Sound Bites

While thinking of ways to make these digital scrapbooks unique the other day, I came up with a thought of being able to record your stories from your own words. Since the digital medium will be different for scrapbooking, why not have a different way to tell stories? This way, the stories will be personalized with your own voice telling the story, creating a new aspect to looking at photos. That way, when you show an album online to someone who is far away, you can still tell the stories your way by having these story bites.

One site that I found to be interested was "America's Life Stories." This site promoted some software that helps you write your autobiography. Looking at the site, it seems like it is a gift that you can give to someone in a corporate setting, and the cover looked kinda cheesy, but the product itself is actually pretty cool. You have a book of questions to prompt stories that will help you tell your legacy. This is geared towards older people who won't be around much longer. The site stresses the importance of having these stories on tape, since once the person is gone, the story will become second hand knowledge. The site also mentioned Alzheimer's Disease, which the mother of the creater of this product lost her life to. I found this part interesting because my scrapbooking consultant and her collegues often have fundraisers to complete scrapbooks for those with the disease. They create scrapbooks with borders on pages so that their family members can quickly add pictures. Those with Alzehimer's can look at these scrapbooks to remember their family. I think it is so important for people to leave behind a legacy of themselves before it is too late. Audio recordings are a great way to do it, and if they were saved on the computer with corresponding pictures, it would be a treasure that would last for many generations to come.