rudyadler

We are recommending this one: http://fab.com/inspiration/photo-frame-white-18x24

It's cheap and looks great around the poster.

Although for some reason Fab took the BUY link down. But they'll probably put it back up again soon.

We made a limited-edition set of 400 posters and sold them on www.alvybrooks.com in late April. They sold out in less than 24 hours. The very last poster is being auctioned so we can raise even more money for Watsi.

akzidenz grotesk

Good question! We'll update the amounts when the dust settles. I'd expect our cost to be ~25% of the poster price. Everything else will go to Watsi (minus shipping and sales tax for CA residents) Final #s will be posted on Twitter @alvybrooks. We're really grateful to Stripe for lowering their transaction fee and Exec for helping with packing/shipping. Those donations will allow more money to go to Watsi.

Poster are selling fast. Only ~200 left!

Yeah, we debated the price for a long time and consulted PG. Keep in mind that the poster was made using high production standards. They are screen-printed by hand and embossed on really beautiful French paper. We are also just trying to maximize the amount of money we can raise for Watsi since this is a limited-edition poster.

Sorry about that. Let me look into it. In the meantime, can you try again on a different browser?

Agreed, it gets really interesting when we bring it around to ourselves. It's difficult to import digital property without expressed permission, but I think the space will evolve a lot over the next few years and create a lot of opportunities for story-telling and narrative.

I'm a co-founder of 1000memories. One of the motivations for starting the site was a bad personal experience on Facebook after losing a friend. My friend's page got memorialized after a week, and all of his wall content was hidden. In response, three group pages were then created, and the experience became fragmented and disjointed.

I don't think of using FB as a memorial as necessarily bad or good; the truth it's somewhere in between and varies by individual. The problem for FB stems from the fact that it was never designed for this behavior. A vast majority of deaths on FB are never reported, and those profiles stay in the viral loop. Those that are reported put FB in the awkward position of being referee of the deceased's identity.

Ultimately, I was dissatisfied with allowing FB determine how we, as friends and family, were going to remember my friend's life. I don't like that his jokey profile photo is now stuck there forever. I think we can do better. But beyond FB, the reason I'm excited about building a platform for memories is that the Internet in general does a bad job speaking in the past tense. We are focused on providing tools to help people tell and preserve the stories of their loved one's lives.

maybe a little context will help. from our blog...

Late last night, we received an email from Mahmoud Hashim, an Egyptian living in Toronto. Like us, he has watched with horror as peaceful demonstrators have been killed in the violence in Egypt. He told us about the growing movement to help document the martyrs losing their lives in the streets and pointed us to a collaborative Google Doc that is being circulated around the world to aid the process. Mahmoud wrote "I realized then that the least we can do is not forget these brave young men and women, and to honor them by letting the whole nation know who they were" He then asked us for a favor: Could we take the data being collected from observers in Egypt and make a more visually compelling website. He wanted us to "create a page that will help young people honor the memory of those heroes and for the whole world to see and then dive deeper."

This email came at the very end of a long day, but we knew what we had to do. We rolled up our sleeves and stayed up late into the evening creating a special online memorial to the Egyptian martyrs. A place to remember their sacrifices and know that these are not just numbers. We hope that this can be a place that shows the world what is happening and helps a little to remember each of the lives lost that they might not be wasted and that the violence may end. You can see it at 1000Memories.com/Egypt

If you have any information about someone killed in Egypt, we have linked our site to the Google Doc that has been used to record deaths. We are totally committed to continually updating our memorial as the Google Doc is updated. We currently have 32 names, but know there are hundreds more still undocumented.

This is exactly why we started 1000Memories in the first place: to help the living pay tribute and remember the ones we admire and love. We're glad to have an opportunity to do our part.

We never thought about hiring VO talent. We just thought about people we know that might have the right tone.

The voice over is a former colleague. We love his voice because a) he sounds like Jeff Bridges and b) he has a slight lisp that is really endearing. We tried younger voices but they just didn't feel as right. We felt it needed an older, wiser narrator.

We started writing the script mid-December. Launched today. So about 5-6 weeks.

We started by writing (and re-writing) the script in-house. Then we hired a very talented friend in Portland to do the illustration and he recommended we hire a local animation house that he liked and had worked with previously. The voice over was chosen after auditioning/recording 5 of our friends and my brother composed the sound design. It was a very collaborative process with a great group of people. We built slowly, allowing for feedback and brainstorming at each phase of the process. It really helps to work with people you like and whose tastes you trust.

Thanks, we spent a lot of time working on getting the tone right. There are multiple elements - voice over, music, color, illustration, script - so the trickiest part was bringing them all together in a way that felt genuine and honest.

Bill's family & friends have set up a page on 1000Memories to share memories of his life.

http://1000Memories.com/BillZeller

If you knew Bill, please join his page.

Bill's family & friends have set up a Memory Page to share memories together online.

http://1000Memories.com/BillZeller

If you knew Bill, please join his page.

paul is a casual guy and usually likes to have an informal conversation. looking back, the mockups we showed him were really overdeveloped. i think paul was reacting to an idea 5 steps ahead of where it should have been.