Abstract: Systems and methods for operating a portable computing device having a broad set of functionality, such as image or audio/video capture capabilities, are provided. One or more specialized modes are provided in a portable computing device, such as a smart phone, for intelligently disabling any distracting functionality of the portable computing device with respect to a target subset of functionality possessed by the device and invoked during operation of a specialized mode. In various embodiments, the special mode for operation of a portable computing device in accordance with the invention is such that functionality that is likely to interfere with a time capture event of the device is disabled or mitigated during operation.

Abstract: A facility for efficiently storing drawing objects in a synchronizable document is described. The facility retrieves a template having a static portion and a dynamic portion, creates a record based on the retrieved template, computes information corresponding to the dynamic portion of the template, adds the computed information to the record, and stores the record as a portion of the synchronizable document. The synchronizable document is thereby enabled to be synchronizable because a shared object associated with a desktop version of an office productivity application is able to retrieve the synchronizable document and deserialize stored records into objects expected by the desktop version of the office productivity application. The synchronizable document contains one or more drawing objects.

Abstract: Systems and methods for operating a portable computing device having a broad set of functionality, such as image or audio/video capture capabilities, are provided. One or more specialized modes are provided in a portable computing device, such as a smart phone, for intelligently disabling any distracting functionality of the portable computing device with respect to a target subset of functionality possessed by the device and invoked during operation of a specialized mode. In various embodiments, the special mode for operation of a portable computing device in accordance with the invention is such that functionality that is likely to interfere with a time capture event of the device is disabled or mitigated during operation.