Ep. 311 – Life in Focus – Preserving Memories in the Modern Age

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In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss the art and importance of Preserving Memories with Angela Andrew, Product Evangelist for the Mylio App. In an age where digital images accumulate rapidly but often remain disorganized, Mylio offers a transformative solution for families looking to protect and share their memories. This episode dives into how the app simplifies Digital photo organization, helps Backup family photos, and creates a seamless structure for Family photo storage that enhances your Legacy planning.

Listen in to learn about the value of Memory preservation not just as a digital convenience, but as a way to remember loved ones and tell your family’s story across generations. Whether you’re looking to scan old photos, organize digital photos, or understand how to organize photos from multiple sources, this episode shows how Mylio empowers you to create a meaningful and secure photo backup plan. With privacy-first features, family sharing options, and facial recognition, this is a must-listen for anyone preparing to retire comfortably and pass on more than just financial assets.

In this episode, find out:

• How the Mylio app helps centralize and organize photos from various sources.
• Why Photo legacy and Family history photos matter for future generations.
• The importance of Secure photo backup beyond just cloud services.
• How to use face-tagging, calendar views, and location data to enhance organization.
• Tips on Sharing photos with family while maintaining privacy.

Tweetable Quotes:

“Legacy isn’t always about wealth—it’s about memories, photos, and the stories we pass down.” – Radon Stancil

“We create memories every day, but organizing and preserving them ensures they actually live on.” – Murs Tariq

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

Welcome everyone to Secure Your Retirement podcast. We are very excited to talk

with you today. You know, whenever Murs and I went back, I mean, we’ve been doing

this now for almost five years on the podcast. And when we started the podcast, we

said that we really were focused on three areas. And one of those was really legacy

and things that a person could do to, to how would they collect or how would they

be able to present or communicate maybe some of their, their memories or maybe some

of their thought processes to the next generation. And so today we’re excited. We’ve

got Angela Andrew from Mylio.com as well as their service,

which is rather unique and really helping us collect those or let’s say preserve the

memories and we’ll get into what that really means. But before we do that, I’d like

to say Angela, thank you very much for coming on and chatting with us and our

listeners today. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Great. So really quick, I think just to get us started, because I’ve kind of teased

this up as to what our memories are about here. But I think that when I think

about what your service does and we’ll just do the reveal, it’s really around this

idea of how do I keep all the pictures of life that I’ve got?

I mean, I am 52. So, I have boxes at the house of pictures of my kids and of me

growing up and all this kind of stuff. And they’re all boxed up. And I always, you

know, don’t, don’t look at them cause they’re in boxes. They’re in the, you know,

we put them in shoe boxes like you used to do that. Then I’ve got many, many,

many pictures on my phone. My wife has many pictures on her phone. Kids have

pictures on their phone. And I think your service, if, let me just ask you and

describing what I just got, what does your service do to help me? – So Mylio is an

application and a service. The application gets downloaded to your devices, so your

phones, your tablets, your computers, and it helps you; it gives you a place to

bring in all of your media from all of these different sources. So, for someone like

you who has boxes of images, we have a service that can help with scanning or we

can help connect you with people who also do that professionally. If you have

something more than what our service can handle, if you have old hard drives with

pictures, because you probably have stuff that pre phone, but you were still taking

digital. You might have had a digital camera before that. So, you’ve probably got

some DVDs of pictures and CDs of pictures and things like that. We give you a

place to help you collect all of that into one single library. You can add in

things. If you have a family plan, bring in stuff from your spouse. You can bring

in your kids’ pictures and have one centralized family library. What Myliu does at

that point is it then can synchronize that library between all of your devices so

everybody has access. You can even set up family specific permissions so certain

people can access certain things or be able to modify certain things and then we

also give you tools to help you get them backed up so that way you don’t keep

everything in one place and have that possibility that you lose your phone you lose

really important memories. So, what we want to do is give you that piece of

mind and security to where things are protected. And then as you’re bringing in all

of those old pictures, Miley also has some great tools to help you add detail. So

if you’re bringing in those scan photos to correct the dates, to add face tag, it’s

got amazing facial recognition. It’s got these beautiful views that kind of auto

organize everything for you. So, if you don’t want to get too into the weeds with

dragging and dropping things into specific folders, there’s a lot of stuff Miley

does, that makes it a really beautiful interface for anybody to interact with.

Gotcha. So, I’m hearing that it helps tremendously with organization, but also granting

access to family and whoever you want to grant access to, and then kind of securing

it in a good place. So, with my phone, and I think with a lot of

or I actually go to Google Drive or Photos or whatever they call it now.

And so how would Milo be different from just a backup type of scenario where you

take the picture, it goes into your phone and then automatically gets backed up to

Google Drive per se? How is Mylio different than that? Well, let me frame it this

way. So, one statistic I recently saw was only one in four people are paying for

additional cloud storage, whether that’s Google photos, whether that’s through Apple

photos, whatever. That means that three out of four people are not actually backing

their things up. If anything is stored on iCloud, it’s going to be low resolution

and possibly not everything. Most everything at that point is going to be stored

locally on their device. So, they may be thinking that they’re backing up, but

they’re not. The second point I would bring to that is when you have a service

like Apple Photos or Google Photos, which are both great tools, that’s still putting

your stuff all in one place. And I like to really promote the 321-backup scenario.

So as with any important digital files, you want to have three copies of your stuff

on at least two different types of media with one them off-site. The cloud is that

great off-site option. So, if you’re backing up things to Apple Photos, you’re paying

for that service and you know that stuff is there, that’s great. But if Apple or

Google has a data breach, that could be your stuff gone or you hand off your

phone. I’ve seen this happen and it’s really sad. But maybe you hand your

iPad off to your grandma to look at some pictures and while grandma’s surfing, she

gets a notification that she’s out of storage space and pops into settings and

without realizing what she’s doing, deletes your Apple Photos library. Stuff like

that, especially if you don’t catch it right away, once it’s gone, it’s gone. So

that’s why I recommend people having more than one copy of their library, don’t put

all your eggs in one basket. – So, I’ve got a question that’s a big one. I hope I

can explain it the way I need to. So let me give you context. A little bit ago,

my mom passed away. My brother and I and sister are going around and we’re trying

to find pictures. We were trying to build this presentation that we were going to

have. So, we’re all looking for pictures, you know, I’m looking for pictures. They’re

looking for pictures. And so, we’re trying to compile those pictures that are really

special to us, but maybe not as special to another part of the family. So, my

question is, I know that this sounds like something I think you, we can connect

each other, but I’m going to ask it in two parts. Number one, how is it that we

could connect each other as a family? And then I’m going to ask a second one,

maybe you can talk about both, but, um, is the other part is like, what if, what

if I’ve got a segment of family, maybe on one part of the family that’s going to

be really interested in these pictures. And I want them to have a part of this

part of the program, but maybe the other side, my wife’s side of the family or

whatever, we maybe have a whole different set of pictures that this part of the

family is not that interested in. Does that make sense? And how I’m trying to

segment what we would have access to and who would be interested in it? Yeah so

our family plans are specifically tailored for that. To start out on a family plan

you can have up to five people that are using it and we help each person get

logged in and get set up and configure the permissions for each of those people and

those permissions can include what they have access to in the master library. Beyond

that you can get a plan that also has up to 10 people so if you want to cast a

wider net, you certainly can do that. Another option is we have what are called

shared albums, which create non -index web links. You can grab a group of images up

to 1 ,000 at a time, and click to share them and it creates this non -indexed URL.

So, you can share that URL with those family members. They don’t need to install any

software. They don’t need to have great technical experience. My 97, almost 98 -year

-old grandmother loves this feature because She doesn’t have to learn anything new she

just clicks on a link and there’s all of her pictures that I’ve scanned So that’s

another way to do that. So especially if you’re you know pulling things together for

a memorial having those shared albums and be able to in your library find all of

the pictures of your mom and put those into an album and then you can share those

with the rest of your family That’s a really great way to do that without

necessarily having to give them access to everything but then your spouse your kids,

and possibly, you know, your parents, depending on who wants to have access, you can

have a smaller group that you share a library with, and then for those more

extended relations, use those shared albums. Gotcha. So, let’s talk a little bit more

about the organization of what Mylio does. So, you know, the one I don’t know,

and maybe I’m not using Google Photos right, is it all just gets dumped in there

with no real organization to it as far as I think it does it does it

chronologically so you do have the year but when I’m trying to go find a picture

I’m pretty much just trying to remember in my head what year was it done was it

in the summer in the winter and I’m kind of just scrolling around now there are

some facial recognition things that are coming up through those apps but it’s

not all that great yet yeah. So, what does Mylio do to help you organize? And you

mentioned tagging, so that sounds interesting. Yeah. So, there are three views in Milo

that I think would be particularly interesting to you. The first one is our life

calendar, and that basically takes all of your pictures regardless of what folders

they’re in, and puts them on a calendar so you basically can view your life in

pictures. You start out at a decade view, you can click on one, you go in and see

all of that. The years in in that decade, you click on a year, you see all the

months, and you can go in closer and closer and then see details of those pictures.

So, if you’re somebody who likes to find things based on when they happened, that’s

a really great view. For our modern pictures, especially those coming off of our

mobile phones, most of those have GPS tags. So, we also have a map view.

So, if you’re someone who likes to find things based on where they happen, you’re

like, you know, I know we went to the Grand Canyon, I can’t remember what it was,

but you can zoom in on the map and you can find the Grand Canyon and bam, there’s

all those pictures. That’s a great way to find things if that’s the way your mind

works. And then finally, one of my favorites is our People View. And this is where

when you’ve gone in and tagged people, so just to back up a little bit, when you

bring new media into Mylio Photos, it scans for recognizable faces. You can then

go in there and say, this is Susie, this is Tommy, this is whoever, and you assign

those names. Once you’ve tagged somebody five to 10 times, the AI gets smarter, and

it starts to group together similar pictures of that person. So, you can quickly go

in and batch tag, and that way it allows you to work through your entire library

of tagging people very, very quickly. Once you do that, then you can go into what

we call the people view, and you will have a collection there for each person. So

want to find all the pictures of your mom. You go to her picture there and you

click on it and there’s all the pictures of her. We also have some amazing search

and filter tools so if you don’t want to use those three views you’re just in the

all photos view which is that kind of infinite scroll view. You can just type in a

search and it’s got it’s going to search all of your metadata that’s in your

pictures. So, the places, the file names, titles,

captions, keywords, any of that kind of stuff. It also has AI object recognition, so

it recognizes over a thousand different facets of your picture from different objects

to different visual properties. And so, you can search by the color blue and it’ll

pull up everything that has a heavy blue color in it. You can search for water,

you can search for, you know, all sorts of different things. So, depending on how

your mind works and how you recall memories, there is a way in my Leo to get to

that memory. Now, as I’m thinking about this, again, I’m not very tech savvy,

so, I’m thinking in terms that may or may not be correct, but let’s say I’m on my

phone or tablet or whatever I’m in and I’m looking at my Mylio app, and technically,

I guess my pictures are not necessarily, I know you said we could store through the

Mylio, but it’s not really stored there, but I’m viewing it through the app. So, if

I’m on my phone and I see one and I want to share it, am I doing it pretty much

the way I would share a picture on my phone? >> Very similar, yeah. >> Okay. >>

So, what happens with your different devices is on every device that you add, let’s

just say you’re at the first simplicity’s sake, on an individual account, it’s just

you and your photos. So on every device, it’s going to store the database file for

Mylio. It’s going to store a thumbnail of each of your images which are really

teeny tiny versions and it’s going to store an XMP file which is your

metadata all the information about your pictures. Then on devices where you’re viewing

such as like a phone or a tablet default setting is what we call space saver and

on these and on these devices, we will store as many optimized versions of your

files as we can. These are about five percent the size of your original so it

allows you to have very good quality viewing images on all of your devices, even if

you don’t have connectivity to your home device. You then have the option, if you’re

using one of the cloud options that we talked about earlier, or you have a computer

home, your device that you’re out and about with, say, your phone, you can pull

down that original quality file to your phone if you want it. But that optimized

version is, for most people, perfect for viewing on a screen, for sharing things

like that. So, you would just click the share button, it’ll access the share sheet

on your phone, you can send it to your email, your text message, your WhatsApp, or

whatever you want to use. Got it. So can we help us understand a little bit of,

I guess, maybe the security around it or safeguards that are in place? And just

because it is someone’s entire life, and you know, you hear every other day about

things getting hacked and their information getting out there. So how secure is

this? – So, it’s as secure as your own computer is. So Mylio runs primarily on your

local devices. You do have the option to use cloud storage. And when you use cloud

storage with Mylio, it gives you the option to encrypt it. So that cloud service

cannot see your stuff. Additionally, because you’re focused on your own local storage,

say your pictures are on your hard drive, Milo never sees any of your stuff. So, we

don’t see anything. It’s very secure. It’s very privacy-centric. So, we’ve talked

about a lot of things. It sounds like, and I’m just going to say it, and then you

tell me, well, it’s not that bad. But I think first level, when you’re getting

things organized, there’s probably some work up front. But how would you describe,

like if I did this compared to me having all the pictures on my phone the way I

have them right now, or whatever, does it make it simpler for me ultimately and

how does it make it simpler? – So yeah, there is certainly some effort to put

in up front. This is a project that you kind of have to have a labor of love and

you want to go in there and make this a better thing than what you have now. So

right now, most of us would go on our phones, we want to find something where in

that infinite scroll mode. Once you get things into Mylio, you’ve taken that time to

do that organization, you’ve tagged the faces and so forth. The search tools in

Mylio are very, very powerful and those are going to make your life easier. So when

you do need to put together that celebration of life slideshow or celebrate your

kids’ graduation from college and you want to do that birth to 18 years old

slideshow, all of that stuff is there. And then for all of your older memories,

If you’ve gone in, you’ve added some context and stories, you can add titles and

descriptions.

Those details are what are going to get passed onto the next generation because your

pictures from when you were a kid are going to mean nothing to your kids. They’re

going to look at them later on in life and be like, I don’t know who these people

are. So, taking the time now to add that context and that information is what makes

those memories valuable and much more tangible as you pass them on. – Sure,

yeah. So, it sounds very interesting. And if someone is interested,

wants to learn more about Mylio, what’s the best way to do? And to kind of

understand how do I sign up? What’s like the cost structure? What’s the best way

for them to look at all that? – Excellent, yeah. So, they can go to Mylio.com, M -Y

-L -I -O .com. And you have the option there. You could sign up right away if you

wanted to, but you can also book a one -on -one demo. So, you get a Zoom call with

one of our experts. They will talk you through the options and take a look at what

you’re trying to accomplish and guide you in the best way to do that. If you do

decide to sign up at that point, you will get handed over to one of our onboarding

experts and you will have help setting up those first devices, doing your first

import, getting to a point where you’re comfortable with the application so you can

move forward. At that point, we have a ton of education and support available to

people who want to go further. The cost structure, it starts as low as $20 a month

for an individual plan. Family plans are more expensive, but you can talk through

those options and see what’s best for you when you talk to one of our advisors.

Well, Angela, thank We, you know, I know that a lot of us, I think most people,

once you’ve kind of lived life and you’re down into the retirement years, you want

those memories collected. And I think it’s great. I know that we were sitting

looking at older pictures as we did this with my mom and we’re like, who is that?

And we had no idea and she’s not with us to tell us. So, we had to guess or

maybe go talk to an Anne or something else like that. So just that one feature, I

think would be something that could be very beneficial. So, thank you very much for

coming on and talking to us. We certainly appreciate it. My pleasure.