Wow Wednesday: ThingLink for Genealogy

ThingLink Interactive Images

We've all heard the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." And as family historians, we know it's true.

Further, if you happen to blog or write about your ancestors like I do, you try to make a picture, your family history, your genealogy research come alive with words ~ for yourself, your loved ones, your descendants, and others in general.

But what about an interactive ancestor image? An ancestor's image where the viewer can click on a portion of the image and, well, a portion of the family story is told? Now, wouldn't that be cool? I mean, sure, for us, that'd be cool, but it'd also be awesome for those in our family who just want pictures with a fast and easy family history story.

Or how about the younger ones in the family who want it digital, mobile, and easy to look at?

Well, you can do that with ThingLink. You can make your ancestors' images interactive with ThingLink. It's a web-based application that, after setting up a free account, allows you to upload an image and tag it {or annotate it} with captions {description}, links, audio, video, and whole lot of other rich media tags to your ThinkLink Interactive Image. Once done, you can set the image to be unlisted {private} or leave as public {default}. And you can also allow others to edit the annotations on {or add them to} the photo as well, which is kinda nice if you're wanting to collaborate with other family members. {The default is to not allow that.}

ThingLink hosts the image on their servers for you and then you can choose to share it to popular social media sites or embed it on a website or blog. If you leave the interactive image as public, then it's also indexed by Google which means it's another way for potential cousins to find and collaborate with you.

So? I thought it was such a neat idea, I decided to try it out for you this morning {which was easier said than done when you consider my old laptop passed away last Saturday and I now have a new one and I'm not done loading it with all my, um, "stuff."} But? I just had to do it because I already knew what image I wanted to annotate and link ~ my newly acquired photo of my 2nd great grandparents, Daniel and Annie (O'Brien) Vaughan.

*big sigh*  And?

Totally worth the trouble. =) Below, embedded in this blog post, is the image that I annotated on ThingLink {after I loaded the drivers to my scanner, scanned it again so I could play around with my new Photoshop Elements 11. Wow. Version 11 is a little different than my old version 7. And wow it's been a long morning.}

If you hover over the image, captions {which ThingLink calls descriptions} and links to blog posts I've written about them will pop up so you can learn more about everyone. I even added a short video that I previously created about my Great Grandmother, "Boo," with me reading her baptismal record out loud.

How cool is that?

It was super easy to make. Now, it officially resides on my account at ThingLink and you can take go take a look at it over there. In fact ThingLink, itself, is a free social platform where you can follow others on there who are also making Thingies on ThingLink. {I've decided that's what I'm gonna call the ThingLink Interactive Images ~ Thingies.} And? They have stats, comments, etc. available for each, um, Thingy, you create. Also, when someone visits the ThingLink Interactive Image you have created {either on ThingLink or wherever it's embedded}, they can "Touch" it virtually. Kinda like leaving a virtual "I was here" note to it or the equivalent of a Facebook 'Like."

Plus, they have a free ThingLink app for Facebook Pages and a free ThingLink app for your iOS device. {That's right. Thingies-to-go.}

So, yes, a picture may be worth a thousand words. But a Thingy is worth even more words and is way more fun!

And who doesn't like fun?!?

So, go forth, have some fun, and make some thingies! I mean, ThingLink Interactive Images. ;)

~Caroline

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