A Tiny Video Camera That Never Forgets

Sept. 30 -- You've just entered a local doughnut shop when what do you see? Elvis is walking out with a handful of crullers and a powdered-sugar mustache?

If only you had a digital camera.

Yes, small camcorders and digital still cameras are now consumer staples. And the more recent addition of tiny digital cameras as built-in features on cell phones and other mobile devices may mean portable photography is becoming truly ubiquitous.

But now a tiny startup is putting a whole new face on mobile photography.

Deja View, of Brick, N.J., says it will soon produce the Camwear 100, a digital video camera about an inch long and smaller than a nickel in diameter.

The lipstick container-sized camera can be worn, as the name implies, by unobtrusively clipping it to a pair of eyeglasses or on a baseball cap's bill. And the camera sends its images to a cell phone-sized device worn on a person's hip.

But what makes the Deja View camera setup unique, says company President Sid Reich, is the software that controls how the whole device works.

"The camera is constantly monitoring what you see," explains Reich. "When you see something occur that you want to keep, you hit the 'record' button and the last 30 seconds of what the camera saw is recorded onto a tiny removable memory card."

The captured video can then be downloaded into a Windows-based or Macintosh computer for editing and playback. Or for simple display, the device can be connected to any TV or VCR with standard audio-video connections.

Less Boring Home Videos?

The idea for the camera, Reich says, came from his own frustrating experiences of using a video camera to record his son's Little League baseball games.

"It's become accepted that if you tape something like a school play or your kid's soccer game, you're going to tape for two hours," says Reich. "But most things that happen in your life that are memorable are short events — and often at times when you least expect it."

And he figures the product will have a broad appeal for the moms and pops that just want to capture the highlights of such events.