Gathering Image data in 360

A kind of life logging model,  or just image information gathering in 360 degrees

FITT360 is a 360-degree camcorder you wear around your neck
By Nicole Lee, @nicole in Engadget

Imagine if you could snap 360 degree photos and videos without holding a camera. That's the promise of the FITT360, a 360-degree camcorder that you can wear around your neck. It's one of the first products from a Samsung spin-off called LinkFlow, and was made as part of Samsung's C-Labs, the company's creative labs program.

The idea behind a wearable camcorder is to capture the world around you in an unobtrusive way. There are three cameras located on the wearable neckband -- one near the front, one on the side and another near the rear. Each camera is capable of capturing the world in 180-degrees. All you have to do is press a button and it'll start recording, allowing for a hands-free capture experience as well. And since it has WiFi, you can even use it to livestream on something like Periscope if you fancy ... "

Google Clips Gathering, Analyzing Images

Saw Clips introduced this week.  An interesting application of an always on,  AI driven camera.  With shades of Life-Logging, but with better ways to make sense of all the imagery gathered.  Creepy, I don't know since we have control of the images its far more secure than most other channels of data gathering.

Google Clips camera lays the groundwork for our AI-powered future
It's what's inside that counts.
Jessica Conditt, @JessConditt

Allow me to make a bold prediction: Google's Clips camera is going to flop.

Clips is a $250 camera powered by artificial intelligence and designed to snap images of important moments as they happen, no human input required. At best, it'll probably sell OK at launch -- there will be a handful of cute videos showing how the camera performs while attached to a dog or the top of a baby's toy mobile, and the internet will briefly swoon. Maybe a few months later, it'll catch a crime in action, and we'll be reminded that these odd, all-observant cubes exist.

But, regardless of the viral content that comes out of Clips, it's not going to be enough to convince mainstream consumers to run out and drop more than $200 on a clip-on camera. Smartphones have cameras (really good ones, even), and a lot of people have smartphones. Clips might address a real problem -- freeing up users to experience life without worrying about filming it -- but no one needs this technology right now. Besides, it's kind of a creepy concept overall.

Allow me to make another, less bold claim: Google knows all of this. And while it would be great for the company's bottom line (and its data-collection department) if Clips takes off, it doesn't need the hardware to sell well right now. Google most likely has larger plans for Clips' software .... " 

Will we all be Wearing Cams Soon?

Followed this once at the request of a retail research client.  Tested it in the aisle. Will it now be common?

Why you'll wear a body camera

As costs go down, quality goes up and ease of use improves, wearable cameras will become more compelling, even at work. Here's why the body cam revolution is coming.     ... By Mike Elgan

" ... A few years ago, a first generation of so-called "lifelogging cameras" came and went. These failed in the market because they were two early on two fronts: The technology wasn't ready. And the public wasn't ready.

Now, increasingly, both are ready. As better technology improves the quality of images, enabling even 4k video and real-time live streaming, society increasingly acclimates to people taking pictures all the time. Those 1.2 trillion photos aren't all being taken in private spaces.

Just a few years ago, nobody could have predicted or imagined what's now acceptable public behavior with a smartphone camera. People shamelessly pose and posture in public for selfies without embarrassment. They take pictures of their food and drinks in restaurants. They take selfies in the bathroom mirror. ...  " 

Body Cameras for All

Do Police Body Cameras Really Work?
Sometimes police body cameras accomplish their intended purpose, but other times they backfire. And nobody knows why  ....  By Barak Ariel

A considerable IEEE analysis piece on the use of body cameras by police.    Which I think does not establish well enough what 'working' means.  The conclusion, they are not as effective as we might think.    Is it because such actions and and reaction occur in extreme situations?  Worth a look.

Also relates more generally to cams that could be attached to all of us, all the time.   Or while we work, or ... ?    To help us share work and progress with minimal effort.  Record effort. Or be monitored?  Orwellian yes,  Somewhat akin to 'Life logging', covered in this space for years, but seems to gone out of fashion, except for police work.

Recalls work we did with consumers, for pay in a laboratory setting, who wore such always-on cameras in the aisle during shopping.  Later I saw this done with unobtrusive EEG caps. The 'test consumer' could engage with product which then recorded their neurological state.   Could that be added to other such cameras to indicate emotional readiness in a difficult situation, warning the wearer?

Lifelogging Pauses

Gordon Bell was a big proponent, but has stopped doing Lifelogging.  Has the ubiquitous smart phone taken over for the approach?  Only if you automated periodic picture taking and recorded keystrokes. And made sure the phone was pointed in the right direction.

We examined variants of the idea for understanding consumer behavior in both laboratory and real life contexts.  Not enough work was done doing pattern analysis of the data gathered.  I see I have not written much about that experience here (see mentions in tags below).  May follow later.

Continuous POV Cameras For Compliance

It has been called lifelogging, a means to record continuous clips of point-of-view images as you work or play.  It was suggested and tested for easily gathering information about in-store conditions.  The Narrative-2 is a recent example.  Relatively cheap, wearable and easy to use.  A somewhat related method is Storeflix,  which we tested and emphasizes the management of select images for compliance applications,  as opposed to gathering continuous streams of images.

Sensor Life Logging with Saga

In Technology Review:    Using your smartphone sensors to monitor and record your every move.    Some interesting learnings that could be applied to other sensor stream applications.  " ... ARO is behind an app called Saga that automatically records every place that a person goes. Now ARO’s engineers are testing ways to use the barometer, cameras, and microphones in a device, along with a phone’s location sensors, to figure out where someone is and what they are up to. That approach should debut in the Saga app in late summer or early fall.  ... The current version of Saga, available for Apple and Android phones, automatically logs the places a person visits; it can also collect data on daily activity from other services, including the exercise-tracking apps FitBit and RunKeeper, and can pull in updates from social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Once the app has been running on a person’s phone for a little while, it produces infographics about his or her life; for example, charting the variation in times when they leave for work in the morning. ... " 

Sony Lifelogging Glasses

Via Walter Riker: Sony demonstrates lifelogging glasses. Have been looking at eyetracking approaches lately. In the Enterprise we examined related methods for delivering key knowledge to people as they performed support requiring tasks. As their design improves you could pay consumers to wear them to track their behavior engaging your product in the real world. Out there, but not that far away.

Gordon Bell's Mylifebits

BW reviews the status of the work by Gordon Bell with MyLifebits. Inspired in part by Vennevar Bush's unimplemented Memex idea. We saw MyLifebits presented in its early phases. The article positions it going beyond the Twitterverse, automating the online and offline minutiae of your life, permitting it all to be retrieved and studied later on. An electronic scrapbook of his entire life. Though some kinds of recording can be automated via video and audio devices like the Sensecam at the right, much else still needs to be manually scanned. We are still not paperless. Also related to the more general Lifelog projects. We looked at it as a possible future knowledge management tool. It is noted that Microsoft has chosen not to come out with a suite of lifeblogging tools.

Update: Thinking about life recorders as common as a wrist-watch, and the implications.

IBM Augments Human Memory: Pensieve

IBM labs has a project underway that seeks to archive human memory. Called Pensieve. (A Harry Potter reference, it is a magical object that can store memories).

The work appears to be similar in its goals to work Being done at Microsoft by Gordon Bell called MyLifeBits. Saw a presentation of that more than five years ago. The IBM idea seems more oriented towards mobile devices. This is the kind of memory augmentation that many of us could use. Juggling lots of data for multiple clients and contexts. Of course the bigger problem is finding exactly the information you need. The approach uses associative techniques to make the happen. And most diifficult, seeing when it might emerge from a large company's research lab.