A New Lifestreaming Wearable Camera Called the Autographer

On the heels of the recent Microsoft patent filing for Lifestreaming comes the announcement from a company called OMG Life of a new Lifestreaming wearable camera. What is a lifestreaming wearable camera you ask? Well it’s a camera that you wear around your neck like a conference name badge that continually takes photographs at configured intervals throughout the day.

As I mentioned in the above link to my previous post, Microsoft’s Lifestreaming patent is clearly based on Gordon Bell’s research as well as the Sensecam hardware. It turns out that this new camera produced by OMG Life is a consumer subsidiary of parent company OMG plc, the makers of the Vicon Revue which is based on the hardware created for the Microsoft Sensecam for Gordon Bell’s MyLifeBits project. I learned all of this from the Autographer press release.

The Autographer is the name of this new camera and it has some pretty impressive sensing features beyond just being a dumb camera. Here’s a snip from the announcement at DPReview:

Autographer uses five on-board sensors and GPS capability to identify the perfect time to take a photo, based on changes in light and colour, motion, direction and temperature. For instance, Autographer might capture an image when the wearer speeds up as they run for the bus, moves from a warm pub to a snowy street or turns around to greet a friend.

All the wearer has to do is put it on and go, and at the end of the day, watch their ‘unseen’ moments unfold through natural, unpredictable images and stop-frame videos, revealing a surprising new take on their world.

I’ve written about some other similar devices before and I think these will continue to gain popularity to some degree but will become much more prevalent once devices to do this become more ubiquitous. I see Google’s upcoming Project Glass as a step towards getting this closer to a more widespread adopted reality.

The Autographer will be released in November of this year for around $650. You can read more about it and get full specs over at DPReview or visit the official site here.