Life Blogging Cameras Will Catch You Scratching Your Private Parts

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Get ready for a life of absolutely no privacy. You may feel like you have none now with credit cards, road tolls, online shopping, GPS, and social media, tracking your every move. That will pale in comparison to everyone you know, and don’t know, taking personal pictures of you everywhere you go.

I talked about this before, but we are now getting closer to this becoming a reality. There is a host of startups, as well as established camera companies, that will be introducing postage-stamp-sized cameras for wearing on your shirt or sweater. The idea is to capture your life in 30-second intervals as you go about your daily business. At the end of the day, you can review all your pictures on the company’s website or app.

Conversely, others are taking pictures of you. If you go to the supermarket, be sure not to pluck one of those olives from the salad bar and put it right into your mouth, because someone is going to capture it. Remember the days when you went to the drug store without any makeup because the chance of someone seeing you early Sunday morning was nil? Not anymore. Or how about telling your boss you are sick, and then someone has a photograph of you on the golf course.

That is the way life is going to be, because more and more Americans want to record everything they possibly can. The trend started with Facebook, Four Square, and Instagram. “Hey, look at me, I am with my BFF at the hottest new restaurant.” Or “Here are photos of the family on vacation in Costa Rica.”

Soon we will see the baby coming out of the birth canal. If you think I’m exaggerating, just take a look at either Instagram or Facebook postings. An increasing number of new daddies post pictures of their newborns moments after the babies are put into the arms of their wives for the first time. The babies look great. The mothers, not so great.

And don’t blame this whole new live camera blogging trend on the people taking the pictures. There is a huge audience of Facebook members who never post a thing, but go on the social media site several times a day to check out what everyone else is doing. They, too, are addicted to watching the lives of others. There is a great satisfaction in being a voyeur.

One company that has jumped on the live camera blogging bandwagon is Memoto, a Swedish startup. Memoto will debut its “automatic lifelogging camera” camera next week at SXSW, the annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, Texas. The square-shaped device can be clipped onto a collar or a jacket, or worn around the neck on a string.

The mini camera costs $279 which includes a year of free online photo storage. It comes with 8 gigabytes of storage, enough for up to 6,000 photos. The company hopes to begin shipping by late April or early May. So far, there are 3,000 orders.

All I have to say is “Smile, you’re on candid camera.” All the time.

8 thoughts on “Life Blogging Cameras Will Catch You Scratching Your Private Parts

  1. On the other hand, I haven’t had a juicy gadget to post on my exceedling popular Amazing Gadgets page on Pinterest for a while. So, thanks for this tidbit. I love being kept apprised of new gadgets and apps, Lois. You do such a great job here.

  2. Here’s the thing, who cares about all these images? Unless you’re a politician, an athlete or a star of reality TV no one is going to pay any attention anyway. Surely, there are four or five geeks in the world who will be passionately interested in this, but for the rest of us, the images will be be stored somewhere on the cloud never to be seen again.

    Imagine there being a digital anthropologist in eons to come, finding these archives and wondering what kind of idiots his ancestors were. We have the capacity to do so much, but we seem to be focused on capturing images of the lint in our bellybuttons.

    I know you’re just the messenger and I enjoy your reports, but I often think, to what end? Why don’t we focus some of that brilliance on curing cancer or the common cold?

  3. Hi, this is Niclas from Memoto. Thanks for writing about our company! We’re getting close to shipping the Memoto camera to the market and we appreciate your support! If you (this blog or its readers) have any questions – please don’t hesitate to reach out through twitter, facebook, web, etc!

    Best regards, Niclas Johansson

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