I think the failure of many seemingly marvelous devices lies not with the lack of value of the "end product" in terms of their utility but in the failure by their designers to provide ease of use. How many examples can we present of poorly written and incomplete instructions, software that doesn't "play nice" with the operating system or other applications, poorly designed user interfaces and controls, lack of technical support, etc.? And this is for the products that would, given the requisite knowledge on the user's part, work "properly"!

Re: "Good question to ask: what short events or conversations would have usefulness to others, if captured and distributed via easy, small, at-hand digital tools?"

Last week I went to RadioShack and bought a tiny digital recorder to use at times when jotting things down in a notebook is impractical. I spend a lot of time ferrying my kids around, plus sometimes I get my best ideas when I'm on a six-mile run, so this thing is a boon. You just hit "Record" and start dumping all your thoughts into it. So far the only challenge has been to integrate processing these audio thoughts into my overall system for GTD. In the future, I imagine I'll use the easy uploading feature to send some short messages to friends as MP3 attachments, rather than transcribing the messages into e-mail.

Does anyone remember the art of the Memo? It was use to concisely and efficiently summarize even quick conversations, and it was even more effective if tasks were assigned and included. The memo was then distributed to all that may need to be made aware of the discussion, meeting, brainstorm session, etc.

One of the problems with capturing little tidbits, etcetera, is that it simply adds to the information overload. The nonsense and unimportant details of a conversation don't get chopped out on a video or audio recording, and the recipient is simply forced to watch or listen to the entire thing to get the data s/he wants.

That said, if used judiciously, taking a snapshot of an informative chart, design detail, etc. Would be worth a thousand words, but for conversations and long meetings, I'd much rather receive a memo.

Videophones is good, for sure but its are expencive.