Sony DSC-W70 / T-Mobile MDA - Emailing pictures

Updated 07/09/2006: added picture and screen shots.

Emailing pictures during our travels allows our family to be visually included in our adventures. The T-Mobile MDA  along with the 4smartphone Exchange 2003 email service make keeping in touch a snap. The biggest issue is transferring the pictures from the W70 to the MDA. I had the same problem with my Sony DSC-P10 digital camera and came up with a solution that works well. I use a combination of the Delkin USB Bridge and the Lexar Trio card reader.

This Delkin USB Bridge allows the transfer of files between two external USB compliant storage devices. The limitations of the USB bridge are:

• The entire content of the input device has to be copied.
• The directory structure on the output device is fixed. The USB Bridge creates a root directory called \Archive and sub directories called STOREnnn, n being incremented from 001 to 999 for each new copy operation. If the source files are not removed, they will be copied again under a new STOREnnn subdirectory for each successive copy. .

The W70 with the USB cable is plugged into the input of the USB Bridge, and the Lexar Trio card reader is plugged into the output. A mini SD to SD adapter is required to use the MDA's flash card with the Lexar Trio.

In order to keep the transfers to a minimum, the file management techique I describe in this blog entry can be used. The W70 USB mode must be set to PTP and the desired folder must be selected. Rather than transferring the full sized images, I  resize the pictures, with the W70, to VGA (640x480). To transfer the files power on the USB Bridge and press the transfer button. LED indicators provide feedback on the state of the transfer. Once the transfer is complete, the mini SD card can be placed back into the MDA for further editing/resizing (if needed) and emailing. XnView is a great freeware application that allows you to resize and edit your images on the MDA. Once you are ready to email use the menu/insert/pictures functions in Pocket Outlook to attach the selected photos.

The transferred files.

Inserting a picture with Pocket Outlook.

Select the desired image.

The email with the attached picture. This image was resized to VGA (640 x 480) with the W70 and is 129KB. XnView on the Pocket PC can be used to further reduce the size. 

This method can be used to post pictures to blogs, and sites like Flickr and Kodak EasyShare.