New settings to send emails using Phojo

Are you using Pocket Phojo to send photos via email? If so you will need to update your settings as we have upgraded our server.

First, you will need to upgrade to version 6 if you are running an older version of Phojo.

Then:
Tap File->Prefs->Configure Remote Editing
Tap Enable Remote Editing
Enter your name in the “Your Name” field
Enter your email in the “Email” field
Leave the other settings as they are.
Tap OK

After a brief pause, Phojo will connect to the usa1.remoteedit.net IRES server. If you send an email, Phojo will now send the email via IRES, then the IRES server will actually send the email. This should result in a major speed up when transmitting via 3G.

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Eye-Fi Pro Updates/Free Phone Setup/Windows Mobile 6.5

Many improvements have been made to Phojo 6 since the initial release, including testing on Windows Mobile 6.5, and the Toshiba TG01. Release 429 is currently available to download from the regular download link at idruna.com, and release 430 is just about to go out for Touch Pro 2 support. For US based customers, we are willing to setup your Eye-Fi Pro cards for free, you just pay to ship your phone and Eye-Fi Pro card to us, and pay for shipping back again, please contact me for details.

If you have been considering buying the Eye-Fi Pro card to transmit images from your camera to Phojo via WiFi, now is a great time to buy as they are currently on sale for only $100 at Amazon.com (normally $169):

They are also now shipping in the UK! For only 100 pounds, darn that incredibly strong dollar. At least your $99 Phojo 6 upgrade will be cheaper in real terms.

New Phone Recomendations: Toshiba TG01 and Verizon Touch Pro 2

If you live in a country that has more than 12 trillion in government debt, you`ll want to skip to the next section, as the new top phone for Phojo is only available in Europe, and will not operate at high speeds in the US due to using the wrong HSPA frequency.

The Toshiba TG01 has a 1Ghz processor, a gorgeous 4.1″ WSVGA screen, etc. etc., all very nice, and a big improvement over practically every phone shipping. The main feature as far as Phojo is concerned though is the return of the USB Host Port. This means you can plug your phone directly into your camera. Transmitting images in real time, as you shoot, can be as simple as connecting your phone, and pushing the protect button on the back of your camera. This completely eliminates the need for a Nikon WT WiFi transmitter. If you are going to plug something in via USB and attach it to your belt, you might as well make it something that can transmit via WiFi AND 3G. Note that Phojo v6 has the ability to allow the screen on the camera to stay on for the Nikon D3 and D300, normally on Nikon cameras this turns off when connected to a computer. The TG01 has also been tested with the Eye-Fi Pro cards, so you can have one camera attached via USB, and another camera connecting via WiFi. You can also attach a USB card reader, allowing you to ingest full size CompactFlash or SD cards. The HTC HD2 appears to be the closest competitor to the TG01, but the TG01’s USB host feature adds so much flexibility and power that I don’t see why you would want to use any other phone.

If you live in the US you can start reading again now. My new recommendation here is the Verizon HTC Touch Pro 2. You can see why I specifically recommend the Verizon version in my video below. It doesn’t have USB host, but you are not likely to ever see this feature over here, if you want to connect directly to a camera via USB, you`ll want to look at IRES running on a UMPC or Netbook. It might not have a 1Ghz CPU either, but it does have a nice big screen, a nice big keyboard, and a nice big serving of upstream bandwidth, 70KB/s worth.

Video of IRES Transmitting 2.8X Faster than FTP

IRES can do a lot of things, but one of the least appreciated features is just how fast it can actually send files compared to FTP. By using finely tuned advanced networking techniques especially designed for mobile phone networks, IRES can achieve speeds almost triple what you would normally get. Seeing is believing, so I made a video of Phojo running on the AT&T Touch Pro, the Verizon Touch Pro II, and the Sprint Touch Pro II. On AT&T IRES achieves about double the speed vs FTP, on Sprint a little bit less than double, and on Verizon, almost triple the speed! The different between the slowest case, sending a file via FTP on AT&T, and the fastest case, sending a file via IRES on Verizon, is huge, 12KB/s vs 70KB/s. If you watch the last section closely you can see the Verizon phone sends almost a megabyte before the AT&T phone can even get up to full speed. Now, your results may and will vary due to how close you are to the cell towers, and in AT&T's case, how many people are using their iPhones at any given moment. In my experience, the Verizon results are pretty typical. AT&T is a lot more variable, enough to cause a lot of frustration. I can't comment on Sprint as I haven't used it as much as the others, but I did expect it to be faster.

Eye-Fi CompactFlash Adapters

Eye-Fi does not officially support the use of their cards in SDHC->CompactFlash adapters, but I have not experienced any serious issues other than reduced range. One thing that can help is to remove the shielding from the adapter.

New Features for Pocket Phojo 6.0

The new page for Phojo 6.0 can be found here. Below is a list of all the new features since 5.0:

Eye-Fi Pro Support
• Built-in Eye-Fi Pro support adds WiFi transmission capabilities to almost any camera for only $149
• Pocket Phojo automatically creates the ad-hoc WiFi network, and allows receiving images from the camera via WiFi while simultaneously transmitting via email or FTP on the phone’s 3G connection
• Choose between transmitting all images or only those selected in-camera using the protect button
• Received images can be automatically renamed, have IPTC captions added, and be resized and recompressed before being transmitted

Idruna Remote Editing System 2.0 Support
• IRES allows an editor to see what her photographers are shooting in real time, from anywhere in the world
• IRES first transmits thumbnails to the editor, which takes very little bandwidth, and can be done in real time
• When the editor clicks on a thumbnail, a small preview is transmitted.
• Only the images the editor selects as the best are transmitted at full size
• Supports ratings stars, editing captions remotely from the browser, voice tags, and RAW files
• Team members can form groups to display all photos from an job in the same browser window
• Supports end to end high grade encryption
• Bandwidth optimization transmits images twice as fast as sending via FTP
• See http://idruna.com/remoteediting.html for full details

User Interface Improvements
• Shiny new user interface
• Improved Image Browser – now displays more thumbnails at once
• Clicking on an entry in the Transmission Queue now displays a thumbnail
• Added Delete option to profile selectors
• Changed Rename Prefix to Template, added ability to rename according to file date etc
• Raw images are now automatically rotated

New Camera Support
• Custom USB driver adds support for connecting to the Nikon D3 and D300, with the screen remaining on, something Nikon’s own software can’t do!
• D3/D300 owners can now select files to transmit in-camera using the protect button
• USB driver now supports having both slots filled at the same time
• Added FujuFilm S5 Pro USB Driver Support
• The built-in FTP server now supports the Canon WFT-E3
• WiFi is set back to using DHCP on exit

Military Features
• Added automatic VIRIN support when Military Captions enabled
• Added Encrypted Email Support (SMIME) for sending to DoD recipients

Transmission Improvements
• Send via Email now supports routing images through the IRES server. As well as being more than twice as fast, this also bypasses problems on phone networks that block SMTP
• Send via Email now supports BCC
• Pocket Phojo now supports up to 256bit AES Encryption
• Added Secure FTP (SFTP) Support, with password or certificate based authentication
• Added FTPS Support
• Added SCP Support
• Now warns when storage is low
• Auto-Retry failed transmissions
• New optimizations allow transmitting thousands of images without slowdowns or running out of memory

IRES at the World Economic Forum 2009

IRES has now been used at the World Economic Forum for the 3rd straight year, and again with great success. IRES gave Swiss Image a considerable advantage over the larger press agencies, even over the Agency That Shall Not be Named that used their own proprietary remote editing workflow.

You can read more at Swiss Image’s newly redesigned site

Season’s Greetings

It seems like only 4 blog posts ago that I was wishing everyone Seasons Greetings. Ah, it was only 4 posts ago, something to add to my New Years Resolutions list. Despite the apparent lack of activity on the surface, things have been very busy here, with over 30 beta releases of Phojo/IRES released this year, including the addition of high grade encryption to meet the needs of our police and military customers, live video transmission support from DSLRs and camcorders, masses of new features in IRES, and the Wi-Pics Mobile software mentioned below. Even with the news media industry turmoil, the feedback from my trip to NYC earlier in the month was very positive, 2009 should be a very interesting year. Best wishes and all the best from everyone here at Idruna!

Idruna to power the new Wi-Pics Mobile

Idruna and United Imaging Solutions LLC have teamed up to produce the next generation Wi-Pics Mobile unit. The software is a special custom version of Pocket Phojo designed to meet the needs of event photographers, with built-in work flow actions to automatically download images from the camera as you shoot, and associate information from a barcode scanner or user edited fields into the exif headers or file names. The hardware is the Socket SoMo 650, with a custom bracket and USB host cable for convenient mounting to the camera. The solution will be available from UIS in January starting at $1299.

2008 Cox Mobile Technology Summit – September 4th, Atlanta, GA

Verizon has invited me to give a presentation titled “Real Time Photo and Video Transmission using DSLRs and Verizon Wireless Hand-held Devices” at the 2008 Cox Mobile Technology Summit, on September 4th, at Cox’s headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Please feel free to email me if you will be attending the conference or would like more information.