Camera phones define news coverage of London attacks

Much in the way the coverage of 9/11 was shaped by the emergence of the 24 hour news channel, now the news coverage following the terrorist attacks in London are being defined largely by camera phone usage. I wonder what might have been different had these technologies been as widely proliferated back in 01? I heard a new term for the first time in this article, moblogs, mobile phone blogs. that's hot.

Mobiles capture blast aftermath
By Jo Twist
BBC News website technology reporter

The bus blast

Amateur footage from mobile phones provided some of the more immediate and vivid images of the bomb attacks in London.

Mobile video footage shot by commuters from inside London Underground carriages appeared quickly on global news networks and across the net.

As video mobiles grow more popular in Europe, they are letting people capture the first scenes of chaos before TV.

The attacks on the London Underground and a double-decker bus killed more than 50 and left 700 injured.

Flood of photos

Hundreds of mobile photos and several mobile videos have surfaced documenting the moments after the four blasts.

Blogs, photo sharing websites, online news sites, and TV news used their images in the minutes and hours immediately following the attacks.

Net surge strains news sites
Many people commenting on online photo sharing community site Flickr said it was their first port of call to get news and images.

Within minutes and hours, news of explosions filtered through other blog sites and many moblogs - blogs which use mobile phone photos - collected the images.

The BBC News and Sky News websites, among others, immediately responded and called for readers to send in their images, footage and accounts of the events.

Around 1,000 photos and 20 pieces of amateur video were sent in to the BBC News website, with many being featured on the site.

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