Media Archiving

Anatomy of an Archival Scrapbook Project

We are in the process of wrapping up a large scrapbook project for a client that has been such a delight to work on that I wanted to share the project and the process we’ve gone through as I believe many of my readers may have similar such scrapbooks a...

Read more ● Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Archival Photo and Slide Scanning Services

Flickr photo: catcetera In January of 2008, Money Magazine wrote an article comparing 6 of the most popular scanning services. They sent 40 prints to the six different companies and rated them on cost, turnaround time and scan quality. The top rated company ...

Read more ● Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Beyond Wills and Trusts – What Do You Do With Your Intellectual Property?

Most people that have families take on the onerous and reflective task of writing a will which provides instructions for the distribution and disposable of our physical assets after we die. Some are very complicated and involve the establishment of trusts to ...

Read more ● Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
Create Your Own Family Bible

Flickr photo: Wonderlane We often do large photo archiving projects for families that involve scanning and creating digital records of photos albums, boxes of loose photos, newspaper articles, certificates and other family mementos that a family wants preser...

Read more ● Thursday, January 8th, 2009
Creating a Storyboard for Multimedia Projects

Flickr photo: Sthomas01 A storyboard is an essential tool for laying out a video or film project to communicate the look of a piece, to show how a story or plot unfolds and to organize the sequence of scenes before any time or money has been spent on studio ...

Read more ● Friday, September 5th, 2008
Every Memory of Your Life Stored Forever – MyLifeBits Project

Gordon Bell What would it look like if you had a computer with every single memory stored on it forever? You would be able to access every webpage you’ve ever looked at, every email you’ve read, every photo you’ve taken or been in, videos o...

Read more ● Friday, April 4th, 2008
Gift Options For Family Researchers Abound

This week marks the beginning of the holiday gift-giving season. Perhaps you are wondering what you might give to a fellow family history researcher or genealogist, or maybe your family and friends are asking you for hints. Simple, practical gifts include a d...

Read more ● Friday, November 23rd, 2007
Hope Chest

A Hope Chest was originally used as a dowry. It was property that a woman owned and brought into her marriage. Some women could not find a suitable husband, for various factors; therefore, the dowry was used as a way of enticing a man into marriage. Th...

Read more ● Monday, November 24th, 2008
How I Save and Archive My Digital Photos

I spend a lot of time flying back and forth between Houston and Los Angeles to visit my family. The flight is 3 hours and last year I made a commitment to spend that three hour time period working on sorting, identifying and tagging all of my digital photos....

Read more ● Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
How To Backup and Store Your Digital Photo Files

Flickr photo: Chas.™ Last week I blogged about how I have been organizing and tagging all my digital photos during frequent 3 hour flights. I received several comments and questions from readers about what to do with those photos once they are tagged and o...

Read more ● Friday, February 4th, 2011
How To Share Your Digital Photos With Family and Friends

For the past two blog posts I have been writing about archiving (How I Save and Archive My Digital Photos), and storing digital photos (How To Backup and Store Your Digital Photo Files.) My first post on this subject looked at how I created an architecture t...

Read more ● Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
Kronomy, Another New Social Media Tool

I have been playing around with a new online application called Kronomy (this site is no longer available). I’m not really ready to show the world my creation on there but let me tell you a bit about it. There is a concept called collective consciousne...

Read more ● Saturday, August 16th, 2008
Legacy Lists – Organizing The Family Information

Flickr photo:neloqua I recently realized that while my two sons are grown, 25 and 22, my will lists my brother as the executor of my estate. My oldest son lives here in Houston and it has occurred to me that I need to start grooming him to be my executor, sh...

Read more ● Sunday, October 19th, 2008
Magnetic Photo Album Deterioration

Flickr photo: mimi.bowling We often hear clients complain they can’t remove their photos from those old inexpensive magnetic photo albums. Those are the ones with the pre-glued pages that you just stick the photos in and slide the plastic sleeve over t...

Read more ● Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Memory and Craft

Flickr photo: josefnovak33 I was recently watching “Craft in America“, PBS’s excellent series covering the major influences that play a part in each artist’s craft. The particularly episode I watched was episode V – Process, tha...

Read more ● Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
My Computer Nightmare Video Contest

My partner and good friend Isabelle MacCrimmon has just entered Mozy’s video contest. The rules are to create a video of your worst computer nightmare that cannot exceed 1 minute in length. Considering she and her husband Keith are big fans of Indiana J...

Read more ● Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
My Top Five Photo Sharing Websites

One of my blog readers recently wrote asking me about the best way to share photos with family members who are far away. She was interested in having family members help her identify people in her photos but was hesitant to put the photos in the mail, fearin...

Read more ● Friday, January 27th, 2012
Natural Disasters 101

Flickr photo:Kicks in New Orleans I am sitting here in Houston, waiting for Hurricane Ike to arrive. It’s 9AM and he’s not expected until around midnight but I’m nervous and not quite sure what to do. Arranging things around the house, most...

Read more ● Friday, September 12th, 2008
New Year’s Resolutions Should Include a Good Backup Protocol

Flickr photo: Shanghai Daddy I was just reading about a woman whose computer was acting up so she called a computer technician out to her home to save her from the dread ‘blue screen.’ Apparently she had 10 years worth of genealogy research store...

Read more ● Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Packing Your Cameras For a Holiday Getaway

Planning on a getaway this holiday season? When it’s time to pack for that vacation you’ve been counting down the days to, remember to consider bringing along these extras to make vacation photography a breeze: Bring Ziploc bags of different sizes...

Read more ● Tuesday, December 11th, 2007