GeekDad + family Twittering
Good post over on the GeekDad blog: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/02/the-family-that.html
It's no secret that I'm looking forward to having my own kids whenever my better half decides she is ready. So really it should be no surprise that I follow the GeekDad blog. These guys post a wealth of information about geeky things to do with your kids and family.
This particular post is an interesting one, especially for families where everyone has reached cellphone age. Obviously you could just use group sms messages to stay in touch with the family but I like the Twitter idea for a few reasons. Not only does it allow everyone to tap in to the family dialogue from any device anywhere, but it also creates an archive of family history and events. Imagine a family timeline of tweets and photos and videos and maps all mashed together. It's kind of like lifestreaming for the whole family.
Lately I find my family spends a lot of time recalling the past and a lot of that discussion is spent clarifying the who/what/when/where of a particular memory. I've also been thinking quite a bit about how to archive my family history. This seems important to me as my family came to Canada to escape WWII. I want my children to hear these stories, but I don't want them to be piecemeal from me, I want them to hear their great grandparents tell it.
I also spent a fair bit of time watching home videos over the holidays as I worked on converting our aging VHS tapes to DVD (and AVI's for backup). The first 4 hours of the VHS recordings are actually 8mm that was recorded onto VHS by my Dad. I'm working to ensure this stuff survives the transition to newer mediums. Most importantly I realized just how important these moving memories are to me. America's Funniest Home Videos + Dad's who do 10 minute panoramic shots of every place they visit have done a disservice to the home video. If you take the time to edit as my Dad did you end up with a beautiful and watchable set of memories.
All of the above are major motivators for me to want a new video camera right now.
Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, I'm just really into this idea of archiving family history and stories right now and I thought the family Twittering was an interesting take on this.