Make a Digital Scrapbook
Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 03:20PM When my son was born in 2001 I had grand desires to keep a scrapbook of all of the cute/funny/sad/momentous details of his life. Well, it turns out that was a lot of work, "scraps" got lost, scrap books misplaced, souveniers dissappeared, photos never got printed and time elapsed quickly. Never the less, the desire to keep track of my son's years still burned in me. I don't remember much about my childhood and I know even less of my fathers. My solution? Email.
2006
I went to Google (not literally, well, literally on the web not the HQ in California) and created an email for him. Luckily no one else had his name. Now I can send all of my digital photos, comments, goings on, scans and more right to file he'll have until he's old enough to access.
I used GMail for it's reliability and storage capacity but any email account should work. Email automatically includes the date and digital photos store the date they were taken as well. With camera phones, iPads, 3G and WiFi you can easily send all those photos and details to a secure location. Of course, I also back those photos up on my computer. Just in case.
2006
Reader Comments (2)
Using gmail is an archive is a great idea for lots of things. I was talking about this kind of archiving with a guy at work who has a 5 year old daughter. He keeps a private blog of her life he shares with his family, however he often uploads photos and videos together with his daughter, and she has access to look at the videos of herself when she wants. When our generation were kids, we had maybe a few photo albums and a shoebox of photos stashed somewhere, but we never really looked at it, and memories of childhood events now are often hazy. However kids today often have the chance to look at 3rd person reminders of themselves, as they are growing up... as a result, their memories of events should stay fresh. So we were wondering how this might affect the development and capacity for memory? Interesting topic...
Wow! That's a really interesting thought. One I hadn't even considered. Like you, my own memory of childhood is hazy at best. I remember bits and pieces, scenes and some dialogue but for the most part I don't remember much from my childhood. I want to do better with preserving moments with my kids but it often eludes me. And man, they grow so fast.