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Tech Beat: Online services can bring your memories up to date
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For about the last 20 years, it's been a race to save your precious memories and preserve them on the most current technology to help ensure they'll last for generations to come. The next step, though, is equal parts preserving them, while sharing them from film or tape or DVD straight to the web.
There are a handful of services like Memory Hub, iMemories and PeggyBank, that will transfer your videos, photos and audio tapes to whatever format you'd like but also host them online for you to distribute digitally.
"These memories become far more useful if they're accessible via social networking or email or just online in general," Jim Simon of PeggyBank.com said.
They all work in similar ways: You to fill up a box with whatever content you'd like. They then digitize all that content and put it online.
"Once you've gotten that all completed, you'll get an email from us saying 'Congratulations all your files are now accessible online. Here are instructions on how to access them.' At that point, you can download them directly to your computer. If you ordered a hardcopy, we can give you the DVD or flashdrive copy or you can simply stream them or view them online or forward them to friends and family via email. You can also post them to your Facebook account if that's what you care about doing," Simon said.
There is also that off-site storage benefit where if your hard drive crashes, or worst case scenario, you have a house fire, your precious memories are still safe and sound somewhere far away.
Most of the services do offer unlimited storage for a monthly or yearly fee. Most also sell some sort of safe shipping kit with crushproof boxes, waterproof bags, iMemories even has for sale a box with GPS tracking.
All of the companies also insist they have top-of-the-line security so that once your memories are on their servers only you and those you give access to will be able to see you, as a baby, running around in nothing more than a diaper.