Kronomy, Another New Social Media Tool
Posted on August 16, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories, Geneaology, Media Archiving, Networking, Personal History, Photo Restoration, Social Media
I have been playing around with a new online application called Kronomy. 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 consciousness which came out of the French social theorist Emile Durkheim’s work in the late 1800s that referred to society’s shared beliefs and moral attitudes which create a unifying force within society. Carl Jung went on to distinguish a concept called the collective unconscious which is basically a shared reservoir of experiences of mankind. It shows up in our myths, lore, archetypes, dreams and views of ourselves.
The growth of the new social media is driving us toward a new phenomenon called a collective global memory. Blogs, media sites such as Facebook and other sites such as Geni.com, all serve as receptacles of personal memory bits. We can share our photos, share our thoughts & stories and share our friends in a way that allows us to be known by others no matter how intimate we may be with these people in our day to day interactions.
Kronomy is a new tool on the scene that is attempting to create an even more expanded view of this collective storage by providing a place where the collective global memory can live. It allows you to create events and memories on a life path that can be easily explored and linked with others. With it’s snappy 3-D interface, it allows you to quickly travel through time, reviewing your own and others’ lives. You can put photos, text, video, links to websites grabbing screen captures of your blogs, social media profiles and websites that then display on your timeline. Rather than just providing links to other users, you can link to people event by event, crossing paths and weaving a complex web with other profiler’s events.
Kronomy is currently in it’s beta stage although the web application is pretty much fully functional. I have played around with it briefly but haven’t had enough time to really create something which I’m ready to show, however Guy Kawasaki, venture capitalist and technology evangelist, created a cool history that pretty much shows you how the basic interface works.
There is also a cool movie on Kronomy’s website you can watch. It’s on their front page but you have to be logged in to see it. However, they have an informative blog and the demo is embedded there. There are a couple of episodes which can be gotten to be clicking on the little open book icon on the bottom of the embedded video.
There are so many applications for a tool like this. Aside from the usual “here is when I was born, here is me in high school…”, you could do the conceptual development of an idea or a project. You could map out the history of an organization or race. Over in my world of personal history, the interface between a linear event tool such as this and a genealogical tree program such as Geni.com would be phenomenal. Maybe they’ll both read this blog and get in touch with each other. 
Hopefully I’ll find the time to finish my own Kronomy project. Right now my husband and I are scanning, organizing and labeling several thousand of my family’s photographs that go back four generations and trying to create a digital pool of media that is accessible to everyone. While we’re utilizing Geni.com and creating online galleries using Adobe Creative Suite, I am still not clear of the best way to collate and disseminate all these photos so that they’ll be protected and multi-generations of my family will have access to both screen and printable resolution files. We’re still exploring tools as we have so many variables to consider. At this point, it looks like there will have to be several options implemented rather than just one that solves all the needs. I’ll let you know.
Technorati Tags: collective memory, Facebook, geni.com, Kronomy, photo and video storage and sharing, social networking
Legacy Multimedia Wins Crystal ICON Award
Posted on August 11, 2008 - Filed Under Business History
![](http://legacymultimedia.com/blog/wp-content/crystal_icon.gif" "lmm"){kind=icon}
Last week Isabelle and I won our very first award. It is the Crystal ICON award and it was awarded to us by the Houston Chapter of the International Society of Event Planners.
We won the award for a video piece we did for the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft on the artwork of Cindy Hickok, a local fiber artist and the Center’s 2007 Texas Master Series honoree.
When a Texas artist rises above the competition, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft honors that artist with the title of Master. Being distinguished as a Master craftsman is an enormous honor. We were commissioned by the HCCC to create a video presentation that both honored Cindy and described her work as well as promoted the Center and it’s relationship to the art community in Texas. It included a section on the history of the Texas Master Series, an interview with board members on why artist Cindy Hickok was chosen as well as a six minute profile on Cindy. There was also a digital catalog of the pieces that were displayed in the on-going show with information on each piece such as dimensions, materials, and what inspired Cindy to create each piece. The show ran through June 17th, 2007 at the Center and our piece looped continuously throughout the exhibit and was also available for purchase in the Center’s gift shop.
The video was an excellent example of the kind of work we do for businesses and corporations. It was pretty exciting to hear our name being announced at the 300+ attended gala/awards ceremony. Bill White, the mayor of Houston was there as well as other notables. I was so proud to go up and accept this award and am sitting here admiring it in my office while I write this piece.
So many great things have been happening for us lately. We’ve gotten some great press and now this award. It’s so nice to have our work being acknowledged and further strengthens my commitment to capturing memories and making great video!
Finally, we created a new page on our website that shows our recent News. Interestingly enough, I see that we’re in the process of creating our own company history.
Technorati Tags: Cindy Hickok, Crystal ICON Award, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, ISES, Texas Master Series
More News on Geni.com
Posted on July 27, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories, Geneaology, Networking, Personal History, Social Media
Photo courtesy: geni.com
I’ve mentioned Geni.com a few times in this blog. It’s one of my favorite social networking tools that enable its users to find and stay in touch with their relatives as they capture and share their family’s history.
This past Thursday, Geni.com got even better. Coming out of it’s beta state, it just announced some new features. Here are two of the main new features that Geni.com unveiled:
Video Sharing:
Geni now offers unlimited, free, and private video sharing for families. Users can instantly tag which family members are in their videos and permanently archive their videos by adding them to the family timeline.
Geni excels relative to other social networking sites when multiple people in the same family tag their media (photos and videos) with a common event, thereby creating a virtual scrapbook of that event. For example, multiple family members can instantly create a virtual scrapbook of a wedding by tagging all their photo albums and videos with that event.
“Despite an abundance of video sharing solutions online, there isn’t really a great way to share family videos,” said David Sacks, CEO of Geni.com. “Having a six-month-old baby, I speak from experience. YouTube is designed for mass publishing, and my friends on Facebook don’t want to see dozens of baby videos. But my family does. Geni provides a convenient way to share and preserve these memories.”
Tree Merging:
Geni has also released tree merging, the ability for family members to merge their trees together. This enables users to create a single family tree that is more complete and accurate than their individual trees. Geni’s conflict resolution tools help to find and resolve any duplicate nodes on each tree.
About Geni, Inc.:
Geni.com is a free tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family online in a private, secure environment. Geni was a winner of the 2007 Webware 100 Awards, which named it one of the top 100 sites on the internet and one of the top 10 reference sites. It is by far the youngest site to receive this honor. It was nominated again in 2008 in the social (networking) category. In May 2008 Time™ Magazine named Geni.com one of the Top 50 Websites of 2008.
Geni.com is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Geni was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe and is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. For more information visit the company’s web site at www.geni.com.
Technorati Tags: family tree, genealogy, geni.com, online photo sharing, Social Media, social networking
The Power of Social Media
Posted on July 25, 2008 - Filed Under Networking, Social Media
Last weekend my husband and I dropped into Guitar Center to do some window shopping. My husband has been looking for the ‘right’ guitar for close to a year now and usually he plinks around for 15 minutes and then we leave. This day, he picked up the perfect guitar which sounded like what he’s been looking for and he decided, in that moment, to buy this pretty expensive guitar.
We have purchased so much equipment from Guitar Center over the years it makes my head spin just thinking about the amount we’ve laid out. With two teenage boys who went through pretty much every instrument they could consider, it was a rotational band in our house. Because of that, we continually get letters and cards from Guitar Center inviting us in for 10% discount. At this time we didn’t have a coupon with us and the one at home was probably in a pile of magazines but I asked the salesman if we could get the 10%. After going back and forth with the sales guy and the floor manager, we basically had no other option but to put the guitar on layaway or come back with the coupon. I was surprised they let a such a potentially(for me) big ticket sale walk out the door but long story short, we left.
That evening, I posted a couple of comments to Twitter regarding my frustrating experience. Less than 24 hours later, I received a private tweet (a message sent on Twitter is called a tweet) from the Executive Vice President of Guitar Center telling me he’d like to help me with my guitar buying issue. With 30 people following my tweets, I was surprised he’d found mine but he told me that he does a global search for anyone blogging or tweeting about Guitar Center and his goal is to make those customers who are unhappy happy again. Sounded great to me.
The next day he had the Director of Communications call me to discuss the situation. He told me that basically the policy of the local store was not what had happened to me and that they would be happy to honor the discount. A couple hours later, the store manager called to let me know he had the guitar put aside, and to please come in and introduce myself to him when I came to buy the new guitar. Wow. Now the store is a good 30 minutes from my house and this second trip could have been avoided but I am definitely feelin’ da love for Guitar Center now.
If a customer complains in the forest, does anyone hear them? Apparently the answer is yes. In today’s New York Times, there is an article about this social media phenomenon of companies combing the internet looking for instances of disgruntled as well as happy customers. Citing primarily complaints about Comcast, not only are some companies listening to what’s being said about them, many are trying to act aggressively from the top down to solve these problems. Some bloggers are complaining they feel “big brother” is watching but I think those that are getting some resolution to their problems view it otherwise.
Of course, this brings up the issue of how abysmal a lot of companys’ customer service is and what is required to change that. I think most of us would nod our heads in sympathy to the chronic complaints of sales clerks who are rude, lack knowledge of their products, or may not even be available to begin with. My son told me of an experience at a fast food restaurant where he was the only one in the building and the counter clerk, looking past him standing at the counter, asked loudly to nobody in the restaurant, “who’se next?”
While many of the daily tweets I get lack any real content, this is a great example of the positive power of social media, connecting you directly to who can make a difference, provided they are listening.
Technorati Tags: Guitar Center, Social Media, social networking, Twitter
Legacy Multimedia in the Houston Chronicle!
Posted on July 20, 2008 - Filed Under Business History, Networking, Personal History
Today is a pretty exciting day around here. My company, Legacy Multimedia, received a feature profile in the Houston Chronicle business section.
I was on my vacation two weeks ago (which is why I’ve posted so infrequently over the past couple of weeks), when I got the call that they wanted to write the story. Needless to say, when I got back from vacation, we were all pretty excited and that week was spent doing a couple of phone interviews and arranging the photo shoot. Originally we thought the piece would run last weekend but found out (after it didn’t run) that it was in today’s paper.
I knew last night before I went to bed that the article was a good one because I received a couple of IMs from friends congratulating me on a great story. But rather than run out at midnight to get the earlier version, I went to bed and decided to read it at the appropriate time, over my cup of tea, this morning. Ah, the anticipation!
The article is great, no complaints in that department. After reading it I decided it was time to send out some announcements on the computer so I came down to my office and opened up some of my social media programs to send out the word. When I opened Twitter, I found my news had already been scooped by my friend Ed Schipul and picked up by tech reporter Dwight Silverman. Now that is a testament to the power of social media, that your story is out there before you send the word! You have to love the internet for that.
With just a few notes, I’ve alerted several networks about the article. I can send a link out to others that aren’t on my social media programs via an email. The article can be scanned and placed on my website or copied and sent out with other marketing materials. Who needs a hard copy? Well I’ll have one framed to hang on the office wall and probably send another real copy to my parents since that generation appreciates the value of the real newspaper clipping. Just 10 years ago I would have been asking everyone I know for their copies to hard mail. Amazing.
And now we have another component to add to our own business history.
Technorati Tags: Dwight Silverman, Ed Schipul, Houston Chronicle, Twitter
California Dreaming on a Summer’s Day
Posted on July 7, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories
I just spent the last week on vacation in Northern California, visiting with my family and attending the wedding of the daughter of friends I have known for over 30 years. My entire nuclear family gathered over the weekend at my brother’s home and we shared some fantastic bottles of wine, great food and best of all some terrific stories.
My brother’s children are 5 and 8 and delight in hearing anecdotal stories about their dad and their two aunts as young children. There are the classic stories that seem to come up on every family reunion but there were a few that I hadn’t heard in awhile and had even forgotten such as the time my sister caught her first fish at the age of 7. She was so scared that she dropped the pole in the (shallow) water while the fish flopped around on the line. While not particularly funny, the way my dad tells it, imitating the poor fish and recreating the look on my sister’s face, had the girls howling with glee. Naturally we didn’t seem to get this stuff on video but having these stories recreated time and again keep them in existence for each generation.
I managed to get in several hikes in the Marin foothills while I was there. Some were quite strenuous and after living in Houston for the past 15 years, I’m not really used to walking up and down hills. But I had the experience of a lot of sensory memories while I was on these hikes. I grew up in California and my husband and I lived in Northern California during the early years of our marriage. I always did a lot of hiking in these same areas so walking through them again didn’t so much bring up memories of specific things that happened but memories of smells and the way my body felt years ago walking through the same grassy paths, feeling the sun on my face as I followed dusty trails up and down these same hills. I was thinking about these sensory experiences since I seem to have them a lot whenever I go back to some place I spent a lot of time in at an earlier stage in my life. I know great writers are adept at describing the nuance of an experience such as that so that you can feel where the narrator is. But in my line of work, which is primarily video, there really is no way to share a sensory experience.
I remember years ago reading about how computers some day would be able to mix and generate scents so that if you were reading about freshly mown hay, that smell would be able to be manufactured by your computer. Sounded very futuristic to me, this ’smell-o-vision.” That has never materialized but it would sure be great to share some of those senses with you.
Technorati Tags: family gatherings, hiking in Marin, vacation memories
Family Photo Album
Posted on June 24, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories, Personal History, Video Tributes
I met this guy at a party the other night and when I told him that I was a personal historian and biographer, he became really, really excited. He said to me, “I have to show you this album I did with my son for his 5th grade class project. ” He was sort of self-depricating about it, saying that it wasn’t really good quality but I could tell he was very excited about it and even more excited to find someone to talk about it with. Mostly he seemed concerned that his wife wouldn’t want him showing it to me. I said, “go get it!” since he lived across the street from the house the party was at. He agreed to go get it but asked me to meet him at the front door since he didn’t want his wife to see him showing it to me. When he came back, he caught my eye from the front door and I signaled that I would meet him in the dining room. I slipped in there and we tried to find the light switch. I felt very “secret agent”, as if I was on some sort of clandestine assignation with a informant. “Move over here so my wife can’t see us,” he told me. He laid the book out on the table and we began to thumb through it.
Basically, what he’d done was to scan and copy photos and organized them into a small family history album. He had photos of his side of the family and his wife’s side of the family, both going back a few generations and accompanied by a few paragraphs of information about each person. Then there were photos celebrating the birth of his son and the book veered off to acknowledging the yearly accomplishments of his son with lots of anecdotal stories. It combined elements of a scrapbook, genealogical tree, photo album and family history. It wasn’t great quality, just information scanned and copied on printer paper and put in plastic sleeves of a notebook. But i was very moved with his sharing this album with me and his obvious excitement and enthusiasm for not only creating it in the first place, which was an impressive feat, but getting how significant it was to have put this into existence. He was also very interested in doing more. Perhaps exploring further collection of materials and putting this into digital format where it could be shared with other family members.
After we were finished, while he ran the book back home, I wandered into the kitchen and found his wife. “I can’t believe he went home and got that to show you,” she said, obviously a bit embarrassed. I told her how impressed I was by the whole album and by his excitement. She seemed surprised and I saw a window of opportunity open there to let her know how important this was. I told her how he had created something that, whether he expanded on it in the future or not, was now some tangible format of the people and stories in their son’s past. It would be something their son would take with him into his journey in life and provide him some grounding on where he came from.
I saw her beginning to understand all this and was myself excited to think that perhaps from that point on, she might encourage him to continue on his passionate quest to know his past.
Technorati Tags: Family History, Family Memories, family scrapbooks
Looking Yourself Up On Google - the New Acknowledgment
Posted on June 19, 2008 - Filed Under Personal History
I was waiting in the dentist’s office yesterday and picked up a copy of July’s Redbook and began reading an article on “Men’s Secret Fears - the Good, the Bad and the Funny, Real Guys Fess Up.” Among such fears as “What’s Up With All This Body Hair,” “Do I Have What it Takes to be a Good Dad” and “Do I Make Enough Money”, was the obsession “How Do I Rank on Google.”
According to this article, while younger men measure themselves on MySpace and Facebook, counting how many friends they have and how many notes they get, older guys look themselves up on Google. Counting how many pages they appear on apparently is a guide to how successful they have been in life.
Not being content with that knowledge, they (again, according to this article) look up their friends and compare statistics on who has more rank. Apparently the two things they search for more than themselves are their friends and their enemies.
The reason apparently is that men want to see the evidence of the impact they are having in the world. As we go through life and have accomplishments, we hang those certificates on the wall or put the trophy on the shelf and nobody really knows about it but us or the people who happen to come into our offices or studys and see those visual acknowledgments. Do they matter? Apparently not if nobody can see them. On Google, they are there for the world to see, measure and apparently acknowledge.
Technorati Tags: personal accomplishment, rank on Google, Redbook July 2008
Texas Governor’s Mansion Damaged by Fire
Posted on June 10, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories, Personal History, Social Responsibility
(AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)
This weekend, the historic Texas Governor’s Mansion caught fire and much of the 152 year old structure was seriously damaged. Arson is suspected and an investigation is under way.
Fortunately, at the time, the mansion was undergoing a $10 million dollar renovation and it’s current occupants, Governor and Mrs. Rick Perry, were relocated to a temporary residence. Enough of the structural architecture was spared from the flames so that an accurate restoration will be achievable. All of the furnishings, relics and other belongings were also out of the house, in storage for the duration of the renovation. They had even removed the paint and wallpaper and much of the crown molding.
In relative terms, this building was a baby compared to buildings one might see when visiting Europe. But when you consider the tumultuous history of this large state, a building that old and with that kind of stature was a sizable undertaking and landmark at the time it was built.
Texas isn’t too sentimental when it comes to preserving old buildings. In Houston where I live, homes of significant age are routinely torn down to make way for new housing developments or commercial tracts. There are a few organizations that attempt to move these homes or they are stripped of all architectural detailing such as fixtures, stair cases, window casings and other details that might be used by those attempting to restore a similar building.
While I realize a 100 year old shack can be looked at as just that, tearing them all down tends to erase from our consciousness where we come from and how we’ve evolved as a town, city or state. I know that a governor’s mansion is quite a bit more significant than a migrant worker shack, but I would want to have examples of both and not just new museums housing old relics.
I’m relieved that while an expensive road is ahead to restore the Governor’s Mansion, the Perrys and the state of Texas are lucky indeed that the contents of the home were not damaged. Rarely does a bad story like that have such a lucky twist of fate.
Technorati Tags: Austin Texas Governor's Mansion, Family History
You’re Gonna Be In Pictures…
Posted on June 2, 2008 - Filed Under Family Memories, Personal History, Video Tributes
Last week NPR ran a segment on their show, Marketplace, entitled “Coming Soon, The Cash Peters Story” which was a look into the world of video biographies spotlighting one Los Angeles firm, Legacy Flicks, that charges $20,000 to put your name on the marquee for 30 minutes.
The segment was humorous and played upon the egotistical aspect of making a movie about your own life. Citing concerns about personal biographies being too gooey or saccharine, Peters poked fun at the vanity of having a movie made about your favorite person, YOU! He also questioned how many people had an interesting enough story to make a movie about. The people who had had Legacy videos done shared their motivation of leaving something about them for the next generation and in some instances, revealing truths about them that maybe successors might not know.
The piece started an interesting discussion on the Association of Personal Historians‘ listserve. Some thought the piece was snide and perhaps poked too much fun at a profession that is only beginning to make some headway with the general public. Others felt that it pointed out the value of telling your story in a way that was funny and maybe got you thinking about finally getting off your duff and doing something to record your memoirs.
I felt the piece was cute. It was a bit cheeky but all in all, a good natured look at something that is gaining ground in popularity. Legacy Flick’s prices quoted in the article are certainly on the high end. We (Legacy Multimedia) can produce an equally unique and professional custom quality video biography for a fraction of that amount, as can many other video biographers.
The one point that I felt was important to distinguish is that your story doesn’t have to have mass box office appeal and sell thousands of copies in order to have value. If I were to walk up to any number of people and tell them I had a copy of their great grandfather talking about his life, I don’t think there would be a single person not interested in it. The opportunity to find out about a long departed relative would have a value that would be difficult to even guess at. How much would you pay? Yet so many people say they have no story, nothing interesting to distinguish themselves from everyone else, not able or willing to justify the expense of hiring someone to do exactly that for their heirs.
Technorati Tags: National Public Radio, NPR, NPR Marketplace, Personal History, The Cash Peters Story, video biography keep looking »
