Amiglia the Blog

ChameleonIntegration review of Amiglia

Thanks to Somu of ChameleonIntegration for posting this Amiglia review:

Amiglia - Social Networking + Photo Sharing + Family Tree

Amiglia is a popular social networking site with 2 twists. It has photo sharing facility and allows you to build a family tree. Founded by Paul and Milena Berry (Husband and Wife), Amiglia creates a mashup of Friendster and Flickr. It lets you to build a family tree and also associate a cool picture along with it.

My first impressions are its ease of navigation. Since the site is targeted on people of all age groups (family tree), not-so-internet-savvy people also need to be taken into account. The features are easily identifiable and the theme is more of an informal look.

The site is loaded with tons of features:

• You can email to the people in your group
• Send an instant message to chat
• Engage the toddlers in your home with the interactive games offered
• Make a free call using Skype
• Share your photos
• Add your digital audios and videos.
• The image recognition program allows you to recognize the faces, and I have to say that its still not full fledged like other image search programs.

If you would like to get a detailed look, try this Amiglia Demo. For a cost of $49.95, I think they are expensive. But if you are curious to get to know the product, there’s a tryout period of 1 month which should give you enough time to test them.

      

Are you in Winnipeg, Canada?

If you are an Amiglia user and live in Winnipeg, Canada or your family is from there - please get in touch - we have a question for you - milena @ amiglia.com. Thanks!

Now you can PRINT your Amiglia photos

Amiglia launched a new printing service in partnership with QOOP today. You can now print your photos on Amiglia and choose from a variety of products:

- Simple prints and enlargements in all sizes, with or without white/black border, glossy or matte
- Calendars (we *LOVE* the Premium Poster Calendar and it makes a great gift for the holidays)
- Photobooks
- Mugs (another great present for the winter) - also available Beer Stein for dad and Travel Mug for Mom's morning coffee
- Minibooks
- Posters
- Minicards
- Apparel (T-shirts, baseball Ts and Hoodies)

Go ahead give it a try, QOOP provides an amazing quality that Amiglia is proud to stand behind.

Amiglia on PediatricsNow and Bella Online

Gwenn Schurgin O´Keeffe, M.D. , F.A.A.P., who we're proud to have on Amiglia's Board of Advisors, published the following review of Amiglia in her PediatricsNow newsletter and Bella Online blog:

With our world faster and more global, what if you could have all these features at your finger tips on one web site, with an educational element for kids:

* Web pages
* Email
* Instant Messaging
* Infant and Toddler Matching Game
* Internet phone services such as Skye
* Online photo-sharing
* Genealogy programs

  That’s what Amiglia.com has not only set out to do, but accomplished. Founded by husband and wife team, Paul and Milena Berry, Amiglia started as an off shoot of the Berry’s personal web endeavors as they strived to stay in touch with their friends and family around the world.

According to Milena Berry, “Amiglia aspires to be the best of breed Family 2.0 site which uses technology to bring your family closer together - with related websites linking your nuclear families by sharing a family tree and the latest family news, photos, videos and calendars in a playful and engaging way.”

What I love about the site is how interactive it is. You can email, chat, send pictures or navigate through the genealogy tree from one screen. The site also includes journals, a family blog and recipe sharing. And, for those of us wanting a more multi-media experience, you can add video and music.

For kids, the web site offers a unique way to learn about the family tree. It is visual and easy to navigate with a mouse. By that feature alone, the site would be a great way to introduce simple computer and mouse skills. The map included on the site allows kids to get a visual idea of where there friends and family are located as well as learning simple geography. Kids learn best with personal associations and this site does allow that.

Right now the site has a matching game for infants and toddlers that allows for simple face recognition. My only real critique of the site is this feature. It doesn’t allow much variation and is really a pretoddler game. Older toddlers would lose interest very quickly. The Amiglia team is current working on enhancing the game features and hopes to expand that niche to other age groups.

Ease of use is a top priority of the site. It includes easy upload of all pictures but features to import from flickR or photoshop. The site includes a GEDCOM import at signup so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel of all your genealogy files.

New features include an improved interface for sharing photos and video as well as RSS feeds. The site now can send birthday and new photo reminders so everyone will be updated as new material is added to your site. All in all, many ways to share online with each other.

A feature that will be launching early November is a photo printing service so families can order prints and photo merchandise of each others photos similar to SnapFish or Shutterfly.

The site has a demo loaded so you can see the features first hand: Amiglia Demo

The final gem of the site is the price: $49.95 for an entire network of friends and relatives. This is an amazing deal when you compare it to other sites out there that require a subscription per user for full access to features.

All in all, I can’t say enough good about this site. It is one of the best family-oriented sites I’ve come across in a long while and I highly recommend it!

Updated navigation

We've been working hard over the Colubus Day long weekend and released new top and side navigation. Comments, suggestions, likes, dislikes - we're in for hearing it all.

New feature: RSS Feeds

For the geeky Amiglia users out there, you can now get an RSS feed of your Amiglia photos. Look for the RSS link under your slideshow.

New feature: Profile Builder

We just launched an interactive profile builder - you can Add a Partner, Mother, Father and Child from within you as the center of the interactive family tree.

Amiglia in The NYTimes, International Herald Tribune

A great article on genealogy included a mention about Amiglia.com - note it, we aren't a free service any more (out of beta), but we definitely give you a feel for our service with the 30 days free you get.

Amiglia is Techdigest Social Networking Site of the Day

Thanks Stuart Dredge from Techdigest for the awesome review:

If you're not already a member of at least 13 social networking websites, you're a digital nobody. And more are springing up every day, flush with venture-capital and bright ideas on how to bring people together. Which is why Tech Digest is going to sniff out the latest, the greatest, and most crucially the ones that AREN'T just a pale YouTube / Flickr / MySpace rip-off.

First up is Amiglia, which really is one of those 'why didn't anyone think of it before?' ideas. It bills itself as 'Family 2.0', which means it's a photo-sharing site, but with a focus on family trees. As we genealogists like to say, it's the illegitimate child of a one-night stand between Flickr and Ancestry.com. Or something.

Anyway, you can get a sense of how Amiglia works by looking at its demo site. Each person's profile is a mixture of photos, videos, music and information. You can even enter your ancient family recipes, although in my case that would be 'swearing, chucking the wok across the kitchen, ordering takeaway Chinese'.

The profile is one way to navigate, as everyone is linked to their husband/wife, parents, siblings and children, allowing you to click through to browse their profiles and latest stuff. There's a separate 'facebook' of your family, friends and, er, pets – complete with built-in links to start Skype chats or conference calls. If Grandma hasn't quite got the hang of this Voice-over-IP or Web 2.0 lark yet, Amiglia might be a good homepage to set her up with, bringing all these features together.

There's also a powerful-looking Family Calendar feature, where you can schedule events, and set up birthday alerts so you don't forget Aunt Edna's 50th. But niftily, you can then use this calendar to navigate through photos taken at these occasions. Meanwhile, when you upload a photo, it's automatically updated in all the family trees that you belong to.

I think the big appeal about Amiglia is that it really is designed around what interactions you'd want with your family, rather than being just another Flickr knock-off with a mild genealogy theme. It's also got good connectivity, being able to import your existing photos from Flickr, and your GEDCOM genealogy data if you've already been using a family history website or application.

And there's some cool geotagging features too, to link your photos to the place they were taken – although I think this might be a step too far for some of the less web-savvy users that Amiglia is clearly targeting. Having used some of the fairly complex family history communities online, I can say that Amiglia succeeds mightily in bringing some Web 2.0 accessibility to the party.

Amiglia Launches a Riya Import Feature

After talking to Riya and working out an agreement with them, we have re-launched this feature. It's live, its real, give it a try and let us know what you think. Thanks Ann and Riya API Support Team!

----

/Jul-5-2006/ Amiglia is the first family networking site to release a Riya importer. It allows you to use Riya's excellent face recognition software and then import all of your Riya contacts and photos into Amiglia and make use of our best-of-breed family structure and interactive family tree. Just use the

Riya Import link and let us know what you think...

Dion Hinchcliffe adds us on del.icio.us

Thanks to Dion Hinchcliffe for adding us with a wonderful description on his del.icio.us bookmarks

Family 2.0: Amiglia.com  save this

A fascinating new family tree/genealogy site that uses network effects and feedback loops to generate growth. It's gotten lots of attention in the press. Looks impressive and definitely check it out.

to web2.0 community networkeffects genealogy flickr socialnetwork startup software internet family2.0  ... on july 18

Amiglia is a piece of Web 2.0 magic ...

Michael from 2Blowhards posted one of our favorite blurbs about Amiglia today. Thanks, Michael.
"Half family tree-maker, half Flickr-like photo-album displayer, Amiglia is a piece of Web 2.0 magic that delivers a taste of what life will be like when, one day, we really are all connected."

Amiglia in Estonia again

Thanks to Kristjan from Tallinn, Estonia for posting the following about Amiglia (does anyone know what it says? Help us out here...):

www.amiglia.com - üks järjekordne sotsiaalveeb mis aluseks võtnud Orkuti edu kuid pole selle otsene jäljendaja vaid veidi spetsiifilisemat rida ajav üritus. Idee on et inimesed saaksid koostada oma online sugupuu aga seda mitte kõiki lähedasi ise nimekirja pannes vaid neid teenusega liituma kutsudes. Idee on tore ja nagu kasutajd on öelnud pole lisa funktsioonidega ülepingutatud vaid on tehtud täpselt see mida keskmisekt vajatakse aga kahjuks Eestis see asi hästi ei toimiks kui siis peaks olema kaks teenust koos sa paned ise online kokku oma sugupuu ja siis igale lülile saad kutsuda inimese ka taha see oleks hoopis huvitavam.

Postbubble: Amiglia is trying to get your whole family online

Thanks Aneil Weber from Postbubble:  What will float and what will sink in the Web 2.0 space about the excellent review:

We talked about MADE Planet hitting a social networking niche properly. Another site that really did well with this is Amiglia.

Amiglia is a social network that really targets families as a place where each of them can login and see what’s going on with Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Grandma, Grandpa, and any other person in the family tree. It’s easy to use and by clicking on somebody in the family tree it goes immediately to that person’s profile. Getting started is pretty fast (but could be faster) however once you set the basics up they make it easy to contact the whole family and let them know what’s going on and get them involved. They have things like recipes, calendar, videos, albums, and maps.

Of all the family 2.0 sites I’ve seen, this one takes the cake. It does give a few of the latest goodies like links to flickr and a tag feature however for the most part they keep it simple and will most likely not scare mom and dad away. Probably the most important thing about this site is that they picked their features extremely well by offering only the things that most families will want.

All I can say is that if this site stays true to what it started with, it will blow up. The key is to get all of the youngsters to initiate the service and send those email invites to the family. This process should actually be faster and not one of the last things you do when setting up an account. This is one of the most important things to do these days in order to ensure that your visitors turn into users. Active or not, at least you got them to sign up and if Mom sees what this site can do then she might just take it from there. I am floating Amiglia for being the second social network on Postbubble to hit a niche properly. They give their users what they want and only what they need.

Read an interview with the founders at Emily Chang’s eHub.

‘Amiglia’ links technology with family photo albums

‘Amiglia’ links technology with family photo albums
Lebanon Daily News - Lebanon,PA,USA
... where the traditional family photo album and the wizardry of the electronic age meet, that’s where you’ll find the Internet Web site Amiglia.com — sort ...

Silicon Beat on Amiglia

Silicon Beat of The Mercury News posted on Amiglia's launch:

Family Tree + Photo Album: Amiglia.com

Amiglia.com launched recently promising a truly amazing photo and social software technology for families. The site has been an immediate hit with the blogs and press reaching CNET.com, The New York Times, MSNBC.com, LifeHacker.com, and dozens of others across the world. It also recently won the People's Choice Award at the Under The Radar Conference.

Amiglia is focused on family networks, tying a visual and interactive family tree with an elegant online photo album. It makes it easy to make linked family albums and connect nuclear and distant family, discover and archive old photos of common relatives and keep up to date with each other. The site includes a family calendar, birthday reminders, family facebook, mp3 uploads for slideshows, video uploads, Skype integration, toddler games, favorite recipes, family stories and bios, trip/vacation maps and powerful photo tagging and search.

Amiglia is in final stages of public beta, and giving away a free year membership to anyone who signs up during this time.

Amiglia.com launched recently promising a truly amazing photo and social software technology for families. The site has been an immediate hit with the blogs and press reaching CNET.com, The New York Times, MSNBC.com, LifeHacker.com, and dozens of others across the world. It also recently won the People's Choice Award at the Under The Radar Conference.

Amiglia is focused on family networks, tying a visual and interactive family tree with an elegant online photo album. It makes it easy to make linked family albums and connect nuclear and distant family, discover and archive old photos of common relatives and keep up to date with each other. The site includes a family calendar, birthday reminders, family facebook, mp3 uploads for slideshows, video uploads, Skype integration, toddler games, favorite recipes, family stories and bios, trip/vacation maps and powerful photo tagging and search.

Amiglia is in final stages of public beta, and giving away a free year membership to anyone who signs up during this time.

Email This Page!

We just launched a new feature on Amiglia - Email This Page! - it lets you email any page that you're on to your friends and relatives. Just click the button at the top right of any page and choose whom to send it to.

Amiglia - not just another Flickr!

Thanks Jeremy from Conncept for this great review:

Family friendly! That’s what I think about this really cool interactive website still in beta version - Amiglia. It’s a really easy-to-use family album (photos and video), family tree, family events, geo-tagging, family stories, family memories, family recipes website…and more! And fun to try to figure out how to pronounce it. Think your family tree and your spouse’s family tree. Put a picture with a name - literally. It’s a great concept and fills a niche that others like Flickr and Zoomr haven’t. Not that they should or are trying. Actually, I’m not sure that Amiglia intends for their users to replace their favorite photoblog, rather, it appears their willing to "work well with others." They’ve recently added new importing features allowing users to import their favorite pictures or tags from Flickr and GEDCOM for genealogy users.

As with any family, security is important. Amiglia reflects this with the ability to keep the site public, create a group password, and/or create an admin password. The option to manage an Admin password and a separate family password is a fantastic option! Way to think ahead, Amiglia! While we’re talking security, their Privacy Policy seems encouraging and not so subtle as with other sites. For me, it’s like my family in Vegas tells me, "We’re not in Alabama anymore, lock the doors." So, I created an admin password and a family password.

So, go ahead and put a face with a name, share with friends and family, and have fun. Blessings!

Social Networking - Here to Stay?

We just read a very interesting review including Amiglia today:

Social networks -- future portal or fad?

Here's what I think:

The MySpaces and Facebooks of the Internet have their market - teens and college students. While this is a great market to have, it also poses some problems as the market grows up. As the youngsters get into college, then careers, they have less and less time to spend on the Internet attracting new Internet friends. They move on – into real life with real relationships.

New sites, recently branded as Family 2.0 (http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6079271.html) go beyond the trendy friendship sites by building networks around what the adult population cares about. As we get older we long for connections with family members and long time friends. The Internet, and Web 2.0 most recently, is great at enabling the sharing of stories, thoughts, interests, photos, movies, baby advice, etc. Sites like Amiglia.com, Minti.com, Cingo.com, Roundbook.com, OurStory.com, etc are heading in this direction... all of these sites have what fad networking sites will not be able to maintain - sharing based on real relationships.

Profitability comes into play here too. Relying on ad dollars may work if the site has a large enough user base, but families are willing to pay for premium content that allows the sharing of large movie files, storage of photos that grandma can download and print at full quality, family history archiving, etc.

Amiglia explodes in Japan

A number of Japanese blogs posted about Amiglia in the past few days. We really wish we understood their comments, if anyone out there can help us out - please please do!

http://japan.cnet.com/special/media/story/0,2000056936,20139707-3,00.htm

http://plaza.rakuten.co.jp/expexp/diary/200606190002/

http://www.aivy.co.jp/BLOG_TEST/nagasawa/a/archives/2006/06/amiglia.html

http://www.feelor.com/t/jeffreybuttle

http://www.concept00.com/2006/06/safari.html

In a minute ago appearance

sharonb from In a Minute Ago posted a detailed description about Amiglia today:

On Amiglia you can describe your family tree with photos. This you can also blog, house links, and photos of your family, and have a calendar listing of upcoming birthdays.

One of the more interesting features is that it is integrated with Google Maps. You can have maps with links to photos of where the photos were taken. It is a good representation of where you went on holidays or where a family is dispersed. These can also be linked to satellite photos which is sort of neat. You are able to link albums together and easily tag people themes and places. Music can be added to slideshows and home videos can also be incorporated into the site. Uploading from mobile phones or email is possible and importing from flickr. Also for a minimal charge have backup CDs and DVDs made.

As a package it brings data management to the home.

Amiglia wins People's Choice Award at Under the Radar

Amiglia won the People's Choice Award at Under the Radar Conference: Why Digital Media  Matters -a one-day conference showcasing bleeding-edge consumer technology on June 14, 2006 in Mountain View, CA.

We're Hot From Silicon Valley

Amiglia was interviewed by Hot From Sillicon Valley at the Under the Radar Conference.

Paul Berry and his partner have created a palce online where families can share pictures and grow there family tree pictorially. Based out of New York, they are now offering beta software to users. The site is Amiglia, and their slogan is, ''Where families grow".
Listen to the conversation with Paul.

Arma tu árbol Genealógico

Amiglia travelled to the Mexican blogosphere today on TapiaSoft 3.0:

Amiglia es un nuevo servicio web que permite la subida y gestión de imágenes con formato de árbol genealógico navegable. No sólo eso, sino que las conexiones entre usuarios son dinámicas, gracias a etiquetas, y permite obtener imágenes desde Flickr hasta configurar avisos para aniversarios, cumpleaños, etc.

También posee integración con Google Maps, que permite crear presentaciones de las fotografías almacenadas y la gestión de perfiles personalizados por cada integrante de cada familia.

stitio oficial : http://www.amiglia.com/intro/

demo: http://demo.amiglia.com/a/

We're invited to present at Under the Radar: Why Digital Media Matters

Amiglia is proud to be invited as one of the presenters at the Under the Radar: Why Digital Media  Matters -a one-day conference showcasing bleeding-edge consumer technology on June 14, 2006 in Mountain View, CA.

"Just when they had the Internet figured out, big media’s running scared again. The power of participatory publishing has taken the blogosphere from laughing stock to triple threat: First text blogs knocked the wind out of the old world newspapers; then Yahoo bet big on photo sharing by buying Flickr; iTunes has used podcasts to bring back radio shows; now YouTube and a mob of “vlogging” technologies are pulling eyeballs away from network and cable TV."

Amiglia on CNET News.com, The NY Times and MSN

Stefanie Olsen from CNET News.com wrote an extensive article about Family 2.0 that posted on NY Times and MSN as well and interviewed Paul Berry for it:

Husband and wife team Paul and Milena Berry started Amiglia, a photo-sharing and family tree site. Privately funded, it launched a public beta in late February, but the Berries plan to introduce a new version this summer. They say Amiglia has already drawn about 100,000 readers...

"Our focus has been anti-WebVan--low cost of operations. We've managed to build Amiglia and develop it for very little," Berry said...

Amiglia.com plans to make money by selling annual subscriptions for better storage. It's free to store 1GB of photos and videos on the site, but access to 100GB of storage costs about $50 a year...

As for the family meme on the Web, Berry believes that good ideas float around in the ether and smart people pick up on them at the same time.

"We hope that our strategy of low-cost operations but powerful development cycles will allow us to out-survive them all," Berry said. "We really hope the whole category does burst out in the next six to nine months, but that will be left to be seen."

Read also this translation into Japanese, posted on June 14, 2006

Amiglia - Clicked by MSNBC

Will from Clicked at MSNBC posted about Amiglia while we were at the hospital, giving us a big traffic surge, and sorry guys I think temporarily slowing the site down while were off in delivery...

"Hi Paul and Milena, nice job with this site.  I really like that interactive family tree.  I’ve been showing it to anyone who walks past my desk or blips up on my IM."

A Nice List To Be On (Google, Yahoo, Ebay.. Next Acquisitions)

Google, Yahoo, eBay.. Next Acquisitions

Here is another long in-depth article by me. I jumped in the web 2.0 bandwagon not very long ago. But I think I learned quite a lot of things.. I should thank Om Malik (GigaOM), Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) and Digg for this. Here are my findings; the winners and losers of web 2.0..

But before starting let me state the acquisition behaviors of big fish:

Google and Yahoo buy small, innovative startups. In some sense, they reward the creativity. The acquisitions are generally low priced.
MSN acquires small search startups; the prices vary
eBay makes big and very profitable (IMHO) acquisitions; examples are Paypal and Skype.
AOL is very hungry for social web applications.
I’d like to see Amazon and Apple also in this list, but I didn’t hear anything about their acquisitions.

On the list was Digg, Technorati, Facebook, Pandora, Wordpress and...

Amiglia
Social networking for families.. Very good implementation. May feed AOL’s hunger for social applications.

Eva Zoya Berry is Born!!!

As proud as we are of Amiglia and its potential, Milena and I are over the moon with life. Eva Zoya Berry was born at 3:09 PM on the 24th of May 2006, after one extremely difficult labor and delivery. She was 7lbs 14.5oz and 20 inches long.

c
Powered by Amiglia.com

If you have a bug or a feature request for the site, please do send it in to us still, while we're going to be obviously quite slowed by this beautiful creature, we're lucky enough to have Baba Zoya (grandmother in bulgarian) as well as Nana and Dandad all visiting and helping love this little one. So I'll be getting to things as I can.

Amiglia on Diva Marketing Blog

Toby Bloomberg posted a short online interview with Milena on her Diva Marketing Blog:

Capturing memories at special times is a must. Sharing your memories is a must as well. Have you seen the cool new mash-up (my new fav word) Amiglia? It combines photos, blogs, videos, music, calendars, tags, chat, Google maps all in the format of an interactive family album.

Amiglia is a family owned small business. Milena Berry, one of the founders, and I exchanged a few emails. I was intrigued with the name of the company - Amiglia. Milena told me it's a  wordplay of the Italian word for family "famiglia." Here's a peek inside this famiglia start-up business..from the perspective of Diva Milena.

Amiglia for your Famiglia

The Under the Radar Blog wrote about Amiglia's secret sauce today:
Sector: online photo management and social network for families
Funding: Private funding with a business model of sales. Amiglia Basic membership is free giving 1GB of photos and videos per year and Amiglia Standard membership is $49.95/year giving 100 GBs of photo space per year (approximately 20,000 high resolution photos!). More pricing options here.
Secret Sauce:A photographic family tree with music and video! This site has really grabbed on to the idea of how much families love pictures of each other and how they love to make connections between all the family members. The site has easy mass uploading, upload by email or from your camera phone. Video clip support, no ads, backup DVDs and storage of the original high resolution photos. Parents and relatives can record sound bites to go with their pictures. This site is heavily database driven application, built primarily in Cold Fusion with a SQL server back-end. Albums can be connected to each other, making it a great way to connect photos and profiles from living relatives for a family history book or upcoming reunion. When you upload new photos to your own album, they also get automatically uploaded to any related families’ albums. You can also create a single family site, and provide your relatives with separate family passwords for upload rights, edit rights, etc. Rafe Needleman wrote, “Amiglia’s add-ons to this structure are well targeted to navigating this network: there’s a Java-based game for children, where they get to identify family members; and there are mapping tools to show destinations on a family vacation.”

Growing the Family Tree

Bob and Joy Schwabach from On Computers wrote this detailed review about Amiglia's genealogy tools today:

There's a new Web site and service for creating a chart of your family tree, and it is by far the best we've ever seen.

The site is called Amiglia.com , and it lets you attach photos, commentary and sound to a treelike structure representing your extended family or group, past and present. Anyone on the tree can add his own stories, pictures and memories.

The leaves, so to speak, are linked to each other; a change in one is recognized by the others. A broadcast e-mail can be directed to all members who have an address listed. Clicking on the "people" tab can show you everyone at once in a huge display of close relatives and distant cousins.

The leaves, so to speak, are linked to each other; a change in one is recognized by the others. A broadcast e-mail can be directed to all members who have an address listed. Clicking on the "people" tab can show you everyone at once in a huge display of close relatives and distant cousins.

The Amiglia.com  site is in beta testing right now and free to all comers. A calendar will be added soon, allowing for the scheduling of family reunions and other events. After beta testing is over, general membership will remain free, with 1 gigabyte of storage. Above that, the charge will be $50 a year for 100 gigabytes of storage. That's enough for 20,000 photos and a lot of explanations.

Family Tree Now Bloggable!

We've just added a new feature -- you can blog your family tree! Or of course, post it to any other website you have. Underneath the family tree is a link called "Blog this Tree!" Here's what the Demo Tree looks like on our own blog:

Click on any person to see their profile

Talking tech on Family 2.0 posts an update on Amiglia

Rachel Cook from Talking Tech on Family 2.0 posted a nice update on Amiglia:

An update on Amiglia. The founders have updated some great things on the site. I also like the new Flickr import feature and I have fallen in love with the video segment that automatically plays on your family homepage, a neat trick…shows a slideshow of the family photos you uploaded of each family member. I am yet to upload all my photos. Which I have an issue with (1500 - 2000 photos) just of family!!!! So I am not sure yet how to go about doing this.

I like the new look on the family trees - must have a play.

I think however, my choice will be to stick with Amiglia.

Great technology Amiglia.

A blogger from the Philippines posts about Amiglia

Pinay from the Philippines posted a beautiful slideshow powered by Amiglia with the following comments:
I finally found the time to check out amiglia, an interactive family tree maker. what i love about amiglia is that you can actually upload and share photos, recipes (yup, recipes), music, video, etc... it literally is a family activity... online.

SimplifierLab calls Amiglia "a smart, best-of-breed Web 2.0 genealogy application"

SimplifierLab posted the following today:
Amiglia is a smart, best-of-breed Web 2.0 genealogy application created by fellow ITP alums, Paul and Milena Berry. And, it's free during their beta period. "[Genealogy] is the third most popular pursuit...behind the twin vices of gambling and porn," according to Matty Sallin during his thesis presentation of Family Hedge, another genealogy application (Quicktime video + chat transcript).

Family linkages are the most basic social networks and, therefore, easily lend themselves to social applications that are meaningfully relevant to all of us. Amiglia focuses on the social aspects among family members rather than the taxonomy. For one, it has hooks into Flickr, making photo-sharing (a natural family activity) simple and accessible. It has a calendar so you can track birthdays and other important dates. You can even add photo journals of trips courtesy of an integrated Google mashup. It even has a fun family tree game for kids. Best of all, it's free during the beta period -- no software to purchase or install. It's all online and collaborative so the onus of maintaining the family tree can be shared across its members. Take it out for a spin: Family 2.0: Amiglia.com.

Lynne D. Johnson writes about living in a new new media world

lynne d johnson mentioned Amiglia on her post on "new new media world" in Diary today:

Likewise Paul and Milena Berry's Amiglia, a site focused on building family networks through the sharing of photo albums and enabling of the creation of a virtual family tree by attaching photos to people in the tree, also has a place in this new economy. You can even import photos from flickr. The site includes a family calendar, birthday reminders, mp3 uploads for slideshows, Skype intergation, favorite recipes, stories, toddler games, family and trip/vacation maps and photo tagging --- all for the means of creating social media for families.

Upgrade: New interactive family tree live

We're releasing the new and improved interactive family tree today (see our demo tree). It solves the problem of family elders and it crosses between family and in-law branches easily. Questions, comments? We're here to listen...

Yahoo Tech Blog post

Dory Devlin from Yahoo Tech Blog mentioned Amiglia today:

A quick search for other social networking venues for moms turns up sites such as Amiglia, where you can share family calendars, photos, and recipes, and build family trees. Amiglia has some nice touches, including a family facebook and a photo kids' game to help little ones get to know their far-away family members.

eHub interviews Amiglia

Emily Chang + Max Kiesler interviewed Amiglia for eHub. See the whole interview here:

Some more press today

Irish Dev News posted about Amiglia's family social software today:

Amiglia.com is launching this month promising a truly amazing photo and social software technology for families.

I want to... share photos, create family tree

Phil Bradley's blog "I want to" posts about how to share photos, create family tree wih Amiglia today:

"A site for families to share memories, create a family tree, calendar and a whole bunch of stuff."

Corante reviews Amiglia

Dave Evans from Corante wrote an extensive review about Amiglia. Thanks Dave, and for the great idea on Skype calling and chats integration in Amiglia:

Amiglia, Social Software for Parents and Family

Posted by Dave Evans

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Amiglia evolved out of a family photo site which became a focal point for all the Berrys' family pictures and memories. The large family realized they needed a better way to share the newest photos, as well as to unravel the old photos of common ancestors. Amiglia is social networking at the family level.

I spoke with Paul Berry, who started the site with his father Tim. Tim is President of Palo Alto Software, if you have ever written a business plan you probably have used his products.

Amiglia is focused on family networks, tying the visual family tree with an online photo album. Spread the site to your nuclear and distant family, discover and archive old photos of common relatives and keep up to date with each other. The site includes a family calendar, birthday reminders, mp3 uploads for slideshows, favorite recipes, stories, family and trip/vacation maps and powerful photo tagging.

We just launched the first version of a kids game - currently for toddlers. Parents and relatives can record their voices and match them to photos of that person. Particularly good for keeping babies familiar with relatives they don't see on a daily basis, it also has a mesmerizing effect on the little ones. We've taken the basics of computer gaming for children, for example they can hammer away at the keyboard for extra effects but without navigating away or causing problems. As the toddlers get older the game will evolve to teach them to read, match places they've been to to points on the map, etc. You can see more about the game here.

Amiglia is currently in beta. Pricing is currently $49.95 per year, with premium and Pro versions at $100 and $150. Competitors include MyFamily.

They were smart to pull content from other sites like Flickr into Amiglia, no need to replicate the photos all over the interweb. The site is a bit rough around the edges and you can tell this was hatched in Silicon Valley- CNET mention of their data management solutions on home page, geeks! Initial feedback has been positive. Expect new features and partnerships soon.

Update: Skype integration is in alpha. I recently worked with someone on a similar family-oriented site concept with embedded Skype functionality. Once it's set up it makes it easy for grandma to read junior a bed time story.

Peruvian newspaper El Commercio raves about Amiglia

Peruvian news paper El Comercio gives a great mention to Amiglia for its genealogy functions today:

Uno de los más espectaculares es Amiglia.com (www.amiglia.com). Este funciona sin necesidad de descargar software alguno. Solo requiere crear una cuenta gratuita y luego usted podrá subir fotografías y crear un árbol genealógico virtual.

Ask Moxie loves Amiglia

A great website plug

So I got this email a week ago with the same "I thought your readers might want to know about this" line that I get sometimes from people wanting me to pimp their products on Ask Moxie. Sometimes they're things I already know about and was planning to mention anyway, and sometimes they're things I see no use for so I don't mention, and sometimes they're scary things like trying to get you guys to sign up to expose your parenting style to ridicule on national television.

But this thing was cool. Way cool.

It's called Amiglia.com, and it's a website that is basically an interactive family tree. Each person in your family has a profile page with photos (you can upload easily from Flickr or your hard drive) and stories and recipes and music. You connect the people so they make a family tree. You can upload tons of photos and tag and edit them so they go together in albums (like "family reunion 2005" or "cousins" or things like that). You can send a general email to everyone in your family tree through the program. It reminds you of whose birthday is coming up. You can set it up so the tree is viewable by the public or only people with the password, and allow anyone with the password to upload to the site or only you. There's also a cool toddler game (it has sound so turn your speakers off if you're at work) that's like a talking photo album slide show.

Last year at my huge family reunion (125 people) we were talking about how cool something like this would be, but the one we envisioned wasn't half as robust as this one. I'm in love.

Here's the best part: They're in beta now, so anyone who joins now gets a free membership. (I think the listed prices they'll charge once they officially roll out were absolutely reasonable anyway.) So go join now.

A great website plug

So I got this email a week ago with the same "I thought your readers might want to know about this" line that I get sometimes from people wanting me to pimp their products on Ask Moxie. Sometimes they're things I already know about and was planning to mention anyway, and sometimes they're things I see no use for so I don't mention, and sometimes they're scary things like trying to get you guys to sign up to expose your parenting style to ridicule on national television.

But this thing was cool. Way cool.

It's called Amiglia.com, and it's a website that is basically an interactive family tree. Each person in your family has a profile page with photos (you can upload easily from Flickr or your hard drive) and stories and recipes and music. You connect the people so they make a family tree. You can upload tons of photos and tag and edit them so they go together in albums (like "family reunion 2005" or "cousins" or things like that). You can send a general email to everyone in your family tree through the program. It reminds you of whose birthday is coming up. You can set it up so the tree is viewable by the public or only people with the password, and allow anyone with the password to upload to the site or only you. There's also a cool toddler game (it has sound so turn your speakers off if you're at work) that's like a talking photo album slide show.

Last year at my huge family reunion (125 people) we were talking about how cool something like this would be, but the one we envisioned wasn't half as robust as this one. I'm in love.

Here's the best part: They're in beta now, so anyone who joins now gets a free membership. (I think the listed prices they'll charge once they officially roll out were absolutely reasonable anyway.) So go join now.

New Feature: Drag & Drop Tagging

We just launched some powerful drag & drop tagging today. We're hoping this would make tagging your photos a lot easier. Any comments or feedback?

CNET Reviews Amiglia

Rafe Needleman reviewed Amiglia's family software on ALPHA The CNET blog:

Amiglia brings structure to a data management problem that desperately needs it. The tagging architecture of Flickr and Riya only gets us part of the way in organizing photos. Amiglia lets us build tight social networks that reflect the way we think about the people closest to us. Amiglia's add-ons to this structure are well targeted to navigating this network: There's a Java-based game for children, where they get to identify family members; and there are mapping tools to show destinations on a family vacation. Read more.

Geneology.About.com recommends to Amiglia your family tree

Kimberly Powel from Your Guide to Geneology at About.com posted an extensive review about our family software today:

Amiglia Your Family Tree

A new Web site shows a lot of promise as a way to build collaborative family trees. Built as a way to connect families - both across miles and generations - Amiglia is not a traditional family tree application, but more of a family tree photo album. It offers easy ways to share the latest family photos with each other, as well as to display and connect the oldest photos of common ancestors.

In concept Amiglia is basically just another online photo album like Flickr, but the family tree option is an interesting twist for genealogists. Albums can even be connected to each other, making it a great way to connect photos and profiles from living relatives for a family history book or upcoming reunion. When you upload new photos to your own album, they also get automatically uploaded to any related families albums. Instant sharing! You can also create a single family site, and provide your relatives with separate family passwords for upload rights, edit rights, etc.

Integration with Google Maps provides a neat way to share photos and reports from genealogical research trips, or even to display the migration of your ancestors in an interactive format. You can also produce a map that identifies all of your photos by location - fun for families spread out across multiple locations.

Amiglia still needs a bit of work. Family relationships such as step-parents, adoptees, etc. take extra work to identify (you have to establish divorcees as a married relationship, for example, and then edit from within their profiles) or can't be accurately portrayed at all. You also can't see an entire family tree at once, only browse through branch by branch. The site is still in development, however, with suggested changes and additions being implemented regularly.

Amiglia Basic is free, but limited to seven additional family members with contribution rights and 1GB of storage space for photos and videos. $49.95/year allows an unlimited number of people in your family album and 100GB of photo storage (about 20,000 high res photos) - it's a family membership, with the annual fee covering your entire core family. Amiglia Premium offers unlimited photo uploads and unlimited linked Amiglia sites for $99.95/year.

Best of all, the site is still in the final stages of beta - and is offering free lifetime memberships to anyone who signs up now. Amiglia is definitely worth checking out. Once you've played a bit, come back and tell us what you think!

AirForce Times, ArmyTimes and LSJ note Amiglia on the web

AirForceTimes, ArmyTimes and LSJ published about Amiglia's family software today in articles about whats New and Notable on the Web and Recording Your Life Online:
Families looking for a way to share photos and much more online will want to check out this new site where you also can create an interactive family tree, keep a family calendar and upload videos.
www.amiglia.com

Amiglia is a Favorite in Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics newsletter

Brandon Watts of the Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics newsletter posted a really nice write-up about Amiglia's family software today:

Although it can be very tough sometimes, it’s vital to help keep families together. It’s truly a shame if you can’t look to your family for support. One of the main reasons why the family structure disintegrates over time for some people is because of a lack of communication. If the various members aren’t making an effort to stay in touch and keep each other updated as to what’s going on, then erosion and collapse is inevitable over time. It may be hard to imagine the fact that a Web site can help to unify your family, but with Amiglia, that just might be the case.

The site is unique in its creation because it was originally created by a family for their family. When they realized that they had a good thing going, they then developed it further and opened it up to you and I. You'll be able to share photos, create slideshows, and document the memories that were made on various family trips. Along with this, you're also given the ability to create a family calendar and an interactive family tree, which links you to the profiles for the people within your family. One of the most interesting concepts is the game that they have built for toddlers. By using pictures and sound recordings, you can help your little ones to get to know their relatives in a simple, fun, and safe way.