Apple just received a patent for integrating a camera directly into the screen. From my post about it two years ago:

What if the screen is the camera? What if you could look right at the screen during a video chat? Wouldn’t that solve the problem? Wouldn’t people then think you were looking right at them? Wouldn’t that make video chats even more personal and emotional?— Secret iChat hardware feature in Leopard?, Watching Apple, May 13, 2007

The context back then was iChat but it makes even more sense for iPhone, where video chatting would require a camera facing you on the same side as the screen, while taking photos or videos would require a camera on the other side of the phone so you could frame them on the screen. Hiding the camera in the screen would also preserve the visual elegance of the iPhone’s hardware design.

Your iPhone would then contain two cameras—one for video chats, the other for photos and video. Cost would likely rise; size and weight would likely rise a bit; but power usage wouldn’t necessarily increase because the iPhone might prevent you from using both cameras at the same time.

Perhaps video may require a pricier plan, since it’s otherwise hard to imagine carriers getting excited about all that video traffic on their networks, especially since at least one report says iPhone users are already generating up to four times as much data volume as other smartphone users. On the other hand, it could be WiFi-only.

Easy-to-use video conferencing would probably convince many to buy their first iPhone. And it’s exactly the kind of feature that would get existing users to buy another iPhone, something Apple’s probably very interested in.

Rumor has it that iPhone 3.0 hardware may include a compass. Combined with Core Location, this is getting interesting.

Nature outlooks sometimes include bronze panoramic viewfinders that describe what you can see in the distance. For example, to your left you see a big mountain peak which the viewfinder—featuring a ridgeline aligned perfectly with the actual peaks—informs you is named “Mount Doom”. Another glance at the viewfinder tells you the river below and to your right is named “Anduin”. Kind of a low-tech heads-up-display, like the one in Minority Report.

Never mind that a built-in compass and Core Location will let Apple finally match the Android demo that showed Google’s Street View updating live while you pivot in a 360° circle—we can see more of those panoramic viewfinders!

Manhattan: “What’s that building over there…hey, it’s the Chrysler building!”
Seattle: “What’s that peak to the right over there…hey, Mount Hood!”
London: “What’s that pub over there…hey, beer!”

This is going to be fun.

An article in the Yorkshire Post caught my eye this morning. (That’s a puffin on the right, by the way.)

Field guides such as the British Birds Video Guide and Butterflies of Britain and Ireland have only recently appeared on the App Store—possibly because they involve a tremendous of number of image, audio, and video files—but they’re already making such an attractive alternative to the traditional printed guides that nature watchers are altering long-held habits: where previously they would make notes before consulting the guide, nature lovers are now using their iPhone apps to make an identification while the unfamiliar birds and butterflies are still in sight.

The audio and video are what’s different:

I loaded them on to my iPhone and took them for a test drive. My first destination was the fringe of some woodland on Rombalds Moor, between Airedale and Wharfedale, where I expected to find two oft-confused species side-by-side.

Meadow Pipits and Tree Pipits are easy to tell apart if you hear them singing or calling regularly, but identifying them by sight is more problematic.

With a bird in view, my phone soon told me I was looking at a Tree Pipit. The close-up video showed it had fine streaks on its flanks and for confirmation I compared it with video footage of the Meadow Pipit. So much easier than colour plates in a bird book.— Latest mobile phone technology gives birdwatchers a flying start
, Yorkshire Post, May 8, 2009

It’s interesting to see iPhone affecting something so seemingly distant as nature-watching in Britain, a pastime with strong discipline…

So would I break the habit of a lifetime and start checking unfamiliar birds and butterflies while I’m seeing them, or continue to make notes? I’ll probably do both. If it’s on my phone, the instant identification guides will often be hard to resist.

…and it becomes even more interesting with a timely article in the New York Times this morning which reports that researchers have created an iPhone app to identify trees automatically by the shape of their leaves alone:

THE traditional way to identify an unfamiliar tree is to pull out a field guide and search its pages for a matching description. One day people may pull out a smartphone instead, photographing a leaf from the mystery tree and then having the phone search for matching images in a database.

A team of researchers financed by the National Science Foundation has created just such a device — a hand-held electronic field guide that identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves, said Peter N. Belhumeur, a professor of computer science at Columbia and a member of the team.— Digital Field Guides Eliminate the Guesswork, New York Times, May 9, 2009

Consider what makes apps like these possible:

Mobility. When people say “the best designs are invisible”, they mean that the tool fits the task so well, you focus on the task instead of the tool. Field guides are used in the field. Laptops may be portable, but they’re not mobile; you might carry one to an observation hide, but you would hardly hold it up, eye-level, while looking at a bird in the distance. Similarly, to identify trees by their leaves, you need to take a photo of the leaf. With iPhone, you just aim and shoot.

Great media support. Field guides are really identification guides. Traditional printed field guides are restricted to text and images, but nature also moves and makes sounds. Great support for video and audio make it possible to identify subjects with greater confidence.

Easy to use. iPhone’s design is fundamental to these apps. Because the apps are easy to launch and use, they are used.

Powerful processor/Connectivity. The iPhone may not match desktop machines for speed, but it’s no slouch either. And there’s always the option to connect and process data remotely. Either way, you can leverage sizable databases:

The computer matching is done using images of recently acquired leaves, Dr. Belhumeur said, typically 20 leaves from each species, but sometimes more, that are in the image library. For Plummers Island, the team collected 5,013 leaves representing 157 species; for the trees of Central Park, it collected 4,320 leaves representing 144 species, said Dr. White of Columbia.— Digital Field Guides Eliminate the Guesswork, New York Times, May 9, 2009

Birds, butterflies, and trees for now, but who know what else will emerge? Vast data and processing power in your hand with always-on connectivity—exciting!