
Would You Wear a Camcorder on Your Ear? - davewiner
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/would-you-wear-a-camcorder-on-your-ear/
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patio11
A few iterations on this and it would be excellent for law enforcement. (See
"Halting State" for a future Britain in which cops are required to wear them.)
It is also one of the easiest protections against police abuse of authority
which you can actually sell to good cops.

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motters
Small helmet or hat mounted cameras have been available to the police in the
UK for the last few years. I don't think they're ubiquitous yet, but it seems
like only a matter of time before they are. A ubiquitous sousveillance
situation seems like the best possible outcome for all concerned, and we seem
to be already some way along that trajectory.

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icey
"Sousveillance": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance> (it looked like
an interesting word so I had to look it up)

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xyzzyz
What if we make this gadget even smaller and embed it into, say, glasses, then
connect it with portable hard drive? I am too lazy to do the calculations, but
assuming the disk space for a month worth of footage costs $300, it is not out
of reach of average person. Maybe our children will have complete record of
their lives, will always be able to recall what happened to them, what are the
names of people they met, what they have agreed upon, what really happened
during last blackout etc. They will never have to search for the lost things,
they will just rewind the video log to see where they had put them.

The downside is that this limits the privacy and makes people do what they are
supposed to do, and not what the actually want to do -- their boss (parents,
teacher etc.) will just look up the video and see what one had done at his
work (school) time. We also really would not want anyone to browse our life
record as they wish. The data will need to be heavily encrypted and protected
from unauthorized access.

~~~
dctoedt
Litigation counsel will have a field day (and make a ton of money) demanding,
then reviewing, life-log records of people associated with lawsuits and/or
litigants.

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metachris
Android appearently is Looxcie's platform of choice:
<http://looxcie.com/looxcie-app.html> (no iPhone support yet). Now they just
need to link it up with ustream or other live streaming services!

Looxcie will be interesting to use at demonstrations or other events where you
may want to immediately publish a video after something happens (before eg.
that video is taken from you).

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RodgerTheGreat
The "Gargoyles" from Snow Crash don't seem that far off base.

edit: Hey, what do you know: <http://igargoyle.com/>

~~~
nym
Hey, that's my site!

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sasmith
I wish I had been. I heard a car crash last night, and when I got downstairs,
it became clear that someone had hit a parked car (hard) and was fleeing the
scene. I actively tried to catch the license plate, but could only pick up the
first three characters, and even those I'm not confident of. Not sure if 15fps
on 480x320 would have helped (especially in bad lighting), but I'd love to
have that footage and find out.

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hugh3
A neat device, for which I personally have no use. The idea of wearing it
around all the time just in case you happen to see something interesting seems
pretty terrible... how often do you see something so interesting that you
really want everybody to see it in a grainy 15fps video?

Folks who might like it:

1\. Model rocket types (or remote-controlled planes, helicopters etc)

2\. Perverts

~~~
randallsquared
3\. Anyone who blogs or twitters or talks to anyone about their life,
currently

"I wish I had thought to take a picture/video of that event."

"I wish I could remember that person's name that I met last week."

This is another incremental step toward a searchable, verifiable, rewindable
stream of your life, and the benefits are enormous. A lot of people I know,
including myself, use search all day every day. I probably use Google a
hundred times a day or more, for the most trivial questions, or just to see if
there's a quick known answer to some problem I'm thinking about. I am really,
really looking forward to being able to do something similar with my real
life.

I've organized my life around simplicity of schedule, so I think this will be
even more useful for people who are constantly on the go and trying to
remember what they need to do next and who they're doing it with and for. The
stuff that various email apps do now with recognizing appointment language and
offering to add things to your calendar, for example, seems a natural for
applying to realtime life.

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tel
For a fascinating look into someone who records the entirety of their life,
see Exit Through the Gift Shop. It was supposedly going to be all about
enigmatic Banksy, but instead was far more interesting by exploring one of his
old friends turned embarrassment, a guy who for much of his adult life
recorded everything on video.

(small spoiler: editing is NP complete)

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awakeasleep
I've been thinking about this concept ever since microsoft debuted a pendant
'life recorder' a few years ago.

I don't know if you've ever read 'The Stars, My Destination", but it's an old
science fiction book based on the idea of a change in our abilities that
completely destabilizes the current manner of human life.

I believe ubiquitous recording would be an equivalent change. It may be my
warped perspective, but I believe an incredible amount of our society is build
upon lies and untruths. This sort of technology will create an enormous,
disruptive amount of accountability to every single person affected by it.

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jamesbritt
"When turned on, the camera continuously records video in the mp4 format, and
can store up to five hours of footage before it loops back and begins
overwriting the oldest video. "

The phone software needs to be able to instantly upload the video to a safe
location. If someone wants to give you shit, but knows whatever has been
recorded is well out of their reach, they may be considerate in their actions.
No more police or soldiers confiscating recording equipment and destroying the
data.

Luckily, such software exists, so this could be quite a good thing for protest
and civil disobedience activities.

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TeMPOraL
I can imagine reporters using ear cameras. As far as I remember, there was
even a scene on Star Trek: Generations movie, when journalists used something
similar in principle: [http://www.ex-astris-
scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federati...](http://www.ex-astris-
scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federation-camera-2293.jpg) and [http://www.ex-
astris-scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federati...](http://www.ex-astris-
scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federation-camera-2293-2.jpg)

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nym
I bought the Looxcie, and reviewed it here:

<http://igargoyle.com/archives/2010/09/looxcie_review.html>

Overall, it's a compelling product, but the Android app to connect to the
camera feels like a beta.

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angstrom
" _If, for instance, you’re hiking and a bear crosses your trail, you’ve got
it on video._ " At least when someone finds bear droppings and an ear piece
they can put 2 and 2 together.

I see it mostly as a way of protecting yourself in court.

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hugh3
Do you get arrested for crimes you did not commit sufficiently often to make
recording all your activities worthwhile, or is this primarily of value to the
incredibly paranoid?

~~~
angstrom
For the incredibly paranoid and those that would otherwise use mini recorders
to do the same thing with just audio. In those cases it would likely be better
disguised by removing it from the ear piece. Mostly situations that would come
up in small claims court where it's your word against theirs and whatever
evidence you've managed to gather.

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jdavid
after reading the comments, it seems that the notion of interestingness is
tightly coupled with this technology.

how would one filter video for important or interesting moments? socially in
public? or privately with an algorithm, agent, or ai?

i think as data becomes essentially free and infinite __, the need for non-
human help to filter through it becomes necessary.

 __infinite in the star trek sense, meaning it's not actually infinite, but
supply easily out strips consumption. st is not a resource limited economy

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andrewacove
I hope someone makes software that can bookmark all the interesting/active
moments in the video for me. Going back through the video looking for
highlights doesn't seem like a great use of time.

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hkuo
It seems a better idea would have been to embed them into some form of
eyewear, a form factor that currently exists rather than create a new one.

~~~
icegreentea
This form factor already kinda exists. It's almost like a bluetooth headset.
Granted, it's still kinda obnoxious.

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bbuffone
"If you’re obsessed with sharing your life in video..."

Are the people wearing this - sharing their live or the lives of those around
them?

After watching the video it seemed that the only thing shared was the brief
glimpse of the people which passed by.

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bond
I see the sex industry go for this, only needs more resolution...

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toxicflavor
A voyeur's dream come true.

