Tis the Most Photographed Time of the Year!

Most of us tend to take a lot of photos around the holidays not to mention ringing in the New Year!  This is a time for family and friends, a time of merriment and fun.  As I mentioned in my last post, we went on a ski vacation in Canada, and met my parents and brother there.  I live on the East Coast, my parents and brother live in northwest Washington state.  We don't often see each other.  There were a lot of photo moments!

It'll be a great time to look back on.  Time with family is always treasured time, and the trip was once-in-a-lifetime.  Whistler is much bigger than the mountains we've skied on out East, and so beautiful as well!  (The enclosed gondola was nice too.)  We took pictures with the Olympic Rings, walked around the village and had a really wonderful time.  During the second part of our trip, in Vancouver, we visited the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park...crossing the wobbly bridge 450 feet above the canyon floor!  The view was absolutely breathtaking!  There were bridge paths among the trees, giving us a squirrel's eye view of the forest surrounding us.  I have to say this was one of the most amazing places I have ever been.  And I enjoyed it immensely in spite of the fact that it poured rain the entire time we were there.

Needless to say between skiing, walking around the village and several places we visited in Vancouver plus Christmas itself, I took a lot of pictures this holiday season.  My dad also took a lot of pictures with his camera.  At the end of each day, I loaded all my photos onto my ipad with a great little card reader that  you can get at the Apple store or Photojojo (http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/ipad-cf-sd-reader/) and loaded to the cloud via a new photosharing app from Linea.

Linea is a fun convenient way to organize, save, and share your photos privately.  You can add captions and comments to your photos and when you share a line of photos with someone, that person can export the photos to their own computer if they would like, which is great for grandparents and far away relatives!  Another nice thing is once I shared my line of photos with my parents, they were able to add the photos that they had taken on the trip, so we could keep all the pictures together and view them as a photo story in a beautiful mosaic.

This isn't like Facebook where everyone can see your photos...its completely private.  The only people that have access to the photos are those that the line has been shared with.  And your photos are stored safely and securely in the cloud, actually in three separate places, using the same technology the Pentagon uses.  So it was nice to know that if something had happened to my memory card, or heaven forbid, my new camera, I would not have lost my pictures!  I could simply export them back to my computer from Linea.

If you want to try Linea*, its a free app available at the App store at Apple.  Or you can go to www.getlinea.com and click on the apple icon.  The app will work on both the iPhone and the iPad.  Linea also has a Desktop Viewer for pc and Mac, which is great for sharing with those who don't have either an iPhone or iPad.  There is a three pronged Linea Air icon next to the apple icon on www.getlinea.com that you would need to click on to install the Desktop Viewer on your computer.  You also will want to download Adobe Air onto your computer if you don't already have it installed.  All of this is free.  If you want to add photos directly from your computer, you can add them right there at www.getlinea.com.  You can also add photos from the iPhone, iPad and the Desktop Viewer.

(Note: *There is a subscription to Linea available as well for higher amounts of photo storage.  The free version caps off at 512MB.) 

I'd love to hear how you share your holiday photos!  And if you decide to try Linea out, let me know what you think about it as well!