Several apps exist to help you remember the many things you'd
otherwise forget, but perhaps none are quite as useful and efficient as
your camera. Typing takes time. Snapping a photo only takes a moment,
and there are so many ways you can remind yourself better with nothing
but a picture.
It doesn't really matter if a picture is worth
1,000 words. If it's only worth 10 it's still a good value proposition
when you think about the time and effort of taking a picture compared to
that of typing a short sentence on a mobile device. Not only is
photography easier and more efficient, it also provides additional
details to help you remember important information that words can't
capture. When you start sorting your photos into specific albums, you've
suddenly got a great set of categorized reminders that only took a few
taps to create. In this post, we're going to look at several ways you
can use your camera to remember things a lot better and faster.
Remember Who Borrowed That Book (or Whatever)
The folks over at
Apartment Therapy came up with a clever solution
to the problem of remembering who borrowed your stuff: take a picture
of them and the thing they borrowed, then save it to an album of
borrowed items. When you wonder where it went and who took it, just
consult that album and you'll find out in an instant. Presuming you lend
things to people you know well enough to recognize, this is much easier
than jotting down all the details and setting a reminder in your
calendar for some abstract date.
Keep Track of Emergency Information
Whether you're taking pictures of
insurance cards or prescription medicine,
an emergency photo album can be useful in two important ways. First, if
you need any of that information when you go to the doctor or pharmacy,
it's right in your phone for easy access. Second, if you're in an
emergency and need to provide information quickly, you can tell people
that your information is in your phone. (In circumstances where you
can't tell them, just write that information on a card in your wallet so
they know where to look.) Hopefully you won't have to consult your
emergency album too often, but it's always good to know it's there to
help keep you safe—or at least remember a few
ID numbers.
Build a Wish List
We
all want a lot of things we can't have, and so we stick them on wish
lists for a day when the money's available and our desire to buy is
ever-present. When you're on the go and want to remember something to
purchase, just snap a photo and save it in a "wish list" album. When
you've got a little extra pocket change and want to get yourself
something nice, just browse and decide what you want. You can use this
same trick when looking for gifts for others, too. On top of the obvious
benefits, it's also a good way to deter irresponsible spending. We've
previously discussed how
instituting a 24-hour policy on your purchases
can help you curb excessive spending. Taking a photo can make it a
little easier to walk away from the product you want because you know
you have a reference to it in your pocket.
Bonus: This also
works great for creating a shopping list at IKEA, as you can just
photograph that tags and reference the pictures later when you're
picking up the items in the self-help area.
Photograph Restaurants (and Other Places) You Want to Visit
When
you want to remember a restaurant, or any other place you want to
visit, just snap a photo. Not only do you have a visual reference to it,
but because most smartphones retain
GPS location data you'll know where
you took that photo, too. This way you don't need to save an address,
the name, or any other details that would take awhile to type in and
save. A picture can really save you a lot of time here.
If you need to copy down some text, snapping a photo is
much
faster than typing it into you phone. On top of that, you can send the
photo to an app like
Evernote and make that text searchable thanks to
the magic of
optical character recognition (OCR).
Take Screenshots of Anything on Your Phone You Want to Remember
Although
not really a photograph, exactly, screenshots end up in the same place
when you take them. Sometimes when you're on your phone, you want to
remember an app to buy on a later date, save a map for offline use, save
a copy of a movie ticket that came into your email, or remember a
specific alert. Save those as screenshots, sort them into the relevant
reminder albums, and you won't forget.
Perhaps
you don't want important photographic information easily accessible on
your phone. One way to secure your photos is to use a password to lock
your entire phone. If you just want to hide your photos, however, there
are apps that can help you out.
Ben the Bodyguard ($5,
iPhone) and
Hide It Pro (Free, Android) both get the job done.
Source:Internet
The
big advantage with Google Earth’s built-in screen capture feature is
that it adds none of the on-screen clutter to your screenshot.
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