Oct 21, 2024 by MemoryWeb Team
CHICAGO, IL — October 21, 2023 — MemoryWeb, a digital photo organizing and metadata management company, has been named #9 on Crain’s Chicago Business Most Innovative Companies List.
Crain’s Chicago Business publishes its “Most Innovative Companies” list based on an independent review of patent output and quality by evaluating Chicago-area companies that received patents from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office last year.
MemoryWeb had 17 U.S. patents at the time of the list’s publication, four of which were issued in 2023.
MemoryWeb was previously included on Crain’s Chicago Business Most Innovative Companies List for 2022, where it ranked #4.
MemoryWeb allows users to organize, view, preserve, and share their digital files with all the memory details captured, connected, and vivified through an easy-to-navigate web of memories. The company was founded by husband and wife, Chris and Nancy Desmond, and longtime friend Michael Taylor, who were all looking to find a way to preserve and share historic family photos.
They built the MemoryWeb platform to deliver on their own unmet needs when it came to organizing, managing, and enjoying their photos and stories. MemoryWeb’s current platform is heavily focused on metadata and photos.
“We’re thrilled to be recognized in this year’s list. We are continually innovating on the functionality of metadata and expanding our portfolio for the organization and management of digital media, so you can expect to see additional inventions and patents coming from MemoryWeb in the future,” states Chief Memory Officer, Nancy Desmond.
Oct 24, 2022 by MemoryWeb Team
CHICAGO, IL — October 24, 2022 — MemoryWeb, a digital photo organizing and metadata management company, has been named #4 on Crain’s Chicago Business Most Innovative Companies List.
Crain’s Chicago Business publishes its “Most Innovative Companies” list based on an independent review of patent output and quality by evaluating Chicago-area companies that received patents from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office last year.
MemoryWeb had nine U.S. patents at the time of the list’s publication, five of which were issued in 2021. The company’s 10th patent is due to be issued on October 25, 2022.
Front/back photo flip feature is one of MemoryWeb's innovations
MemoryWeb allows users to organize, view, preserve, and share their digital files with all the memory details captured, connected, and vivified through an easy-to-navigate web of memories. The company was founded by husband and wife, Chris and Nancy Desmond, and longtime friend Michael Taylor, who were all looking to find a way to preserve and share historic family photos.
They built the MemoryWeb platform to deliver on their own unmet needs when it came to organizing, managing, and enjoying their photos and stories. MemoryWeb’s current platform is heavily focused on metadata and photos.
“We’re thrilled to be recognized in this year’s list. We are continually innovating on the functionality of metadata and expanding our portfolio for the organization and management of digital media, so you can expect to see additional inventions and patents coming from MemoryWeb in the future,” states Chief Memory Officer, Nancy Desmond.
Nov 28, 2017 by MemoryWeb Team
MemoryWeb, a company founded on the concept that back-of-the-photo information should travel with photos wherever they go, enhances and redesigns it's memory stamp feature in response to user feedback.
MemoryWeb today announced a revamped version of its memory stamp feature that changed both the format of the stamp and expanded the information it can mark. This popular feature lets users share photos with “who, what, when, where and why” details permanently imprinted as part of the picture. Users can share photos without any details as well.
Prior to this release, MemoryWeb’s memory stamp feature placed the user’s chosen details directly on the actual photo when it was shared from the app. While the original memory stamp format was very well received, users gave feedback that they would prefer the tag details to be separate from the actual photo but still a permanent part of the image. Users also expressed a wish to be able to use the memory stamp to clearly mark ownership on photos, especially when they are shared in a public setting such as a collaborative family tree.
In response to this input, MemoryWeb revamped their memory stamp feature in two key ways. First, the company added a field in the memory stamp options that allows the user to cite who contributed a photo. This is a key add for genealogists looking to ways to better protect their digital assets.
Second, MemoryWeb placed all memory stamp information below the photo and used smart icons to easily distinguish what type of detail was included.
In the new format, users chose what, if any, details they would like to share from this list:
MemoryWeb’s founders created the memory stamp to solve one of the biggest problems faced by people sharing photos today – the disconnection of details.
“The ability to share photos with details permanently connected is especially important to genealogists,” says Christopher Desmond, one of MemoryWeb’s three founders. “These family historians spend countless hours researching the stories of their ancestors and are clamoring for a way to easily share their findings with the context intact and with photo ownership clearly documented.”
Even though the company takes the unusual step of allowing users to export photos with all their tags embedded within the file metadata, the founders realized that the details can come “unglued” when the image is uploaded/shared with platforms such as Facebook. More often than not, social media and other sharing platforms will strip out the embedded tags or will override them with incorrect info such as today’s date and location. This blog post contains a detailed example how photo information can be compromised.
“MemoryWeb’s memory stamp solves that problem by creating a way to permanently attach back-of-the-photo details, regardless of where the photo is uploaded, shared, printed, etc.,” states Desmond.
MemoryWeb’s memory stamp feature is just one of several ways tag details can travel on and/or within a user’s photos. The company describes the ability to permanently tie details to photos forever, a process they refer to as creating File DNA, in this passage from their website.
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About MemoryWeb
MemoryWeb was founded by three Chicago-based entrepreneurs with a track record of start-up success who believe that back-of-the-photo information should travel with photos wherever they go. Currently available for iOS devices, MemoryWeb brings generations of photos from a broad range of sources in one organized place, creates interactive connections between them and preserves “back-of-the-photo” details forever. Because MemoryWeb imports copies of photos directly from places such as Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Flickr, Photos Camera Roll, Mac/Windows computers and FamilySearch, the company is able to preserve more of the correct information tags during the import process.
Sep 28, 2017 by MemoryWeb Team
MemoryWeb made its genealogy industry debut by exhibiting at the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) annual conference held in Pittsburgh, PA, August 30-September 2, 2017.
Just prior to the conference, MemoryWeb released a new set of features to help families connect past, present, and future generations of photos from one place (see announcement).
The FGS annual conference draws genealogists and family historians from the US and other areas of the world who are interested in strengthening their research skills. Conference sessions are taught by industry experts, with special days focused on society management and the library science behind family history research. The conference also has an exhibit hall showcasing regional societies and vendors with products/services useful to genealogists.
2017 booths included businesses and organizations such as American Ancestors, Ancestry, Daughters of the American Revolution, FamilySearch, Family Tree Maker, My Heritage, RootsFinder, and MemoryWeb.
At MemoryWeb’s booth, the three founders (husband/wife Christopher and Nancy Desmond and their long-time entrepreneurial cohort, L. Michael Taylor) spoke with attendees about the particular challenges they’ve had in managing family photos and details. The team explained how MemoryWeb could help solve unmet archiving and sharing needs, especially with the recent release of the new feature set that can permanently connect the dots for all photos and generations.
As the founders gave demos of the app to booth visitors, attendees remarked that many features and capabilities clearly differentiated MemoryWeb from other photo apps, including:
FGS conference attendees had much to say about MemoryWeb:
Dallan Quass, President of RootsFinder, stated, “Our industry has seen so many solutions for preserving family photos and details that newcomers are nearly all dismissed as YASAPA (yet another story and photo application). Quass continues, “I was fully prepared to count MemoryWeb among those apps with nothing unique or important to offer the genealogy community. I was happily surprised to see that MemoryWeb is the answer to so many of our needs.”
Angela Rodesky of ARodesky Genealogy stopped by MemoryWeb’s booth to interview Christopher Desmond, one of the company’s three founders. In her vlog, Rodesky exclaims: “The fact that you can save information on who, what, when, where and post it to your family tree like that? Best thing ever!”
Diane Barberio from ORIGINS unveiled stated “MemoryWeb is moving the genealogical market into the future by merging the old photos we all have in our attic with our cell phone photos. This documents our full family history while preserving the images together in one place.”
Co-founder Chris Desmond stated on behalf of the company and his co-founders, “We believe that context should always travel with a photo, in every direction. Otherwise, we’ve traded one shoebox for another. Our users love how portable their tags are – within or on top of their photos. So the next time they research a great photo or family record, they don’t have to worry that the date, location, people and caption will be stripped out when they post it somewhere like a family Facebook group.”
MemoryWeb will make its next event appearance at RootsTech 2018 which will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 27- March 3, 2018. RootsTech is a global family history event where people of all ages learn to discover, share and celebrate their family connections across generations through technology. The company will have a booth in the exhibit hall and founder Mike Taylor will be presenting on the critical need for metadata portability.
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About MemoryWeb
Founded by three Chicago-based entrepreneurs with a track record of start-up success, MemoryWeb brings generations of photos into one organized place, creates interactive connections between them and preserves “back-of-the-photo” details forever.