Episode 2 of the Virtual Historians podcast we discuss Forever with Christine Woodcock. Dave and Terri discuss RootsTech Connect.
Show Notes
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David: Hi, this is David Alan Lambert. I’m here with Terri O’Connell we’re your Virtual Historians. And this is our second episode, and we’re really exciting to introduce a guest that you probably know for the world of genealogy and social media, Christine Woodcock, and Terri, why don’t you tell me you’ve known Christine a longer time than I have.
[00:00:26] And, uh, from cruising, I believe, right.
[00:00:29] Terri: No, we didn’t get to cruise together. We,
[00:00:31] David: Oh, okay.,
[00:00:33] Terri: Christine wrote for us when we had The In-Depth Genealogist going on, which is where I met her from. But we met at roots tech. So I’ve actually like known you longer.
[00:00:44] David: Okay.
[00:00:45]Terri: Um, but we met at RootsTech quite a few years ago and we hit it off.
[00:00:49] It was like, she’s like my sister.
[00:00:52] David: That reminds me. We actually, this week is RootsTech were taken on Saturday. Even the RootsTech lasts for a year. So you get to see all those excellent lectures that have to do with genealogy, but it also history and technology. So, uh, we’ll be talking a little bit about later on that in the back end of the show.
[00:01:09] So Christine why don’t you tell us about what it means to be an ambassador for Forever and what historians and, uh, individuals can benefit by.
[00:01:20] Christine: Sure. So I actually, the first time I went to RootsTech, uh, Dave, I was an ambassador, which I think, you know, a lot of us have been, I don’t know. Do you have, you’re usually speaking, but Terri and I both been ambassadors and I had the opportunity to interview, um, Glenn Meakam.
[00:01:38] Uh, Glenn is the CEO and Founder of Forever, and it, he was fairly new to the whole, uh, marketing, you know, in genealogy world. And so I went, uh, I think it was Katherine Lake Hogan and I did, um, did the interview and, um, I was really quite fascinated by the whole process of what Forever is. So he started the company.
[00:02:02] Um, he was looking for, he, he, after he and his wife had, after he had been away at service, he came back and he, and his wife took, I think he said a, um, camera and an audio recorder, and they went and visited their grandparents. And. Uh, recording. And then he wanted somewhere to store that, uh, so the future generations could find it and everywhere he came up against, you know, there were limitations.
[00:02:25] And so he decided, okay, this was important. So he found a company and there were a lot of people that you’re kind of doing a similar thing. So I wasn’t really buying, like I was, I was buying it cause I could see it’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t necessarily have picked Forever over the others. Until, um, and he was showing us how you could use the pictures that you upload, uh, then to create books.
[00:02:49] And I’ve been scrapbooking since, before scrapbooking was a thing. And I said to him, uh, you know, the guarantee they put, they have like a hedge fund or they guarantee is when you buy storage, that most of that money goes into this fund. And it pays for it’s like buying cloud real estate. Right. So you pay once upfront and then you don’t pay again.
[00:03:11] And if I, if it migrates from, you know, JPEG to some other format, they do all of that. So I don’t have to run around and get all that converted again. Yeah, it is very cool. And, um, the guarantee is my lifetime plus a hundred years, I don’t really care what happens after a hundred years when I’m dead. Um, but I said to him, um, and it was kind of the end of the interview and I said to him, so let me get this straight.
[00:03:39] If, I create a book like a scrapbook and my kids, my daughter decides after she’s had children, because she’s really not that interested now. But if she decides after she’s had children that she wants to print that book again, can she do that? He said, I’ll go you one better. If her daughter decides she wants to print the book, she can do it.
[00:04:00] And from that I was sold.
[00:04:02] Terri: That’s amazing.
[00:04:05] David: That is amazing.
[00:04:06] Christine: And part of the, when you pay for storage, you can get a two gig account for free, which I encourage everybody to do. Um, I’m not a good sales person, so, you know, I don’t make tons of money on this. For me. It’s more about preserving the stories and the photos, but once you get a paid account, you get to set up an account manager.
[00:04:24] So I, my kids are set up as my account managers so that when I die, they can take over, uh, my account. If you don’t assign an account manager, it defaults back to forever, which is fine. Um, they become like trustees, but if say a great grandchild of mine, um, suddenly took an interest in genealogy and somewhere along the line knew that grandma had done something.
[00:04:49] She could do a Google search, find that I have a forever account contact, forever support prove her lineage to me and get access.
[00:04:57] David: That’s pretty cool.
[00:04:59]Terri: I didn’t know all that.
[00:05:01] Christine: Yeah. It’s all written in their terms of service. So I’m like, okay, I’m all over this now.
[00:05:07] David: That’s amazing.
[00:05:07] Terri: So it pays to read.
[00:05:09] David: Absolutely. They’ve been out for about five years now or so. Is it safe?
[00:05:13] Christine: I first found out about them? I’m going to say 2016 or 17, 16. I think he was maybe a couple of years old by then.
[00:05:23]David: Okay. Yeah.
[00:05:25] Yeah. I know I saw them at RootsTech, um, around that same time. And, uh, as also an ambassador, I got to go around and meet with a lot of people and try to get ideas, um, for, you know, what we can do back where I work in Boston.
[00:05:40] And it was kind of fun to kind of look at that. And I think one of the things I talked to forever about one of the reps I may have even talked to the founder, um, is that historian should use this. I mean, especially historical societies, because think of all these small historical societies that, you know, have all these boxes of photos or, you know, old films and whatnot, and they really don’t have a preservation center.
[00:06:04] I mean, but they might have a little bit of a budget or it could ask their membership to go forward and say, Hey, listen, let’s get an account like this. So in a hundred years, these are preserved. And it’s also digital because. What happens if the building burns down or something gets stolen or damaged ?
[00:06:22] Christine: I’ve actually, I’ve taken, uh, I had old VHS tapes cause my husband inherited his dad’s video camera when my daughter was born.
[00:06:30] And it was one of those big things, you know?
[00:06:32] David: Oh yeah. Yeah. You shouldn’t be, you kind of walk like this for a while after you.
[00:06:39] Christine: That’s the one. And so we had, I mean, her whole life was on videotape. Um, and so I sent those in and had those converted. Um, but just recently it was actually maybe about a year and a half ago.
[00:06:52] Um, I was talking to my cousin, uh, she had just, um, my aunt was in a retirement home and Fiona, my cousin had just sold the house. So she had gone in and cleaned everything up. And I always knew that in my aunt’s attic, there were photos and, uh, old, old home movies. So, um, I said to her, did you happen to clean out the attic?
[00:07:15] She said, yeah. I said, did you happen to find any old movies? She said, yeah. I said, well, can I get those from you to digitize them? She was like, sure. So she handed me 22 photo, 22 reels of film. And one of them, we came to Canada in 1960 when I was almost three. My mom being from a family of 20 was really, um, homesick.
[00:07:39] She really missed the, the chaos, I think of, you know, having her family around her. So she and I went back when I was four and there’s a movie.
[00:07:51] David: That’s amazing.
[00:07:52] Christine: Yeah. There’s movies of my, like my fifth and sixth birthday parties and my, my cousin when he was born and, Oh my gosh, it was just phenomenal to be able to use that.
[00:08:01] And again, so that was eight millimeter and they’ve digitized it. So now if they go for, you know, whatever, the next thing is, I don’t ever have to worry about getting that done again. They just automatically migrate it for me, which is fabulous.
[00:08:14] Terri: So what’s their pricing to do things like that.
[00:08:17] Christine: Um, so the eight millimeter it’s, I think it’s 15 cents a foot or something, but you know, the little ones and actually I felt ripped off because I was used to the, and not, not for pricing, but I was used to, um, But when you get a video done, they’re like two hours.
[00:08:31] Right. And then, and this is like three minutes and I’m like, what did they do with the rest of it?
[00:08:38] Forget that those movies were short then.
[00:08:40] David: Yeah.
[00:08:40] Christine: So the little ones wind up being about $25 and the big ones. Like, you know, they used to take some of them and splice them and he’d have like a big tin canister thing. And they’ll say, I think we’re about 75
[00:08:53] David: now, if I wasn’t a member forever and I wanted to go and have them do that as a service and I had like a roll of old eight millimeter film, what do they charge for something like that for, do you have to be a client or
[00:09:05] Christine: no. So I actually just did that for a friend of mine, um, who I had grown up with, um, her parents and. My parents and my aunt and uncle the same app I had these videos or these movies were really good friends.
[00:09:19] My uncle and her dad had grown up together in Scotland. And then when they came to Canada, they stayed friends. So I went up and got, uh, got them from Alison. So what you do is you order a box, um, from forever. And so the one I ordered was, um, $249. Which is the kind of the midsize box. Um, they FedEx that to me, I put everything in for her.
[00:09:46] Um, basically you just put them all in there yet. Itemize, what you’ve got, um, there’s little stickers that you put on there. Like, you know, the little labels that you put on books that has my account number on it or not the, sorry, not the account number. The order number has the order number on it and an email address.
[00:10:04] So I put that on everything. I called FedEx, they came, they picked it back up. Um, and sent it off. So the first, um, two 40 10 reels, I think she sent me 12. The first 10 reels were covered by that 249. So you get the 249 credit. Now, if you happen to buy the box on sale and say, it’s, you know, you get it for 199, you still get 249 credit.
[00:10:29] David: Oh, that’s cool.
[00:10:30] Christine: That’s what I credit doesn’t chase. So I think she wound up paying, I think $75 extra. She doesn’t have an account. So they, they uploaded that into the free account for her. She’s not a client per se, but she now has access to all of those videos, all those movies.
[00:10:45] David: So do they give you like a hard copy on like a Blu-ray or a DVD or do they give it to you just on the cloud, on
[00:10:52] Christine: They give it to you, on the cloud. And they give it back to you on a, um, a memory stick, you know, the jump. Um, but you could also order a DVD of it. And I think it’s like another $10.
[00:11:03] David: Well, most players and Blu-ray players now take the USB stick, which is interesting. A lot of people don’t realize that. And you can kind of do with that. Yeah. Look at your, well, I mean, it depends how old it is. I mean, But the one that I just bought through a place that DVD player that decided to give up the will to live after nine years, actually Blu-ray player has a USB port.
[00:11:21] Christine: Yeah. Well, I’m one of the TVs.
[00:11:22] Now you can just put it in there and play it through there. Right?
[00:11:25]David: That’s true.
[00:11:25] Terri: I need new TVs and new gadgets.
[00:11:29] Christine: You need to come into the 21st century girlfriend.
[00:11:31] David: Nope. Virtual reality. Come on, stop being in the past, Terri..
[00:11:35]Terri: I thought I was up to date on everything.
[00:11:39] David: Well, this is great. I mean, I think there’s a lot of things out there that people need to know.
[00:11:43] And so if they want to find out more about. Forever. We’re going to put up a slide at the end part of it so they can have all the contact information. But if you wanted to, um, tell people how they can get ahold of you, Christine, I’m more than happy to let you share that now to our listeners.
[00:11:58] Christine: Right? So it’s, um, it’s just go to Forever.com.
[00:12:01] Um, you get to choose the ambassador, just put in Woodcock, it all come up. Um, like I say, I’m not, I’m not driven to sales. Well, I’m, I’m my biggest customer. And, you know, and if I look back and say for the month, I’ve spent $2,000, I know that like 1900 of that is mine.
[00:12:18] Terri: She says that, but as I’m scrapbooking and she knows what I’m scrapbooking, she sends me all these links, look at this cute little boys’ stuff.
[00:12:26] I think about what you could do with that. I’m like, Bought bought, bought. So she is!
[00:12:34] Christine: And then, um, that then puts you onto my list. So any, I often, the other thing that I do day, but I think I’m the only ambassador that does it is I’ve run webinars. So I’ve run webinars on using the cloud storage. I’ve run webinars on, um, creating books.
[00:12:49] So they have a it’s called what is it called? Design and print. And so you can, um, do a spread. Literally you can do a scrapbook in an hour.
[00:12:57] David: Wow, that’s pretty amazing.,
[00:12:58] Christine: Because you just click, you know, drag and drop the photos in very little text in it, and it’s ready to go. A lot of people who’ve done that. I personally liked the flexibility and I’ve now got Terry hooked on the flexibility of their scrapbooking program, because you can add more.
[00:13:14] I’m really more about the story than I am about the picture. I want to have the ability to put the text in. And, um, I’m really, you know, if I’m doing something and it’s got, I did one, for instance, for a friend who had taken a trip to Portugal. And so I had to go and find, you know, now all this digital art for Portugal.
[00:13:32] So I, I, I’m the person who Scouts that out for Terri, whether she wants to, or not.
[00:13:38] David: There you go..
[00:13:41]Terri: Look at this Ireland stuff!
[00:13:43] David: When you think about scrapbooking, you mean how long that’s been going on since well, into the 1800s, because you see these scrapbooks that people have that are in archives or in personal homes. And now you could probably take that same old scrapbook, which is probably a non, some acidic type paper.
[00:14:00] Do it digitally and redo it as anybody done that, Christine, at all?,
[00:14:03] Christine: Yes, actually. So this, um, and I’m not sure the whole connection, so I don’t want to. I’m just going to apologize up front and say somebody from whoever’s listening to this in case I have it wrong, but somehow they’re connected to the old, um, creative memories.
[00:14:18] I think they bought the digital scrapbooking rights or kits from them. I’m not really, that’s the part I’m not sure on. But, um, so I was, I was, um, I, you know, I did, um, hard copy scrapbooks problem with them. Of course, as you do one and you have three kids and then what, but, um, the, I can take those pages and put those in the box and send those and they will scan them page by page.
[00:14:43] And then I just do a blank book and it’s just the same as it was, but it’s like a third of the size and I can make as many copies of it as I want. Right. So.
[00:14:53]David: I know you did one for the cruise.
[00:14:55]Terri: I was just going to say, so I did one for our New England cruise last year. And was able with a link to share it to the Facebook group for everybody on the cruise.
[00:15:07] And, um, one of our attendees actually purchased the scrapbook because I had done, you know, he liked what I had done with it. Um, so it was good that I got to encompass everywhere we went and then I put the genealogical uh, stuff like I borrowed some of your pictures, some of Gena’s pic, uh, I think that were Gena’s pictures, maybe some of Paul’s pictures.
[00:15:26] Christine gave me pictures from Halifax for the stuff that we didn’t go see. Cause we went to see Titanic. Um, then I got to put all of that in there for everybody to have these memories. What I like about it is I can remove all those pictures from my account, but because they’re in that link on that photo book, it all stays. I don’t have to keep all those pictures in the account.
[00:15:51]Christine: That’s right. So you don’t have pay storage, right?
[00:15:54] Terri: No.
[00:15:55] Christine: No. Yeah. So that’s um, yeah, and that’s why it’s the book has gone once. You’ve got it. Um, and once you’ve sent it onto their print, their print department, even if it never actually gets printed, you can, the pictures are, are, stay there so you can delete whatever’s in your account.
[00:16:12] Right? If I, if I’m in the process of making the scrapbook and I delete them from my account, then I just get blank stuff. Uh, but once that’s actually finished and I’ve, you know, um, sent it through to be printed, um, even if it stays in, even if I never ever printed those pictures are still in there. And I recently Dave because, um, so along with the, um, after we got the, um, the movie reels from my cousin, Fiona.
[00:16:39] Um, I said to her any photographs cause Fiona and I we’re the family photographers. Right. We took pictures of everything. And so she handed me, gosh, I’m going to say six boxes. A couple of them had, um, old albums in them. You know, the peel and stick were old, black and whites. Like there was a ton of stuff in there.
[00:16:58] I stand over a thousand of them and did, um, like history book of my aunt. Um, so I did before, uh, genealogy, I was, um, a frontline worker for child welfare. And part of what we had to do was a life story for the kids. So they could understand, you know, where they’re, where they’re family of origin was why they had come into care.
[00:17:21] And then, you know, if they go onto adoption or foster care or whatever. And, um, so I basically did that same thing and that’s really the things that I’ve been doing now. Um, but you know, that aunt is, she was the first one, um, of my mom’s siblings to come over. But she’s the one that everybody went to until they got on your feet.
[00:17:39] David: Wow.
[00:17:39] Christine: So, um, you know, so it was cool cause I’ve got pictures of her, of the house being built and she’s had the receipt that how much she paid for the house. Um, and then I was able to tell the story of, you know, the number of people who came and stayed with her until in fact they found their own place or found a job or whatever.
[00:17:56] Um, so that’s what I do. Um, those, you know, I’ve done my own. Um, I also include things that are important in history. Uh, you know, like so many of us have lived through, you know, 9/11. We lived through the insurrection last, uh, last month we’ve lived through um, the pandemic, uh, you know, 2020 , I mean, if you lived through 2020,
[00:18:17] David: Right, exactly.
[00:18:18] Christine: And so, uh, you know, I try to include that, but I also did separate books. I ran, I kept a separate yearbook just on everything that happened in 2020, because most of us forget that the world started out the year, started out with wildfires in Australia. Right. And so it just kind of documented all of that.
[00:18:35] And then I’ve kept one I’m now in volume, three of the pandemic. Well, so the yearbook and the pandemic books are going to go to our provincial archives.
[00:18:45]David: Excellent.
[00:18:46] Christine: Yeah, we don’t have, um, like you guys have County archives, so we don’t have that here. Um, we just have provincial, so a copy will go to the provincial archives.
[00:18:55] Um, so that that’s kept, you know, Forever.
[00:18:59]David: Literally.
[00:19:00] Christine: Literally.
[00:19:03] Terri: I love it. I did get to see one of them on the pandemic or maybe it was a couple of pages. So it was a while ago and she did a great job covering it because she’s got pictures of the essential workers. She’s got some of the crazy memes in it that are all over Facebook, all the stuff that’s really like.
[00:19:20] 10- 20 years from now, you’re gonna look back and be like, Oh my God, those stupid maids, they were everywhere, but it was such a big part of the pandemic because we needed the laughter.
[00:19:30] David: Like the smiling faces with the masks, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s great. Well, Christine really thank you for coming in and telling us about forever.
[00:19:39] And you know, I makes me even want to scrap book now, I guess I’ll have to have some more prodding from Terri and you to figure it out, well,
[00:19:47] Christine: I’ll tell you, Randy Seaver has sent it all kinds of movies to be digitized. Like I’m going to say he’s close to 50 or 60 that he’s sending him. Yeah,
[00:19:58] Terri: I will say the one thing I like is I talked to them at the booth last year at RootsTech.
[00:20:03] I have one super eight. It is of my dad’s mom. She died when I was eight and I don’t want to put it in the mail. And I was very adamant that I was not shipping it. And he was so nice and he goes, you could bring it to us and we will do it.
[00:20:19] Christine: Yeah. Well, I actually was really worried about that. Um, when I sent my first batch in, because it had my mom on it who had passed away, and my husband who had passed away and I called and said, listen, this is, this is everything I have in terms of memories.
[00:20:35] And I don’t want to send it and you know what? They have it, every step of the process you can follow and see where your stuff is.
[00:20:42] Terri: That’s awesome. I just liked that they were really willing to work with me when I was like, you just don’t understand, like she died when I was eight. It’s the only thing I have. My mom.
[00:20:50] I don’t even know why my mom had it. She gave it to me a few years ago. Right. And she’s like, grandma’s on this. You’ll you’ll want to hold on to it. And I was like, Oh my God, I’ve got to get it.
[00:20:59]Christine: A friend of mine actually has audio tapes of her dad and her granddad. And she, um, has those uploaded in her account as well.
[00:21:07] Terri: Oh, that’s awesome.
[00:21:08]Christine: So she could hear her dad and her kids could hear their great grandfather.
[00:21:11] Terri: That’s awesome.
[00:21:12] David: Yeah, that’s really, really cool. Yeah.
[00:21:14] Christine: That’s very cool.
[00:21:15] David: Thank you so very much. And I hope that some of the listeners out there will take advantage of beginning to think about scrapbooking. It’s not just for your grandma anymore.
[00:21:25] And, uh, also, you know, preserving those pictures because you know, it’s nice to have them on your phone. There’s nothing wrong with having a phone with photos on it, but if you don’t preserve them, They’re just in memory. That could be one button gone.
[00:21:40] Terri: You’re just going to sit in this plastic for the next 20 years.
[00:21:44] David: Yeah. People tell me they have thousands upon thousands of photos and I asked them how many have you printed out?
[00:21:49] Terri: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:21:53]David: So thanks, Christine and awesome to have you on the show.
[00:21:57] Christine: Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me out.
[00:21:59] David: My pleasure, our pleasure. All right. It to your RootsTech would have been a lot more fun if we could have been there in person, but virtual RootsTech Connect has been pretty cool.
[00:22:09] Terri: I definitely agree. I’m missing my friends. There’s a lot of great video content out there. And the best thing about that is. You can watch it for a year!
[00:22:16] David: An entire year. And I think somebody said that if you watched six hours a day for every day, for the entire year, you might be able to see all of it. So you’re already a couple of days late.
[00:22:27] If you haven’t done that,
[00:22:29] Terri: that’s a lot of watching.
[00:22:31] David: [00:22:31] There’s a lot of really amazing tech there. And I think as VR historians, we’re always looking for new and exciting things. So hopefully we can get a couple of these folks, uh, on the show coming up. So my fingers are crossed, but I thought I’d give you a kind of a sneak peek.
[00:22:47] So let me share my screen. I’ll tell you one of the things I really love that. Was brought out during RootsTech Connect 2021 is Computer Assisted Indexing. And this is done by family search.org And Terri this is great because think of all the historical documents out there that people have really had a hard time reading.
[00:23:07] And now you can actually use this software to index.
[00:23:11] Terri: I have 160 page civil war pension file that I have not transcribed that I am dying to put through at least a page or two to see what else access.
[00:23:22] David: Well, that’s a great thing. So let’s take a peak and show you an example in English so that they have, so what you get here is you have the document and when it’s looking at on the right as a transcription, and it’s actually getting the places are in orange, the person is in green and any dates that come up are in blue.
[00:23:41] So that’s pretty amazing. And, uh, just think what, this is just the tip of the iceberg on this technology and probably will make it a lot easier for people to transcribe. But you know what? I also like to think that people should learn how to read handwriting. So this is gonna take a little bit of both technology and also reading cusive to be useful for the next generation.
[00:24:04] So. You got a little bit of an in.
[00:24:06] Terri: Yeah. Especially for the kids who weren’t learning it in school for awhile.
[00:24:11] David: I mean, you and I have to be part of the last generation where, you know, cursive handwriting and penmanship was probably a way of life. I mean, I don’t think it’s even taught in a lot of schools in the United States.
[00:24:22] Terri: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s coming back, but yeah.
[00:24:25] David: Well, This is great. So I can tell you that there’s a lot of times that I wish I had a second opinion or maybe the computer notes or computer assisted indexing from family search will do just that. Now the other thing that I love is what happened with My Heritage Deep Nostalgia.
[00:24:43] Now we’ve already really lucked out with My Heritage if you’re, uh, had a chance to colorize and old black and white photo, or if you’ve had a chance to enhance it. It’s amazing. And you can take them and print them out or put them online. They’ve gone a step further and reanimated our ancestors and for historians this will be both fun as well as kind of useful. You may be able to take a look at a historical picture in your collection. May it be a family member or something in your historical society archives, and they add another twist and it might be fun to show the young historians in something like this. So let me give you an example.
[00:25:23] This right here is just, uh, an example of my great grandfather, his brother, who was born in 1859 and died in 1934. And I already had that one up on the screen, but I’m going to show you how easy it is to do this. And I’m hoping that we can have one of our friends from My Heritage, come out, give us a whole walk through in the, behind the scenes tech, but this is sort of a teaser.
[00:25:44] So I’m going to upload another photograph. And let me go into my pictures, this out of the way. And I have to look and find a picture of my grandfather. So my grandfather, I never knew and, uh, died sometime, probably in the 1950s. Uh, we’re not entirely sure cause he disappeared. He’s my big mystery. So if I was to meet him and say, 1950, this is maybe what it would’ve looked like.
[00:26:13] This is the only photograph we have and it’s been colorized by My Heritage. And now for the first time, I’m going to see it animated by My Heritage through this wonderful process of deep nostalgia. Oh my goodness. That is unreal.
[00:26:32] Terri: It is very cool. They’ve put a lot into their tech this past year.
[00:26:36] David: It’s amazing.
[00:26:37] And for, for a person, myself person like myself who does not have a of home movie or my grandfather, and I never had a chance to know him, you know? I mean, it’s almost like I’m just waiting to kind of hear him speak now, maybe that’s next.
[00:26:54] Terri: I will say in a lot of the reading I’ve done, um, in social media, people are saying, don’t do it with somebody that you knew or somebody that you’re really missing.
[00:27:03] It’s just. A little bit too much to handle.
[00:27:06] David: Yeah.
[00:27:06] Terri: Um, do it with those that have passed on before you, before you were born. Right?
[00:27:11] David: Exactly. And so in the case of James Albert, George Lambert, wherever you are out there in the world, still looking for you, he’d be 134. If you see him, let me know.
[00:27:21] Now we were talking about virtual reality from the get-go and I thought it would be great to plug an app for the Oculus that we both love. And again, this is just our own personal review. Doesn’t mean you have to run out and get it. It’s just a suggestion, but you really can’t beat Wander $9.99. I think that in 2020 Terri, we spent so much time at home. We really didn’t get a chance to wander even down to the street that we grew up.
[00:27:55] But with this app, it’s amazing.
[00:27:58] Terri: I love it. And I want to say this. I want to say that, um, I know a lot of people love,
[00:28:04] um, Google like the,
[00:28:08] uh, Oh, what is, I forget what Google calls it, but you can see, you can do the, almost the same thing. Right? But with wander, you can create a, basically a little group and bring people along to do a tour.
[00:28:23] So when we tried this out originally, you took me on a tour of homes from your family. I took you on a little tour of Chicago, the places that I grew up, and I just think it’s great that you can do that.
[00:28:38] David: Well, you know, I’ve always said, you know, there’s bucket lists, but now for $9.99, you can kind of make that a VR bucket list.
[00:28:44] So Virtual Historians invite you to try this out and let us know what you think. Tell us where you’ve gone and maybe we can get you as a guest. And you can, uh, tell us about your adventure around the world.
[00:28:56] I went to red square in Moscow. I always wanted to see it. It was amazing. It was like, wow, I’m right there.
[00:29:03] And I’m like, I wonder what’s down this street. Uh, Took my daughter back to Edinburgh and we wandered around on the Royal mile. Um, I went back to where my crazy great, great grandparents lived in, uh, Krzanich and Cheshire England and walked right by the farm. In fact, I think I showed you.
[00:29:22]Terri: Yes.
[00:29:25] David: Yeah, it’s amazing.
[00:29:26] And what I find really, even cooler is that you can peel back different views from this technology and see what it looked like, you know, up to about what about a dozen years ago? 10 years ago, roughly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing. So,
[00:29:40] Terri: So it’s using the same technology as Google earth. I couldn’t think of earth few minutes ago.
[00:29:44] It’s using the same technology as Google earth and you’re peeling back the Google earth layers of when they videoed it last. Now I will tell you wander was the first thing I downloaded. Um, I downloaded it on Christmas day and I spent the morning in Ireland. I figured if I was stuck at home by myself, I was going to do something cool.
[00:30:05] David: Exactly. And I really thought it was amazing to kind of just like wander up the streets where my parents lived or go to where, you know, an address that I had on a document, one of the, see where it was, or I wanted to revisit someplace that I was supposed to visit last year. So it was kind of fun, not as good as being there, but virtually the next step away.
[00:30:29] Terri: And you can create a video too. So like, if you let’s say your friends don’t have it, you can go through and, uh, video tape, the whole thing. I don’t believe the audio will tape, but you can add that later if you have that kind of stuff on your computer, in the technology,
[00:30:46] David: Overdub, the audio too, which was great.
[00:30:48] Terri: Yeah. I mean think about creating tour, um, for your family or the young generation that you want to get interested in history, you know,
[00:30:58] David: Right, exactly. Our history. What a great little trip down memory lane, you could show your kids where you went to school, where your parents may have worked. Um, so, uh, and then it’s really kind of like a note to the future.
[00:31:10] If you save and preserve that video, you now can have sort of like a timeline or places you worked and went to school and places you enjoy going to and leave it for future generations, if you record it and preserve it.
[00:31:23] Terri: That’s amazing. I didn’t think about that, but that’s amazing. Yeah.
[00:31:27] David: Well, we talked with Christine earlier about preserving videos. Why not digital videos you create on your computer from things like this. So. Well, I had to go back and put my headset on and virtually wander someplace. until next time virtually yours, your Virtual Historians, Dave Lambert and Terri O’Connell signing off.
[00:31:47] Terri: See you soon.
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