Growing up I was always conscious of my Dad making entries into a claret leather-bound book, in which he was documenting the milestones of my life. Starting with when and where I was born, the pages tell the story of “firsts” (first tooth, first haircut etc.) and other achievements; all captured in his beautiful handwriting, the sort of which is no longer taught in the digital age. This collection of memories has become one of my most cherished possessions.
Fast-forward to 2011 and my wife and I were expecting our first child. Faith was born in October and here was my chance to carry forward my Dad’s idea and to capture a new set of memories for my daughter — only this time with a set of digital tools at my disposal.
I had been inspired by Google’s Chrome commercial “Dear Sophie” and I promptly set up an email address for our daughter, and began to capture the memories. Rather than entries made in a journal, these were now emails with attachments capturing a new set of events. But somehow this approach still seemed insufficient.
Enter just.me. With baby Faith I now find myself in the situation where I want to capture small and big events in the moment and be able to look back over a beautiful timeline. just.me allows me to easily capture a mix of media types — the obvious photos and videos of course, but I have also struck an emotional nerve with my family by capturing voice memos of Faith’s baby babble and nascent first words.
There’s much more coming in the product pipeline for just.me that will further enable this memory capture and curation. For now I urge you all to think about the memories you want to save for others, or even your future self.
A fun day at the San Francisco Zoo
This post was originally published in April 2013 on the just.me corporate blog.