Comments on: Photos as notes

By: Martin Audley

Martin Audley — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:26:38 +0000

Brilliant idea Eszter. I’ve taken a picture of this web page, so I can show it to friends to demonstrate how a professor in a Department of Communication Studies celebrates being either too lazy or stupid to use a pencil and paper. Lucky that those leaving the similar comments above don’t have the same excuse.

22. Just in case you do lose your phone, Jim, make sure you take a picture of it now, in a mirror, to remind yourself what it looks like.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:35:17 +0000

I’ll have to try that with wine labels. It’s so hard to remember whether Thunderbird or Night Train Express is better.

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:55:37 +0000

There is a piece of note-taking software for Windows called Evernote which is designed to work with photos (amongst other things) like that: It will automatically import photos uploaded form your phone to a designated folder, and they can then be tagged, annotated, etc. It also attempts OCR on the texct in photos, not very well in my experience. But possibly more useful for this sort of thing than Flickr is.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:51:45 +0000

In addition to taking pictures of flyers and posters with information I want to remember, and the ocassional page of text, I use the camera to document home improvement and repair projects, so I can look at the parts when I have to go back to the hardware store and make sure I’m not doing something stupid.

By: Slocum

Slocum — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:17:13 +0000

When hiking, we take a photo of the map on the signboard if we don’t happen to have a paper copy. Also, take photos to be able to reassemble what you’re taking apart. And sometimes a camera is great for being able to see what can’t otherwise (you can get your camera into places where your head won’t fit).

Digital cameras are great for copying articles. If you are careful enough, you can get OCR to work quite well—at least for the ‘text behind the image’ option that will make the PDF indexable and searchable.

And the macro mode works well for a low-power microscope—take a macro shot and then use the review function and zoom in as far as possible. You can definitely see things you can’t with a naked eye.

And if you get stopped by police or arrested, recording could come in very handy. But use it at your own risk, since authorities don’t much like being photographed and recorded (this is one of those crankish causes—like paramilitary SWAT raids—that libertarians tend to worry about).

By: bitchphd

bitchphd — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:00:09 +0000

This is an awesome idea. Thanks!

By: Ketzl Brame

Ketzl Brame — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:50:31 +0000

I used this idea when doing some remodeling. Heck if I knew the names of the parts I needed, but I’d hold a ruler up to the door-hinge I was replacing, or the thingy that went at the bottom of the wall, and I was good to go.

By: eszter

eszter — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:36:56 +0000

Michael, that reminds me, I took a photo of my toilet tank when I needed to replace the flapper to know in the hardware store which of the several flappers would fit.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:17:13 +0000

It took, it seems, hours of trial and error for me to hook up my TV/TiVo/DVD player/cable box/stereo system initially. When I moved, I found that a few phone pix were much quicker than drawing schematics.

By: Jim Kiley

Jim Kiley — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:15:50 +0000

I did the same thing with the license plates of both my cars. I know I wouldn’t remember them, and I’m too lazy to write them down on an index card and put that in my wallet, but I’m not likely to lose my phone.

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:15:10 +0000

Wait until the copyright police come after you.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:10:33 +0000

17 – you mean QR codes. I haven’t seen them in use here, at least not in the wild. However I’m off to 3GSM next week where there will be plenty of suitable gadgets. I think it’s an installed-base thing.

By: anthony

anthony — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:48:59 +0000

Another help with wine is the wine tear tab, where the winemakers have a little perforated tag that can be torn off the label with all the details about the wine. With the sad decline of matchbooks, it looks like an excellent way of recreating a lost evening.

By: barista

barista — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:22:53 +0000

Also good for hiking – take snaps of crossroads, particularly in the forest where everything looks the same. Minor details slip the memory but they do get recorded. And, if for some reason you are using hair clippers to give yourself a quick skull harvest when everyone else has gone out, you can cut your own hair by photographing the back of your head. Quite a few times, actually, but it does work.

By: SG

SG — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:24:15 +0000

do Americans and Europeans have those kuta-code things? Here in Japan every product, every flier for a band or event, every nightclub and shop have a little bar-code-like image on the flier. You take a photo of the code with your phone and you can use it like a url to access the information about the object. They don’t yet have them for car-parks and the like, as far as I know, but there are kookier things in Tokyo, I’m sure.