It is ironic that now that everyone (well, almost) owns a digital camera, we have so many digital photos - taking up huge amounts of hard drive space, but not much to show for. What would your guess be as to what percentage of photos actually make it out of the dark recesses of our hard drive and get shared with families and friends? 10%? 5%?

The holidays is a great time to liberate your photos from your hard drive to make holiday gifts. They are special, meaningful, unique and can cost less than a tie.

	Digital Scrapbooks - Bound and printed into gorgeous albums
	Photobooks -  Share your vacations, baby's first year in these easy-to-make beautiful, coffee-table albums.
	Customized Photo Calendars - Start any month, highlight important dates, birthdays, anniversaries, make unique holiday gifts for friends and families.
	Make slide shows with your photos.  Get creative and create a story out of your photos (click slide show below).
	Make personalized holiday photo gifts: Photo coasters, poster-size canvas, canvas totes, photo keepsakes, the variety available out there is mind-boggling.
Like this slideshow below (Press Play)? It was made from just 5 photos: Click To Play
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Personalized photo calendars are a snap to make with Microsoft WORD. Many people who have used Microsoft Word for many years have never done what the below video shows: that you can use Word as a simple scrapbooking software. One of the ways busy families keep up with memory keeping is by leveraging software they already own and are familiar with.

Share your photos this holiday season by making your own gift calendars. Your families and friends will enjoy them year round instead of storing your holiday photo cards away in the cellar with the other holiday trimmings.

If you have a color printer, you can print the finished photo calendar pages right at a home just like you print a Word document. If not, copy them on a thumb drive or CD, take them to your local Kinko's for 49 cents a color page. While you are there, get a transparent sheet for the top, a backing for the bottom, and have them spiral bound the photo calendar pages into beautiful gift-calendars.

To request free custom photo calendar templates used in the video, email to freecalendar@joyremembered.com

While you are waiting for the photo calendar templates, check out some gorgeous calendar pages here at our Idea Center

Technorati Profile

The easiest way to digitize your video tapes is to transfer them to DVDs. You drop off or mail your video tapes and you receive a finished DVD that you can pop into your player right away. Send to aunts, uncles, grandparents, and enjoy reliving the good times all over again.

When choosing a tape-transfer service, go through this checklist:

• Do they use professional equipment? Don’t go with hobbyists whose equipment may damage your precious tapes.
• What tapes do they convert? They should accept all these formats:


• Do they print the DVD title or do they use stickers. Direct printing is better because if stickers are not applied with 100% symmetry, the DVD may not play smoothly.
• Will the finished DVD play in your DVD player?
• Does the price include a DVD menu with chapter points a.k.a. scene selection?
• Is each chapter represented by a small clear picture (thumbnail) on the menu screen so you can navigate around easily? If the company says you got to click the Next and Previous button to get around, find another company. We live in a visual world, a DVD must have scene selections shown by thumbnail images.
• Are the chapter points based on scene changes or by the clock? Chapter points based on scene changes makes for a better viewing experience as opposed to a chapter point every 3 minutes that may be smacked in the middle of Junior’s recital.
• Are the chapter thumbnails shown on the DVD cover so you can pick up a DVD and know what’s in it without having to pop it into the player. Yes, the DVD title helps, but images will help me remember the content more easily.
• How long before you get your finished DVD?
• Do they guarantee their work? If you don’t like your finished DVD, can you get your money back? The reputable outfits say, “Absolutely!”
For those reasons and for the price, the service I use most is www.apmstudio.com. Click this link to get a 5% discount from APM Studio.
www.HomeMovieDepot.com is another reliable outfit I recommend. They charge less, and this is the tradeoff. Instead of printing 48 thumbnail images on the DVD cover, you see about 10 snapshots from different points of the movie. For me, the DVD caption plus the 10 snapshots are enough to help me identify the DVD. If you are ok with that, you could save some $$, they are usually $5 to $10 less than www.apmstudio.com Plus, due to the volume of business from our readers, HomeMovieDepot has an exclusive 10% discount for our readers (use coupon code: "joyremembered" ).

So, here’s how to transfer your tapes into a finished DVD:
Step 1: Choose a service that meets the guidelines I outlined above.
Step 2: Place your order on the web site and print out the order form.
Step 3: Mail your tapes together with the order form.
Step 4: Receive a finished DVD that you can pop right into your player and enjoy.

What if you are scared to death of mailing your precious tapes in the mail? Bring them in person to a Ritz Camera store or your local drug store. Make sure they don't just mail them out for processing okay, because that beats your purpose.

VHS Tapes, 8 mm tapes, mini-DV tapes will deteriorate with time. If you can't digitize them today, store them in a dark, cool, dry area to slow down the deterioration. Another reason to digitize them? I don't even own a VHS player anymore.