I do the wishlist thing all the time.

Photographed the Marquee of the movie theater showtimes to take back to the group to decide which movie to see.

Remembering good wines you have at a party or restaurant is useful. I also use shots to remember to “google this later when you get home” when I feel like I haven’t done enough research yet to make an informed buy.

In foreign cities, the first thing I do when I get off the train/bus/plane is take a picture of the city map display.

Like Frank, I use a phonecam to snap a picture of the intersection/subway stop/building when I’m traveling in a foreign city.

I also snap a picture of my room number in the hotel. Now that keys don’t have the number on them, it saves me from the embarrassment of having to ask the front desk when I space out my assigned room.

But my single best phonecam usage example is when I found a pair of long sought-after Doc Marten’s in a foreign city. I snapped a photo, emailed it to my wife, then called her to confirm that I’d found the right pair.

re: documenting fender bender, you might want to snap a few of the cars before they’re moved to document positioning [especially if other driver is at fault ;]

I know this isn’t necessarily a camera thing, but I use my phone to call http://amabuddy.com/ When I’m at the bookstore I can call amabuddy and enter any book’s ISBM number at it will tell me the price on Amazon. If it’s cheaper, I can go to their site when I get home and they’ve saved the link to the books I’ve entered. It saves time and money. I have to be honest though, most of the time I just buy it in person (I hate waiting).

Those are some really good ideas. Especially, the shopping/to do list.

I keep track of grocery prices for chicken and such so I know what I thought was a good price the last time I bought food (mainly so I don’t have to call my wife every 15 minutes when I shop).

I often take photos of things I need to do and replace my wallpaper with them. When I open my phone later, I’ll remember to do that thing. If there’s nothing tangible to photograph, I just take a picture of whatever is around and use that - not seeing your normal wallpaper is reminder enough.

I’ve photographed the doorway back to an airport car park and the things adjacent to the doorway. Makes sure I get back to the right section of the car park.

I take photographs of books in bookshops so that I can look them up on amazon later.

When I take the kids to Blockbuster to rent games I snap shots of movies that interest me. Then I go home and add them to my Netflix queue

A couple of years ago, I remember reading about several applications that would allow the camera on your phone to read the barcode of an item and look it up on, say, amazon (not unlike amabuddy). Google’s not helping much; is that idea dead?

Not sure if the resolution would be good enough on a phone, but when I’ve been on holiday, I’ve used my digital camera to take photos of those big maps that are sometimes displayed on notice boards of the surrounding area. You often get them in places like large parks.

Then if you want a map at some point later, you can just look at it on your camera, zooming in as necessary to see the detail.

Take photos of the classroom blackboard/greenboard/whiteboard to catch assignments (or to preserve explanations before they’re erased).

It’s a good way to prove to Mom that yes, you did do all the posted homework.

I used my phonecam to take a pic of 3 different light fixtures I liked for the dining room. WHen I got home, I stood back, held up the camera with the photos and closed one eye. It showed me exactly what each fixture would like like over the dining table. Worked like a charm!

I used it to document car mileage when I’m traveling for business.

I’m applying for a new job/promotion at work. The promotion will involve more than 30 weeks worth of intensive training before I am able to take up the new appointment.

The wallpaper on my phone is currently a picture of the training facility taken from outside the main gates. This reminds me that the gates for me are currently closed - my focus at present should be on interview preparation, and my wallpaper resets my focus with every view.

If/when I’m selected for training I’ll take a fresh picture of the building taken from just inside the gates. I’ll then take pictures a little closer with each passing week (progression towards my target etc). Eventually, on graduation, I’ll take a picture standing inside the front door looking out - on the inside, trained, passed and ready for my first appointment.

My wallpaper is a focusing tool - does that seem sad?!

I take shots of any bruised or damaged packages that arrive via UPS, FedEx, etc - BEFORE I open them.

RE: Cam reading of Barcodes.

You might find Sem@code interesting.

http://semacode.org/

When looking up a book in a library catalog, I take a picture of the reference number.

I don’t have a phone cam, so these don’t quite fit the bill (I use my Palm Zire to take quick snaps). But they’re still handy: I take pics of things I might want to buy or good ideas for fashion/design. I take pics of store display windows showing interesting styles of clothes so that I can try to learn how to not be quite so fashion challenged. I’ve also taken pics in stores to get ideas about arranging furniture or for design/color scheme ideas. It’s a digital version of ripping out magazine pages for ideas. I have those on my Palm for when I’m out shopping next; I’ve showed those to retail clerks before (“I want something like that….”); that’s been a really fast way to let them know what I’m looking for. And another variation - this just with my digital camera: I was fixing plumbing under the sink & took some pics showing the exact, weird configuration of the pipes and printed them out quickly on plain paper. Showed those pics to the guys at the plumbing store and they were able to sell me the exact thing I needed. Surely saved me many trips back and forth. I suppose that if you’re out and about with your phoneCam, someone at home could take those pics & send them to you, then you’d have them to show at the store.

The other night at a train station in Tokyo I couldn’t find a paper copy of the train schedule so I snapped a shot of the timetable. It worked just as well, and didn’t waste paper.

“Remember your level - F”

At first glance, this looked to me like advice for living. (Not very encouraging advice, though…)

My wife was out shopping for fabric to make new curtains for our office, and she wanted my help choosing between two options. I told her to snap a pic of the details of each and send them to me phone-to-phone.

She ended up picking a third option anyway.

Phonecams are great for entertaining little kids too. They love having their pictures taken!

I’ve done many of these things. The wishlist idea is a really good one. I’ve done that many times.

One thing I’ve also done which wasn’t mentioned was to take pictures of myself in various types of glasses, so that I could e-mail them to my wife and she could tell me which ones she liked.

I’ve also taken pictures of her in various different types of glasses, so that she could see what she looks like — her eyesight is very bad, and the mirrors at most optometry places don’t help. She needs to be wearing her normal glasses in order to see anything, but that makes it hard for her to see what other styles might look like.

I’ve also taken pictures of various things she’s asked me to buy at the store, especially hair care, skin care, or other products she uses that I wouldn’t otherwise know from shinola. With a picture of the bottle with me, it’s usually a lot easier for me to get exactly what she wanted.

This is a really big issue when you don’t speak the local language, so you can’t understand most of what’s written on the bottle anyway.

I’ve also used my camphone to document medical problems — maybe a strange rash, or whatever. Or to show my wife what I wore on a given day, during those times when I was consulting at a customer site and thousands of miles from home.

Or, I find interesting/strange/cool vehicles while I’m out, so I snap a few shots of it and upload them to my blog.

And I’m always taking pictures of the cats.

1. Snap dip switch settings on computer equipment before you change them so you can go back.
2. Snap the on screen instructions so you don’t have to print them out.
3. Instead of writing down the addresses of the network printer to take back to your desk.
4. Grab prices for comparison.
5. Snap the little scrap of paper with name or phone # on it then throw it away.
6. Yellow page ads with map and info.

I snap any work resources — books, equioment — mail the pics with prices and cat #’s to my mgr to pre-approved PO’s or expense reports.

I always try to snap pics of powerpoint presentations and the like if I know that I won’t be getting an official copy — even if the text is unreadable the snaps can usually job my memory adequately to get the bullet points across.

I have four kids. They invented a great way to keep themselves busy at a restaurant. One of them takes an extreme closeup of some object while the others don’t peek. Than they have to figure out what it is a picture of… hours of entertainment.

I don’t have one yet, but I would do the following : - take a snapshot everytime I receive an sms - upload sms + snapshot to my website (already done) I will finally have a new-kind-of-diary and some sort of artistic project. I think SMSs can really be some sort of diary, we just think about it enough.

I already save my SMSs on my site (needs typing, but it’s beta only): http://www.darwah-group.com/ppp/concept/sms/index.php?lang=fr