In the scene in the movie The Social Network where Sean Parker which is Justin Timberlake’s character exclaims at a party that with the ability on Facebook to upload photos, everyone will be inspired to take their cameras with them everywhere they go and document all their parties and all their times together and put the pictures on Facebook. Facebook now has over 50 billion photographs, and everyone knows that what Sean Parker said came to pass however that was in 2004 when digital cameras were cool. Today, practically eight out of ten photographs on Facebook do not come from proper digital cameras, but from the cameras built into cell phones. People cannot be bothered too always carry a separate camera anymore  and the sales of compact cameras are on the wane. Sometimes, even having to fish your big slab of a smartphone out and to hold it steady to shoot still pictures or video on can seem a bit of a drag and that’s what this digital camcorder review is about a video camera that you can wear on your ear. It looks like something that makes you look like you are wearing a laser shooting device which The Predator always wore in the films.

It’s called the Looxcie they love crazy names these days and it’s a $200 Bluetooth-equipped video camera which looks like a tiny little jet engine that you clip to your ear. It connects to all Android smartphones  and phones such as the iPhone and Blackberry will have support coming shortly.  It works through Bluetooth, and it  allows you to record video hands-free. Think about it you have had hands-free audio for this long well isn’t it time you added video to the list?  Wearing it is pretty easy as you just adjust the flexible ear loop to sit on one or the other ear and it holds on pretty tightly. You can install the cameras app on your Android phone and then check out that you like the angle it points at, you enter your Facebook or YouTube information to help you upload to those services, and you’re good to go. You can then put the phone in your pocket and wait for something worth recording.

One of the best parts to the Looxcie is as any digital camcorder review on it must be at pains to note  that it records video in mp4 format to internal memory for a full five hours. When it is done this way, you don’t have to ever fumble for your camera or pull it out and try to capture a surprise event. You just leave the camcorder turned on at all times as since it has enough memory to record for five hours it will be instantly ready to capture the vital moment. When something finally does happen that you wish to preserve or share, you just tap the button and the Looxcie will instantly upload it to Facebook.

Of course, any digital camcorder review is obligated to say something about the quality  of recording and pictures involved. The Looxcie records at a  webcam-like 480×320 resolution and although the audio is good you do have to expect that the video quality will be somewhat less quality as it is trying to record hours of video into what is essentially is as small is your little finger. If the video quality isn’t all that important to you and if you really like the idea of the always-recording plan or if you are in law enforcement then maybe this could be the product for you. Or if you are a woman walking home through a dangerous neighborhood late at night, you could just have the Looxcie clipped to your ear. If someone attacks you, you can tell them that video has already been sent to Facebook, and unless they want the law breathing down their necks they should go.

What exactly goes on in cell phone companies today and why do they do some of the things they do? How do cell phone companies decide which place get a strong signal and which does not? What  is behind all those complex tariff plans they put out and keep tweaking and why do they keep on changing them? Below are some of the reasons behind what cellphone companies are doing and trying to achieve.

As far as signal quality is concerned, it will depend on how many people happen to be in an area at a given time. If somehow, 5000 AT&T subscribers converge at a particular club at one point, they’ll begin to experience spotty or inconsistant signal quality. This isn’t really the fault of the cell phone companies as they cannot really anticipate when lots of people will suddenly move to an area for a short time. What you can however blame on them is spotty coverage in the rural areas where there is no big influx of people and they just figure that since there are fewer paying customers then it just is not worth their investment to upgrade the coverage.

Of course, this becomes a big problem when someone in an area with spotty coverage makes a 911 call. To begin with, the call might not go through correctly when the signal strength is undependable. Then of course, the 911 operator won’t be able to accurately assess the location of the caller as they would be able to do if the signal strength was good. The FCC has asked all phone companies to put a GPS chip in every phone but it is just a recommendation. The FCC has no teeth to actually enforce it and with the cell phone companies they publish coverage maps if you care for that sort of thing which you can find on their websites.

Cell phone companies routinely advertise prices which look nothing like the price that you end up paying. Why is this so? To begin with, there is all kinds of federal and state taxes you pay on the actual bill and then there is the matter of the various fees which can also be added on. One particularly annoying one tends to be the Federal Universal Service Fund. This is something you pay to help the cell phone company defray the costs of establishing cell phone towers in rural areas, in schools and libraries and also in places where it’s very expensive to establish a network – places like Washington, where the cell phone companies have to pay really high regulatory fees.

It used to be that on a landline, your messages were stored at the telephone exchange on a tape. However with cell phone voicemail, it is all stored on a hard disk at the phone company. When you check in, their system has to be able to place that message from among the billions spread all over the country. Most of the time, all of this bewilderingly complex stuff works wonderfully. When you happen to be roaming though, they really can lose your messages. The cell phone companies need to tell you that when you’re roaming, your voicemail isn’t in the safest of hands and it could go missing or suffer long delays on being recovered.