Filed under: News | Mobile Phones
FunMail: Talk Through Photos
Nov 20 2009, 9:19am CST | by Robert Evans
Ah, Multimedia Messaging...so many uses, yet so rarely used. Taking a picture with your camera and sending it with a message is too much of a hassle to do with every message. That's why MMSing never really caught on the way SMSing did. FunMobility, a mobile content provider from Pleasanton, CA, thinks that's a shame. They've created the FunMail app as a way to encourage more MMSing by making it easier to send pictures in your message.
FunMail keeps a stable of over 50,000 images from a variety of creative commons sources like Flickr. When you enter your message, the app's "Media Brain" will give you a selection of five different photos to choose from. Pick the image, and the app automatically sticks your text into the picture and sends it off. An example of a conversation held this way is shown in the photo above.
The FunMail app is free for the iPhone, you can download it here. This app sounds more like a gimmick than anything else, but there is one aspect of it that piques my interest. If that image cache is filled with some photos that are actually pertinent, this could be a huge time saver. If I'm standing outside the Lizard Lounge, trying to guide my friends there via text, and the FunMail app prompts me with an actual photo of the place, that's useful. If we're chatting about a politician and the app prompts me with his headshot, that's kind of cool too.
How practical this app is depends directly on how appropriate the pictures it chooses are. They'll probably need a much larger image stable than 50,000 for this idea to really take off, though. Fortunately, there are plenty of Creative Commons photos out there.
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Robert Evans
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Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.
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