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.

Here’s a link to his obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times.

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!

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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Flickr is a web service that has always allowed people to easily organize and share digital photos. Christine and I have over 4,300 photos stored and shared on Flickr. Recently Flickr began accepting your digital videos too! Only one caveat, your videos can be a maximum of 90 seconds long. That’s right, they’re forcing us to keep it brief, kind of like a video Twitter. More on Twitter later.

Below are 2 short videos I shot today of Christine and our neighbor, Earl, cutting the 4 razor sharp “needle teeth” on our pot belly piglets. I shot these 2 videos in HQTV mode on my new Sanyo HD700. HQTV is 640×320 video at 30 fps and it seems to offer excellent video quality considering the price of the camera. I love the quality of the Flickr video player and I plan to keep most of my videos under 90 seconds long so I can use Flickr nearly exclusively to share our photos and videos. I believe the Flickr video player offers much better quality video conversion than does YouTube’s player, although with YouTube you can have up to a 10 minute video. Leave a comment and let me know what YOU think.

click the play arrow to start playing a video

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Our first product review will be published this weekend. I’ve ordered a Sanyo Xacti HD700, which will be delivered tomorrow. I’m excited to think that this small digital media camera will be with me wherever I go.

I’m a firm believer that “video blogging” is a great way to capture and publish interesting slices of life, as long as you have easy to use publishing tools. This camera and its bundled software seem to fit the bill perfectly. I’ll be sharing sample videos and photos taken with the camera, as well as my first impressions. Stay tuned!

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Our goal at RememberGranny.com is to help technology challenged Baby Boomers create a digital legacy for their family’s future generations using today’s multimedia technology and the latest Internet applications.

If you’re a newcomer to computers or someone who really doesn’t know the difference between a blog and e-mail, then you’re in the right place. This web site is all about making it easy for technology newbies to learn what they need to know to start sharing their lives with their kids, grandkids and friends.

Many Boomers simply don’t think much about the digital revolution. They don’t know how this technology can be used to bring them closer to their family and friends. Most don’t use technology much other than a cell phone, maybe a little email, and some simple web browsing. Some may even have a BlackBerry. But that’s about it. Most Boomers have never been presented with a good enough reason to develop an interest in using technology for anything more than these simple tasks. Let’s face it, as a rule our generation is not very technology curious. If its not practical, we just don’t need it.

So, just what is the practical value of all this new technology? What’s the compelling reason every Baby Boomer should embrace digital media to enhance their lives? The answer lies in the ability to use simple, readily available and inexpensive technology (digital camera, digital video camera and the power of the Internet) to leave behind a rich personal legacy that no other generation before you has been able to do. We have tools at our fingertips that our parents would never even dreamed of having!

Using today’s digital media you can now leave your loved ones and future generations a digital legacy that won’t ever get lost or deteriorate. You can let your descendants know so much more about you than has ever before been possible by capturing the highlights of your life using digital media. As a matter of fact, some of these products are so easy to use that you might just find yourself taking your camera everywhere with you, as I do. It’s very satisfying to capture a quick 5 minute video of something interesting and post it on the Internet for all to see.

Your great, great, great grandkids will be able to watch your videos, view your photos and look into as much of your life as you wish to share with them. By leaving them digital videos, photos and an online diary (called a blog, as in what you’re reading right now), you can be sure your legacy will survive you well into the future. In fact, future generations will be able to watch your videos and view your photos for hundreds of years to come on a media that will never fade, rip or deteriorate. Our role is to lead you through the technology maze so you can quickly and easily begin using digital media to record the highlights and everyday events of your life.

The video below is an example of a recorded moment of life that loved ones will be able to enjoy for generations to come. Just press play button in the middle of the video window below to see what you can do yourself with a relatively inexpensive camera and very little effort:

Sure, most of us Boomers probably have some photos of our parents and grandparents. We may even have some old home movies on VHS tape or 8mm film laying around somewhere. Chances are excellent that after we’re gone these photos and movies won’t be around much longer either. They’ll probably end up in someone’s closet and possibly brought out at a family Christmas gathering, if you’re lucky. Your legacy won’t last but a few generations by filling a shoebox or albums with some old family photos.

The good news is that you’ve found the site offering easy to understand instructional videos and entertaining reviews & commentary that’s sure to motivate and guide you through the digital technology maze. Visit RememberGranny.com often, or better yet subscribe to our RSS feed (more on RSS in a coming post). We’ll provide step-by-step instructions for sharing your videos, as well as offering product reviews with links to the best places on the web to purchase them.

Bottom line, we’ll be offering tips & tidbits in plain English to make it easy for even the most technology challenged to benefit from the digital revolution. With our help you’ll soon be creating your own digital legacy that will be enjoyed by dozens of generations to come. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing that future generations will be able to get to know you and what you stood for. With our help and a little effort on your part you’ll connect better with your loved ones now and live on for generations to come through your videos, photos and your blog.

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