I shared this story with James and Matt during our most recent podcast that hits the airwaves in the next 24 hours, but wanted to share it with the readers in case you don’t listen to the show. (Hey, why aren’t you listening? All you have to do is subscribe in iTunes!) ;)
I’ve got a little project going on in the backyard and a quick mobile technology solution was just the ticket. We’re building a pool at our house and I’m about as handy as a ladder with only one leg. As I muddle through the project, I keep trying to incorporate what I know best: mobile tech. Yesterday, I needed to run to Home Depot for some insulation materials and I was concerned about what type of insulation I needed, how much and what I would use to adhere the insulation to the pool. Enter OneNote Mobile, my Samsung Q1 UMPC and an XV 6700 Windows Mobile smartphone….
I can’t emphasize enough how many infinite uses there are for OneNote Mobile 2007. Given my pool situation, I opened OneNote Mobile on my Windows Mobile phone and started a new note. Using the "Take Picture" command, my phone’s camera was automatically activated and I snapped several pics of my project. Once I had several angles and a close up of the material, I connected the phone to my UMPC and let ActiveSync do it’s thing. OneNote Mobile notes are automagically brought into the main OneNote 2007 client, so all of my pictures were on a single OneNote page.
Using the inking functionality native to the Tablet Edition operating system in Windows XP, I then added some measurement notations right into the pics. A quick run over to my local Home Depot followed where I had PLENTY of help; not just because those folks are typically helpful, but because the associates kept calling over their co-workers as I was showing them my entire project on a handheld computer.
Needless to say, we had all of the information we needed to make the best selections of insulation for my project, plus we were able to easily calculate the proper amount of materials. In fact, I even let the Home Depot folks do the math right in ink within OneNote, so that I have a permanent record of what we figured.
If I really wanted to go crazy, I could have used OneNote Mobile to record a message about the project, indicating what I was trying to do, what I needed, etc…. In that case, someone else could have actually run the errand for me while I continued to work. My message would then be played for the Home Depot folks and between the audio and the annotated photos, I’d bet the result would be the same.
Hopefully, this illustrates an important and oft overlooked concept: mobile technology is not a "one size fits all" general solution. We have to keep pushing the technology and applying it in unique personal ways; if we keep doing that, we expand the technology and gain much more benefit than an "out of the box" solution!
For additional OneNote and OneNote Mobile information, I highly recommend Chris Pratley’s blog on the topic. Chris is one of the Microsoft designers of the application, so you’ll get good info straight from the source.
-kct


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