We were lucky this afternoon to talk with Sam Melden and Kevin Marsh of Vintage Aerial. Vintage Aerial specializes in finding historical photographs of rural locations and then printing high quality reproductions of those images. Just give them an address and they will start looking through their database of 25 million photographs for a match.
Tpstry has landed at RootsTech and there is definitely a large crowd. We were able to grab a few people to answer our 3 Questions and the first up is Jim Ericson from FamilySearch. Jim is the facilitator of the RootsTech Developer Challenge, a contest to see who can develop and present the best use of a genealogical API in 48 hours. The winner will be voted on by the audience on Saturday.
Tpstry helps users gather family memories from their relatives, combine them and then reshare them as a larger family history. This works by asking your relatives questions you might not find in other places. We thought it would be interesting to ask attendees of the RootsTech 2011 conference some of the more popular questions from Tpstry and video their responses. We will start posting these videos later in the week, so stay tuned.
We are happy to announce that you can now use your Facebook account to access Tpstry. When you create a new account on Tpstry, you now have the option to link your Facebook account to your Tpstry account.
By using your Facebook account on Tpstry, you will be able to:
If you already have a Tpstry account and you want to link it to your Facebook account, follow these steps. First, log in to Tpstry using your current account. Once logged in, click on the “My Account” link at the top right of the page. This will bring up a page that displays your account information. Click the “Link Account” link next to the Facebook logo to begin the linking process. Once this is complete, you will be able to log into Tpstry by either entering your email address and password or by clicking the “Sign In With Facebook” button.
We plan to do even more with Facebook in the future. If you want to see Tpstry integrate with Facebook in other ways, please let us know.
It’s almost time to start packing for RootsTech 2011. While Tpstry will not have a booth or be presenting at the conference, we will be attending. If you will be at RootsTech and would like to meet up, let us know. We’d love to share Tpstry with anyone who will listen. See you next week.
When we launch our site redesign a few weeks ago, one of the new features that we added was the Family Memories Website (see example). Besides helping you discover new family memories, we also want to help you share those newfound memories.
So how does the Family Memories Website work? Easy, you don’t have to do anything extra. Tpstry takes all your answered questions and uploaded images and automatically creates a website for you. To view your website, log in to Tpstry and click the “View Website” button at the top left of the webpage. Currently, all Family Memories Websites are private and can only be viewed by users who have access to that Tpstry family. We have plans for the future to open this open and let you securely share your website with non-Tpstry users. So stay tuned.
The Family Memories Website uses the images you have uploaded to create a visually appealing homepage for your site. Don’t worry if you haven’t uploaded any images, we have a collection of nice general photographs to use as placeholders.
The Family Memories Website organizes content into People, Places, Events and Images just like on the main Tpstry site. We also moved the Timeline page from the main Tpstry page into the Family Memories Website. Plus, we made the timeline even better!
As you answer more questions, your Family Memories Website will begin to look even better. Since many people are just getting started answering questions on Tpstry, we’ve created an Example Family Memories Website that you can view to get a feel of what your site will look like.
When we recently updated the site with the new Family Memories Website section, we also updated the Timeline view and moved it from the question area to the new memories website.
The Timeline view takes all questions with an associated date and places them in chronological order. Questions with dates include births, deaths, marriages, graduations and events.
Uploaded images also have dates associated with them. Most new digital cameras automatically store a date in the picture file. When you upload an image, Tpstry reads this date automatically so you don’t have to enter when a picture was taken. If more than one picture is taken on a specific date, the images are grouped together and you are able to scroll through all images for that date.
Thank you to everyone for using and providing feedback on the Tpstry site. We’ve taken that feedback and made the site even better!
Today we are launching a site redesign. This redesign is intended to make Tpstry easier to use and to also introduce the Family Memories website section of Tpstry.
Making Tpstry Easier
Answering questions is how Tpstry collects your family memories, so we reconfigured the visual design of the site to better reflect this idea. We also made it easier to find an existing entry by adding a “Quick Nav” search box that will take you directly to the page for a particular entry.
Family Memories Website
Now that you have answered questions and uploaded images, wouldn’t it be great to view all this in a visually appealing website? Well now you can. Once you log into your Tpstry family, click on the “View Website” button in the top left of the page. This will take you to your Family Memories website. This website is a read-only version of all the answered questions and uploaded images. We plan on adding a lot more features to the Family Memories website in the future to let you customize your site and easily share it with others.
We hope you and your loved ones will have an enjoyable holiday season. This is also a great time to share Tpstry with your family. At family gatherings you can ask relatives to help answer questions and also invite them to join your Tpstry family.
Here are some other ideas on how to add to your Tpstry family over the holidays.
Add Family Gatherings as Events
If your family gathers together for a meal or party, you can add that as an Event. For an event, you can answer where the event occurred and who attended it. By answering when an event occurred, it will appear on your timeline.
Upload Pictures of Christmas Morning
If you have kids, then you probably take pictures of them opening presents. You can upload these to Tpstry and mark when, where and who is in the picture. Just like an event, if you answer when the picture was taken, it will also appear on your timeline.
Remember Past Holidays
Maybe you and your relatives want to answer questions about past holidays. You can answer questions like: What is this person’s favorite holiday food? Was this person scared to get their picture taken with Santa Claus? What is this person’s favorite Christmas ornament?
We thank you for joining us in 2010 and we can’t wait until next year. We have lots of plans to make Tpstry even better. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. You can reach us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/tpstryweb) , on Facebook (http://facebook.com/tpstry) and on your support website (http://support.tpstry.com).
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