We’ve all been taught as young children that we have to share. We learn to share our toys, our Mom’s attention, our candy, and most everything else we would have preferred to keep just for ourselves. As we grow older most of us buy into the idea that “it’s better to give than to receive.” Yet, however selfless we may think we are, most people just don’t share enough when it comes to those things that will last for generations and generations to come.

Plain and simple, you need to share - and manage what you share - if you’re going to be well remembered. Be it the pictures you take (or don’t take, but should), the articles/blogs you find interesting, the latest gadget reviews, a good book, or our thoughts on any given topic. In this article I’m going to cover a few basic things you can do to begin sharing things in your life that you’d want your grandchildren and their children’s, children’s children to know about you.

Why Bother? Who Cares Anyway?
Even if you don’t have anyone you know to share your on-line life with right now, you should still start sharing. Everything we share can be read later. With a little care, it’s not going anywhere. I know your kids and most of your “real world” friends probably won’t follow you today, but you can find plenty people to share with in your virtual world. Facebook, for example, lets you join groups where you interact with people who have common interests. Or share your thoughts on Twitter with others who share links to articles that resound with you. Through mutual sharing you often develop friendships and a following as you share snippets of your life. These new friendships are a side benefit of the process of leaving a digital legacy.

If you do it right, much of your shared content will still be intact 10, 20, even 100 years from now. When someone in the future wants to know more about you, they’ll find this information fascinating even if they could care less about it today. The ones who will be most interested in what you share are probably not even alive today. I’m betting some of my great, great grandkids will find it a treasure trove of insight into who I really am. Even my kids may ponder these ramblings when they get to be my age and want to share a bit more about Poppy and Grandma with their grandkids. When that time comes they’ll have a wealth of pictures, videos, blog articles and other material for these young’uns to get a great sense of who I was. My kids will surely learn things about me they never knew before. It will be a gift I leave for them that they’ll only fully discover years from now. A buried treasure, of sorts.

OK, How Do I Get Started?
So just how does someone start sharing information in a more meaningful way? Here’s 4 things I believe you should be doing as an absolute minimum to have the best chance of leaving a digital legacy that will survive long after you’re gone.

1. Start a blog. This is the place you bring it all together. From here you can link to everything that’s important to you. Your photos, videos, thoughts and tweets, favorite blogs and other shared items. Think of your blog as your “home” on the internet. It’s where you bring it all together. This web site is also my blog.

2. Get a Flickr account. You need to start taking digital pictures if you aren’t already. Flickr is where I store and share my pics. I love Flickr because it’s easy to use and so many other programs work with it. For example, I can send pictures I take with my BlackBerry Storm directly to Flickr. I also have a plugin for iPhoto that lets me export photos from iPhoto to my Flickr account. Open an account and upload some photos. If you don’t have a digital camera, get one and USE IT! You can get a decent point and shoot for well under $100.

3. Use Twitter and/or FriendFeed. Twitter and FriendFeed are both considered micro-blogging tools. Twitter messages are a maximum of 140 characters long so they are, by design, brief notes. Twitter is a great place to create a living biography where you can share brief thoughts about things that are meaningful to you. FriendFeed excels at promoting conversation about a topic by making it easy for readers to comment. It also allows greater than 140 character messages.

Many people have written about Twitter, but this video is probably as good an overview of how it works as I’ve found:

With these “social networking” tools, you share your thoughts with your “followers” and you also read the thoughts of those you follow. It’s a great way to become known amongst groups of people who are interconnected via these services. You’ll meet and establish friendships with others you’d never meet any other way.

The main thing to remember in our context of creating a digital legacy is that Twitter is a good place to quickly and regularly share thoughts about yourself and your interests that you and others can refer back to in the future. Twitter is very popular and ever-increasing in its number of users. I believe it will be around for a long time in some form or fashion.

4. Use Google Reader. There are so, so many interesting blogs chock full of information that YOU will be interested in. Whatever your interests, there are blogs discussing virtually any given topic. Take a minute and read my previous article about why you want to use Google Reader to surf the net. I demonstrate via video how easy it is to subscribe to a blog that interests you.

What I don’t tell you in the post is that you can share articles you come across and other items of interest on a personal web page Google Reader maintains for you. Here you’ll get your Google profile on the right side of the page and a listing of all the articles you’ve shared. To share an article all you need to do is click on the Share link at the bottom of anything you happen to be reading in Reader. It’s a simple and highly effective. Every time you add or delete something from your Google Reader shared item list it’s instantly added or removed from your shared items web page. A simple link to this page from your blog, Twitter, or in an email allows others to quickly and easily view the articles you find interesting.

Becoming Virtually Immortal
I’ve written about the need to establish your digital legacy in order to be remembered by generations to come. It takes a little effort to do it right, even though it’s not difficult. Like anything else that’s worthwhile you have to work at it a bit. I’m going to do my best to guide you through the process of getting started and share much of what I’ve learned so you don’t make the same mistakes I made. If you’re someone who just doesn’t want to do anything more than take pictures and upload them to the Internet, we can still help. While we can’t take your pictures for you or write your blog, we can get it all set up so it’s easy for you to do it. Let us know if we can help.

In conclusion, stop keeping everything to yourself and start sharing! You’ll not only enjoy the process, but you’ll also be writing and creating history. Use these free web tools to your every advantage. Create your digital legacy as you share, share, share!

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Mike Neal and Ruby Harwood. Ruby is 101 years young.

Rhea County sheriff Mike Neal really cares about senior citizens in our rural Tennessee county. So much so that he’s allocated 4 or more sheriff’s cars to be used by volunteers who regularly call on 4-5 seniors in the area. He’s also appointed a staff member as laison for the effort. The program Mike sponsors is called S.C.A.N. (Senior Citizens Awareness Network). Each volunteer couple is assigned 3-5 seniors who are shut-in or just in need of company. Christine and I have a total of 5 households we visit every two weeks. In the short time we’ve been involved, we’ve already made friendships that are sure to last a lifetime.

Yesterday S.C.A.N. had its annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Spring City United Methodist Church, sponsoredby Sheriff Neal. I was the designated photographer and shot lots of photos and some video. Over 160 people were in attendance to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner prepared by church members. We were treated to music by the Mercy Missionary Baptist Singers and the Grandview Gospel Boys, not to mention some fine entertainment by M.C. Norman Lane. Norm heads up the S.C.A.N. volunteers and is responsible for recruiting us into the program.

Below are photos from the event. Videos follow. Many of these pictures may be the only photos some of these folks have had taken in years. Enjoy!

Videos from the event below. Click the Play arrow in the middle of the video window to play it. Click the arrows on either side of the video window to switch to the next or the previous video. There are 5 videos total.

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For the last few days I’ve been thinking about the issue of how people can be sure their digital photos, videos, spoken & written words stay in perpetuity after they’ve passed away. Overcoming this problem is central to the idea of becoming virtually immortal and it ultimately needs a secure, simple solution.

The issue is really about who’s going to assume responsibility for making sure your accounts stay active when you die and that all of this media you’re creating isn’t simply deleted when you stop paying the annual fees? Who’s going to do this for you? Your kids? Yeah, right.

A Digital Safe Deposit Box?
Initially my thinking was that a trusted provider like Amazon or Google might develop a really cool digital safe deposit box of sorts. Here anyone could keep all of their passwords up-to-date so future generations could access the accounts containing their digital media. This digital safe deposit box could also be used to store certified electronic copies of your will, bank documents, contracts, etc. Just as with a safe deposit box at your local bank, upon your death your designate could gain access to your digital safe deposit box. There he would find your login and other account information for all of your on-line accounts (media, web sites, banking, etc.) as well as your digital documents. In fact, I think this is such an important issue that I’m going to submit the idea to Google for their $2 million contest for the best ideas to change the world. Who knows, I just might win!

Ok, I’m back down on earth now. Short of winning $2M from Google, perhaps there’s still an opportunity for Remember Granny to develop a somewhat less ambitious solution to this problem. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. During my interview with Steve Mays yesterday he suggested that we may want to offer a service to our clients where Remember Granny would assume responsibility for renewing and maintaining their clients’ accounts into the future. This way Boomers wouldn’t have to rely on the kids to take over management of their media and the kids would still benefit by being able to view, share and download Mom & Dad’s media into their own libraries.

I believe there’s a very real opportunity for Remember Granny to help ensure that our clients’ grandkids, great grandkids and great, great grandkids will have the opportunity to watch their videos, view their photos, read their blog and listen to their podcasts 100 years from now. These are exciting ideas and I’m pumped about putting them into action.

Putting the Immortal in Virtual Immortality
There are several trusted and secure on-line file storage services (ie. JungleDisk) where we could store our clients’ passwords and account information.  They could be easily maintained in a document stored securely in a digital “safe deposit box” using one of these storage services. Upon notification of a client’s death, Remember Granny would take over the management of the media and the accounts according to our client agreement. We could provide a variety of services to this end, depending on what a client contracted with us to do for him.

For example, it could be a service as simple as making sure a designated survivor gets the “key” to the box, or as complex as actively managing and renewing any accounts for a period of several years. We could ensure that your photos, videos and blogs continue to reside in a location that will ensure their future availability. As technology advances our clients’ media would be perpetually maintained on the best of breed hosts to preserve and share it with future generations. Maybe Google will give me the $2M after all!

Count Your Media Among Your Personal Assets
The bottom line is that when making provisions for passing along your real and financial assets, you also need to plan to preserve your digital assets into the next century. I’m assuming by the year 3000 it will be VERY EASY for our descendants to place our media files into perpetuity via some sort of on-line/in-home service we haven’t even dreamed of. Until then, many people will need someone to actively manage those digital assets for them. It’s either going to be their kids, relatives, or a service provider like Remember Granny. The alternative is for your photos and videos to become inaccessible and, ultimately, deleted. So much for being virtually immortal, eh?

What do you think? Would you pay for a service that would manage your media after you’ve passed away? How much would it be worth? Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

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I came upon this blog post by Steve Mays (and the original post he references by Henry Domke, MD) about how a house fire can destroy everything you’ve been collecting for years, including your photos, videotapes, DVDs, etc. All these recorded memories can go up in smoke in a matter of minutes! Yes, it can happen to YOU.

Please heed the advice of this blogger and convert your photo albums and videos to digital format and get them onto the Internet where they will stay “virtually immortal.” Do this for yourself and for future generations!

I wrote earlier of a great device for converting videotapes and other media to digital video. I’ve recently come across an even less expensive device that doesn’t have as many features, but still looks as though it gets the job done. However you decide to do it, get it done before a tragedy (fire, flood, etc.) ruins years of recorded memories.

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I had the pleasure of being the designated, unofficial photographer and videographer at the county fair this weekend. Here’s the links to my photos and the videos. I’m also including the photos below in a Pictobrowser player. As I’ve said in previous posts, Pictobrowser is a great way to embed a group of photos in a blog post. Unfortunately, a Pictobrowser slide show does not show up in Google Reader, as do other embedded Flash players. Anyone know why?

The event was great fun, with Christine making the front page of the local paper with our camel, Boris. We so enjoyed watching the kids interact with our pygmy goats, camel and miniature donkeys.

One of the highlights of the fair were the performances of the local chapter of the Red Hat Society. These 50+ year-old women really know how to have a good time. Here’s a couple of my favorite skits by the Red Hatters. (Tip: click on the video window to watch it on YouTube if you have a fast Internet connection. On YouTube you can click a link to “watch in high quality” and you’ll get a much better video image.)

I’m sure these photos and videos will not only bring smiles to the faces of those who are featured in them, they will also bring smiles to future generations as we teach people best practices of managing digital media.

Family Memories
One very cool happening this weekend was a request by Karen Clark that I shoot her mother-in-law, Ruby Clark, seeing for the first time a display of several quilts she’d made over the years. It’s a heartwarming moment when Ms. Clark realizes what she’s looking at. The key now is to do something with this video other than put it on a DVD, where it’s bound to be lost in time.

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Good Friends
We had guests this past week from my hometown. Rich grew up in the same neighborhood as I did and we’ve been friends for close to 50 years. I moved away from that sleepy Midwest town right out of high school, but I’ve always stayed in touch with Rich. Whenever we’d visit the family cottage each summer I’d make a point of looking him up. Rich never left town and has worked for the same company for over 30 years.

Rich married for the first time 12 years ago, just 2 years before Christine and I met. When Christine and I made our initial visit as a couple to my town, we looked up Rich and Sue. I was so happy that Sue and Christine hit it off and that they’ve since developed a great friendship. We both enjoy their company and we were looking forward to their Labor Day week-long visit.

The Camera Deal Goes Down
Turns out Rich was in the market for a camcorder/digital camera. He didn’t want to spend too much and wasn’t really sure about what features he needed. As my old friend, of course I had just the camera for him. I sold him my Sanyo Xacti HD700 for an excellent price. It’s the perfect camera for him. Yeah, Rich got a great deal. He’s Mr. Tightwad, you know.

Truth be known, I made my old friend this great deal with an ulterior motive. You see, I’ve been eying the Xacti HD1010, which has a bigger lens for low light situations, more features, and shoots full HD 1080i video. I’ve been drooling over this ever since I saw Zena’s at the Catholic New Media Celebration in June. I just needed the right excuse to upgrade, and this was it!

Hello, Amazon!
After closing the deal with Rich, I ordered the Xacti from Amazon on Thursday and spent the extra $12 to get it here overnight. (I’ve got to call Amazon on this, as overnight was represented to be only $3.99 as a Prime member, but then I was actually charged close to $12). I still thought it was worth the extra $12 to be able to use it this weekend and get a few shots of Rich & Sue before they left this morning. Amazon is a great place to buy technology products because you most likely won’t pay sales tax, their shipping is prompt, accurate and very reasonably priced. Here in Tennessee we have a 9.50% sales tax, so there’s really no better way to shop for higher ticket items.

First Impressions of the Sanyo Xacti HD1010
I’ve been playing with the camera this morning and I’m very pleased with it overall. The quality of the pictures, especially in low light setting, is much better than the HD700. The video quality is also awesome at 720i, which will run without conversion in QuickTime on my Mac. However, the 1080i video will not play in QuickTime without conversion. That really doesn’t bother me, though. The video quality at 720i (60fps) is excellent. Take a look at the video below shot in 720i and uploaded to Flickr. Of course, you lose some of the quality when Flickr converts it to Flash, but I think it looks pretty good. What do you think? (feel free to comment below)

Bottom Line
If you’ve been looking for a small, easy to use, high quality digital camcorder and digital camera combined, this camera is a great deal. The HD700 is real nice for $400, but the HD1010 gives you so much more for around $700. I think I’m going to love this camera. Check it out in our Amazon store. We make it so easy to get your very own!

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I received some tragic news this week. My 49 year-old brother, Steve Maentz, fell victim to Lake Michigan in an apparent accidental drowning. The tragedy occurred Thursday evening in front of our family cottage where Steve swam thousands of times before. He apparently had just arrived for a vacation and was alone. He’d routinely come to the cottage alone where he’d enjoy time with hometown friends before his wife and 4 year-old son joined him on Sunday. According to the neighbor, Thursday was no exception to his routine of going down to the beach around 8:00 for an evening swim. This time, however, Steve did not make the walk back up the stairway. A couple walking on the beach found his lifeless body around 8:30. Steve was my only sibling and he leaves behind his wife, Sue, and son, Ben.

Steve and I weren’t real close, as kids or as adults. It’s not that we didn’t like each other, we just never talked much. Steve was 4 years younger than me and we were world’s apart growing up. About a month ago I felt inspired to call him to see how things were going. It had probably been a year since I last spoke with him. We had a nice chat for about 45 minutes, catching up on all kinds of things. I’m so glad I called. It felt great at the time and now I’m incredibly thankful to have had that opportunity to speak with him. Steve was very proud to be a Dad, something he accomplished later in life than most. You can tell from the pictures that he loved his son, Ben, who is 4 years-old at the time of Steve’s passing.

Unfortunately, Steve was not one to take pictures. Like so many of us, there’s very little he’ll be leaving behind photographically to help his family and friends remember him. It’s really a shame with the technology we have available that many of us don’t have more photos of ourselves. It’s at times like these that we should reflect on how precious life is and how important it is to capture slices of it to share with future generations. Let’s all make an extra effort to take a few more pictures along our way this week.

Here’s a short video of Steve competing in 1992 at an Illinois body building championship. Although he wasn’t as toned as he was in ‘92, Steve was still in great shape for his age.

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I came across this beautiful photographic tribute by Phillip Toledano to his elderly father that underscored for me the importance of leaving a digital legacy. Don’t wait until your parents are in their 90’s to capture these precious memories. Start taking pictures and videos now to build a library of digital media that will endure through the ages.

What a blessing it would be to have all of our parents’ stories on digital video for future generations to enjoy and learn from. Time slips away. Capture the now before it becomes the past, never to return.

Click near the bottom of each picture in the essay to flip to the next one.

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Remember Granny is pleased to announce that we are now accepting clients for our personalized consultation and tutorial services. Our services range from an inexpensive one-hour Skype* video conference to setting up a complete “virtual immortality” package for you.

Be sure to check out our ultimate in-person training package at our East Tennessee studio, which includes a 2-night stay in our cozy, furnished guest cabin. Visit the “Our Services” page for more information.

*Skype is a free program for your computer that lets you place computer-to-computer video phone calls free of charge using the Internet. You can download Skype and learn more at skype.com. All you need to use Skype is a PC or Mac with a high-speed Internet connection and a webcam. I’ll be publishing a how to use Skype instructional video soon.

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I believe it’s important to digitally capture the good times in your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s photos, video or audio, just as long as we use some type of digital media to capture the moment before it passes by. So often we get together with friends and nobody gets any pictures, let alone video. The event soon becomes just a distant memory without any recorded images or audio to bring us back there. It’s really a shame in this digital age. It’s so easy to do and we’re going to show you how.

Our July 4th Party, Flickr and PictoBrowser
Well, we didn’t let our recent July 4th celebration slip by without capturing some pics and video. Gabe, my oldest, is using this great photo viewer called PictoBrowser in his blog that easily and attractively displays your Flickr photos right inside your post. Here’s how PictoBrowser displays a “set” of Flickr photos from the party. Click on any of the small “thumbnail” pictures below the larger image to display it. Use the page numbers and arrows below the thumbnails to see more pictures:

I personally prefer to use a combination of audio, video, still photos and the written word. The combination of all of these “new media” formats makes for the richest memories and best overall communication method. We’re going to be offering regular tips and examples on this site, as well as video tutorials like my first one about using Google Reader and RSS feeds. Check out that video and then subscribe to our feed. This way you won’t miss a thing.

Here’s a video of our neighbors trying to assemble a pellet gun to be used on a special mission. The mission has been completed, the dog is fine and it’s no longer visiting our barn. This video is actually located on Flickr, but it’s “embedded” here on our website. More on that topic coming soon.

I’ll soon be doing a complete how-to video with Flickr to show you how it works. It’s very simple to upload your photos and with a $25/year “Pro” account you can share 90 second videos and as many photos and videos as you wish to upload. I currently have 6,141 items in my Flickr “photostream.” And they’re all available for easy public viewing. Isn’t technology awesome? We didn’t even imagine being able to do these things 20 years ago. More on Flickr coming soon.

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If you were shooting home video in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s, chances are you did so with a VHS camcorder. You probably have hours of video stuffed in a closet somewhere and the tapes are slowly deteriorating. You may also have a large movie collection on VHS that you’ve purchased or recorded over the years. Every time you bring these tapes out to play them you run the risk of having the tape jam and losing these memories forever.

Enter the Neuros OSD Media Center. Convert your old VHS video and movies to MP4 video files (the most popular computer video format) using the Neuros OSD! This reasonably priced box (under $200) hooks up to your TV and VCR to convert video and movies trapped on VHS tapes and and other “old media” recording formats to an MP4 file.

Once converted, you can watch your old movies on your TV, your computer or your video iPod. You simply use the OSD remote to play the movies and videos you just converted/recorded. It’s really simple! You can even upload your videos to YouTube where you can easily share them with family and friends. Imagine putting your kids’ birthday parties, graduations, and summers at the lake all on-line where they can be  watched at any time by your friends, your kids and your grandkids, regardless of where they live. You’ll be the hippest granny on the block!

Here’s an example of a video shot in ‘92 that was converted in 2008 to MP4 using the OSD. It looks pretty good even after being further processed by YouTube, don’t you think?

The converted video is stored on virtually any type of storage device you plug into the Neuros OSD. This includes USB hard drives, USB flash drives and memory cards. Additionally, the OSD will record from ANY source, allowing you to easily record your favorite TV shows and DVD movies to the storage device you connect to the OSD. And, with it’s YouTube video player, it’s more than a viable alternative to AppleTV.

A big feature that makes this device “future proof” is that the OSD (Open Source Device) is exactly that, an “open source” device.  The device’s specifications and software code are made public and the company allows essentially unrestrained community development of new features and bug fixes. This generally results in an abundance of updates and “plug-ins,” which are specialized programs that work within another program to provide new features. My preferred web browser, FireFox, is an open source browser for which there are hundreds of plug-ins to enhance your web browsing experience and provide additional convenience and functionality.

Want to learn even more about all the capabilities of the Neuros OSD? Check out the humorous and informative video review of the Neuros OSD from Shawn Powers at the Linux Journal:

Neuros OSD is a “cross platform” device, which simply means it works with virtually any computer including the Mac and Linux machines. You can get all the specs and purchase this awesome product through our Amazon Store. If you decide to purchase it, please be sure to do so using our link. Every little bit helps.

What About Old Pictures, Slides and Negatives?
You may not have a collection of old VHS videotapes, but possibly you have a collection of photographic negatives or slides that have been gathering dust over the years. ScanCafe will convert your slides and print photos or negatives to digital images at a very reasonable price. My son is a photographer who recently discovered this service and gives it an excellent review in his blog. I’m sure he’ll do a follow-up post when he receives his DVD full of converted images. Check out his review if you want to take steps to preserve these photographic memories for ages to come. It’s not at all expensive and ScanCafe makes it very easy to do.

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One of the tech blogs I read tipped me off this morning to a very cool blogging service that could not be easier to setup and manage. All you need to do to create a blog is send an email. That’s right, just send an email to post@posterous and you now have your own blog!

The subject line of your email message will be the title of your blog post and the text of your message becomes the blog text. Not only that, but if you attach photos or documents to your email, they will appear in your blog post also. Posterous is even smart enough to embed a YouTube video if you include a link to it and it will automatically embed a music player in your post if you attach an MP3 file. How cool is that?!

Posterous will send you an email after receiving your first post with instructions as to how you can easily manage your account after it’s been created. You can password protect it (a very good idea), change the name of the blog, or edit and delete posts. They also provide an RSS feed for your blog so you and your friends can follow it with Google Reader.

While Posterous is not as full featured as using WordPress to host your blog, it’s a heck of a lot simpler and provides everything most people need to create and manage a blog. While I plan to continue to use WordPress to manage the Remember Granny blog/website, I think a service like Posterous is just what the doctor ordered for anyone just getting started in the digital world and for whom simplicity is paramount. You can quickly and easily create your very own blog by doing what you already know how to do well. Just send an email!

Check out my test blog to see what I was able to create in a matter of minutes. I highly recommend this service and hope they are wildly successful.

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Christine and I received some very sad news today from a customer whose wife died in a motorcycle accident on their way to Myrtle Beach in May. He mentioned that one of their reasons for attending the event was to get some more Boogey Lights added to their bike. While we didn’t know these folks real well, they were repeat customers and big Boogey Lights fans. They were customers we always enjoyed seeing again. This is such a tragedy that I can’t stop thinking about them.

As I was looking through Patti’s virtual memorial, I realized that this couple seemed to have very few pictures of the two of them in the later years of their marriage. There’s a few photos of them on the bike and with some friends, but precious few. There are several pictures from Patti’s younger years, but very few of her and Steve together.

We have this video of Steve and Patti giving a testimonial about how much they enjoy their Boogey Lights, but wouldn’t it have been nice if they had several videos of themselves together doing the things they enjoyed doing? It seems to me that there’s no better way than short videos and lots of photos to help us remember and share the highlights of our lives. And not just the highlights, but the everyday events that most of us take for granted.

Even if Steve does have a shoebox or albums full of photos of Patti, chances are they will eventually be lost to future generations. I mean, what do you think your great grandkids are going to do with a bunch of old photographs? Maybe put them on a shelf in a closet or store them in an attic somewhere? Paper photographs are “old media” with a relatively short life span. However, if we start to capture our lives and memories on the digital “new media” the images and audio will remain with future generations without taking up shelf space or fading over time. In this digital age we have an opportunity that no generation preceding us has ever had. We have the technology and all we have to do is start using it.

This is what RememberGranny.com is all about, encouraging and empowering you to use today’s inexpensive digital technology to capture the special moments of your life before it’s too late. We’ll not only teach you what you need to capture these moments, but we’ll also teach you how to put them online so you can share them with friends and family right now and well into the future.

Bottom line, we all need to start taking pictures and videos. What better way to remember someone than to see and hear them doing the things they loved to do? We’re going to show you what you need and how to do it. There’s no time like today to get started with a digital media recorder. Get one, carry it with you and use it often. You’ll be so happy you did when you discover the joy of using digital media to record and share your life with your loved ones. And when the time comes for a loved one to leave us, we will forever have these special and potent digital memories.

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In speaking with several people recently about how they use the Internet, I’ve found that very few folks have a good understanding of a simple, yet powerful technology designed to help you effectively manage burgeoning on-line content.  This technology is called the “RSS feed” and products like Google Reader let you “subscribe” to these feeds.

Whenever a website is updated or a new blog post is published, that site’s RSS feed is updated with a link to the new content. When you subscribe to the feed and someone uploads a new photo or video on Flickr, they appear in Google Reader. You no longer have to go to someone’s web site or photo page to see what’s new. You’ll know every time something new is published, and only when it’s published. And you’ll be able to read it all in one place…in your Google Reader. It’s all very cool and works like a charm.

Take a moment to watch this video showing how I use Google Reader (click anywhere on the video window to start and stop the video):

Here’s a great video tutorial on RSS feeds from CommonCraft:

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Ok, so you’ve bought into the idea that it would be a good thing to leave a digital legacy for your kids, grandkids and the generations following them. Awesome! Congratulations on taking this important first step. Now what do you do? Where do you get started?

There are so many choices and options that you really do need someone to guide you through the technology maze. This is where Remember Granny™ shines. Our mission is to provide practical information for getting your life online and to keep things simple, always striving to speak to you in plain English. We know that much of this is completely foreign to many of you. Like traveling in a foreign country, you need a good guide to make the most of your time. We know you can easily learn to take full advantage of the Internet with the right guidance. Remember Granny™ hopes to be your personal Internet guide.

Here at RememberGranny.com we’ll be teaching you everything you need to get online. We’ll have instructional videos as well as articles on this web site that will help you filter through all the noise to make good choices and save you valuable time. It’s all free and is yours for the browsing. Just give me a couple of months to build up the articles & videos and we’ll soon have something really helpful here.

For those of you who are not inclined to take the time to do this yourself, we’ll be starting a services business that will take care of getting everything set up for you. I’ll have more information on this coming soon as well. One way or another, we’ll make sure you have what you need to take advantage of today’s digital age by using today’s rich digital media to communicate your life, your values and your ideas to future generations.

The Basics
Well, besides a commitment to do this for your grandkids you need some gear, a Flickr account and possibly your own web site.

1. Digital Media Recorder - This is a fancy term for a digital camera that also records digital video. Or, you might call it a video camera that takes pictures. Whatever you call it, you need this to take pictures of yourself and of things that matter to you. If you have a digital camera and only take pictures, that’s better than doing nothing. However, to really capture the essence of who YOU are, you’ll need to take some video too. You can use the video camera to record the events of your life, but also to create a video diary of sorts. Video is a great way to record your life memories and aspirations. There’s no better or easier way to capture the real you than with video. I’ve just started using the $400 Sanyo HD700 and plan to do a review of this small digital media recorder.

2. A Computer with High Speed Internet Access - If you’re new to computers, I’d recommend you purchase a Mac of some sort. Either the Apple desktop iMac or the portable MacBook Pro. All Macs come bundled with the software you’ll need to create your digital legacy and there’s no computer easier to learn to use than a Mac. A new Windows Vista computer would also work well if you are already familiar with Windows. Be sure to get a minimum of 2GB memory regardless of the computer you choose. Also, get something with a 320GB hard drive or larger. You’ll need this space to store your media. Whatever you do, don’t buy a used computer. It won’t be fast enough and you’ll regret it. Buy new and get the fastest machine you can afford. Digitial media needs a lot of horsepower to process.

You’ll also need a high speed internet connection to be able to practically send and receive media with minimal delays. As you get more involved in using digital media you’ll appreciate having the fastest connection available. Don’t be cheap with the Internet service you purchase. Get a fast, broadband connection.

3. A Flickr Account - Once you have your recorder and a computer with high speed Internet access, you now need to set up some sort of “presence” on the Internet. You need a place to store (upload) your photos where others can easily view them. There are several choices here, but my favorite is Flickr. In fact, I recently moved all of our photos from Google’s Picasa site to Flickr. The main reason I moved has to do with the number of other web applications that use the Flickr API. In plain English this means that you have more options with Flickr, including being able to “stream” your photos to your Apple TV. I LOVE Apple TV for looking at photos and videos on my big screen TV. You can stream your photos directly from Flickr and your videos from YouTube. Apple TV is a must have for every granny. Tell your kids to buy you one for your next birthday.

While there are several choices as to where you store and share your photos online, I believe it’s important to select a host that has the best chance of surviving during this period of rapid evolution of online applications. I initially selected Picasa (owned by Google) for its promise of long term staying power, however with Flickr’s added functionality and the fact that it’s owned by Yahoo I’ve now concluded that this is the best place to store your photos. I’ll be doing a video how-to demo for setting up a Flickr account soon.

4. Your Own Web Site - While it’s certainly not mandatory that you have your own web site to leave a digital legacy, it’s a great place to bring it all together. It’s also nice to have the ability to create “blog posts,” the digital equivalent of writing in a diary. From your web site you can create links to your photos & videos as well as to your friends’ and family’s web sites and photo albums. I highly recommend having your own web site, but this does introduce some additional complexity.

First, you need to register a domain name. This is your “www” address, such as www.scottmaentz.com. There’s a good chance that your name is available to purchase, unless you have a very common name. In that case someone else may already own it. As time goes on, choice domain names are more and more difficult to find. Once someone owns a domain name, it’s theirs to keep forever as long as they continue to renew it. It’s important that you stake your claim to an available name before someone else does. A typical domain name will cost between $8-$12 a year. Domain names that end in .TV cost about $20 a year.

You can shop for available domain names by going to one of the many domain name registrars. I happen to like GoDaddy.com, as their prices for domain name registration are the best I’ve found and they’re a well-established company that’s likely to be around for several years. At GoDaddy.com you’ll find a search box at the very top of their web site that’s labeled “Start a domain search.” You just type in your preferred domain name and it will tell you if it’s available. If it is, buy it before someone else does. If its not, try another name until you find one you like.

Our Services
Even with guidance from a site like this one, the tasks of getting everything set up can be time consuming and quite daunting for many people lacking experience with technology. Some people enjoy taking pictures and videos, but they just don’t want to fool around with setting up a web site or a Flickr account. They’d rather have someone else do the design and set up work for them. Then they simply need to learn how to “upload” their media to their sites.

We’ll soon be offering “quick start” packages where we’ll get everything set up for you. You can choose from our packaged services and even schedule our time by the hour for extra help. We can set up your computer so that we can manage it over the Internet as if we’re sitting in the same room at your keyboard. However you choose to use our services, we’re here to help get you up and running quickly once you decide you’re ready to go. More information on our offerings will be available soon, stay tuned!

Please Comment and Ask Questions!

If you have a specific question or problem related to getting your media on the Internet, just leave us a comment or send me an email. We’ll do our best to answer your relevant digital media questions here on this web site. Thanks for stopping by and we hope to see you back often.

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