Wearable Videocam Records Your Life
DejaView's Camwear 100 continuously captures 30-second clips.
Tom Spring, PCWorld.com
NEW YORK -- Call it TiVo for your eyes and ears: The ultimate
memory-enhancing hardware for geeks is here at CeBIT this week, dubbed
Camwear.
Shown by DejaView, the product is a thimble-size video camera that mounts on your glasses or baseball cap. It videotapes everything in your view.
If you see something worth saving, just press a button on a corresponding device attached to your belt, and bingo--you've recorded the last 30 seconds of your life for playback on your PC.
Obtaining a photographic memory with the help of DejaView Camwear 100 comes with a price tag of $350 and will become available in mid-September, according to company representatives. Although DejaView did not show its wares on the CeBIT show floor, the company pitched its product at an affiliated offsite event, ShowStoppers.
Product Specs
The Camwear 100 system consists of a tiny camera with a thin cord that connects to a small PDA-size device that you can attach to a belt. Camwear continuously buffers the 30 seconds of video being recorded. Hit a button on the device, and the video and sound can be stored on a Secure Digital removable storage card. DejaView does not bundle the SD card; you must buy it separately.
The device captures video at 30 frames per second in a 320-by-240 format at 24 bits per pixel. It stores the files in mpeg4 format, with the .asf file extension. Although the video and audio demonstrated at ShowStoppers wasn't standard camcorder quality, the device did an adequate job capturing a Little League game from the sidelines.
You can record only at 30-second intervals, but you can capture as many 30-second snippets as your SD storage card can handle. A 128MB card holds about 65 video intervals of 30 seconds, says Sid Reich, DejaView's president.
The Camwear device has a USB port, so you can export the video clips to your PC. Or, you can just pop out the SD card and import its data through a card reader.
Recording Life
DejaView representatives expect the product will appeal to people who want to record impromptu moments without having their heads stuck behind a full-size camcorder.
"Parents will never miss Junior running the bases when he hits a home run," Reich says.
The company also markets several other Camwear products. The $80 model 50 captures a 50-second clip, but is used with a PDA; the 200XP can capture up to four hours of video and costs $500.
Reich estimates the DejaView Camwear 100 supports about 4.5 hours of use between battery charges.
But you'll have to rely on organic memory and backup if you forget to recharge your Camwear 100 after it runs out of juice.
