So you’re looking for an opportunity and you’d like to make it a Homebased business – one that you can work from home or be free to move about and not stuck in the confines and with the restrictions of an office five days a week.

How about something so new it was “just invented” in 2000. So new that it wasn’t even available in Canada, the US and Europe until 2002. So new that practical uses for it, including uses of a commercial nature, are just beginning to make themselves known.

That’s only three years – or a little less.

So what am I talking about?

I’m talking about the “picture taking cell-phone”.

What? You can’t see any practical use for a “picture taking cell phone” except as an invasion of someone’s privacy, and you definitely don’t want it to be your privacy? Well, I can’t disagree with that, but consider these uses as a starting point:

• In Sweden recently a burglary attempt was photographed on the store owners cell phone camera, circulated to the police and the criminal apprehended within a half hour.
  
• In Wales doctors have been experimenting with a system to speed diagnosis of fractures by sending photos of X-rays to consultants to get a second opinion in minutes.
  
• In the US mobile-phone service providers are setting up electronic photo albums where customers can display pictures taken with phone-cams.
  
• In January 2003, showstudio.com, a fashion-news web
  
  
  site, used phones to beam photos from Paris fashion shows, producing almost-live coverage of the catwalks and scooping the competition.
  
• BBC News Online now accepts photographs of news events from readers.
  
• Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, predicts phonecams and similar technology will change the news landscape.

Courtesy Readers Digest, January 2004.

So here are a few ideas, things that are already being done.

Now I realize that phone-cam pictures aren’t the latest and greatest in high-resolution photography. You won’t be winning any awards with your pictures for “gallery quality” work!

But…you can take action photos of breaking news and have it instantly ready for media use. You can take pictures of events and have them instantly reproduced in far distant locales. You can capture ideas and archive them for your later use in art, fashion, etc.

Just let your imagination run wild, jot down all the ideas you can come up with for possible uses of your cell phone camera, run them by all your friends, weed out the impractical, and “go” with what you have left. Investigate, check it out in detail, and then “put your dream to work” and create your own new, successful home-based business from your cell-phone camera.

Happy picture taking.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Loring Windblad has been involved in Homebased businesses for nearly 40 years. He has turned photography, Ham Radio and rockhounding (silversmithing and jewelry making) into successful businesses. His latest business endeavor is at: http://www.organicgreens.us