My Picture Projects and Dropbox

I have been super busy this week, but not on my normal research. One of the things, for me, that comes along with family history is preserving all the photo's I can get my little hands on.  I have traveled far and wide looking for photo's.  Including taking a trip to Colorado to visit with my Grandma Helen's sister, Nancy.  It was a wonderful trip.  I took my family and my Mom.  We were able to visit with Aunt Nancy, Aunt Marilyn (Grandpa Lloyd's sister in law) and some cousins.  We had a great time and made lots of new memories and got to know some people that we didn't know before. 

But being the genealogist that I am...I also brought along my trusty, scanner-printer.  This printer that I got has been all over the country side with me, going to places like: Colorado, Utah, Montana, Washington, Oregon and of course to a couple family reunion's in Reno, NV.  The best part about this trusty printer....it was free. :) Well, so Aunt Nancy gave me free reign to scan and copy many things.  This was just one of many trips I have made with my scanner.

So needless to say, I have had my work cut out for me.  I spend endless hours working on these picture projects.  I am currently in the middle of scanning all of Theron's Grandma's pictures.  This process has taken longer than normal...probably because I have the pictures here with me and keep thinking I have time.  I will hopefully get back to scanning this weekend however.

I also make a picture index to go with these big picture files.  I ask anyone I can that might have a clue who they know in my photo's and then have compiled it all into one neat little word file.  This is what I am currently working on, a couple picture indexes. 

I do this so that anyone that would like copies can have them.  This makes sure that everyone has access to their family history, in the form of pictures, and also that they are not lost. 

I title my projects by whom I received the pictures from.  Each photo is given a number.  Which corresponds with the picture index.  Easy...peasy...

So now that some are finished and some are close to being done, I can share them with my extended family.  I say extended because I have a special project I am working on for my brothers and sisters and Theron's siblings. ;)

Which, brings me to Dropbox...

For those of you that don't know what Dropbox is, it is "cloud" space on the internet.  I can put big files, such as my picture projects into my Dropbox, from my computer.  Then my family can take it from my Dropbox and copy it to their computers.  It is free for the first 2 gb.  But you can get more "free" space when someone signs up from your link, see above link for me. You can upgrade and purchase extra space, which I am really considering.  For one thing, I am constantly worried about what would happen if my computer crashes.  I am quite paranoid in fact and have many backups hidden all over the place.  This would just be another backup for me.  Plus, I can now share things between my phone, Nook and computer.  This is a very cool service, that I highly recommend.   There are other services that are similar to Dropbox but I find this one is quite user friendly.  I will be able to set it up on my Mom's computer and show her how to use it, with ease I think.

For me this is such a better alternative to having to buy flash drives for all my "cousins" and then go to the post office.  Which I totally don't mind doing.  It just gets expensive after a while.

Please email me at mtm_ad@yahoo.com or contact me through Facebook (you will have to ask to be my friend if we are not already...sorry I screen) if you are interested.  :D