The New York Times is predicting that the built-in camera on smartphones will kill point-n-shoot cameras. Or, rather, that the point-n-shoot camera built into a phone will discourage people from buying a standalone point-n-shoot, which only makes sense. Come on, why carry more than one thing? People have stopped wearing wristwatches because of phones, for god's sake, who's going to carry around yet another electronic device only to find the batteries are dead when they try to use it. Now, if people will only start complaining about how shitty cellphone cameras are, they'll start putting GOOD cameras in celphones. I admit, I take a lot of pictures with my cellphone, but I have my nice cameras (including my K1000) when I really want to take a good picture. Pro photographers, for years, have carried around a Polaroid camera for staging and lighting purposes, so it doesn't hurt to have one in my phone. There's a bunch of stuff I would have missed if I didn't take pictures with my cellphone. They've done the small-cheap-camera thing better than the other small-cheap-cameras, so don't fault them for being easy and portable - fault them for tiny sensors and crappy plastic lenses.

Japan, long admired for having a higher quality cellphone system than here in the U.S., is running into a little problem: Customers are downloading pornography in such quantities that it is bringing the cellular network to a standstill. On one hand, Ha ha, your phone network isn't as awesome as you thought! On the other hand: you can get that much porn on the phone network? Fuck, that is more awesome than I thought.