Help Mom Preserve Her Memories Digitally On Mother's Day
/If you're on a tight budget and traditional gifts are a little out of reach for Mother's Day this year, I have good news for you.
You can give your mom gifts this year that will mean a lot more than an expensive present might. Some of them won't cost you anything except time with her (which isn't a cost at all--it's priceless) and an afternoon to go through things with some tools you likely already have on hand.
I firmly believe our own resources and resourcefulness are more than enough to create a life of abundance and meaningful memories for those we love.
We only have to start where we already are.
Do What You Can With What You Have Quote
Especially if your mother is a woman of a certain age, she might need a little assistance with the technology involved in some of these projects. Or maybe she doesn't need help with that kind of thing at all! We mature women are pretty savvy. In any case, I know she'd love to do these things with you even if she can do them herself.
Here is a list of digital gifts you might consider for mom this year:
Archive Her Photos
Does she have photo albums that are a little worse for wear? Or maybe she's more like my mom (and me, frankly) and has boxes and totes full of family photos. (It's on my list of "I need to get to that" projects.) There are some great solutions to that problem.
If you have a scanner in your printer or your mom has one, use it to start scanning the photos into organized files. You could just scan them right into her computer, but it might be more convenient to use your own laptop or tablet depending on the number of pictures involved. That way you can continue the project on your own if you can't get it all done in one sitting. Just take the photos with you and proceed at home.
After you have everything scanned and organized, you can get a USB flash drive for around five dollars and back the pictures up, give the drive to your mom and she can plug it right into her own computer. Once the pictures are saved in her computer file system, she can see them any time she wants. Cost (for flash drive only) $5.
The other option is to save them in the cloud, e.g. Microsoft OneDrive, Google Photos, or Dropbox. Then you can just share them with her via email. Cost: $0.
And on that note, here is an option that is even easier and all you need is your phone.
Google has an app called Photoscan which can be used on both Android and iOS. The photos can be stored in Google Photos and shared from there.
Here's a great article with all the details:
Google Just Made It Way Easier To Scan Your Old Photos
BONUS: Now you have all your family pictures, too, and they can be shared with other family members!
Create A Digital Scrapbook
If you have some favorite photos of mom or some nostalgic pictures you think she'd enjoy, go a step further and put them in a scrapbook--a digital one! Embellish the pictures and pages, add frames and text, save, and either email your work of art or print it all out for her.
You might have software in your computer which would work for this, but that route tends to have more steps than a program specifically designed for scrapbooking. A free version can be found at Smilebox.
They also offer more options for free digital creations including greeting cards and photo albums. If you're creative, you'll have lots of fun with it. Cost: $0 unless you print it out. Then you will only be shelling out money for paper and printer ink. If you do print it out, I would suggest using card stock. It holds up much better than regular copy paper.
Do A Computer Cleanup
It will be a lot easier for mom to keep her memories organized and accessible online if her computer is running at peak performance.
You don't have to be a computer technician to help her out with a little digital housekeeping. You just need a few free programs.
First, make sure her computer antivirus is up to date by checking for updates on the antivirus screen.
At this point you can do a quick scan with the antivirus or a full scan if you have a lot of time.
If she has Windows, check to see if there are any Windows Updates she might be missing.
Next comes the downloading. These are the programs I recommend for getting rid of viruses and spyware which might be missed by a standard antivirus program on a Windows system. Most of them have a premium version which costs money, but I use the free version of all of them and they work great.
1. Malwarebytes. I wouldn't be without it. It picks up suspicious programs and it normally doesn't take more than 20 minutes to run.
2. Glary Utilities. This program is the best. You can clean up your registry, your drive, clean out your temporary files, and do about a dozen other upkeep tasks with this one program.
3. CCleaner. This is similar to the Glary program. I also run this one. It sometimes catches things Glary doesn't.
4. Spybot Search & Destroy. This is a standard spyware buster.
There are several others available and if mom has a Mac, you may have to look into similar programs for that platform.
These are my personal workhorses for Windows when it comes to computer maintenance. If you don't live close enough to your mom to download and run the programs for her, maybe a nice email with all the links explaining what they are and how to use them would be gift enough. Cost: $0
Make A Video
If you have special photos or short videos, it's easier than ever to put them into a movie format. There are several free video creators out there, but I will use the best-known video platform as an example.
Youtube has a creator mode. You drag and drop your pictures and movies into the video creator, set transitions and special effects, choose some music from their free audio library and hit publish. Write a description if you like, select your privacy level and share it with mom.
The only requirement is to have a Gmail account in order to sign up. Cost for everything: $0
Help Her With Facebook Security
I'm sure we've all had it happen. You get a friend request from someone you are already friends with on Facebook. Most people think this means that the account in question has been hacked.
Generally, it is more often a case where the account has been cloned. Someone takes that person's profile information they can see publicly which usually includes the person's friends list and creates a duplicate account with a different email address. They then attempt to get the friends on that list to friend them for spamming purposes.
It's always safest to change your passwords both on Facebook and for the associated email account in the event it is a hacking attempt. In addition, changing privacy settings is often the most effective way to prevent people from cloning your account. If they can't see your profile information and your friends list isn't public, there isn't much point in trying to clone you.
Computer security and peace of mind are also priceless. Again, the cost is $0.
Here is an article that explains the problem and the solutions in greater detail.
How to Prevent Your Facebook Profile from Being "Hacked"
On Mother's Day this year, help Mom stay safe online, get her computer system organized, or create some digital records and memories. Things that are vintage-inspired don't have to ignore modern solutions. Sometimes the newest technologies afford us the best opportunity to preserve what matters to us at the lowest possible cost.
This is only a partial list of digital solutions for preserving memories. What programs, applications, or websites have you found that might help create a memorable gift for mom?
