Don’t Let Politics Ruin the Holidays (Again)

Posted on November 30, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

In the age of Trump, how to create healthy discourse during the holidays by sharing nostalgic family photos, rather than waging a political minefield of bellicose bickering

A family is thicker than water – except in this post-2016 election era. How many of you walked away from nine punishing rounds of political “discourse” during Christmas last year, vowing never to speak to your once-favorite cousin or idiotic brother-in-law ever again?

Agree! Rather than discussing politics during Christmas and holiday gatherings–share pictures

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If the data is any indication, a lot of us cut visits short or avoided Christmas, Hannukah and the holidays altogether. In a paper, M. Keith Chen of UCLA and Ryne Rohla of Washington State University, politically divided families avoided each since the election. Using smartphone data, the researchers determined where people live versus where they spent Christmas – and how long they stayed. Then they collected 2016 presidential voting data at the precinct level to approximate political leanings.

Forget Politics! How to Focus on Family History During the Holidays

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The results were startling. Compared to 2015, Democratic voters were about 5 percent less likely than Republicans to travel for Thanksgiving in 2016. Those who did travel did not significantly shorten their visits to Republican hosts. Republicans were more likely to travel to a distant for Christmas and holiday dinners, but they shortened their visits by over 40 minutes. Visits were also shortened proportionally to the number of political ads aired in the traveler’s home media market. For every thousand political ads, visits were shortened by 1.5 minutes. In Florida, that resulted in a 1.2-hour reduction in holiday time for politically divided families.

Forget Politics! Focus on Family History During the Holidays

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Given the divisive political climate, we continue to live in, things might not be much different this year. So, the big question is, how do we cross that divide? How do we enjoy a calm and (mostly) Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and holiday season dinners? How do we get through Christmas without resorting to sword fights with rolls of wrapping paper? How do we survive – and maybe even heal – our broken families?

The effect of partisanship and political advertising on close family ties

Agree ahead of time to focus the conversation on what binds you together: your shared family history. Revisit photos and home movies from yesteryear. Put together a slideshow of digitized photos and display it on your TV. Ask everyone to bring their favorite family memories to share over dinner. If you have a family historian, request that they tote along the big photo album that contains images going back generations. (And let them know that they don’t have to bring along great-grandma’s fruit cake recipe this year.)

Our photo scanning company has digitized more than 600 million family photos, and we often hear from customers about how much these photos mean to them, how many memories they conjured, how many new stories they got to hear from great-grandma because the photos jogged her memory.

Pull out the photos
Share the stories from the past, but not politics
Maybe instead of shrieking and whooping at each other, reminisce
Instead of lunging at each other, laugh
Instead of screaming at each other, cry together
How far would you travel for that kind of togetherness?

* Source:

Published by, Mitch Goldstone, President & CEO, ScanMyPhotos.com

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This Week in Photo Interviews ScanMyPhotos

Posted on November 28, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

This Week in Photo, one of the top photography podcasts is featuring the world of photo scanning and a behind-the-scenes discussion with our CEO, Mitch Goldstone at ScanMyPhotos.com with Frederick Van Johnson.

TWiP 300x209 - This Week in Photo Interviews ScanMyPhotos This Week in Photography (TWiP) is a weekly photography podcast. TWiP recorded its first show at the 2008 MacWorld Expo, launching on January 28, 2008, and is consistently ranked as the #1 photography podcast on iTunes.

The show is co-hosted by Frederick Van Johnson and Alex Lindsay with contributors Scott Bourne, Ron Brinkmann, Frederick Johnson, and Steve Simon. In addition to the contributors, the show features regular guest contributors including photographers Nicole Young and Sara France.

I just watched @ThisWeekInPhoto interview with ScanMyPhotos.com

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Excerpt: Mitch Goldstone of ScanMyPhotos.com joins me to discuss the ins-and-outs of scanning in today’s high-tech world. Is scanning still relevant? What is the state-of-the-art? And what are some pitfalls that you should be aware of when choosing a company to entrust your precious family archives to.

Mitch, leading ScanMyPhotos.com commercialized professionally digitizing photo and other imaging content and the company, headquartered in Irvine, CA has scanned 600 million pictures.

Here’s a great piece on C|Net about ScanMyPhotos.

The company is passionate about preserving pictures so they are not ruined from natural disasters, as was profiled in this Weather Channel segment.

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#TBT Christmas Edition: 3 Creative Ways to Celebrate

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Mitch Goldstone

An opportunity like this only comes around once every seven years: Christmas will be falling on a Thursday this year!

For those who may not know, #TBT stands for “Throwback Thursday” where Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites, honor this trending hashtag by posting old/throwback photos.

Since Christmas is on a Tuesday this year, our big question is: how do you plan to celebrate the holiday and this catchy social media trend?

Consider trying one of these creative ideas to make this upcoming #TBT the most wonderful day of the year.

Instead of getting your loved ones a partridge in a pear tree, start by posting an old Christmas photo with #TBT and #12DaysOfChristmas

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12 days of #TBT

Friday, December 14th will be the first of the twelve days of Christmas. Instead of getting your loved ones a partridge in a pear tree, start by posting an old Christmas photo with #TBT and #12DaysOfChristmas. You can even caption your scanned photos with: “Christmas is on throwback Thursday this year, but I’m starting early! I’ll post one old Christmas photo here every day until the 25th. Stay tuned!”

Then/now themed holiday cards

For a “Then/Now” themed Christmas card, combine a “back-in-day” holiday photo with a recent photo of you and your family. Underneath the photo on the card include #TBT and tell loved ones to watch their social media pages on the 25th. Then, on Christmas Day, fill your newsfeed with a mixture of old Christmas photos combined with the new 2018 ones.

Play a game of #TBT tag with relatives

Every Thursday from Thanksgiving until Christmas, you can play a game with your relatives on Facebook. Tell them since the 25th falls on #TBT this year, you’ll upload an old photo of a family member every Thursday until Christmas. The first family member to correctly tag or identify the person in the photo will get an extra present from you on the big day. This is a great way to get everyone in the family talking and connecting before the holiday.

The #TBT trend is a fun way to celebrate old memories and get everyone reminiscing on your social networks, but there’s an even better way to honor this upcoming Christmas #TBT with your friends and family. If you haven’t done so already, use the ScanMyPhotos bulk scanning option to get your old photos scanned and uploaded to DVD before the holiday. You can then show your loved ones all the good memories you’ve had throughout the years by looping the images on a computer or TV during the holiday.

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The Mercury News: “What to do with your old photos and papers”

Posted on November 25, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

Award-winning journalists, author, and speaker, Marni Jameson. Photo courtesy of Marni Jameson (c).

What to do with your old photos and papers

This nationally syndicated article by “At Home With Marni Jameson” on the urgency to digitize pictures was reported by Award-Winning Journalist Marni Jameson, America’s most beloved home and lifestyle columnist.

In addition to writing a weekly nationally syndicated column on all things home, Marni is the author of three best-selling books.

Her most recent book, “DOWNSIZING THE FAMILY HOME: What to Keep, What to Let Go” (Sterling), is a No.1 Amazon bestseller and it is the definitive guide for anyone cleaning out the family home.

Award-winning journalist, Marni Jameson shares how and why to digitize photos

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If you are a fan of Real Simple, O Magazine, Martha Stewart and the top unclutter and organizing professionals, Marni eclipses all and wrote the primer, actually many. The author, syndicated columnist, and speaker now tackles what to do with your lifetime of memorabilia, pictures and more for today’s all-digital world with this column syndicated in the top 25 U.S. newspapers. As a humblebrag, ScanMyPhotos.com is grateful for the mention to help many preserve their irreplaceable photo memories.

Excerpt: “You still have boxes of Mom and Dad’s stuff?” I twist my finger in my ear to make sure I’m hearing clearly. I’m on the phone with my brother who’s 3,000 miles away in California. He’s moving, prompting this confession to his sister, the purge queen.

Our parents have both passed on, Mom, most recently, two years ago. Now Craig tells me he’s been holding onto boxes of their stuff because “I can’t bring myself to go through them.”

So much for my plan to plow through the boxes in one afternoon, and send an edited pile of photos to Scanmyphotos.com, where high-speed scanners reduce mountain heaps of snapshots into tidy DVDs in minutes.

The scanners are working overtime lately after a year of hurricanes and wildfires, says owner Mitch Goldstone. “Times like these make people realize all can be gone in a flash.”

I’ve called to tell him about the mess I’m in. He gives me a pep talk. “Every day I see photos and documents destroyed by mildew, moisture, high temperatures, dirt and bugs. Those old storage boxes will just disintegrate,” says Goldstone, whose company scans 300,000 photos a day, which is nothing when you consider that Americans have 3.5 trillion analog photos sitting in shoeboxes taking up storage space and risking permanent loss.

However, the biggest enemy of all, he adds, is procrastination.

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Read the full article here

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Washington Post: How to tackle those boxes full of old photos

Posted on November 25, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

We all have decades of irreplaceable pictures. Yet most are fading away. Thanks to Nicole Anzia, freelance writer and owner of Neatnik for sharing these smart and important tips.

Washington Post: How to digitize decades of photographs

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If you’re over the age of 30, you probably have at least a few — and maybe even a dozen — boxes filled with old printed photos and photo albums. You probably haven’t looked at them in years, and yet you can’t just throw them away. Or maybe your parents are moving, and they’ve asked for help in determining which photos to keep and whether anyone wants part of the collection.

Another option is to have all of your newly organized pictures scanned and digitized, so you can toss the prints and easily send electronic copies to friends and family. There are a number of online companies that provide this service based on a per-print cost, such as ScanCafe, DigMyPics, ScanMyPhotos and Legacybox.

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Tech Talk Radio: Preserving Your Photo Memories with ScanMyPhotos

Posted on November 17, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

Listen to “Mitch Goldstone of ScanMyPhotos.Com Talking With Andy Taylor on Preserving Those Digital Memories”

Excerpt from Andy Taylor’s Tech Talk Radio:

Preserving Your Photos and Film with ScanMyPhotos.Com

Mitch Goldstone, President/CEO
ScanMyPhotos.Com. The interview.

Technology over the years has made it easier to save your photographic images and film reels to share with future generations. Photos are a great way to relive great moments from the past and remember the way a town looked, the Alma Mater, the first car, the children as they grow up over the years. I have had a friend send me photos that over the years have been torn, degraded in color quality or damaged by water. For those with photos before 1985, the general way we looked at them was in Photo Albums which filled bookshelves and entertainment nooks.

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Saving those memories has become easier for the consumer however it can be a tedious process of having the proper scanner and knowing how to work programs to save these images. This is a reason we really like the quality, reputation, and speed of what ScanMyPhotos.Com can do for saving these memories in a digital format. No Color Degrading, No splitting or tearing of photos, no having to weed through boxes of photo after photo to find a specific photo.

ScanMyPhotos.com can send you a box for putting your photos in, ship them to ScanMyPhotos.Com and they will take your photos and scan them with high-end professional equipment and then ship them back.

ScanMyPhotos.Com has an incredible amount of reviews from the quality to customer service.

The Company recently introduced Same Day scanning for up to 1000 photos for handling your needs. We spoke with a friend of the show, Mitch Goldstone about the process and how they are able to provide this service. While Smart Phones and DSLR cameras have given us the immediate ability to share and “process” our photos, ScanMyPhotos.com allows us to share, post and preserve the images, catalog and yet still print images at photo kiosk when desired for a print for the living room wall.

Tune in to this Fun Audio Interview with President and CEO of ScanMyPhotos.Com Mitch Goldstone who can help you not stare at those boxes and boxes of photos that one day you will “get to” but have them available for you to look, remember and enjoy.

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California Wildfire Wakeup Call — Scan, Save, Protect Now (USA Today)

Posted on November 17, 2018 by ScanMyPhotos.com

Jefferson Graham, tech columnist at USA Today shares mandatory tips for backing up your pictures. We just heard from a former photo scanning customer whose home was destroyed in the Woolsey, California firestorm. The scanned photos were not archived off-site. If only she had read Jeff’s column before. But, this is a wakeup call not just to digitize and backup your lifetime of pictures (because this keeps happening), but keep the images off-site.

California wildfire wakeup call — Scan, save and protect now (USA Today)

Excerpt: This week, Trevor Hughes saw up close the devastation that comes with those massive California fires, when people found their belongings and memories burned up, leaving them homeless in a flash.

Outside of the devastating human toll, “When you’re watching and looking at a disaster like this, it really forces you to think about what you own, how safe it is, and where your valuables are stored,” says Hughes, a USA TODAY reporter who covered the fires in Paradise, California, that turned an entire town to ash.

Things have been very rough in Malibu as well to the south, where the whole town was evacuated in the wake of the fires.

Scanmyphotos.com ($170 to scan 1,800 photos, free shipping)

How to backup photographs and protect from wildfires

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