You may be able to normalize the labeled images by removing the background. I found some OCR examples of doing that with bluring and subtraction. The same normalization steps could be run on smartphone images taken with a consistent background.
How about if it already knows you're Jim? I think understanding context is holding it back. Azure Cognitive Services has a speaker recognition service. I'm hopeful that Amazon will get there.
Delivery room experience: before stitching my wife, the OB counted the pieces of gauze out loud with the nurse watching. They verbally confirmed the total with each other. A matching count and verbal confirmation were performed after the stitching. It inspired confidence seeing them perform this protocol.
This is only a bad thing if you feel compelled or addicted to reading these books. There is nothing wrong with always having a better book ready until you obsess about it.
Cloud9 also supports remote ssh workspaces which is very useful. The default workspace runs inside a container where you have root. They give you a public https route mapped to the container.