Alltel Wireless and Ontela Launch PhotoCopter Service

If you have ever taken a picture with your phone and then transferred it to your PC you know that your thumbs can get tired. A typical phone requires 100 keystrokes to transfer 10 pictures to a PC. A recent study by Ontela found that 93% of camera phone users want to save their pictures on their home computer but only 24% actually do it. Alltel Wireless and Ontela decided to take on this problem with the PhotoCopter service.

PhotoCopter automatically transfers every camera phone picture taken to a user’s home computer and favorite web photo albums. PhotoCopter is exclusively available to Alltel customers with the Motorola V3m, V3a, V9m and ROKR models. The service costs $2.99 a month and provides customers with unlimited picture transfer to their PC, email address and web photo albums.

“Alltel realizes that our customers are capturing amazing memories on their camera phones, but until now, they have not had an easy way to transfer them to a PC for printing or sharing,” said Craig Kirkland, director of messaging and voice products at Alltel Wireless. “PhotoCopter is a simple to use application that will allow our customers to get the most of their phone’s camera and enjoy their photos in any setting.”

”It doesn’t even feel like software,” said Dan Shapiro, CEO of Ontela. “You just take the pictures and as if by magic, they appear on your computer in your ‘My Pictures’ folder. This is the end of the ‘photo graveyard,’ where people take pictures and then leave them on the phone until they’re deleted. Instead, we’ve given a new life to these memories by saving them to the places users care about most.”

This isn’t the type of service I’m willing to pay for. Frankly, there are too many embarrassing photos of me already that I wish would just go away. But if you are a 21 Century shutterbug you might appreciate the convenience a service like PhotoCopter provides.

Alltel Wireless
Ontela