Next time you are walking down the street and turn your head towards an unobtrusive grey camera - watch out. If the device is Nokia's new Observation Camera a picture of your face could be winging its way as an MMS (multimedia message service) to someone else's mobile phone.
At first glance the camera, launched earlier this month in the UK, looks like any other CCTV camera. Yet pop in a Sim card and the camera's phone functionality is activated, enabling it to send images to other phones via MMS or to PCs using e-mail.
Owners can phone the camera and listen to the sounds it picks up via its microphone, or control the device remotely, enabling them to send a text message and receive an image via MMS in return. It can also be pre-set to send images/text warnings if it detects movement or if the temperature exceeds pre-set limits.
Nokia has come up with an imaginative list of potential uses for the camera. Planning to visit your favourite bar? You can find out via the camera who is buying the drinks. Want to find how much snow there is at the top of the mountain? You will be able to see by sending a text message to the camera.
While those ideas sound great in theory, the camera will have one prime use - security. Almost everyone is eyeing up the security market, from BT with its home-monitoring system to network camera manufacturers such as Veo and Panasonic, whose products display constant images via a dedicated web page.
There are also a small number of cameras that can be integrated into Wi-Fi systems so that if they sense an intruder they can e-mail the user.
The leap forward for the Nokia product is that the mobile phone is the one device that is always accessible. Unlike an e-mail alert that may sit for hours unopened on a server somewhere, users will get their SMS or MMS within seconds. In theory, the snaps it takes might also come in handy in identifying a burglar after a crime has been committed.
It is difficult to gauge the camera's likely effectiveness. The motion sensor seems fairly sophisticated, but I wouldn't bet against some users getting a load of MMSes of the local pigeon population. The images it takes are pretty good, too - you can specify their resolution to keep within the parameters of the size of message your network lets you send.
There are a couple of key weaknesses. First, the camera is not exactly plug and play: users have to configure the camera either via SMS, or by using the PC, the route I chose. Even after following instructions to the letter, I couldn't get the camera to work without enlisting extra help. I suspect Nokia's technical centre is going to be fairly busy with this one.
Second, while the camera costs £300, users need to budget an extra £35 a year. That's because the camera is classified as a CCTV device and owners have to register and pay in order to ensure compliance with the 1998 Data Protection Act.
Overall, the camera is an impressive piece of kit. And while it has clear value as part of a security system I doubt that snooping on the local cat population and snapping would-be felons will be the limitations of its use. If ever there was a cool device in need of a killer application, it is this camera.
