Patent ID: 6970185

Claim:
A digital camera, comprising: a housing; a digital optical sensing apparatus mounted within said housing, said digital optical sensing apparatus sensing optical images; a storage medium for storing digital optical images captured by said digital optical sensing apparatus; an acoustic sensor capable of sensing human speech; a speech reduction apparatus coupled to said acoustic sensor, said speech reduction apparatus converting human speech sensed by said acoustic sensor to a symbolic text form; and a controller which stores said symbolic text form in said storage medium in a relationship associated with a captured digital image, wherein said controller: (a) receives a user indication of a plurality of discrete time intervals; (b) records a plurality of discrete human speech segments sensed by said acoustic sensor in respective said discrete time intervals; (c) causes said speech reduction apparatus to convert each said human speech segment to a corresponding symbolic text segment; and (d) automatically associates a respective digital optical image captured by said digital optical sensing apparatus with each said symbolic text segment based on a temporal relationship between the time interval in which the discrete human speech segment corresponding to the symbolic text segment was recorded and the capturing of said digital optical image; wherein said controller associates a respective digital image with each symbolic text segment according to all of the following association priorities: (1) if a first digital image is captured during the recording of a human speech segment corresponding to the symbolic text segment, the symbolic text segment is associated with the first digital image; (2) if no digital image is captured from a time the digital camera is powered on until the end of the recoding of the human speech segment corresponding to the symbolic text segment, and a second digital image is captured after recording the human speech segment but before the digital camera is powered off, then the symbolic text segment is associated with the second digital image; and (3) in all other cases, the symbolic text is associated with the digital image most recently captured before the recording of the human speech segment corresponding to the symbolic text segment.