Yahoo took a fleet of 20 custom-pained Electra Townie 8 bicycles and rigged each one with solar panels and a camera-equipped mobile phone mounted on the handlebars in waterproof housing. Each “yBike,” as Yahoo calls them, was also given its own, dedicated Flickr account. The cameras were then rigged to take photos every 60 seconds while the bike is moving, and to immediately upload and geotag them on Flickr.

And it got me thinking: why can’t a normal camera do this?

What sucks about mobile uploads is that the quality of the picture is bad, it takes way too long to send, and it’s just not a fun process.  And what sucks about camera uploads is that you have to do it through cables.  When your memory card runs out of space, you have to get to a computer and upload the pictures before you can take any more.

Camera companies need to get rid of the limitations they’ve put on our experience with their product.

So here’s my idea for Kodak, the company who wants to “do for photos what Apple does for music“:

Make a camera that can instantly upload our photos wirelessly (to iPhoto, Flickr, Facebook – whatever) and geo-tag them.

I know this technology is technically already out there, but it hasn’t been done well.  All the elements haven’t been put into one sleek machine yet.

Don’t make people run out and buy a special type of SD wireless card – have that stuff built into the camera.  I don’t want to have to be in charge of connecting my camera to a network, I just want it to do it for me.  Then whatever pictures I take, have it send them instantly to my private Flickr account and my iPhoto WITHOUT TELLING ME!  I don’t want to know that stuff is happening; I just want to keep taking pictures.  Also, I want my pictures to be automatically geo-tagged.

I know what you’re thinking: this is hard to pull off.  With the drain on battery life and collaborating with a wireless network, it’s just too hard.  And to top it off, that technology is already out there in different forms.

Well, mp3 players were around before the iPod.  Ever heard of the MPMan?  There’s a reason you haven’t – it sucked.  And right now, taking pictures sucks.  But not enough people realize that because they haven’t experienced the way things could (and should) be.  It may be hard to pull off, but that’s always the case when you want to make something great.

Kodak- you want to do for pictures what Apple did for music?  Well, here’s the starting point for your industry’s iPod.

After we talked in person the other night, it was obvious that we could have had a script done a long time ago. I know that it’s possible to generate a lot of great ideas online (e.g. Seth’s virtual internship, The Big Think, etc.), but it’s so much more dynamic when you’re bouncing your thoughts off a person a few feet away. All it takes to get a solid free flow of ideas with someone is to be in the same room with them.

The reason I’m writing about something that’s seemingly obvious is because it’s actually not so obvious anymore. I work so much on a computer that I find myself acting like all communication can be done online. But it can’t be done that way a lot of the time. Aside from body language, inflection, volume, and all the other things you need to see and hear to communicate, you also need to feel and develop an energy that’s conducive to creativity in the room. It’s much, much harder to create that type of energy in an exchange of emails.

I know this seems like it contradicts what I said a few days ago. But when you’re generating ideas and really want to move a project along, it’s sometimes necessary to meet in person. The hard part is controlling the group and making sure it stays productive.

Seth imparted this wisdom upon us:

The thing that impressed me the most, overall, was the wacky
boundaryless brainstorming. There were some absolutely terrible
ideas, and yet no one jumped all over them, no one wasted time
quietly dissing them. You stretched boundaries in a bunch of
ways and that’s an extraordinary talent. Don’t lose that… not
next week or in ten years. It’s essential and it’s rare.

Fewer of you got the strategic part. A key part of thinking
strategically when it comes to marketing is to empathize with
the reader. I don’t care if you like something. I don’t care if
I like something. I care about what the market will do. I care
about what the high-influence, listening individual will do.
This is a tough knack to learn, and very difficult to teach. But
with practice, you get it.

I’m amazed at how much effort we put into this little project. We’re going to do some incredible things this summer.