Store your holiday keepsakes

Store your holiday keepsakes

PHYSICAL ARCHIVE

When it comes to saving boarding passes, museum tickets and special keepsakes, it is hard to beat the old-fashioned scrapbook. But scrapbooks have fallen by the wayside.

American company Artifact Uprising hopes to change this by turning digital archives into physical heirlooms.

The printing company has online templates for products such as coffeetable books, wall calendars, thank-you notes and postcards.

Users select a product and upload photos from their phone, digital camera and even their Instagram account, which are then laid out according to their desired design. When crafting a coffeetable book, for example, users choose the framing, layout and order of each photo. They can add captions and titles, and even choose the fabric of the cover.

The process is straightforward, and the sleek product will be delivered to you within three weeks.

Production takes from two to eight business days, plus five to eight business days for shipping with Fedex.

Prices range from US$22 (S$29) for a set of prints to US$139 (S$187) for a 150-page hardcover coffeetable book, excluding shipping. For more information, go to www.artifactuprising.com.

DIGITAL JOURNALS

It is no secret that data companies and apps can track a person's location via his mobile device as he moves around the world.

Some apps such as Journi, Traveler and the Google+ photos programme use this to the traveller's advantage.

Journi is an iPhone app which helps users create daily journals of their trips. When embarking on a holiday, simply enter the destination into the app's digital passport. Once the app registers the phone's global positioning system in the destination, it starts logging the trip.

Vacationers take photos, make notes and add captions to their journal as they go about their day, tagging their posts with labels such as "activity", "nightlife" and "worth seeing", so they and others can easily search the entries.

The posts are geotagged and displayed on a map beside the entries, so travellers can find their way back to their favourite spots. The app works offline so this saves on data bills. All posts are uploaded once you are in a WiFi zone. However, this app is not available for Android phones.

Like Journi, Traveler lets you post photos and notes, and place geotags at spots you want to remember.

The Android-friendly app also allows one to add audio notes and, for Samsung Galaxy Note devices, it includes a digital sketchbook component for use with the S pen. Both apps are great for logging trips on the go, rather than at the end of an exhausting day.

But for a really hands-off approach to digital memory-keeping, try Google+ stories, an extension of Google+ photos programme.

First, you have to select to have the photos on your mobile device or computer automatically backed up to Google Drive.

Using algorithms, Google+ photos will select your best photos and videos and arrange them in a timeline to show the highlights of a trip or special event.

The programme will also auto- enhance pictures and, when there is a burst of photos of one subject, turn them into a photo animation, all of which will be displayed on the timeline, which is organised chronologically by day and by location.

The stories are created automatically when Google+ notices heightened activity or that you have travelled overseas. Users are notified of new stories via e-mail and they can then edit the stories by adding titles and captions, while photos can be added or deleted, before sharing the story publicly or emailing it to contact lists.

The programme works for Android, iOS and computers, but has trouble creating stories for photos without a geotag.

VIDEO

To capture the sights, sounds and mood of your trip, try making a short video.

Clips of your adventures can be recorded on smartphones, digital cameras, hand-held video cameras and compact, durable GoPro cameras ideal for capturing sporty activities.

Edit the clips on your computer using programmes such as Pinnacle Studio, Adobe Premier or iMovie, then upload your film to video-sharing websites such as YouTube or Vimeo.

But if the time and skill required to put a short film together is intimidating, try Cameo. Think of this free film- sharing app as the video version of Instagram.

Cameo allows users to record video using the phone's camera from within the app itself, or to upload pre-recorded clips.

Users record or upload six-second videos, and with a few swipes of their fingers, arrange and trim the clips.

They can also choose from more than 30 themes and dozens of songs for a fitting soundtrack to their film.

Cameo then splices all the pieces together, leaving users with a fun, colourful and unique short film with professional polish and a maximum length of two minutes.

As with Instagram, users can like and comment on their videos - and share them with the public or with friends via e-mail and other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

The notable downside to Cameo is that it is only available for iPhones. While Android users can watch user videos on Cameo's website, they cannot create their own videos.

DIGITAL ALBUM

With so much of our lives and social interactions occurring online, social media is a prime way to compile and share holiday memories.

One of the most attractive digital displays is Steller, a free storytelling app and website which allows users to produce digital booklets.

You select, arrange and lay out videos, photos and text with the help of artful templates. The booklet is then published via the app to the user's Steller account.

The result is often a polished, coffeetable-type booklet used to compile photos and thoughts on recent trips, festivals and even recipes which can be shared on social media. Steller is for iPhones only, though Android users are able to relish Steller booklets via the Steller website steller.co.

Alternatively, Android users can use Flipagram, a free app which takes a selection of user-uploaded photos and turns them into a flipbook, a rapid slideshow of photos which can be shared via e-mail or other social media.

Add, edit and filter the photos, insert captions, titles, destinations and dates, determine the slideshow's speed, sync a soundtrack all within the app and, within minutes, publish a digital fast-tracked photo album for all the world to see.

While the picture quality and production value are not as crisp as Steller, it does, happily, work across all operating systems.

vlydia@sph.com.sg


This article was first published on Feb 1, 2015.
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