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What if our photographs and social media updates could be turned into memories we \u2013 or our children \u2013 could later access just by asking a virtual assistant, like Amazon\u2019s Alexa? That\u2019s the premise behind a new startup called Mylestone, which is experimenting with turning\u00a0our digital footprints into narratives that help us recall highlights from our lives, as well as\u00a0those of our family members and other loved ones.<\/p>\n
The idea seems a little far out there, but it\u2019s an area where a number of companies today are competing \u2013 \u00a0whether that\u2019s bots that will remember the minutia<\/a>\u00a0of our day-to-day\u00a0lives, or even\u00a0tools to augment our human intelligence with computing power<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mylestone approaches\u00a0this space a bit differently. Instead of focusing on more utilitarian functions, the startup is developing a highly personal service for capturing and recalling memories.<\/p>\n To use the Alexa app it has created, you first upload a series of photos, videos or audio files to the service. These are then analyzed by a combination of\u00a0data science \u2013 meaning A.I. and machine learning \u2013 along with people who help the process along.<\/p>\n So, for example, if you upload a photo of your parents on a vacation, Mylestone\u2019s system can extract certain data automatically. Using metadata from the photo, it can determine things like the date, time or location where the photo was taken. It can also identify certain things in the photo \u2013 like a recognizable landmark (think: the Eiffel Tower, e.g.) to make other determinations about what\u2019s in the photograph.<\/p>\n On the human-assisted side of things, people can help connect the other dots to make\u00a0the sort of leaps that computers cannot (yet). A photo of two elderly people might be your grandparents, for example, the people working with your digital collection could guess. Or maybe the photo is of a restaurant menu \u2013 and since other\u00a0metadata indicates the city where it was shot \u2013 people\u00a0could search until they found the restaurant in question,\u00a0then manually confirm the related details.<\/p>\n In other words, people can do the sort of advanced cyber stalking you\u00a0does on ahead of your\u00a0Tinder dates,\u00a0but for the purpose of saving life\u2019s precious\u00a0memories, not digging up dirt.<\/p>\n A future version of the service will\u00a0also be able to scan your Facebook profile, Instagram, and other social media accounts in order to automatically create these memories for you, without the manual uploads. While that would give Mylestone more access to your personal data, it wouldn\u2019t require any of it to then reside on its servers, as with the file\u00a0uploads supported\u00a0today.<\/p>\n \u201cOur intent is to create narratives for you, not to host your content,\u201d explains\u00a0Mylestone founder and CEO Dave Balter.<\/p>\n Balter previously founded BzzAgent, acquired by Tesco in 2011, and Smarterer, acquired by Pluralsight in 2014. Mylestone\u2019s team includes\u00a0Head of Engineering Jim Myers who worked with Balter at Smarterer, and Head of Advocacy Jon O\u2019Toole, who co-founded BzzAgent. <\/span><\/p>\n A serial entrepreneur and frequent traveler, Balter\u00a0began thinking about memorials after seeing an empty cemetery when looking out the window of his flight to\u00a0Laguardia.<\/p>\n After 20 or so trips where he would glance down\u00a0the graveyard and always find it vacant, a question began to tickle in his mind. Why don\u2019t people go to graveyards anymore?<\/p>\n In part, the answer is that we\u2019re a more transient society these days.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what started becoming obvious was that there was something bigger happening. Social [media] had transformed the way we talk about deceased loved ones\u2026it\u2019s fully acceptable to talk about death,\u201d says Balter, noting how we tend to just post on Facebook. \u201cWe have other ways to memorialize,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n But Facebook may not be the best way to do this. And with the rise of voice-based computing, Balter began to think of\u00a0different ways we could use computers to\u00a0recall memories. Maybe we could just ask Alexa, he thought.<\/p>\n The Alexa skill lets you say things like: \u201ctell me a story about mom,\u201d or \u201chave grandma say the prayer,\u201d for example. It\u2019s a way of remembering loved ones in a very real, interactive way.<\/p>\n And yes, this is science fiction come to life. Remember this episode of Black Mirror<\/a>? Or this Sundance film<\/a>, perhaps?<\/p>\n The startup already has its tendrils in tools for memory collection. It acquired the photo-scanning app Heirloom in April, 2016, for example. And it\u2019s working on other ways to make it easier for families to collect\u00a0their histories \u2013 like tools for collecting\u00a0grandpa\u2019s war stories, for example \u2013 instead of relying only on file uploads.<\/p>\n I tried the service for myself, and found it intriguing. I uploaded a handful of scanned photos from a vacation I took as a child, and Alexa told me a story about my summer on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, visiting the historic and tiny Salvo Post Office<\/a>, splashing in the ocean, and picking flowers for mom. (Nah, I picked them for me.)<\/p>\n But as a proof-of-concept, it\u2019s not bad. With more data pouring in from Facebook and your social media accounts, and\u00a0flashing up related imagery\u00a0on your\u00a0TV through Alexa\u2019s\u00a0Fire TV connection (well\u2026one day), Mylestone\u00a0could be even better.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of those swing-for-the-fences type of ideas,\u201d said David Frankel, Partner at Founder Collective. \u201cMylestone is tapping into the mainstreaming of voice activated assistants to put tech-enabled human connection and memory at the center of consumer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n The startup has time to experiment, thanks to a new $2.5 million round of funding led by\u00a0True Ventures, a prior investor in Smarterer. Also participating are Founder Collective, Boston Seed Capital, Converge Ventures, and Mergelane. To date, Mylestone has raised $4.5 million.<\/p>\n![\"screen-shot-2017-02-15-at-5-39-21-pm\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/6a33b_screen-shot-2017-02-15-at-5-39-21-pm.png?resize=640%2C472&ssl=1\")
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