MemoryMiner has been on our radar for some time. It almost had to be, why? At FotoBridge we pain- stakingly shepard volumes of private images, with the upmost care and respect, to the digital universe. Beloved memories of family, friends, personal and historic events and achievements --- priceless, meaning soaked keepsakes.  As we like to say, once digital, these treasure troves are not only protected forever - perhaps even more importantly, they are unleashed from the shackles of their prior form.  And here inlies the appeal and promise of MemoryMiner.  That is of a tool that enables you to spin static, one dimensional slices of time (newly digital photos and other digital items) into cherished memory gold.  With MemoryMiner the idea is to evlove your one-of-a-kind photo collection into a living network of links, relationships and purposeful content. The program works simply and intuitively by helping you capture and preserve precious information about the people, places, times and events captured in any collection of images, sounds, documents, etc. and provides the digital "thread" to knit togther meaningful context.  It treats photos as individual frames in an endless story.

In addition to photos, the stories can contain video, documents, ULRs and other digital media.  As elements are linked, the value of your photo collection starts to benefit from the network effects - more links, more relationships, more information, greater meaning, deeper context and utility - pure memory gold! From personal histories, educational programs, artistic projects to business marketing the uses are nearly limitless and varied.

We tested MemoryMiner v 1.1 for windows and found it to be easy to use, powerful and even fun.  It includes slick implemetations of features found in the latest versions of Apple's iPhoto like face recognition and live mapping.  But unlike iPhoto, MemoryMiner is a complete personal digital asset manger for everyone with memories and a PC.  The version we tested sells online for an introductory price of $30.00 (Mac Version $45.00).  There are also school grant programs and higher education discounts available.

Our take? We give MemoryMiner a rare 5 stars (out of 5 stars) for it's ease of use, nice implemantion of cool features (like instant web publishing among others) and the huge value adding effects for newly digital photo collections of all kinds.  To see creator John Fox tell the story of how and why MemoryMiner was developed to the Los Angeles Idea Project click here.