The Home of The KCPokes

Let’s face it, mobile phones have changed our way of life. As phones become increasingly more powerful, so does your ability to do more from your phone. I can essentially work from my phone now, as my calendar and email are always just a fingertip away. But work is not really a whole lot of fun, so the time comes to find new ways to use your phone for actual fun. Camera phones are fun, or are at least a start. While the quality of the images taken with a mobile phone is not usually stellar, it is good enough to normally capture the moment. Plus with a camera phone, there is never an excuse to not have your camera with you. But what to do with your pictures once you take them? Most carriers offer you the ability to upload your pictures to their service, but then you really are at the mercy of that carrier; change carriers and kiss your pictures goodbye. I want a way to get the pictures from my phone directly to my photo gallery, specifically to my Pictures on the Go album. Can’t be that hard, right, since you can send the pictures, via email, to anyone. So, what to do?

Let’s start by setting up a generic email inbox to receive the picture emails. Next we will set up a backend script, that runs every couple minutes, to go to that inbox and check for new emails. If we find emails, we then want to check to see whether it is a picture email, by looking at the source code. We are looking for a specific string, at which point, if we find it, we will use that URL to receive the full size image from the carrier’s picture service. Download the image and upload the image to a specific gallery album. Finally, delete the email to both stop from pulling the same image twice as well as keep the inbox nice and clean. Easy enough.

Ok, sure there is a bit more logic in there, such as setting it up to check multiple email addresses, for different users, and uploading to different albums based on the email address. But really, the core logic is there. To run the process on your own sites, you simply need a database, php access, and Gallery. But what is the end result?

How about the ability to capture, and share, moments at any time?

It is all technical mumbo-jumbo if you are not a nerd, like myself, but you start to see how those things you never use, but always have with you, can start to come in quite handy.