MyHeritage: New photo features

MyHeritage.com has just launched its new photo features that claims to make it easier to store, share and present digital photos online.

Useful elements include uploading photos from mobile devices, creating slideshows from the images and tagging them more quickly. The goal is to make the most of your family photos.

Imagine attending a wedding, a birthday party, a graduation or a family reunion. Take photos with a mobile device - even a video of bride and groom cutting the cake - and send it directly to your family site for other family members to see.

Every member of your MyHeritage family site gets his or her unique email address. Any photo, video or document they send via any mobile device will be published to the family site. The email address prevents strangers from posting content to your family website. It contains the family site address followed by a four-digit PIN code, and also helps the site identify which family member sent what item.

Save the unique address in your mobile device and your email contact list. Photos can also be emailed from your web mail or email address to the family site.

It seems to be a great idea that provides a safe place to store family images and documents , at make them easily accessible. A family site folder contains all uploaded images.

I liked the feature which creates full-screen animated slideshows in various formats. See this presentation with photos of Barack Obama which also illustrates how videos can be incorporated.
Among various effect styles are a traditional slideshow and these:

- 3D walls display photos on a virtual wall.

- Photo stack is like flipping through a box full of Polaroids on a table:


To share a slideshow, click the "share" button, copy URL, paste into an email and send. Your destination might be a person, Twitter, Facebook or other networking sites. However, the links will only work if 1) the recipient is your family site member or 2) if the album is public. Take a look at this interesting example: garden designs. With 100 images, see how fast it loads and try the various formats (top left).

In September, the site added photo tagging, so users could add names to the people in photos. Now the process is automated. When a member has identified all family members at least once, he or she can turn on automatic tagging and people in new photos will generally be automatically tagged. Tagged people will be sorted into albums, and viewers can also see a face cloud showing the most frequently imaged people in the collection.

Tagging is faster, the interface has been redesigned and there's a new sidebar with more information, including recent tags and options. MyHeritage claims it works fast and reliably with even very large photo collections.

For more detailed explanations and more click-on examples, see three blog posts at the MyHeritage company blog: here, here and here.

Tagged on books

I've been tagged by bloggers Colleen and Lidian to answer some questions on non-fiction issues or topics that interest me the most.

Can I simply say "everything" and leave it at that?

What issues/topic interests you most - non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that has nothing to do with novels?

As an omni-voracious reader (if there's nothing new to read, I will read ketchup labels!), there are piles of books all over our house. Cookbooks. History/Jewish history. DNA. Science fiction. Genealogy. Name a topic, it is here somewhere.

I am a "foodie," so cookbooks and books on food are a big part of this. I love cookbooks: Jewish, Italian, Russian, all flavors of Asian, Persian, desserts - just name it. I'd love to be locked in a huge bookstore - like Barnes & Noble - overnight and read through the cooking section! Musicians can look at a sheet of music and "hear" the music in their head. I can read a recipe and "taste" it.

In the old days BG - before genealogy - I amassed a large needlework collection, particularly old manuals of interesting embroidery stitches or working with gold and silver bullion on velvet, which I enjoyed, a real link to the past. Sephardic gold embroiderers were famous throughout Europe working on royal and ecclesiastical robes and decorations, although I don't know if our family was involved in this. No time for that now, unfortunately.

History is a major magnet as genealogy has shown me that my families were in the middle of major historical events. Jewish history anywhere is always of interest as are Jewish genealogical reference works. Sephardic Jewish history and resource books are a major part of this. Whenever I visit Barcelona, I have to send back boxes of collected books.

When I need comic relief, my choice is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (two favorites: Moving Pictures and Going Postal).

Would you like to review books concerning those?

I have reviewed books on my special interests.

Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.

Both are interesting and I've done both. Paid reviews are often slanted towards a particular publication's view, while blogging has fewer constraints.

Would you recommend those to your friends and how?

Absolutely, via personal contact, email and blog.

If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.

In addition to books personally read, Tracing the Tribe spotlights works that haven't yet reached my desk, but whose reviews elsewhere reveal that I should read them and let readers know about their important content. Here are some previous postings:

Avotaynu stories from the heart
Book: Moscow Photos 1900-1917
Australia: These are the names
Poland: Post-war atrocities
Helene Berr: France's Anne Frank
A Galitzianer Murder Mystery
Book: Aromas of Aleppo Syrian Jewish cooking
Books: Passing the genealogy torch
Book: Southern Jewish roots
WOWW is wow!
Washington DC: Updated guide for Jewish research

Lidian, Colleen and Lori, have tagged everyone I would have tagged, so I'm just going to enjoy reading the postings. I just saw Lidian's Kitchen Retro blog which spotlights vintage cookbooks and strangely weird old recipes. This is one case when being able to "taste" printed recipes is NOT an advantage. Do take a look and be prepared for laughter.