Our family Thanksgiving was extra special this year with family members from the Carolinas and California. “Social distancing” has made this possible. Our California family includes teachers who use Zoom to teach their students online. Why does this work? Many of the California schools are closed down because of the pandemic and our family teachers already have been using Zoom.
Right now Zoom is one of the most popular apps for video calls and conferences. It can be used for classes, meetings and more. I won’t be surprised to hear that the upcoming RootsTech Connect conference puts Zoom to good use connecting with participants.
If you would like to learn more about RootsTech Connect and get registered to attend, you will find all the details at https://www.rootstech.org. By the way . . . there will also be free conference apps (iOS and Android) available soon.
As the holiday season continues, it’s also a great time to capture and save special moments, family traditions and precious Christmas items. This is where a journaling app can be quite useful. There are a number of journaling apps available for iOS, Windows and Android devices.
Journey is a light-weight journal app that is available on almost every platform including Windows. You begin by creating entries for each day. Adding photos, audios, and videos is easy, but only one at a time. Journey uses Google Drive to backup data and sync it across platforms.
While Android and iOS apps are free, the Windows app will cost you $19.99. There is also a cloud plan priced at $2.49.
Day One Journal goes with you everywhere. It has both a free and premium option. The premium version includes real-time syncing which allows you to start on one device and finish on another. Premium also includes unlimited automatic cloud backup, audio recording with voice-to-text transcription and unlimited photos and videos. The premium version costs $2.92/mo billed annually.
Momento is quite easy to use with basic journaling tools like new entry creation, tags, and photos. You can pull data from your social networks and there is even support for videos. Momento not only helps you privately capture moments in just a few taps (with notes, photos, videos, people, places and tags) but it also automatically collects your daily activities, posts and photos from the social networks, apps and devices you use everyday!
Momento is free but there are add-ons that are quite affordable. Their premium supscription costs $3.99/year. Adding multiple photos to a post costs $1.99 and setting a lock code will cost $0.99.
Once you have a journaling app, it’s time to start capturing special people, places and things. With Christmas season ahead of us, a journal app on your mobile phone makes it easy to capture the people, places and things that make Christmas so special. Use it to tell the stories of your favorite Christmas ornaments, decorations and even foods.
The premium Day One Journal app also offers a book printing feature that lets you select a collection of your journal entries and send it to Day One who will then create a book for you. A book with 50 color pages will cost $19.99. If you have more than 50 pages it will cost $0.10 per extra page.
Journaling is an affordable and easy way to collect and share the stories your research discovers. This Christmas season is a good time to start. Future generations will love you for sharing your family with them.
Final Notes
Sample of the “fine print” at the bottom of each post.
Also down at the bottom of each delivered post is a Comment button. If you would like to comment on something discussed in a post or ask a question, just click the Comment button and you will be taken online to the comment section of the post where you can share your thoughts and read what others have shared.
To learn more, download a copy of the SAGS Support Guide.