As I mentioned in Part 1, I take my responsibility of family photos and videos seriously. I envision my children enjoying them as adults and sharing them with their children. While this is all nicey nice, we also have friends and family that like to keep up with us now. As a new mom, it only took a couple weeks of e-mail updates and two snail-mail packs of pictures before I found some great ways to share digital memories with others in real time.
The Family Web Site
If you do not have much time to get creative, Easysite.com is ideal. You literally just fill in the blanks and pick the design. Below is a sample of the huge range of designs to pick from.
For only $50 USD a year, you can share photos and videos. You can also have chat rooms, a blog and many other pages on your site with the click of a button. If you’d like to have a little more control over design and layout, it might be worth checking out Blinkweb. It is a new site that allows drag-and-drop creation.
Warning Moms: You do have to keep this stuff updated. Family will certainly harass you when your “news” is six months old or your “featured photo” is the first tooth of your now 8 year old!
Digital Scrapbooking
Digital scrapbooks are created as individual files that you can print, e-mail or share on other sites. They are not Web sites themselves. Scrapblog.com has a very easy interface that feels like PowerPoint. It is Web based and free. After creating all of your pages, you can share it on many social networking sites or export to jpeg and print.
If you like paper, there are sites that help you design and create beautiful scrapbook pages that can be printed for a fee, like howfasttheygrow.com. You can throw that glue stick away!
Not Online
I do not know about you, but I have family that is simply not online. The family Web site does not exactly help me keep them updated. So when I am updating pictures on our site, I go ahead and add a few to Walgreens or Wal-mart photo center. I pay for them online and have them printed at the local store for my family to pick up next time they are out.
Whether you are sharing or preserving your digital memories, technology is keeping up with us moms. If technology could only provide us a way to somehow get in a few pictures so that future generations can see that we made it to a few of these important events, too!
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Thanks for the mention. This is a great article. Let me know if you ever have any questions!
Rebecca
Community Manager
Scrapblog.com