GLOBAL – Recently I was faced with a personal conundrum. Every year my garden needs to have some paintwork done. For the last few years, I’d found it a struggle to find the right colour and type of stain to use. But last year, I lucked out and stumbled across the right one. Rather cleverly (for me), I held onto the packaging so when the time came round this year, I’d remember which one to buy. And that’s when I hit the conundrum, and the solution. Do I really want to bring an empty pot of paint to the paint shop, just so I can get the same one?

The smarter amongst you will have figured out by now what happened next. The lightbulb went off and quick as a flash I whipped out my phone and snapped a picture of the label. Bingo, the (digitsed) paint pot in my pocket, I went to the store. Conundrum cracked.

Whilst that might seem like the most obvious thing in the world to you, for me it was my eureka moment. Using a camera as a memory aid? Surely not. But it did make me think. If the camera can help solve that problem, I’m betting (heavily) that’s not the only problem it can solve. Multi story and airport car parks are another frequent problem (for me, at least) and again the camera in your mobile device can come in handy, giving you a visual record of where you left your car.

This piece is titled “101 uses for your camera phone”. I’ve nabbed number 92 for “going to the shops” (and the car park one is number 73) but do you think we could pull together another 99 uses for the cameras in our pockets? Over to you, dear readers. We might even create a special section on Conversations where we can host them, and put your name in virtual lights for all to see.