We're so incredibly excited about our innovative creation Life Cube that we want to shower you with HARD COLD CASH!

We're running a contest that is open until December 1st 2009 - the details are really easy and the rewards are high....

LIFE CUBE CONTEST REQUIREMENTS:

1. Build a Life Cube on arcalife.com or sign up through the Facebook Application.(It's free and easy to sign up.)

2. Share your Life Cube on Facebook OR Twitter.* (Don't forget to make your cube "public" in arcalife so anyone can view it.)

3. Most important step to officially enter: Share your Life Cube with us at arcalife by either including @arcalife in your tweet or post your Cube link to the arcalife Facebook Fan Page - this way, we'll definitely see your entry into the contest. You will receive notice you have officically entered at this time.

4. Get 5 of your friends or followers to either Comment on your Life Cube post on your Facebook Profile Wall OR Re-Tweet your Life Cube tweeted link on Twitter.*

THE WINNING LIFE CUBE WILL RECEIVE $500 CASH. And in true social networking fashion, the first FIVE people to comment on your Cube post on your Facebook wall or re-tweet your Life Cube tweet on Twitter will also receive a cash prize of $50 each. Everybody wins! (For those of you who link your posts Twitter-to-Facebook/Facebook-to-Twitter, not to worry - we have it sorted and can measure where you posted and your first five people to count for the win.)

* Rules Apply.

Judging and awarding the winning Life Cube is based on inspiration and creativity. Life Cube only takes a few minutes to sign up, upload and publish photos and videos.

Here are a few examples of published Life Cubes to get your creative juices flowin':

Don't forget to hit the "Animate" button for the full effect :)

Growing Up - Family - New Baby
Little League Hockey Team
Ancestry

To kick-start the launch of the Life Cube, arcalife is running a contest for the most innovative and inspiring Life Cube. The winner will collect $500 – CASH. The first 5 people who shared the winner’s Life Cube link through social networks Facebook or Twitter will also win $50 each – so everybody wins! It’s free to enter with a few simple steps to follow.

[ Contest Begins in September 2009 and will run for one month. ]

Life Cube Contest Details:

1. Build a Life Cube on arcalife.com or sign up through the Facebook Application. (It's free and easy to sign up.)

2. Share your Life Cube on Facebook OR Twitter.*

3. Get 5 of your friends or followers to either Comment on your Facebook Profile OR Re-Tweet your Life Cube link on Twitter.**

That's it!

The arcalife team will judge and award the winning Life Cube based on inspiration and creativity.

* / ** Rules, Regulations and Specifications will be posted to the arcalife wiki when the contest launches in September.

Check out this Michael Jackson Life Cube a fan created. (Don't forget to hit the animate button!)

Press Release August 20, 2009

VANCOUVER, BC (arcalife) August 20, 2009 -  Arcalife has launched their latest application: the patented Life Cube^TM. Life Cube^TM is a multimedia application, accessible on the arcalife site and as a Facebook application, that allows you to bring all of your best photo and video moments together in a fantastic animated 3D showcase. 

The Life Cube^TM is a perfect tool to highlight memories from weddings, graduations, birthdays, and even memorial events. The arcalife team also sees this tool as a great way for visual artists and musicians to show off their work, or for companies wanting to use it to easily display professional projects or products.  Being able to add music, videos, control the rotation speed of the cube and overlay text on each frame, means that you can create an extremely professional result that works in time with the music and is in keeping with the message you are trying to deliver in your promotion or showcase.  Best of all it can be done in a matter of minutes and shared publicly or with a specific, defined private audience.

VP of product and technology Daniel Dekkers says, “The great thing about the Life Cube^TM is that you can use it to play your life from beginning to end. Modern technology has made this kind of digital showcase accessible to the end user. In the past this would have cost you hundreds or even thousands to have this custom made. Now you can upload your photos and video to arcalife and literally create a unique view of your life in minutes.”

 Arcalife is a family centric social website where its members can securely and privately capture and share memories, stories and family history. CEO Paul Taylor says that the site is about “showcasing life experiences that we have every day and sharing them with family and close friends.”. As well as letting you research your family history, the site has a number of unique multimedia applications. 

A couple of months back I was talking with Peter Van Garderen about personal and public archiving projects. One of the things that came up is that there seems to be a gap in how private companies like our family history site arcalife and the public / not for profit organizations can work together.  Peter and I shared the view that some of this is as result of profit making companies targeting national and provincial resources. Some of the attempts to secure exclusive access to national assets are badly thought out and not in anyone’s interests.  Still the appeal is there; for local, provincial and national archives the opportunities are significant in terms of the preservation of records and the benefits for companies are obvious – Is there a model that works for everyone?
 
Mistrusted motives is only a part of the problem in my view. A few months ago we realized that we had been spending a large part of our time and resources building our membership on a global basis, and not much time in our own back yard. Once we figured this out we started to create a program to reach out to family history and genealogy organizations inside of Canada. Maybe naively, with us being a Canadian company, I expected a warm welcome. People have of course been friendly enough, but disappointingly a bit ambivalent in their dealings with us.  Despite major success in a global context, it seems that forging links and partnerships with Canadian organizations is an uphill struggle.
 
I think this is because some not for profit organizations have the view that it is unethical to work with profit making companies. This idea is an anathema to me as we are based around a free membership [no time limit] and our offering is founded in a strong personal motivation. This is to encourage all of us to secure our family history, memories and experiences for future generations, either in a personal digital estate or as part of a wider contribution to the Canadian cultural record. I would be very surprised to hear any not for profit organizations say that my motivations are not genuine and from the heart.
 
I think these kind of objectives are important enough for us to overlook the difference in our profit making structure and I will continue to reach out to Ontario Genealogical Society and New Brunswick Genealogical Society with the hope that they will talk with us one day. Over the coming days and weeks, we hope to make some friends at Manitoba Genealogical Society, Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta Genealogical Society, Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island Genealogical Society, Québec Family History Society and the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society.
 
 And we look forward to working with you at the British Columbia Genealogical Society and the Alberta Family Histories Society.

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The UK genealogy show “Who Do You Think You Are” is over for another year. Talking to Dick Eastman and Megan Smolenyak I was surprised to hear that there is nothing like this In North America. Perhaps it’s the geography that prevents hundreds of thousands or even millions of Family historians from getting together to share their passion for the ‘artform’. Attendance at the UK show was probably around 10 thousand this year, although official figures aren’t out yet. The next largest shows in the US, are less than a fifth of this size: Genealogy Jamboree, FGS in Little Rock and NGS in North Carolina. How is it that when family history is so important to so many people that the world's biggest market does not have any major celebration for this? Clearly one answer is cost; the other seems to be that there are quite a few people thinking about putting on a show, but no one has quite got there yet. My hope is that the airing of the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are” in the US, with celebs like Sarah Jessica Parker and others, will provide the platform for the live show to be spun into action in the same way that it did in the UK. With arcalife attending the show for the first time for its UK launch, we definitely took away the feeling that we had joined a community of companies (albeit competitive). Thank-you to those who made us feel welcome, especially Megan Smolenyak, Dick Eastman, Nick Barratt, Olivier Van Calster, Charlotte Campion, Charlotte Wiberg and Chris Paton. In all the show was highly successful and enjoyable for us. Here are some of our favourite moments: check out our YouTube Channel - you might just find yourself in there... We snapped a few photos as well. Would be great to reconnect with those we met and meet more of you out there - post a comment and let us know what you think!

It’s been a great if a little tiring day at “Who do you think you are live 09”. The day started well … with a few technical issues. Luckily, my brother AKA super Dave, was able to run the 3 miles to the store to buy the new cable we needed. It’s kind of hard to show your website with no demonstration screen! The reception to our site has been extremely positive and it has been a good validation of our vision. We have probably had a couple of hundred people through the stand today and we are hoping for more tomorrow. Even with the hardcore genealogist set, there is a strong understanding of our messages – that their memories, as well as their research needs to live on. We are the only site out there that is doing this, I hope that they take the opportunity to take their research to new place and turn it into a true Digital Estate. The show itself looks great. No tanks this year, but plenty of other great stuff to see and do. I have been really impressed with the organization of the event, although not sure exactly how many people have attended today, but the educated guess seems to be around the 3 thousand mark. Tomorrow is another day, as they say. I am looking forward to hearing more great stories and memories from our guests on stand. If you are in the neighborhood please drop by and see us at stand 701. If you happen to be on twitter, follow my random thoughts of the day. And I've created a YouTube Channel as well and posting the event for you to get an intimate sense of all that's happening...the man with a plan: