Scribble on your digital photos from your cell phone, forget metadata
By Justin Montgomery
Since the beginning of photography, people have been scribbling notes on the back of photos revealing things like where the photo was taken, when, who’s in the photo and more- it’s especially useful on older photos you might not remember. A problem in today’s digital world is that photos taken with digital cameras and cell phones lack this vital information. Nokia wants to change all that.
New Scientist Tech is reporting that Nokia of Finland filed a US patent on a technique to let users of digital or cell phone cameras make back-of-photo notes for posterity. In theory, you’d be able to "flip over" a photo taken on your digital or cell phone camera to write notes via your cell phone or smartphone’s keypad. With a touchscreen and stylus, you can even write in your own handwriting- very reminiscent of the real thing. The notes can then be saved with the photo as a type of enhanced metadata of sorts.
Media content, which nowadays is mostly digitally stored, is often handled with a number of devices- such as mobile phones, digital cameras, media players, etc. Handling, such as sharing, copying, making printouts, etc., is more often than not facilitated through the use of these devices. However, the personal approach in handling the content items has been suffering. Therefore, there’s a need for improving handling of media content stored on certain devices. As we all build up a massive collection of largely un-identified photos, there will ultimately be the need for better organization techniques. With notes on each photo, combined with the digital nature of the approach, it makes it even easier to find exactly the right photo when you want or need it.
According to the patent filing, Nokia summarizes it’s technology by stating; "in old times, media- such as photographs, press cuttings, etc., were kept in photo albums, scrap books, etc. The handling of the contents were physical, with abilities to make notes on the content items, such as writing on the backside of a photograph. The disclosed embodiments are based on the understanding that making notes in the old time way, as described above, was very intuitive for a user. The disclosed embodiments are further based on the idea that principles of these intuitive assignments of notes to media content may be introduced into the handling of digital media content in an apparatus. I hope the technology makes it into devices sooner rather than later, because I see it as a very useful tool, especially with devices such as the iPhone that let us carry thousands of photos with us at all times.
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