Wireless Broadband Network: Camphone Compression & WiFi Mapping

PixSense today announced the launch of their new location tagging feature, Media Map. It automatically captures the geographic location and the time that photos or video were taken by the subscriber’s cell phone.

The captured data is automatically integrated with an online interactive map. It is also added to the subscriber’s online gallery where it can be effortlessly categorized by date/time, location, or event. Subscribers can send an entire album based on a trip or specific timeframe to friends.

Location tagging is a one-click feature, with media saving, sharing, web posting and mobile community building. Photos and videos captured on a subscriber’s cell phone can be uploaded to the online media or social networking site of their choice. Subscribers are able to share any mobile media from cell phone to cell phone, cell phone to web or web to cell phone.

If an image stored on the site is too large to be seen on the phone, the company’s technology converts it to the proper viewing size. The phone images can be sent to a variety of sites, including one PixSense operates but also to blogs, MySpace, Facebook or even to CNN.

The photo on the left was originally 2.7 MB in size and was compressed 89%
using PixSense BioCompression technology to 240 KB with little quality loss.

At the core of PixSense’s PSP infrastructure is the patent-pending Bio-Compression technology that provides real-time, on-device media compression to reduce the media data size by up to 90 percent before transfer. PixSense technology is being demonstrated at the 2008 Qualcomm BREW Conference next week. Compression makes a lot of sense for cellphones. Handsets with 2+ Megapixel cameras often use plastic lenses with terrible quality. Wireless Week reviews ways to share your cellphone pictures.

Speaking of location information, Dash GPS, a stand-alone GPS product, also provides real-time traffic info. It uses Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System. Dash sells the device for $399 and charges $12.99 per month for the wireless service.