[aprssig] APRN news from Dayton!

[Gregg Wonderly]

On 5/23/2011 4:55 PM, Stephen H. Smith wrote:
> On 5/23/2011 12:39 PM, Rud Merriam wrote:
>>
>>
>> A further thought is to take damage pictures with cell phones or cameras. They
>> would be transferred to a laptop / net book and sent back to the EOC.
>>
>> I haven't looked into how to do the picture transfer. One possibility is
>> EasyPAL on 70 cm to attain a higher transfer rate.
>
> The biggest problem is the vile and obnoxious locking down, by cellular
> carriers, of cell phone capabilities built-in by the phone's manufacturer.
>
> Most cell phones have the capabilities to transfer pics taken by their cameras
> to a computer via a USB cable. However the carriers disable this feature in the
> phone's operating system to force you to email/transfer the pics over-the-air
> using expensive (and profitable) MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), and to
> force you to buy ring tones over-the-air from their store (rather than uploading
> your own sounds directly from your own computer). On some phones, it's a fairly
> easy hack of the phone firmware to re-enable local transfers to/from a computer
> (an activity known to cell carriers as "side-loading") On others, not so easy.

This is precisely why the iPhone is so valuable in the Cell phone economy. 
Apple dictated a lot about what happens there, and all smart phones, have 
network access, some via wifi with arbitrary applications that make it trivial 
to do things from the phone to some other network accessible "thing".

With the wisnap device, for example, you have a wifi->serial terminal server 
function that allows your cellphone to be wirelessly (via wifi) connected to 
your TNC and radio.  It could also, via wifi, transfer pictures to a picture 
APRSN server.

This is a very different world that what existed before Apple said, "Enough!" 
and very much changed how things work in the cellular market.

Gregg Wonderly
W5GGW