Bringing Digicams into personal toy status

SONY Cybershot T2
Promotion site | Official site | DPreview

Digital cameras have brought photography more and more closer to people's lives. Back in the days of film cameras, people usually only bring out their cameras on trips and events, partly because of the size and partly because of the price of film, thus they only bring them whenever they are sure they would have something to take pictures of. But now with digital cameras, memory is reusable, which makes people feel that taking pictures is free, and people start taking pictures much more freely. Thus people are starting to want to take pictures of whatever they please, and starting to bring their cameras out with them every day.

With the release of the Sony Cybershot T2, I see Sony grasping this chance and designing something that is more designed to be a mainstay gadget in people's bags then a photo capturing device. There is actually no other way to say it, but the design is real CUTE (just look at the apple green one). It is a camera, but the design concept is more of a personal photo album that people use to show their lives to friends. With easy to use touch screen, 4gigs of built in memory, built in photo album management software, and simple photo touch up software to doodle on the photos, it really is more of a "toy" that people would want to bring with them and play with. And the cute design, really makes people want to bring it with them, as if a classy status icon. I could perfectly imagine girls clamoring over this cute gadget and showing them off whenever they can. Count in the smile detector that takes pictures whenever people smiles, the doodling software, and the music slideshow function, and it would be a nice entertainment device at friend gathering.

I even saw a creative way of using the smile detector in a promotion video: you don't need the timer function to take pictures of your self, just let the camera stand, move in front and smile!

Sony really does know how to make attractive products. Never have I saw a camera this focused on the casual fun factor of life. And it really is an amazing package of fun software and beautiful design.
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By the way, blogs have became an important part of modern marketing, and the T2 promotion site has really cool stuff that you could put on blogs and help with the marketing (they call them "blog parts"). If you haven't noticed, I just added a nice looking clock here on the bottom of the right panel. Just for fun, here's another one:

*Wow, this is my 666th post on this blog!!! What a number