Tech Guide: Ditch the wallet, carry photos on your PDA

Used to be you'd carry around your favorite snapshots in you wallet. Not so much anymore. One reason: It's way easier to carry around those snapshots in your PDA. Here's how.

When I was a kid, people always carried prized family photos in their wallet or purse. The plastic accordion holder would fold out into a seemingly endless strip showing off all those pics of a favourite little monster or two. (And to all of you photo-carrying friends and family members, I love looking at each and every one of them.)

There may be plenty of people carrying around their best snapshots like that, but I haven't noticed it lately. One reason: photo-viewing software for PDAs. Instead of using a plastic folder, you can carry all your photos on your Palm or Pocket PC, ready to be viewed at the click of a button. These apps make it easy to show mum the latest picture of my girlfriend without taking up valued wallet space. Here are my three favourites.

PicturePerfect lets you view your photos, create photo albums, and make slide shows right on your Pocket PC. You can also look at several thumbnails of your collection at once to find the ones you want. (Shareware/Pocket PC)

Palbum Picture Viewer loads your favourite photos up fast and supports several different image formats. This app also offers brightness and contrast controls so that you can view your images more clearly in almost any setting. (Shareware/Pocket PC)

SplashPhoto for Palm OS lets you view your photos one at a time or in slide-show mode and facilitates beaming them to other Palm users. The included desktop software makes it easy to transfer your favourite images from your PC to your Palm. (Shareware/Palm)

What do you think? How do you carry your photos around? TalkBack to me below!