Personal Digital Histories

The hobby of genealogy is very popular now, revealing how generations like to know about their ancestors. But what will your descendants be able to find out about you? Will they have to rely on fragmented records and lost archives? Or will you leave them your own Personal Digital History as a legacy? A kind of personal time-capsule for your future family to enjoy. With a bit of patience and a normal home computer you can make a relatively complete digital history of your life which will still be 'readable' in many years to come.

The WholeLife Viewer is a simple piece of software for PCs (not Mac compatible) which helps you organise and visualise all your digital stuff to tell your life story as your own personal digital history, which I call a 'WholeLife'. Most importantly you can incorporate your narrations (stories, anecdotes and musings) so that future generations will hear your spoken memories as well as see your illustrated history. You simply put all your photos, scanned documents and sound files into a set of predetermined Windows folders and the software presents your life story as a series of related multimedia 'pages'. This is not an Internet based activity but one which you do on your own PC at home, keeping security issues to a minimum. Use the menu option on the left to find out more about the software.

You can download a small free 'trial version' of the software from the Download Free Trial Software page. Have a play with it and make a few personal digital history multimedia pages. Then, if you like the idea and want to create your own WholeLife you can purchase the complete software on DVD (Order Full Software) for £34.50 plus postage and packing. The full software is not available as a download because it is a bit too large.

Creating a complete digital history of your life is a bit of challenge! The free book called "How To Save Your Life" was written partly as guidance on using the WholeLife Viewer software and partly as inspiration in helping you understand how to go about making your digital history. The book is available as a set of free downloadable PDF files (one per Chapter) from this site in colour but a bit compressed for smaller file sizes. You can download the whole book and have a good read. The book together with the small trial version of the software will help you decide whether you want to create your own Personal Digital History, or perhaps a digital history of someone else's life.