Personal and Family History Software
The Personal Historian - personal and family history writing software. From their overview
Many people want to write a personal history about themselves or a family member but they just become lost or overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the project. That's where Personal Historian comes in.
Personal Historian takes the seemingly monumental task of writing a personal history about yourself or another individual and breaks it into small, manageable pieces and then reconstructs it into a complete, publishable document.
Personal Historian comes with an extensive library of LifeCapsules- timelines, historical events, cultural fads, and memory triggers covering a wide-variety of subjects. LifeCapsules add color and context to your history, giving you insights into what was happening in the world at any point in your history.
Personal Historian builds upon the work that you've already done. You can easily import word processor documents, photographs, and other data.
Personal Historian can even brings in events, dates, and notes from your genealogy software so that all the important events in your life and the life of your family are automatically there, ready for you to write.
From start to finish, Personal Historian is the quickest, easiest, and most enjoyable way to write your own personal history or that of another individual. You'll be amazed at how easy and entertaining it can be with Personal Historian!
Kevin Kelley on Lifelogging
The goal of lifelogging: to record and archive all information in one’s life. This includes all text, all visual information, all audio, all media activity, as well as all biological data from sensors on one’s body. The information would be archived for the benefit of the lifelogger, and shared with others in various degrees as controlled by him/her.
Some form of this total recall is inevitable, at least for some people. Partial recall from partial recording seems inevitable for the rest. We are all likely to record more and more of our lives.
Still the overriding concern is how to read, retrieve, and use this huge – and I mean huge – ocean of data that your life will generate. There’s one solution not normally offered in discussions of lifelogging that seems reasonable to me. Ten years ago computer scientist David Gelertner envisioned a new organizing metaphor for one’s growing cache of personal data. Instead of boxes and “windows” a lifelog should be centered on well, a life log, a timeline, chronological log of one’s life. "We're going from an artificial information storage scheme to a far more natural one. The idea of a timeline, a chronology, a diary, a daily journal, or a scrapbook is so much older and so much more organic and ingrained in human culture and history than the idea of a file hierarchy."
Plan your funeral online
Mywonderfullife.com allows you to plan your funeral online.
Rhea says I Planned My Funeral and It Was Fun
I just had such a fun time this afternoon. I began planning my funeral. It feels odd to plan your funeral. Most people can’t stand the idea of dying. But MyWonderfulLife.com is a comprehensive funeral-planning site that’s free and extremely easy to use. So, why not? Once you open your free account, you can choose burial or cremation, fancy casket or not fancy, visitation or not, what kind of music will play, etc., etc. Mostly I said I want it to be party-like. No black clothes, only bright colors. I can’t wait!
More on Tributes.com
How Jeff Taylor, the whiz behind Monster.com hopes to bring the newspaper obituary back to life in an interview published in the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, To Die For
You recently launched your latest venture, Tributes.com, a site that allows individuals to post obituaries online. It's pretty depressing, don't you think? I mean, why base a whole business around dead people?
You know what? I think it's exactly the opposite. I have this fascination with having a storied life. I had a relationship with a grandfather, but I wasn't old enough to appreciate it and I find I have nothing to look at to be able to enjoy that story.
If you were my father, I would appreciate you sitting me down and showing me pictures. Isn't it a little weird for your kids to go on the Internet to see this?
Stuff is in cardboard boxes in people's attics. Your classic obituary or death notice is something cut out and sitting in someone's Bible. I think there is the ability to make connections and build family trees where it's not just a date of birth and date of death. You're cynical about this. Want to share your age?
I'm 37.
It's hard to relate to at 37. It's creepy at 37. But it's intriguing at 47.
Ancestry Press -Bringing family stories to life
From Springwise, Ancestry books and family tree posters
Genealogy buffs can now pull together the fruits of their hard work and research into handsomely bound self-published books and family tree posters thanks to Ancestry Press, a new venture recently launched by Ancestry.com. Customers who already have their pedigree information archived on Ancestry.com can easily transfer their family trees, facts, photos, stories, historical documents, recipes and more to formatted templates—or blank pages they can design from scratch—for printing. And those who aren't yet Ancestry.com users can set up accounts quickly and easily.
Books are hand-bound and printed on 100-pound gloss, acid-free, archival paper with hard leatherette covers that can be stamped with custom two-line titles in gold foil. Pricing is currently at USD 29.95 for a 24-page book. Customers can add extra pages for just 39 cents each up to a total of 100 pages. 18-by-24-inch family tree posters (additional sizes coming soon) are available at an introductory rate of USD 19.95 and can feature up to six generations.
Surrogate Memory
Don't Forget to Back Up Your Brain
But what if you could capture every waking moment of your entire life, store it on your computer and then recall digital snapshots of everything you've seen and heard with just a quick search?
Renowned computer scientist Gordon Bell, head of Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group and founder of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, thinks he might be able to do just that.
He calls it a "surrogate memory," and what he considers an early version of it even has an official name — MyLifeBits.
I think this is profoundly misguided because it strips memory of meaning and discrimination.
Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking or "journalling with embellishments" is a billion dollar business and an addictive leisure activity for millions of Americans, mostly stay-at-home Moms between 18-40.
Slate has a good video that visits the 2007 Scrapbook Expo, called Scrapbookers Unite! that gives you a clue if you know nothing about scrapbooking.
Organize your family's essential information
Wendy Boswell, weekend editor of Life Hacker puts together an essential information kit for her family, a subject dear to my heart, so I am going to excerpt most of it.
My mom had a minor stroke last week and was unable to speak. (She's fine now, thank God.) But when it happened, we had no idea where her "stuff" was - her insurance info, her bank accounts, even the location of the keys to her house was a mystery. Ultimately, we were able to get everything pulled together, but it was a waste of precious time that we could've spent on other, more important things.
If there's ever a time when you don't want to be caught unorganized, it's in the middle of a health crisis. You need certain documents on hand and ready to go when you're in situations like these. Today I'll show you how I've gotten my procrastinating booty in gear (finally) and made my very own essential information kit.
What do you need?
It took a crisis like this for me to realize that if I or my spouse ever become incapacitated, whoever comes behind us and tries to figure out paperwork is basically up Sh*t Creek without a paddle. So! First, I had to figure out what exactly it was I needed to have on hand. This would be:
Up-to-date medical insurance information
An updated will
Power of attorney information
Life insurance info
A basic guide to your bank accounts - numbers, passwords
A basic list of bills in case someone else needs to help you pay them
Doctor and vet info
Spare keys for both house and car
Now, this was just my list for me and my family. You can customize it as you see fit, but these were the most pressing items I had to track down for my mom last week. I'll probably add to this list as time goes by, but it's a good start for an essential info kit that your family and friends will be able to utilize in order to help you more completely.
Best ways to organize your info
Obviously, some of this information is not going to be able to go onto a computer, and that's actually (believe it or not) a good thing. Not everyone who will be in charge of taking care of you should you be medically incapacitated is the computer-savvy ninja that you are, so let's make this as simple and easy access as possible. You have a few options that are written in order of what works best:
First, start a paper trail: All your paperwork in one file in one place couldn't be easier. Make copies and hand them to your significant other and one (or two) friends and or family members that you trust, literally, with your life.
Next, scan and save: Y'all still have scanners, right? Scan those essential documents in and save them to your hard drive, a CD, and a USB stick. Label everything, and give simple directions on where this information can be found to your already mentioned friends and family. Make sure that they understand how to access this information - don't assume that they can figure out how to use a CD drive or a USB.
Lastly, store it on the web: This is technically one of the ways that I'm advising you to store your essential info, however: do NOT use this as the only way. Please. I'm begging you. There are a myriad of online storage options available to you, including the multi-faceted Gmail, and it's a pretty easy and secure option for making sure your stuff is all in one spot. This particular option is advisable after you've completed the paper trail and electronic backup; be absolutely sure to write down where this information can be found in case you can't help out yourself. Definitely, this is a super backup option, but I'm putting extra emphasis on the "backup" part of that sentence.
Don't put this off
Last week was a wake up call for me, to put it mildly. I don't ever want my loved ones to be put in the frustrating position of scrambling for paperwork for me, and I'm pretty sure you don't either. For more information, I invite you to read the following resources; but please feel free to chime in with your essential paperwork strategies in the comments as well.
Booming Scrapbooks, It's a Good Thing
The Wall St Journal reports that Martha Stewart will soon roll out 650 products aimed at the scrapbooking market to be sold online and in partnership with Michael's Stores with 920 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada.
Dowdy Craft Business Gets Martha Stewart Makeover
The scrapbooking market has grown from $350 million in 1998 to a $2.6 billion business in 2006.
Now you can get your MS designed cards & invitations, photo books and stickers.
"It's a good thing."
Martha Stewart Crafts
Martha Stewart Scrapbooking and Memory Keeping
Martha Stewart offers Archival CDs for backup on online photos
One fan writes
I went into Michaels in Langley B.C. Canada today and spotted the Martha Stewart scrapbooking supplies for the first time. I could not believe it! They are awesome! I love the colors and cant wait to attempt one of the oversized scrapbooks. they are all very classy and remind me of your beautiful Christmas ornaments. I know I will be collecting it all. Please keep new stuff coming so everyone can enjoy!
The Ultimate Gift
The Ultimate Gift, a novel written in five days by Jim Stovall, has sold over 4 million copies with no promotion or advertising.
Essentially a fable that teaches the right way to hand down money is to hand down values as well, the book has become a favorite of trust officers, estate planners and other financial advisors who bought it for clients.
Forbes reports that it's now become a film starring James Garner that will be released on March 9.
You're Pulling My Legacy.
Backers of a new film, The Ultimate Gift, hope it will make you laugh, cry and hire a financial planner.
Ourstory.com
They take the simple idea that media exists in time, and come up with an end-to-end photo organizer, storage and sharing experience. The photos are organized around events and timelines, and they can be shared and contributed to by multiple users via site or email.
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The timeline collects and organizes your favorite stories, photos, videos, quick notes and letters once and for all.
Their tagline: Capture your stories, save them permanently.
Genealogy 2.0
The Next Generation of Genealogy Sites
One new entrant, Geni.com, which was launched last month by a former PayPal executive, offers a new model, based on connecting living relatives free of charge. The site is part genealogy, part six degrees of separation: Instead of paying a fee to research family records buried in archives, it asks users to build their own family trees -- using the knowledge of living relatives -- that eventually will merge into one giant family tree for the world. That is the hope anyway.
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Geni.com is taking some of the elements of popular so-called social-networking and user-generated content sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace. It went live in mid-January and has registered more than 100,000 users since then. It has done no traditional marketing yet, but blogs such as Digg (where users submit news stories) and Tech Crunch (which focuses on technology) passed the word. The site is free. Rather than charging fees, Geni plans on selling advertising and also plans to generate revenue by creating "premium" accounts and selling products, such as posters or coffee-table books of the family trees.
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The Generations Networks -- founded as MyFamily.com, Inc. nearly a decade ago and now operating eight sites including Ancestry.com -- has built its $150 million a year businesses primarily by selling subscriptions to passionate family historians for access to archives that track family lineage, such as census records, draft cards and death certificates. The Provo, Utah-based company is offering more free, ad-supported features, allowing family members to build trees by attaching ancestors' names, photos and stories. Since adding these features last July, Ancestry.com users have created more than one million family trees, with 150 million names, 400,000 photos and 10 million family documents from the site's thousands of record collections.
The article by Emily Steel also has a good list of genealogy sites and their cost.
Microsoft seeks patent on "immortal computing"
E-mail from the grave? Microsoft seeks patent on immortal computing
In this culture of instant information, some Microsoft Corp. researchers are pursuing a radical notion -- the concept of saving messages for delivery in decades, centuries or more.
The project, dubbed "immortal computing," would let people store digital information in physical artifacts and other forms to be preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations.
After all, when looking that far in the future, you never know who the end users might be.
"It is definitely a long-term project," said Andy Wilson, the Microsoft researcher whose musings on the ephemeral nature of digital information inspired the research initiative.
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The previously undisclosed project came to light through a newly surfaced patent application in which the researchers explain some of the concepts they're exploring. The project seeks to address the fact that large amounts of valuable information are stored on media with limited life spans, in formats that could be rendered obsolete. Consider how quickly floppy disks disappeared.
ut the patent application, filed in June 2005 and made public this month, at least shows that they've given the concept of "immortal computing" considerable thought.
Among other things, the filing describes the potential use of durable data storage, such as advanced imaging techniques, to make sure the information survives over time. One key will be to avoid storage devices that require movable -- and potentially breakable -- internal parts.
The filing says the information could be retrieved through a separate interface, independent of the individual artifact, in part to allow the method of display to evolve with changing technology. People who store information would be able to decide in advance when and to whom it would be disclosed, using DNA or biometrics to confirm identity.
To be sure, the Microsoft researchers aren't the first to see the growing need to preserve information in the digital age.
One existing online approach is called the Handle System. Launched more than a decade ago, it assigns unique identifiers that, unlike traditional Internet addresses, can be used to find online information and media even if they're subsequently moved. The system grew out of the work of Bob Kahn, the technology pioneer who was separately responsible for the system design of the Arpanet, the forerunner to today's Internet.
"I'm delighted when anybody takes interest in this," Kahn said in an interview last week, when asked about the Microsoft Research project. "More and more information is being generated, and everybody, whether it's a corporation or individual, from time to time wants to go back and find something and they don't know where to look.
"I think there's a generic issue here that's really important for the future," he added. However, he said, there's no reason that the Handle System by itself can't be used to reference any type of informational resource.
And the fact that Microsoft has applied for a patent could raise eyebrows in the industry.
"I think it's great that they're pursuing it. If they feel like they have to patent it in order to pursue it, I guess that's a business decision they have to make," said Mark Anderson, publisher of the Strategic News Service technology newsletter. "But I would hope they wouldn't try and do it in a way which would preclude others doing the same thing."
Bequeathing Your Avatar
From Faith Popcorn's 2007 Trend Predictions
Virtual Immortality
Consumers globally are creating fully fleshed out existences in the virtual world-dressing up their avatars, making friends, having affairs and buying property for their pixilated alter-egos. And now that people have multiple lives, who says you can’t live forever?
The Future: While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.
Identity, the next step after experience
From Bruce Nussbaum who writes on Design and Innovation at Businessweek
Instead of thinking of experience as something you design and give to someone, think identity.
Today, enabling people to create their own identities may be the Next Big Thing in design and innovation. The iPod is really a set of tools to allow you to build your own personal music library. Cell phones allow you to shape your own communication system. Ditto for MySpace.
Identity goes was beyond mass personalization, which is a passive concep
Insperiences
The trend watcher Springwise calls it Insperience, new businesses formed to bring top level experiences to consumers in their homes.
This week they point to Magnolia, a division of Best Buy, that's turning the complex difficulty of setting up and wiring home theaters and making everything work together into a branded, nation-wide business.
Magnolia tells consumers what to buy and then comes to their houses to hook everything up.
Trendwatching is a blog-like website that categorizes trends and all their newsletter articles that relate to trends like Mass Class, Garage Influentials, Infolust, Online Oxygen, No-Frills Chic and my personal favorite Life-Caching.
Buying the Elvis Estate
Elvis is the highest-earning dead celebrity for the fifth consecutive year according to Forbes. The Elvis estate brought in about $40 million last year.
Robert Sillerman, a billionaire media entrepreneur who owns American Idol — the hugely successful equivalent of Pop Idol in Britain — paid $114 million (£65 million) last year for an 85 per cent stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises, which is run by the Presley family. He got control of Graceland, the King’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, and control of his name and likeness, but not his music.
Alone, Together
Women have become the amateur documentarians of 21st suburban life.
With devotion, and, some say, obsession, they have fueled the thriving, $2.5 billion scrapbooking industry, an ever-expanding, ever-more-elaborate supply of photo-safe minutiae: corner lacing punches and circle cutters, rickrack and paisley paper and brads eyelets and packages of thematic word stickers -- on love, on vacation, on childhood -- the better to frame a life.
Savoring Life's Memories, by the Book
One anthropologist said it's part of an underlying trend he calls. "Alone, together."
"It makes me feel part of a larger community, but it also grows my sense of self," he said. "That's what scrapbooking does, especially for moms, who have no time to be creative these days."
And yet, among their thousands and thousands of photos, women tend to include very few, if any, photos of themselves, often because they don't like to be photographed or are reluctant to relinquish control of how their descendants will view their lives in 100 years.
UPDATE: Virginia Postrel says
One theory is that it creates an excuse for sociability while allowing time for personal enjoyment. I suspect that scrapbookers find their hobby a deeply satisfying source of "flow".
