Last Sunday, May 16th, my mum turned 60 years of age. A significant milestone by all accounts, and one that could not simply go by without some kind of major fanfare. Now herein lay the problem, because we are a very geographically challenged family these days. I am one of 7 children (OMG! Yes, 7, now move on!), 3 of which (including me) reside in the UK nowadays, and the rest are in Australia – a sister in Brisbane and the remainder of the clan live in Wollongong, south of Sydney. Added to the dilemma of course, is that the birthday girl and my Dad live in the remote wilderness of north western Tasmania. So remote, on previous visits I have counted more wallabies than people. The geographical complexities were even richer as a sister’s partner was visiting his family in Algeria at the time – and he was as keen as everyone else to participate in birthday wishes. So how could we do something fun with my Mum for her 60th birthday, when we are all scattered to at least three corners of the globe’s four. (I’ve used some geographical license here.)
Well, for one, we decided that a cool thing to do would be to make a fun video, containing a montage of our family photo collection going way back (70s and 80s), with of course Vox Pops from everyone wishing Mum a happy birthday. So that was the goal! But how do you go about capturing photo and video content from family in opposing hemispheres, and then pull it all together in a seamless, professional looking video – and all in the space of about a week. Well, in actual fact, it is readily achievable using Windows Live software.
My family had a great starting point. All of my siblings and their partners with the exception of my brother and his wife use Hotmail. In fact 9 out of 11 people in my family use Hotmail. Some people might say, that’s a result of me, a raging ‘Softy*, evangelising Hotmail with my family – but actually I hadn’t. They chose Hotmail of their own volition and have been using it for years. True, every word, I swear! Of course, my brother and his wife were not disadvantaged in this endeavour, as all they needed to get started with “Mission: 60th Video” was a Windows Live ID. You can create one readily with any email account, even your own ISP email account as they did.
* Softy = a Microsofty, like me!
So here we had 11 people with burgeoning Live IDs eager to collaborate. So the next step to get everyone sharing photos and posting their video content, was to set up a Windows Live Group. Easy to do, just go to http://groups.live.com and you can create a group for just about any purpose. The great thing about a group is that it can be Private, and it gives you all the great features that you’d associate with any Windows Live Profile – so you get a group Windows Live Skydrive where people can post Photos and Videos. The group had to be private as I didn’t want my Mum coming across it and Skydrive was ideal for posting Video Vox Pops too, as 50MB per video file was more than sufficient for us to say “Hi Mum, happy birthday from me in raining Surrey!”, or “Hi Mum, happy birthday from beautifully sunny Brisbane!”
The other great feature of a Windows Live group is that you are given a group email address. One of the perennial problems with trying to stay in touch with my family is remembering everyone’s email address, let alone ensuring everyone is included on those all important family announcement emails. Well, all I needed to do was send an email to the Windows Live group email address, and emails were automatically sent to everyone’s email account. This also meant I was assured of not emailing my Mum accidentally about her surprise video. I intend to carry on using this group email address, now that it’s in place.
So the group was set up. I posted some instructions on the groups Discussion board, and the fam began to upload content. It actually generated heaps of buzz amongst ourselves, because as old family photos from our childhood were added, it all showed up in the group’s What’s New feed, prompting people to leave comments on the more embarrassing ones. Unfortunately, there were no embarrassing photos of me, otherwise I would have happily posted them here.
So, I had the content from everyone, all I needed to do then was download it onto my Windows 7 PC, and then drag and drop it into the waiting capable arms of Windows Live Movie Maker. I have to say, Movie Maker is quickly turning into my favourite Windows Live app. I was a little fortunate in that I was using a Wave 4 internal preview (the next release of Windows Live, due later in the year) – and had access to some rather nifty features over and above the officially released product. I can’t reveal these features as yet – but suffice to say they rock. I must have spent hours in Movie Maker editing content and bringing it all together. Not because it was difficult; on the contrary. Movie Maker is such a snap to use, and so feature rich, that it had my creative energies burning into the small hours.
So there I had it the finished product with photo montages and video Vox Pops from Brisbane, Wollongong, Birmingham, London, and a small village in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. I then published the movie and burned the DVD also using Movie Maker. I could have published the movie on the web, but I decided to go for maximum effect and snail-mailed the high-res DVD to my brother, who was doing a surprise visit to Mum. The plan was to show it to her on a large screen TV on the big day. A plan hatched on Hotmail incidentally. The only thing Windows Live did not do was handling the postage, but Royal Mail graciously stepped in. I had to leg it to my local post office to get it to Australia in time, before my brother flew to Launceston, where the premiere was to take place. But it arrived in 4 working days. A record by all accounts.
And so come the big day last Sunday, and my Mum got to watch our video production. It was a huge surprise and emotional roller coaster for her. But, all the same, it gave her a great thrill and it won’t be a birthday she forgets too easily. She actually commented that it was like having everyone all in the same room, for the 15 minutes the movie ran. It’s kind of humbling knowing that software I work on, like Windows Live enables, these kind of priceless moments – and especially more gratifying when its my own family benefiting from it.
That does not quite complete this Windows Live story however, because it would be remiss of me not to mention that I’m writing this post using Windows Live Writer.
How do I get access to all this you-beaut software – well remember, all you need is a Windows Live ID and the Windows Live Essentials software suite – which contains Writer, Movie Maker, Messenger and other fab apps like Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail. Just go to http://download.live.com
Happy 60th Birthday Mum!