CVS have launched a new disposable digital camera with a 1.4” TFT preview screen. Customers can new take up to 25 pictures, preview them, delete the ones they don’t like and take it back to a CVS store for printing.
The camera is fully functional and features an automatic flash, self timer and automatic exposure all for US$19.99 (€16.27). Digital cameras have come from being expensive high technology items to throw away entertainment items very quickly indeed.
Now, I know these things aren’t really disposable – they get recycled and sold onto the next person, and the advantage is that they’re cheap and you don’t worry about losing them. The key difference between this camera and a non-disposable camera is that there’s no way for the end-user to get their pictures off – they have do trot down to CVS and hand the camera back. That US$20 you’re paying isn’t really for the camera – it’s essentially a deposit. I give it a week before someone reverse engineers the electronics in the CVS camera and works out a way for consumers to get the data off.
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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