Above the Trees

Photoloom has a new face! We've changed our color scheme and tweaked our logo. Now if you look closely, you can see a "tree" woven into our photo-corner ~ the perfect marriage of photos and family history!








Serendipity is my all time favorite word.

Last Thursday night, I was reviewing some updates our daughter had made to some of our graphics when Serendipity snuck up and stamped on my toe. All of a sudden, I saw “the tree,” right there in front of me. Sure, it was sideways and hidden, but it was there.

Has that always been there? Why haven’t I seen it before? Why did it taken me three and a half years to see something so obvious?

If you’ve been working on your family history for any amount of time, you’ve asked yourself these very questions. There you are, hunched over your desk, scanning the same document for the hundredth time, when suddenly something completely new jumps out at you. Something that HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE, just waiting for you to find it. And most of the time, this happens when you are all alone, and you want to jump around the room and hug someone and tell them about the cool thing you just discovered, but there’s no one there and so you have to just kind of squeeze yourself and smile a lot.

Or maybe that part’s just me.

Anyway, my point is, things don’t always happen like we expect them to. And sometimes that’s a good thing.

____________________
Have you entered our Family Threads Contest yet? Send us your favorite family history photo and a short description/story/memory about it! First prize is two tickets to the St. George Family History Expo at the end of this month.

Big things are happening at Photoloom! Just for starters, we are now an official software affiliate with New FamilySearch, and are working to become “New FamilySearch Certified.”

With our upcoming 3.0 release, Family Photoloom members will be able to import information from New FamilySearch* and tag their pictures with New FamilySearch IDs, enabling their pictures to be associated with records stored in New FamilySearch.

What does this mean for you?

You can import your genealogy information into your Family Photoloom account directly from New FamilySearch, so you will no longer need to type it in.

You can help ornament the global New FamilySearch tree with your pictures and documents. You have complete control over what is kept private and what is made available to other researchers.

Together we are paving the way for a new generation of "image-enriched genealogy."

Below is a screen shot from my personal Family Photoloom account. The picture in the main frame was taken on my Dad’s 80th birthday. We had just thrown him a surprise party – complete with balloons and cake and old friends – and, almost as an afterthought as we were packing up after the party, we asked my daughter’s friend Sara to snap a quick family picture. We even noted at the time that it was the only picture we’d ever taken of the whole family that included all five of my daughters. It turned out that it was also the last picture ever of taken of Dad – he died six weeks later.
The particulars surrounding the history of this picture make it all the more meaningful me, and I don’t want those details to fade with time. I want to be able to record them and associate them to this specific picture.

I usually find a way of getting what I want.

In this case, I know the developers of Family Photoloom pretty well, so when I asked last week if I could plan on posting my next blog about a "Notes" feature that didn't exist at the time, I was relatively confident that it would be up and running by the time I was ready to hit "publish post." They didn't let me down.

Our newly added Picture Notes couldn’t be easier to use: just pop open the Title Pane (indicated by the red arrows above) and type or paste up to 1024 characters (roughly a 170 words) into the window labeled “Picture Notes."
While we're on the subject, let's look at a few other notable features of the Title Pane.

The fields that are initially revealed when you click on the Title Pane are for recording specific data about the picture, and can all be edited. This includes Title, Location, Date, Source, and now, Picture Notes.

But wait! Click "More" and a second tier of fields appears below the Title Pane. These additional fields are automatically populated by Family Photoloom, and include revision information and unique image identification numbers.

Let's examine that last one. Note the green arrow in the image above pointing to the Picture URL. (No, not Oliver Queen.) Every picture uploaded to Family Photoloom is assigned a unique URL. This file name is encrypted, which allows you to do a couple of significant things:

• Send a picture to someone without giving them access to your Family Photoloom account.

• Blog - safely and confidently - using pictures from your Family Photoloom account, without the threat of someone hacking into your other pictures. Example: If one of your blog photos has a URL that has a Family_Vacation_23.jpg in the URL, it stands to reason that if I l change the 23 to a 22, I’m likely to find more of your pictures – maybe even ones you don’t want me to see.

When Cheryl called us recently to suggest a new feature for Family Photoloom, she probably wasn’t expecting to see it up and working in less than 24 hours. But it was!

Cheryl asked for a feature that would allow her to save a portrait she created in her Family Photoloom account to her hard drive, so that it could be used as the “key” picture for that individual in other genealogy applications. The result is our new One-Click Download feature.

Portrait Downloads: Each time you tag a face or anything else with Family Photoloom, a portrait is created. When you choose a record from your “Records” list, all the portraits of that individual appear in a “Portraits List” on the right of your screen.

To download a portrait for use in other applications, simply click the new ‘download’ button that appears on a portrait in the “Portraits List” when the mouse cursor is over it. You will then be prompted to save image to your computer’s hard drive.

Picture Downloads: One-Click Downloads have also been added to the group picture thumbnails at the bottom of the screen to make it easy to download a “full picture.”

Thank you, Cheryl!

One last note: When you contact us at Photoloom, know that we set the bar on Member Support high. We want to hear from you. Tell us what you like, what needs improvement, and what you’d like to see in the future. Who knows, you might even be the next “Cheryl,” and your new feature could be up and running by tomorrow.

"Photoloom gives the non-genealogists in our family something that they can understand; that will evoke memories...it’s something that draws them in. (Family Photoloom) is showing the connections between the faces in those pictures." ~Lisa Cook, Genealogy GEMS

Sharing family history with family and friends has always been one of our main goals, we've added a new feature that makes sharing even easier. Our new "Invite Button" allows you to invite others to view, browse (and even edit if you choose) your Family Photoloom account. Simply select someone from your “records” list on the left side of your Family Photoloom account screen, and then click the “invite” button at the bottom. Enter the individual’s email address and click “send.” You will see a preview of your invitation before it is sent, and can even customize it if you wish.

I took the opportunity to sit down with Lisa Louise Cook at the Family History Expo in St. George, Utah to tell her about this new feature and other recent innovations at Family Photoloom.



Visit Genealogy Gems to listen to more podcasts from Lisa Louise.