A blog about changing the way we remember

New ShoeBox (v 1.2.2) with Editing Features, Performance Upgrades

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:43:40 +0000

The 1000memories team is pleased to introduce the release of ShoeBox 1.2!

For those just stumbling upon 1000memories, ShoeBox is our iPhone (and soon to be Android) app that turns mobile phones into photo scanners, making it easy to digitize and share your old paper photos. You may have read about us on CBS, Wired, the AP, or seen us on TV.

The new version of ShoeBox is super fast, comes equipped with new editing features and performs better than ever.

New Image Editing Features

We've introduced a couple of new tools that let you tweak and edit your photos after you scan: white balance and exposure adjustors.

Depending on when and where you scan your photo, the lighting can greatly vary the exposure and white balance of your results. For instance, old tungsten light bulbs will give a yellow-red tone to the photo, while an overcast sky will make your photos appear more blue.

On the new ShoeBox, we've added two sliders on the "Adjust" screen (step 3 out of 5 of the scanning process). The first one adjust the tone of the picture (white balance), and she second will adjust the exposure.

We know how important it is to make your scans look as close to the original as possible, so make sure to update ShoeBox! As always, if you have any questions or feedback, shoot us an email to questions@1000memories.com. Enjoy!

P.S. - If you like what you see, take a minute today and rate us "5 stars" in the app store! We appreciate your support!

Preserve Your Family History by Digitwirl

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:48:08 +0000

This week we're featured on the popular weekly web series, Digitwirl!

Check out the video below, where Carley talks about 1000memories, the ShoeBox app, and why preserving her family photo collection is so important.

Thanks Carley and team!

To view the original article, click here.

Old-School Celebrity Yearbook Photos

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:25:26 +0000

The team at Retronaut.co (one of our favorite blogs, FYI) has managed to assemble an impressive collection of old-school celebrity yearbook photos. We've included some of our favorites below.

Angelina Jolie

Barack Obama

Barbara Streisand

Bill Clinton

Bruce Springsteen

George Clooney

Madonna

Oprah

Russel Brand

Whitney Houston

Want to see some of the best yearbook photos from the 1000memories community? Check out our favorites on our Pinterest page.

Via (Retronaut)

Welcome, Bruno!

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:16:06 +0000

Today we are thrilled to announce the addition of Bruno Virlet to the 1000memories team.

Bruno will be leading mobile development at 1000memories, and he is our team's expert in computer vision. He is the co-creator of Genius Scan, the popular app that has revolutionized scanning on the iPhone. Genius Scan is the backbone of our own ShoeBox app, and it enables our servers and mobile app to automatically correct and edit images in ways that only the human eye could previously.

Bruno comes to 1000memories from Amazon.com, where he worked as a software engineer. Previously, he interned at Intel and Novell, received an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and studied Engineering at Supélec.

As we continue to grow in 2012, it remains our priority to hire top talent to build the best products possible and stay at the forefront of photo scanning and sharing technology. We are excited to welcome Bruno to our team!

Fill Your Facebook Timeline With Photos Of The Past

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:11:33 +0000

It’s easy to forget that Facebook was only invented eight years ago. For many of us, online photos and status updates have accumulated to tell a rich story of our recent years. However, most of our photos and memories are still missing from the story.

The recent release of Facebook Timeline has made clear the gaps in our life stories—particularly the empty space between our dates of birth and the moment we all first joined the social network.

We’re working to change that. Starting today, you can use ShoeBox to scan photos directly into your Facebook Timeline. Round up your favorite childhood and family photos, use ShoeBox to quickly scan them, and simply hit “Share To Facebook” in step 5 of the scanning process to display them beautifully in your Timeline. You can also add any of your existing photos to Timeline via 1000memories.com - just select the photo you’d like to share, then click “Share to Timeline” at the bottom-right of the screen.

You can find all of your Timeline photos in your new “ShoeBox by 1000memories Photos” album—from there, you can edit dates and captions as you please.

View all of ShoeBox’s new updates and features in the iTunes store, and don’t forget to download the latest version!

As always, if you ever have comments or suggestions or just want to say hello, shoot us an email to questions@1000memories.com - we’ll get back to you sooner than you think.

The 1000memories Team Shares Their Favorite Holiday Photos

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:47:44 +0000

Happy holidays from the 1000memories team! We've all been visiting home, using ShoeBox to scan our old collections of vintage, funny, awkward and slightly embarrassing photos to share with friends and family.

In the spirit of the holiday, we'd like to personally share a few of our favorite childhood holiday photos with you.

Rudy Adler (Co-Founder, 1000memories)

I used to spend a lot of time playing basketball when I was a kid. This is me playing during the winter holiday break in high school. When I couldn't find anyone to play with me, I'd go by myself and replay a scenario where I was on the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals down by 1 point with 20 seconds to go.

Elizabeth Gershman (Art Director, 1000memories)

This was my second Christmas, and the first time I was introduced to the concept of Santa. When my parents asked me what I wanted, naturally I asked for apple juice, because it was my favorite thing. And apple juice I got, a giant jug of it (along with a Sesame Street table and a Fisher Price record player).

Jonathan Good (Co-Founder, 1000memories)

Every year, we would go "visit Santa" at the big department store in the center of Auckland, New Zealand. Here are my siblings and me, posing on Santa's knee.

Brett Huneycutt (Co-Founder, 1000memories)

Here's me and my sister when I was six. I got my favorite Voltron toy set that year.

Helena Price (Communications Manager, 1000memories)

This was Christmas of 1990. It was my brother Kane's first Christmas, and he and I were clearly excited, in our matching skiing panda bear jumpers with our names on them. My mom says matching custom jumpers were all the rage back then.

For more photos, visit the 1000memories.com homepage - we've featured our favorite Holiday photos from our community.

From the 1000memories team, have a wonderful holiday at home!

Behind The Scenes: 1000memories Holiday Party Photos

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:32:05 +0000

The last year has been a big one for 1000memories - we redesigned 1000memories.com, launched the popular iPhone scanning app ShoeBox, and saw our community use it to scan and share hundreds of thousands of old photos over the last two months. To celebrate our accomplishments and bring the year to a close, we gathered in Ohio Design's beautiful Mission warehouse for a night of delicious food, drinks, gift exchanges and impromptu dance parties.

From the team at 1000memories, we hope you have the best of holidays at home.

Presenting our 2011 Year In Review

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:49:20 +0000

2011 was the year that the Internet stopped looking forward and began looking back. From live-tweeted revolutions to Facebook Timeline, this is just the beginning of a shift in how we think about recording human history, as well as our own digital lives. For the first time ever, we have more digital than analog possessions, and we are starting to scan more than we print, a recently-reversed trend that will continue as we bring more of our history and memory online.

In the linked posts below, we offer our analysis of these trends, and the key numbers that show a growing foundation for the past tense on the Internet.

Read more below or see the whole series here

Mobile is changing the way we share our lives

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:46:23 +0000

In just 40 years mobile devices have transformed everything from work, to politics, to how we wake up in the morning. In 2011, 3 of every 4 digital devices sold will be a mobile phone - a staggering 1.8 billion "phones" [1]. With almost 6 billion mobile subscribers around the globe, mobile phones now connect the largest network of people that has ever existed [2].

A billion people online all day, every day

What’s even more incredible is that, unlike Gordon Gekko’s brick of a phone from the 1980s, today’s devices connect a network of a billion people to the Internet whenever, and wherever they want [3]. 2011 was a watershed year, as people truly started taking advantage of having the Internet in their pocket. From the Arab Spring, to Instagram, humanity started sharing our lives in an unprecedented way. And at its core was photos. 14 years after an image of Sophie Kahn launched the camera phone [4], mobile photography (iPhoneography if you will) went mainstream. In 2011, Americans took 34% more photos using mobile phones (and 13% fewer photos with point and shoot cameras) [5]. The easy, pocket-sized camera we take with us everywhere has become our preferred way to capture and instantly share our photos.

Our ubiquitous mobile has become a way to share the world through our eyes: the places we’ve been, the people we meet, and the things we experience in real-time. In doing so we are implicitly crafting an incredibly rich portrait of our lives, and together, creating a detailed collection of human history that will, for the first time, include the story of everyone …

Or click here to see the whole series.

Footnotes and sources

1. Earlier this year Gartner, a technology research company, estimated 1.795 billion global mobile phone shipments in 2011. You can see more in their report here. You can see PC and tablet estimates here and digital camera estimates here.
2. According to a report by ITU published in October, "The World in 2011", the global number of mobile subscribers in 2011 is 5.9 billion.
3. More than 1 billion mobile phones can access the Internet according to a "The World in 2011" report published by ITU.
4. Phillipe Khan invented the camera phone in 1997, snapping a photo of his newborn daughter, Sophie.
5. Based on a 1000memories survey conducted in December 2011.

We are recording more stories than ever

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:45:35 +0000

2011 was the year when the history books were finally thrown open. From Tahrir Square[1], to Facebook Timeline, we proclaimed for the first time ever, history would be the story of everyone, infused with billions of voices and trillions of images.

For a couple of hundred thousand years most people’s stories were an oral history, passed down for a generation or two and then forgotten. A few lucky people escaped this information black-hole with a thumbnail entry in an encyclopedia. But it really was a few - the 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica had just 65,000 entries, spanning places, people, historical events and ideas[2]. Then, 10 years ago, Wikipedia revolutionized the idea of an encyclopedia, writing the collaborative history of many, many more people. Today Wikipedia has at least 40 times as many names as a traditional encyclopedia[3]. But it is still the history of an elite few. Wikipedia imposes a standard of notability that few people can meet. It doesn’t consider my story, my mom’s story or my granddad’s story "important enough" to be included. (Wikipedia takes down close to 100,000 pages a year for individuals who aren’t "notable")[4].

And yet, our stories are history and they can and should be recorded. So we have found an outlet elsewhere, in social media. For over 800 million of us, our Facebook page has become a (very incomplete) history of who we are[5]. But those 800 million fragments are the richest history we have ever had, and as close to democratizing history as we have yet come. In just 10 years we have gone from 20,000 thumbnail entries in an encyclopedia to 800 million stories recorded in rich images, videos and our own voices.

Recording more stories

In the midst of this explosion of social media it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we still don’t know the names of most people who ever lived, let alone their stories. Wikipedia contains entries for just over half a million individuals from history, suggesting that just one in 100,000 people from history has been lucky enough to be remembered[6]. Even including the blogs, Facebook pages and Myspace profiles left behind by those who have passed, less than 0.1% of people in history are remembered today[7].

In contrast, the 7 billion people alive today are much more likely to live on in the history books. Over 1 in 10 people alive has a Facebook page and on top of that there are services like LinkedIn, RenRen and others that capture even more people. The best way to estimate the overall number of people using social media today is to take the 2.1 billion of us with Internet access[8] and multiply by the 70% who in surveys say they use some form of social media[9]. That suggests 1.4 billion social media users, which is one in five people alive today.

Recording richer stories

This new paradigm of history doesn’t just allow us to record more people’s stories—it also allows these stories to be much richer, collaborative and full of detail. One of the saddest moments in 2011 was the passing of Steve Jobs on October 5th. His passing led to an unparalleled outpouring of grief, emotion and a new kind of online history. Sure Walter Isaacson’s new biography, "Steve Jobs"[10], captures a detailed, thoughtful and insightful view of his life story, but Jobs' real legacy is the treasure trove of 2.3 billion pieces of content that Google has indexed. Compare that to the 22 million about Thomas Edison[11] and you start to see how modern history is changing how we collect all of the thoughts, emotions, and digital fragments of memory associated with someone. After Jobs’ passing, Twitter reported an astounding 6,049 tweets per second, over tens times the collective biography written in the aftermath of Michael Jackson’s death in 2009[12].