iMemories was selected by Comerica as a 2008 Arizona Company to Watch.

Steve Krell, Kevin Myers and myself went to the Phoenix Convention Center to accept the award. The evening was a lot of fun, interacting with other top companies in our home town.

Thanks to Comerica and ASBA for putting on a great event, and supporting entrepreneurship and 2nd stage growth companies throughout Arizona.

I frequently read “The Latest in Technology from David Pogue”.  David, who is a journalist for the New York Times, has a good perspective on technology, and I enjoy his writing style and respect his views.

He delivered an excellent post today — that is right up my power alley.  I thought I would share it, and help David spread the word.

View Post: Why We Shoot Home Videos

I agree with David on several levels of “Why we shoot home videos”.  I also don’t believe people have to have a “captive audience” and “long periods of time” to enjoy home videos.  At iMemories, we transformed the way home videos are enjoyed and shared modern day — via our innovative online video experience.  We have found that once a box of home movies are converted to digital — or digital video is uploaded via a modern camcorder — that the Web is where the primary watching and sharing (or consumption) takes place, even though the video is preserved on DVD. 

In addition, when iMemories breaks the home videos into video clips for our customers, it makes it easy to watch and share the best moments — interactively.  This is an innovative and fresh approach to home videos that makes the entire experience effortless as well as more entertaining, and more fun.

Recording our lives is a fundamental human instinct.  Recording is easy for most. It’s everything after recording that becomes difficult and time consuming.  That’s where iMemories comes in.

So, we applaud David Pogue for creating the conversation.

It appears at long last JVC will stop producing standalone VHS VCRs, made from Victor Company of Japan, after a 32-year run. Not a bad lifespan in the technology world.

The company said it will still keep pumping out combo units, with three-in-one HDD/DVD/VCR and DVD/VCR players so people can at least watch old home movies and wedding tapes not yet transferred to digital yet.

More than 900 million VCRs, including 50 million from JVC, were produced, for what was definitely a “game-changer” piece of electronics when it hit the scene.

This is a further wake up call that analog videotape is quickly becoming extinct.  No only do all videotape formats have an aggressive lifespan (~10 years). But, it’s continuing to be more and more difficult to even watch videotape. 

It’s clearly time to pass the home video entertainment torch to DVD, Blu-ray Disc and other digital entertainment platforms, including the Web.

Due to the economic environment, industry experts expect consumers to “nest” this holiday season.

“If people aren’t traveling and stay home, what are they going to do? They’ll want relatively cheap home entertainment,” said David Gibson, senior analyst at Macquarie Research Equities.

iMemories home movies on DVD provide the type of social entertainment that “nesting” families are looking for this Christmas season. Hours of rediscovery, family storytelling, joy, laughter and nostalgia.  iMemories DVDs bring these important, treasured memories back to life – for everyone to enjoy.

The Internet and advances in printing technology made it possible for consumers to design and order their own posters, mugs, books and T-shirts.  Consumer electronics companies — even sneaker companies — offer music players, shoes or computers with personally selected designs or colors.

Now you can personalize your video camera. Pure Digital Technologies, which makes the popular Flip Video line of compact camcorders, unveiled a website (theflip.com) where you can design the case of its Mino video camera.

The company offers more than 1,000 new designs, as well as the ability to upload your own photos.

Since launching the Flip in 2006, Pure Digital has sold 1.5 million cameras.  While camcorders are usually popular with moms and dads to take video of their kids, the Flip Mino is targeted to teens. It’s small, looks cool and fits in your pocket.  

A personalized Flip video camera makes a really cool gift for teens or anyone who you know would take more video if they could just put the video camera in their pocket, and take it with them everywhere. Just remember, make sure they upload their Flip Video clips to iMemories — so they can share them, store them, and make personalized DVDs.

The entire iMemories Team is excited about the latest buzz about our innovative company, and what we do for our customers.

Today, a national story hit the wire through the Associated Press. It has been picked up by hundreds of media outlets — all hungry to tell our story.

See it here: Analog’s twilight: Slowly, digital trumps physical

A special thanks to Ted Anthony, a professional journalist with AP, for doing a masterful job telling this story. And to Jon Teeuwissen, one of our prized customers, for sharing his family’s story to the world.

While cell phones were once well known as a critical device for business communications needs, it seems as though they’re now no longer popular for this use solely.  As more and more users turn to their cell phone for entertainment purposes rather than business needs, it is quickly becoming the ‘must-have’ consumer gadget.

A new survey conducted by Artificial Life finds that almost half of U.S. mobile phone users turn to their devices for entertainment and on the go access to gaming, music and video content.

According to the surveys findings, 46 percent of U.S. cell phone users use their devices for entertainment. Also, of the 200 respondents to the survey, 87.5 percent of smartphone owners said they access this type of entertainment content.  In addition, 33 percent said they use their phone for entertainment over any other purposes like email, GPS and Internet browsing.
 
As phones continue to advance technologically to offer enhanced memory, robust architecture and increasing speed, the demand for high end mobile devices is climbing.
 
Even those users who do not own a smartphone (56 percent) responded to the survey that they want to own a smartphone so they can utilize these types of advanced features.  Music, gaming and video were desired by about one-fourth of these respondents while 33 percent expressed value in mobile gaming.
 
It’s motivating to witness more U.S. consumers, handset manufacturers and carriers taking advantage of the new capabilities of 3G smartphones, including rich 3D gaming, social networking, music and videos, from anywhere at anytime.

Individuals are now seeing the value in mobile phones beyond business productivity, and are beginning to see them as tools to complement their hobbies and lifestyles in fresh and exciting ways.

Everyone’s carrying phones with digital cameras built-in. That leads to some really great ideas of how to leverage the speed and convenience of having a digital camera with you at all times.

Ideas like, 1) leave a trail of digital bread crumbs when walking in a new city, 2) capture a whiteboard after a meeting, and even 3) be prepared if an accident should happen.

Read the Ten Great Uses for Your Camera Phone from DigitalTips.org (which is produced and managed by the Consumer Electronics Association).

The Godfather is remembered as a dark picture. But over the years it has become less dark than intended.

The opening scene of the best-picture Oscar winner is the ultimate example. Emerging from shadow is the face of Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto), the father who asks Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) for a favor on the day of the Don’s daughter’s wedding.

But when director Francis Ford Coppola saw the 1972 film on a screen for its 25th anniversary, he thought, “Gee, the picture doesn’t look like I remember it looking. This very, very beautiful photography of (cinematographer) Gordon Willis over the years had faded.”

The movie is back to its inky finest — thanks to an assist from Steven Spielberg — on The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration.

The Godfather was a victim of its own success. It earned $135 million in the USA.  To meet demand, Paramount quickly made large numbers of copies to ship to theaters. As a result, the negative was ultimately destroyed through the practice of printing it so much.

A decade ago, Paramount stored all its Godfather film elements in a cold vault to help preserve them until a full digital makeover was possible. No matter how seriously the studio wished to solve the problems at that time, it would not be possible until digital technology provided the tools.

Fast-forward to 2005: Coppola, looking to renew the preservation effort, wrote to Spielberg when DreamWorks was acquired by Paramount. Could Spielberg, who had been involved in restoring Lawrence of Arabia, spur on the project? It was an offer Spielberg could not refuse. He set into motion the two-year process.

No single usable Godfather negative remained that was suitable as a source. In the end, Harris and the preservation team gathered a bunch of backup film elements and an Italian-subtitled print used as a color reference.

Over months, the restoration technicians carefully scanned the material and then began cleaning up the footage in its digital form, 4K files (meaning the video is made up of 4,000 lines of horizontal resolution, more than four times the quality of HDTV).

In addition to digitally removing scratches and repairing damage — more than 1,000 man-hours of dirt removal was performed on The Godfather— the technicians were able to fix errors that were more than three decades old.

This just goes to show you the power of digital technology as it is applied to restoring motion picture film. At iMemories, we deploy similar technology to restoring everday home movies, that are priceless and treasured to everyday people.

Home Networking penetration will grow nearly 50 percent by the end of 2008, according to a new study from Parks Associates.

The study says home networking will reach 168 million households worldwide by the end of 2008. Households with networking solutions for broadband and file sharing totaled 114 million in 2006, according to Parks Associates.

The study says this growth will lay the foundation for expansion of multimedia services internationally.

“Broadband growth pushed Europe ahead of North America in terms of home network adoption,” says Kurt Scherf, vice president, principal analyst, Parks Associates.

“With the network in place, providers will tie in high-demand entertainment services. By 2012, over one-third of networked nodes worldwide will have entertainment or multimedia functionality, with particularly strong growth in IPTV services.”

Scherf says European broadband providers are the leaders in deploying home networking solutions that provide basic broadband-sharing features.

Parks Associates also says the sales of NAS devices will reach 13 million units by 2012, attributing the growth to the ever-growing desire for digital content.

This seems to be an unstoppable trend, as consumers continue to demand rich media entertainment — on any and all digital devices. At iMemories, we believe that personal media entertainment — home movies in digital video format — will become a dominant form of entertainment.