When
Øyvind Woie from the Norwegian newspaper
Vårt Land packed for the
CeBIT 2004 exhibition in Germany, it would have been a slight understatement to say that he packed lightly. He brought nothing but his Nokia 6600 photo phone, and sent in his reports every time he spotted something worth a mention. All in all, he submitted 32 small stories, consisting of a 400 x 300 pixel photo and no more than 160 characters of text. The end result was a small
slide show with all the latest gear and trends.
According to Journalisten.no, Woie reported that his thumbs were a bit numb after CeBIT, but he still believes that photo phones are excellent for music festivals and such, in which short feature pieces work well. As for the numb thumbs, the problem should be solved; he spotted a new and better phone at CeBIT. Now, this all reminds me of a comment I heard from
John Pavlik of Columbia University in the spring of 1997: "Is there any reason why journalists should show up at the desk to write articles, when they can carry everything they need in their pockets?"
