Lord Ember Stone's Quest

First, we must forget about the whole movie after the nation’s baby boomers grew up in Kodak, Polaroid, and 35mm cameras of various shapes and sizes. We all use it to send the idea in our film for developing and waiting for our pictures again.

Then came digital cameras and the world was taken over by the storm with this cool new technology. Suddenly you could take pictures and view the results immediately. Initially this camera is slow and not so good quality, but still somehow cool. Then it was heated and now we have a fantastic digital cameras of all shapes and sizes, the beautiful pictures that can be shared directly with family members or the rest of the world can take in this regard.

Now comes the latest in technology integration. WiFi and digital cameras. No need to even plug your camera memory card into a computer, or a printer at all. Now you can buy a digital camera that transmits the images via wireless technology. Yes, that is right, a wireless connection for your image uploads.

Now, you may be among those in the population that have not even gotten their hands around the whole digital image sharing thing yet. But this promising new technology may lead us to a world of fewer cables to plug in, quicker transfer of our images, and in the case of events in the world, the ability to share images of news almost instantly.

As we saw in the recent bombings in London, folks with cell phone cameras recorded the devastation they saw in the underground and shared it with the world in almost real time fashion. These new cameras may be able to take that sort of thing to an all new level. Imagine cities that implement widespread WiFi access and photographers with WiFi cameras capturing images of news and other special events. They could transmit those images right away and let the world see them.

Here is how it works:

Nikon has released two models of digital cameras that are WiFi enabled. The idea is to be able to transmit your pictures straight from the camera to your computer or printer through a wireless adaptor. You bring up the images to transfer, hit “go”, and they get sent through the air to your printer. The Coolpix P1 and P2 will be in the $400-$550 range in pricing and the adaptor is extra.

They are competing with Kodak which released its own version of the WiFi camera in their Easy Share line of cameras this year. Kodak has already gone to making it easy to share photos by transmitting them at so called “wireless hot spots”, usually cafes or stores where wireless access is sold or given away to customers. These efforts by the leading camera makers seem aimed at adding value to their already impressive digital technology.

Digital cameras continue to be hot sellers despite what some in the industry thought would be a slowing of sales this year. Many had predicted that cell phone cameras would slow digital camera sales, but this is not happening.

If you are a leading edge gadget buyer and have a wireless mindset then you may want to be first on the block to get one of these Wi-Fi digital cameras.

Wireless systems have always been an integral part of our life in the last century because of their ability for immediate installation in addition to the clear cutting huge amounts of capital and time that would otherwise be wasted in the assembly and installation and commissioning. But how big and developed a wireless system is the industry? And how many touches our lives? And if I’m not stretching too far, whether we are controlled by a wireless system? Well, let’s a critical look at the issues that concern us all.

Wireless Systems and Communication
Ever since Graham Bell and Marconi invented telephone and radio respectively, life has never been the same. Although they didn’t revolutionalized things instantaneously they sure caused a ruffle thus signaling what was on the way. Today, without wireless systems communications would grind to a halt. Satellites become dud flying objects of little use if we don’t ‘connect’ through wireless for billions of gigabytes of data transfer every hour.

Consumer Wireless Equipments
At the bottom, we have wireless toys which are the rage with children. But the most common wireless system everyone is familiar is cell phone without which most of us can conduct our lives the way we need to. Cell phones have rapidly expanded to exit the wired phones in a matter of a few years. Even the basic phones are going wireless with the advent of CDMA technology. The 3G cell phones can transmit up to 2MBPS of data.

Mobile phones reached their zenith of glory when Motorola introduced satellite phones (Irridium) which didn’t even require wireless network but worked with satellites directly.

Connectivity is just notional; look at what broadband has done to wireless systems. Internet no more needs ‘wired connectivity’ as there is wireless broadband service. IPOD has made world collapse into our pockets. What we imagined till the other year, that wireless systems made useful wireless microphones, was turned upside down by one small pocket gadget called IPOD.

Wireless Gadgets

If we are able to watch news cruising at 50,000’ at great speeds, you could imagine what ‘the void’ (wireless) can do. Let’s take a look at some cute gadgets from the current rage.

1. Push to talk phones: Talk, browse internet, watch TV and connect to all your friends by one button push.

2. Pocket PC and wireless LAN for laptops: Pocket PCs double up as cell phones. Laptops connect to LAN with a wireless LAN card.

3. Toys, game controls etc.

4. Home theater, music systems, network booster and headphones etc.

Long ago, when gods communicated, they were not verbal! They communicated silently. Just where are we heading?