Archive for the ‘technological advances’ Category

Tech Tuesday ~ Shoe Box

Posted: July 10, 2012 in technological advances, technology
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Vintage Photo Backs

Vintage Photo Backs (Photo credit: HA! Designs – Artbyheather)

Last night as I was preparing for bed, I found myself browsing the App Store on my iPhone searching for free genealogy applications. I found one that seems very promising for the family historian, it’s called ShoeBox. It’s downloadable for both iPhone and Android and it turns your cellphone into a photo scanner! I was so excited to try it out that I did just that, and jumped out of bed like my cozy two bedroom apartment was on fire. Go figure! The things that excite me and it’s not even a sale at the Coach store! (Although, I could use another handbag.) But I’m a frugal kind of girl, so I’ll just stick with the ShoeBox app. For now at least. What is so great about this app? Well let’s take a look..

This app allows you to scan all your old paper photos and send them to family and friends. Imagine having an old, vintage photo of your grandparents that isn’t in the best condition, or a photo of your mother or father from the 1950’s. I love photographs, both new and old. I love being behind the camera more than being in front of it. I think I have more photo editing apps on my iPhone than any other type of installation.

ShoeBox has edge detection where it detects the edges of your photos and also has perspective correction capabilities to make sure your photos are scanned beautifully every time. This is perfect for me! Not so long ago I was going through some of my mother’s old photos, knowing my sister didn’t have many of them. She lives in Florida and here I am in Hawaii. So the only thing I could do at the time was to scan them from my printer or just snap a picture of them with my cell, shoot her an email or send the photo in a text message. I am so very happy to have come across this app, because not have cell phone cameras advanced in technology, but with this app, I will be able to scan the images and the perspective will be much better. It won’t have that glare you sometimes get when you take photos and just see a reflection of its’ glossy surface, it will be a nice clean scan. No crooked photos that I have to alter and crop so they look straight and I don’t have to crop each photo because it has the edge detection built right in.

Your photos can be saved on your cell phone but they are also saved on 1000 Memories, which is the company that created such an awesome app. Really, the best part is that you can scan an unlimited amount of photos, whether you scan 2 or 2,000, it’s still free! What better way to preserve your photos than to utilize this program. Consider it your Plan B just in case a natural disaster were to happen. A fire in your home or a flood could easily ruin these photos and then you would be left with nothing. Photos are memories, these memories should be saved as they are irreplaceable.

Organize your photos into ShoeBox albums, maybe you would like to capture an event like a wedding or graduation, name the album accordingly and you are all set!

Privacy concerns? No need to worry because it has enhanced privacy controls so you can choose whether you want your ShoeBox albums public or set to private and each album has this setting. So say you would like to publicize an album of your recent vacation, you can broadcast this to your friends and family but you have photos in another album that you would like to keep private. You can do all of this with these privacy controls and this can be accomplished all on your mobile phone!

The link to the site is below if you would like to check out the program yourself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am! I know what I’ll be doing later!

http://1000memories.com/scan

Through The Looking Glass

Posted: July 25, 2011 in ancestor, brick wall, documents, Facebook, family historian, generations, historical maps, Oahu, old newspapers, past, technological advances, technology
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Our ancestors of past generations would probably think that living in today’s digital world of computers, the iPad, and even our smart phones, as alien. In their days, they were lucky if they even had a land line! Knowing what I know now, depending on Internet and my iPhone on a daily basis, I would be lost without them; I couldn’t imagine living life day to day without these items which have become so common in our world today. 

Image Source
My Smartphone



Taking you back in time, imagine life without any technology whatsoever. You don’t have electric or gas stoves, but wood burning stoves instead, you don’t have computers to write your family and friends an email or the ability to share photos, but you have to hand write everything down to the last letter, there was no such thing as a washer and dryer, you had to use an old washboard for every article of clothing you wore. Which by the way, had to be taken to the nearest lake or creek to be washed and you can just forget your handy dryer with your lavender scented fabric softener sheets! And what…no FaceBook? My husband’s grandmother, Evelyn is still in awe, when I show her pictures on my iPhone and she doesn’t understand how they got there! I have tried many times to explain to her what FaceBook really is and how you can share photos of family and comment on them. My favorite part of this is the way she says, “You can do this on the computer? It does that? Oh, how nice!” (Laughing) Oh the possibilities! We haven’t even really started to break the mold as far as what technology can do for us today.

Image Source
Time To Do Your Laundry!



So with this great thing called technology, I am searching and scouring the various websites and resources in search of my family. Making contact with relatives I never even knew I had, all through the use of the Internet and my laptop! Ha! Who knew?? But being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, living on Oahu, I find that I am forever grateful for the high tech world I live in, and being able to re-connect with family I haven’t seen since I was probably six years old! 


The digital world has turned my laptop into a great tool. I now have the power to see through the looking glass (my laptop screen) to the world that was once my ancestors, and see not only photos of them, but also see the homes where they lived, the town where they grew up, the ability to see historical maps as they were back in the 1700-1800’s, searching old newspapers and census records, and so on. 


Today, my research is at a standstill somewhat, as I am waiting to receive documents from a family member that will give me something solid and concrete as far as actual data and birth records. Having contacted several members of my family, who I might add, are gathering photos and documents for me as I type this article. I hope to read and go over these very soon!


Hopefully I will be able to tear down one or more of the brick walls that seem to have stopped me in my tracks. 


Happy Hunting!!