Ever get frustrated that you don’t have a simple system to edit (i.e. crop, color, brighten, redeye removal…) your photos? Perhaps you don’t have $600 to buy Photoshop + 40 hours to invest in learning how to use it. Maybe you are like me, taking dozens of photos per month just to let them sit on your PC, waiting for when you have time to organize and edit them. If this is you (and you have not heard of Google Picasa) then you are going to thank me for this blog post.

Over a year ago Neal told me about Picasa. I downloaded it out of curiosity and was thrilled when it automatically found and organized every photo on my computer. Picasa found photos I didn’t even know I had. I have yet to find such a simple system for editing, printing, emailing, and preparing my photos for my iMemoryBook projects.

For example, here is a photo of me fighting to catch the garter at my friend’s wedding. You can see that the photo is dark and barely viewable (I am the one in the middle. I did catch it:)

Here is the same photo after 10 seconds of editing in Picassa:

The difference is night and day and it didn’t take more than 5 minutes to learn!

Getting Picasa:

Click here to download Picasa to your computer (it takes less than a minute).

After you have downloaded Picasa, let it go and find your photos on your computer. (If your photos are still on your camera just click import in the top left corner and go get them).

Using Picasa for your iMemoryBook:

• Select all your best photos for your current iMemoryBook project (hold down CRTL to select more than one.)
• Click “Add to” in your bottom tool bar.
• Select “New Album”
• Name your album: “My Personal History Photos” (This example is if you are creating a personal history)
• Continue to add photos to this album until you have all the photos that you want.
• Select your photo album in the “library” and click “Export” in the bottom right side. (I usually export photos to my desktop so that they are easy to find)

Great. You are almost done.

• Log in to your iMemoryBook account.
• Click on your “Photos” tab in your book.
• Click “Upload Photos”
• Click “browse” under “upload multiple photos” (this is the best photo uploader I have ever used)
• Select ALL of the photos in your newly created picasa album.
• Click “Open” and wait for your photos to upload.

Your done!

You can also use Picasa to create CDs, blog entries, and order prints from over 10 different online photo stores.

Picasa is FREE and considered one of the best bargains ever.

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My Grandma Crane lost her mother when she was six-years old.  Her mother hadn’t written anything down about her relationship with her daughter.  Grandma grew up wishing for some memories of her mother, but unfortunately they just weren’t there.

When Grandma started her own family, she was determined to keep a good record for her children.  She kept a detailed baby memory book for each of her seven sons.  She noted their milestones:  first smile, first tooth, first steps, etc.  She recorded their first sayings.  My dad claims his first words were swearwords, but I’m sure his baby book would attest otherwise.  Grandma kept a copy of the boys’ birth certificates as well as a foot and hand print.  She even wrote down father’s blessings and little letters from mother for each of the boys.  Grandma felt closer to her babies as she compiled these books, but she never imagined the long term effect they would one day have.

My Uncle Bobby, the youngest of the seven boys, was diagnosed with Leukemia when he was just six-years old.  His oldest brother Curtis became his best friend as he fought through the excruciating sickness and the associated treatments.  Curtis comforted, loved, and protected Bobby in every way he could.

During a family outing to the carnival, Curtis and some of the other brothers took Bobby to the carnival funhouse where inside a padded room the boys would hang from “monkey bars” on the ceiling.  They would have “king of the hill” style wars where the last boy still hanging from the bars was the winner.  Curtis and the other brothers decided to make sure Bobby was victorious.  They swung from bar to bar knocking the other boys down while telling Bobby he was winning. 

Amidst their fun, a young man was able to slip past their defense and was headed straight for Bobby.  Curtis saw it happening.  “Don’t you dare knock him down!” he shouted.  The young man continued toward Bobby.  “If you knock him down, I’ll punch your lights out!” called Curtis. 

With a swift kick, the young man knocked Bobby to the ground.  I’m sure the youth was oblivious to what he had done; what a surprise it must have been to turn and face Curtis and five other ornery brothers.

Within the next year, Curtis was called over seas.  Bobby passed away shortly after Curtis’ departure.  His passing was difficult for the entire family, but particularly hard for Curtis who was far from home.  Curtis and Bobby had become so close, and how Curtis wished he could see him again.

Forty years have passed since Bobby’s death.  Last year Grandma handed Bobby’s baby memory book to Curtis.  After reliving his memories with Bobby, and sharing them with his family, he decided that he had never before received such a meaningful gift.  The faded memories of Bobby were revived as he read them with his family.  The relationship between the two brothers, separated by death, still lives on.

To create your baby memory book, visit http://www.imemorybook.com

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The geek squad has a load of bug fixes and new features to report today.  In addition, we’ve been working to catch up on the high demand that Christmas deadlines have brought about.  We’re happy to report that some of the major slowdowns we were experiencing earlier are fixed—although we are still working on an even better solution to the whole speed issue that we’ll report on later.

Without any further ado, the fixes and features:

• Global Spell Check! If you are an editor of a book, visit the contributions tab and you’ll find a “Global Spell Check” option at the bottom of the list of chapters in your book. Click to go to the new spell check page—you can check your whole book for typos from there.
• Multi-Photo Uploader! We’ve used the up-and-coming SWFUpload package. Sue Hessell has been begging for this for a long time . Ben thinks this is the best one he’s every used.
• The publish / checkout bug is fixed that was preventing people from getting their hands on one (or more) hardbound copies of their book.
• There was an issue with the tabs in Internet Explorer where the selected tab would obscure the sub-tabs.  This is now fixed.
• Deleting other peoples’ books is now disabled. (Thanks go to all of you who were tempted to delete someone else’s book and didn’t )
• There is now a flashy new tutorial available in the book editor page.  Try it out!  It will guide you through the basics of how the editor works.
• The quality of some uploaded photos has been improved. (But don’t worry, you don’t have to re-upload any photos, we’ve kept your originals intact and only the best quality photos will be used in the final product).
• The Invitation System had some updates: as the chief editor, you can change the deadline using the menu on the left; you can change who the book is about; and when the time comes that you need to stop accepting contributions, you can turn that off.

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Everybody at FamilyLearn knows Liz, the epitome of the Tender Lovin’ Customer care part of our mission statement. I’m sure she’s touched every one of you who read this blog. What you don’t know is that she’s nine months pregnant and after almost no sleep over the weekend serving all of you, she skipped her appointment to be induced at the hospital at 2:30pm yesterday. That’s right, she put you before her doctor and her baby. We thought she’d need time off before the baby came but she insisted on helping to the bitter end.
Last night, at 7:30pm, Joe called me and said they were headed to the hospital. So today, when you call in and get Neal or Paul or Jeff or someone other than Liz and Joe, you’ll know why.
I write this entry for three reasons:

1. To say thank you to Liz.
2. FamilyLearn has got to be the best company to work for in the world (because people here, everyone, live and love our mission).
3. Everyone please keep a prayer in your heart for Liz - that she and the baby will be ok.

That’s all. Thank you Liz and Joe. Our prayers are with you.

NOTE: 10:30pm last night I received an email from Liz explaining who needed help today and what I should do to help them. Wow.

UPDATE: 12:01pm Liz had a new baby and everything went well…congratulations Liz!

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I spent two years in Portugal where I took hundreds of photos and filled two handwritten journals. I’ve been wanting, for a long time, to put my photos and journals into a memory book from iMemoryBook.com. I’ve been procrastinating the task because uploading photos and images has always been such a slow and tedious process. You used to have to upload in small increments of five photos at a time.

Fortunately, however, iMemoryBook.com released the best photo uploader I have ever seen. It is 100% web based, which means you don’t have to download any software. You can select loads of photos at one time. The uploader then begins to transfer the images seamlessly from your computer to the internet. As each image loads, you will see a thumbnail size version of it. Next to each thumbnail, you have the option to enter a photo caption while the other photos are still loading! I love it!

Finally! This Christmas break I will turn my photos and memories into a beautiful memory book.

If you want to know more about the technical side of this uploader, it’s called SWFUpload. Read Duane’s blog post on it. He is an iMemoryBook programmer and as far as I can tell, a super-genius. You can also check out the deconcept blog.

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Happy Christmas! Make sure you publish your books by Monday, December 11th in order to have them for Christmas. Memory Books make great Christmas gifts.

It is not difficult to create a book. I just created a 48 page baby memory book in less than three hours. It is ready to publish.

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