Wednesday 29 August 2007

My mother celebrates her 78th birthday today. There were celebratory comments, birthday cake (Cranks recipe, baked with my fair hands - honest it was the wholemeal flour and raw brown sugar that gave it the texture and dark colour) and X-factor standard tuneful renditions of "Happy Birthday" renditions. Additionally, her age triggered comments about and memories of gramophone records that traveled at 78 revolutions a minute.

This nostalgic moment in turn triggered thoughts about the vinyl albums stached away somewhere at the back of our garage. Unplayed for well over a decade. In any case, not capable of being played since our then 10 month old son decided that it would be fun to test the tensile strength of the pick-up arm on our turntable.

This in turn led to thoughts about our old analogue camcorder and the tapes that we know we can play as long as we can use the camcorder itself for playback. Not the most reliable method for long term viewing. We treasure the images of our children when they were very young more than being able to play my once treasured Top of the Pops compilation album featuring classics like "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" and "Back Off Boogaloo" - click on the links and you'll understand fully. We need to work out how to transfer to a current media format. And then keep current as formats and software programs evolve, shift and change.

The real challenge is staying on top of things and deciding which trend or trends to bet on. Would loading the images on YouTube be a good bet? Maybe relying upon Google's commercial interest in keeping YouTube going would be good? Or maybe Google will pull the plug if they do not get the right return on their US$1.65B investment? Or maybe the best thing is to cover the bases and chooses a number of options?

Realistically, what will happen is that for most people nothing much will happen until such time as the underlying problem surfaces. Then it may be that a solutions is readily available and cost-effective. Or shrugs of shoulders, possibly tears and a realisation that something has been lost for ever.

Tempting to consider the many parallels in terms of personal and societal development. Or maybe an interesting commercial opportunity not only on the technology front but also, and possibly more significantly, on an individual service level. I just need to have another slice of birthday cake and then I can think about it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!