The Tech That Binds

Knock wood, all continues to go well for our grandniece Isabella! After several weeks of taking lots of photographs, I had a slap the palm of my hand to my forehead kind of moment. I suddenly realized that our Canon PowerShot S2 IS digital camera has a video feature. Isabella had been moved to a new room in the NICU and I thought that her family living far away would like to be able to see her new room and, much more importantly, see Isabella in motion. So, I shot less than three minutes of footage, loaded it onto my computer, edited it in iMovie, uploaded it to our private iWeb site and sent the link off to family and friends. Unfortunately, not everyone could access iWeb or view the video.

Cue the abrasive sound of a phonograph needle being scraped off an LP!

I’ll spare you the excruciating details of how I tried to troubleshoot the problem and how many e-mails I sent out. Eventually, I had to take another route and I finally found a winner. Turns out YouTube offers a Private video option. You upload your video to YouTube, tick the box marked private and then send out invitations to whomever you authorize to view the video. You’re limited to a maximum of 25 people and they have to register with YouTube. But for the family members whose non-Apple PCs and internet browsers weren’t compatible with iWeb, it has been a great solution. We’ve uploaded four videos to both locations and have it down to a pretty smooth system.

There was only one family member left out of the unlimited access loop: Nana, Isabella’s great grandmother. She has watched a couple of the videos on our laptop, but unlike everyone else, she doesn’t have nor does she want a computer. So this afternoon I used iDVD and burned all four videos to a disc. If her reaction to Carrie and Al’s wedding DVD is any indication, I should probably bring her a box of tissues along with the DVD!