Link. System ties photos to job note locations. (Photo courtesy of Trimble)

These days, Bob Crawford, a Lakewood, Wash., municipal inspector, is solving the problem with InSite Mobile Inspector, a new system from Aurigo Software that marries images to notes and Global Positioning System coordinates as he takes them. The system applies the GPS coordinates to photos as they are downloaded wirelessly from a Bluetooth-enabled camera into a handheld data collection device from Trimble Navigation Ltd. for later database synchronization.

Crawford says that the new system is a great organizational tool. “One problem is that we take so many photos,” he says. “You spend a lot of time doing photo logs, and then you have to remember where the photo was taken. This takes care of that. You can code the picture with the project name, who installed it and the specs are, and it all stays with the photo.”