Version 1.85 for Mac Out the Door!

March 9th, 2008

I recently posted about some work I did in creating a mechanism for automatic keyword to people/place mapping in MemoryMiner. I’m happy to report that the fruits of this collaborative work with a German user named Marco is now available. He had written to us earlier and essentially said “I love your product, but before I do anything with my photos, they go in Adobe Lightroom, and I do a lot of key-wording in order to indicate who’s in the picture and where it was taken. I’m much too lazy to have to do the same type of work again in MemoryMiner.”

Well, Marco is now a happy camper, and I believe a lot of other people will be as well. A continuous design goal of MemoryMiner is to make sure it “plays well with others” (a quality I want for my 4 year old son as well). There’s a screen movie that shows off this new feature here:

http://homepage.mac.com/groupsmarts/.Movies/KeywordMappingDemo-Web.mov

A full list of new features and improvements can be found here:

http://memoryminer.com/SWUpdate/1.85

And as always, the best place to a complete set of information in one place (screen grabs, videos, download and purchase links) can be found here:

http://memoryminer.com/mac

This is a free upgrade for all registered users. You can get it just by clicking “Check for Updates” in the MemoryMiner application menu. Alternatively, download the disk image from here:

Download MemoryMiner 1.85 for Mac

Of Keywords and Objects

February 12th, 2008

A core strength of MemoryMiner is that it uses actual objects, rather than keywords, to represent people and places. Why does this matter? Some people have asked “why not just use keywords to represent people or places?” Of course, you could do this. However, if you’re going to take the time to annotate (or “tag”) your photos (which is obviously a great thing) why not get the most for your efforts?

It takes virtually no more time to associate an object representing a person or place to your photos, then it does to use a plain text string. Unlike a piece of text, an object representing a person can be told when the person was born, and thus, as is the case in MemoryMiner, fetch photos corresponding a specific period (e.g. “teenager”) in a person’s life. Similarly, an object representing a place can be used to retrieve the latitude and longitude given something like a street address. Objects are smart, keywords, considerably less so.

Now, there are plenty of people who have taken the time to carefully apply keywords to their photos using any number of tools such as iPhoto, iView Media, Aperture, Lightroom, etc. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something in MemoryMiner to take advantage of this work? Something that would let one easily “map” a keyword to a MemoryMiner Person or Place so that on import, if such a matching keyword were found, do the linking automatically for you.

Sounds like that could be an interesting new addition to an upcoming release!

Macworld Followup

January 23rd, 2008

Macworld was another huge success for us. Our humble little 2 meter pod had slick signage (thanks Kathryn), our postcards looked great, we had steady traffic throughout the show, and met tons of existing/new users. I personally love doing demos, and it was very satisfying to still see peoples’ jaw drop when they see MemoryMiner for the first time.

Now that MemoryMiner has been shipping for two years, I’m feeling really good. Man, we’ve come a long way: MemoryMiner works really well with a bunch of different desktop apps, data formats and of course the web. Having the Windows version also changes the game completely. Some people wondered why we would have a Windows laptop in our booth, (many made fun of Chris’ tablet, some dubbing it the “No Child Left Behind” computer). However, it only took a few moments to appreciate the value of the platform that we’re building. We now have Mac, Windows, Web, and you can be sure we’ll do some extremely clever things with the iPhone SDK the second we get our hands on it.

2008 is off to a brilliant start.

Macworld Followup

January 23rd, 2008

Macworld was another huge success for us. Our humble little 2 meter pod had slick signage (thanks Kathryn), our postcards looked great, we had steady traffic throughout the show, and met tons of existing/new users. I personally love doing demos, and it was very satisfying to still see peoples’ jaw drop when they see MemoryMiner for the first time.

Now that MemoryMiner has been shipping for two years, I’m feeling really good. Man, we’ve come a long way: MemoryMiner works really well with a bunch of different desktop apps, data formats and the web. Having the Windows version also changes the game completely. Some people wondered why we would have a Windows laptop, (and many made fun of Chris’ tablet, some dubbing it the “No Child Left Behind” computer). However, it usually only took a few moments to appreciate the value of the platform that we’re building. We now have Mac, Windows, Web, and you can be sure we’ll do some extremely clever things with the iPhone SDK the second we get our hands on it.

2008 is off to a brilliant start.

MemoryMiner 1.8 Released

January 16th, 2008

Readers of this blog who have been sending panicked emails wondering if Chris and I survived can rest easy. We made it to Macworld 1.8 in hand, and were slammed all day at our booth.

The new version has been extremely well-received, especially with the new Flickr Upload plugin.

Here’s the RSS feed with details of what’s new:

http://www.memoryminer.com/SWUpdate/MemoryMiner-AppCast.rss

As always, a great way to learn about MemoryMiner is our landing page, found here:

http://www.memoryminer.com/mmlanding

A little problem

January 13th, 2008

Chris (aka Hapbitch, aka Elwood Blues) has been in town since yesterday. On the way to the Farmer’s market, we ran into a little problem with a new sculpture that was recently set up along the Embarcadero.

In case there are any problems with our development efforts in preparation for Macword, the following pictures explain why:


If you’re going to Macworld, do stop by booth W-4336 (The Digital Media Special Interest Pavilion in the West Hall) in order to check up on us!

Countdown to Macworld

January 3rd, 2008

Still in Italy, still freezing, but I’ve noticed by looking at the calendar that Macworld is days away. Where did all the time go? Once again, we’ll have a sprawling 2 meter pod in the Digital Media Special Interest Pavilion in the West Hall (Booth 4336) .

Macworld is always a blast, and I hope to see lots of faces old and new during the four days we’ll be there.

Stop by and say hello.

Freezing to Death in Sunny Italy

December 21st, 2007

Regular readers of this blog know that I spend a lot of time in Italy, mostly in and around Perugia, to spend time with my wife’s family who hails from the area. I absolutely adore coming here, but man, is it freezing here. It’s not even really all that cold, compared to any number of other places: but living in Sunny San Francisco has made me a bit of a “weather wuss”.

No worries. though: the cold and the time shift are good for sparking those quick bursts of creative energy. Nothing like a busy laptop to keep you warm at 3 am whcn you can’t sleep.

Flickr upload from MemoryMiner, anyone?

Love from Apple Matters

December 12th, 2007

I was utterly flattered to see this column from Apple Matters, an Australian blog that listed MemoryMiner as one of the 5 killer apps for 2007:

Apple Matters

I am humbled.

MacSanta

December 10th, 2007

It’s the holiday time again, and nothing spreads holiday cheer like a visit to MacSanta. MemoryMiner is listed today, alongside a bunch of other great applications. Have a look!