#getcedar

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Responsible for introducing me to the greatest game in the world. Great man and glad to have known him

[getcedar]

#digitalbackup for #keepsakes -- better to at least have those copies for your favorite treasures. So glad Ms. Leoni got her cedar chest back.

[getcedar]

#FoundersKeepers  Small statue. Wedding gift from the artist. 

[getcedar]

A nice reflection on keeping over at the “Paper of Record” 

So though my trash failed to bring me joy, I decided that it might, in the future, bring somebody else joy (that somebody might be me), and in preparation for that possibility, I should preserve it. I should make a keeping society — a virtual one, exhibited online, where there’s plenty of space — from my desk trash. And so I have.

We think everyone should have a Folded Clock journal in their pocket.

[getcedar]

Cedar with Family

Over the July 4th holiday, the team at Cedar added a bit of homework to our family visits. We emailed parents and grandparents and siblings to bring out their mementos so that we could photograph them and document some of the stories behind the saved items. 

It was great fun!  

If the Cedar app sparks these kinds of activities for families, especially for young folks with their grandparents or even great grandparents, we think it will add a lot of smiles to the world. 

Family mementos create a great sharing platform and capturing them with Cedar ensures that you will remember these stories for years to come. 

[getcedar]

#FoundersKeepers: An old lift ticket saved by my grandparents. The ski hill, managed by my grand-uncle, was across the road from the farm where my grandfather grew up in New Hampshire. My grandmother remembered taking the bus up to ski there as a little girl as well.

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A good friend of Cedar sent us this highly relevant keepsakes clip from the movie, Amélie. Imagine having your special keepsake box in your pocket with you at all times!    

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Save to Reduce?

Interesting comments on this old Apartment Therapy post about storing childhood mementos. 

lana_g considers the value of digital replacement for some items in your physical collection of keepsakes:

[lana_g] It's the feelings these objects evoke when we look at them that makes them precious, but I think the reality is that these sentimental objects become cumbersome as we grow older, and frankly irrelevant when stored away in boxes where they never even see the light of day...

I'm not suggesting everything should get tossed, but why not consider taking photos of certain objects (i.e. childhood stuffed animals, trophies, etc.), and then donating the actual physical item? I think Teddy might be much happier perpetually displayed in a cool photo then festering in a cardboard box in your mom's basement...

Too often you find that your treasured mementos are indeed stored away in boxes, forgotten for years and years. 

Raena took pictures before throwing some of her items away, but without an app to help organize them, one wonders if they are just buried in a folder somewhere also.

[Raena] I recently helped my mom clean out my childhood home. My room was left exactly the same ... with all my toys and clothes. I took a picture of everything sentimental then threw them away. It hurt, but most of these things I didn't even realize I still had.

tyniapt mentions that it is indeed more often easier to scan through digital copies. We love the excitement you can see in this comment, from someone who does access these treasured memories. 

[tyniapt] My stepdad scanned all the kids' photos, art, report cards, articles, etc. and gave each of us a DVD of those things for Christmas last year. I love looking through it, and its less bulky and dusty than the real thing! I saved the key stuff, but scan and dump the rest!

Imagine an app that helps you keep these sentimental objects organized and more readily available for memory refreshing. Coming soon. :o) 

We’d love to hear what you think - does digital replacement sound like a viable strategy for you for some of your keepsake collection?

[getcedar]

Digital Memory & Digitized Keepsakes

This blog was created by the team at Cedar, an app for capturing digital images of mementos and then organizing and interacting with those digitized keepsakes. There will probably be a lot of content directly related the app and the efforts to build it for the world. 

But we also want this blog to explore more general concepts related to the intersection of technology and memory, and/or forms of digital nostalgia. We plan to profile folks out there talking about these ideas (and interview them if we can!), as well as companies making products in this space. 

One big source of inspiration has been The Future of Looking Back, a book by Richard Banks at Microsoft Research. He covers many angles on how the general digitization of our lives will impact how we remember, but in the passage below reflects on a topic near and dear to Cedar: 

We will always have some of these objects in our lives, but do we really need all of them? How much could the capacity for digital technology to record these objects loosen our obligations to keep them as physical things? What is it that we are trying to do when we choose to persist these objects, and how much can digital technology fulfill these needs and release us from the necessity of preserving an original? I’ve brought bits and pieces back home from my travels as a reminder of the places I have visited. Sometimes these objects are beautiful and want them to persist, like a glass bowl I brought home from Finland, which I have on display in my hallway. Sometimes these things that I pick up are quite kitschy and not really “me” at all, as a lot of tourist purchases are. I recently brought back a pair of bright orange plastic glasses with horizontal slits in them from a conference where I’d been given them for free. I really wish I hadn’t. Yet they act as a reminder of an evening of fun. In this sense they don’t play much more of a role in reminding me of my past than a snapshot taken on my phone or camera might. They are a reminder of a throwaway moment; the object itself is not precious to me. Taking a photo of these glasses and storing that image with the other photos of the conference would remove the need for me to keep the physical item itself.

We highly recommend the entire work to anyone who is interested in memory and technology, and it is available for free as a PDF, so check it out!  We will probably post some other thoughts from the book later on.

[getcedar]

For he lives twice who can at once employ  The present well, and ev'n the past enjoy.

Alexander Pope (1730)