William Grosso’s recent weblog (What is a camera, anyway?) about phone-camera use at OSCON 2003 caught my attention.

I recently blogged about the first phone-camera that I’ve used (Nokia Phone Camera, Pocket PC 2003, QuickTime, & RealOne.
His concept of visual aids for real-time social interaction got me thinking more about my new fascination with this hybrid technology.

William also notes some of the more-or-less negative stories about phone-camera behavior in Asia that have various people/groups upset (photographing magazines instead of buying them, etc.).

But can’t those of us who consider ourselves Creative Technologists (for lack of a better term) come up with more interesting uses for phone-cams that falls in the realm of socially responsible or at least socially/legally acceptable?

So, how’s this for an idea (if someone hasn’t already implemented it somewhere I don’t know about):
A Social Photo Mosaic Blog. One recent phenomenon are spontaneous email meetings where people email each other to meet at some designated spot at a certain time. They all arrive, create a crowd, and then disburse as quickly as they arrived. Ok. Interesting, I guess. But, not interesting enough that I’d show up at one. But, what if everyone arrived with phone cams and had everyone take a phone-cam photo of their area and uploaded it (wirelessly of course) to some group photo blog area where the meeting could be collected and displayed in some interesting time-space arrangement?

Or, for those of you at OSCON 2003 (I couldn’t attend this year… rats…)… Group phone-cam photo blog the various events for those of us attending OSCON only in spirit?

Good idea? Bad idea? Whatever. I thought I’d throw it out their to you Creative Technologists to see if someone is interested in it. If you have a better idea for using phone-cams in an interesting way… Great!

Good idea? Bad idea? Got a better idea?