Odbody Blog

An open letter to all odbody users: news and great news

 

odbody.com is our passion - it's a site that we created in order that all of you lovely people could record events that made an impact on your life - something that you can keep and that future generations can learn, from. 

So, firstly to the 'news': odbody.com, without major developments, is not an income-generating website and, as a very small team in the depths of a recession, we do not have the means to continue with the development of the website without some major investment. We are therefore planning to move the website to a new server which may mean you notice the site becoming slightly slower than it is now. We also plan to operate 'matches' on a weekly basis instead of daily as they are at the moment. Odbody will continue to operate in the same way apart from that and we hope to be able to return to the development of the website in the future.

Now, on to the 'great news': having moved odbody.com to a different hosting solution, we will be using funds that we have available to develop a new website - one that has the same principals as odbody.com but performs a completely different service. We're really excited by our new idea and, as it continues to be developed, we'll keep you posted via this blog. We know you'll all use the service from time to time and will want to help us to promote it. Although we're unable to disclose the exact nature of the new website right now, we plan to give hints and clues as we move towards a launch in the Summer of 2012.

Thanks to all of you who use odbody.com to record your life events - please continue to do so and to pass the message on to friends and family and watch this space for more news!

 

Spread a little happiness (and inspire a few along the way)

It's been a long time coming but we've been working on a nice little add-on to Odbody help you share the things that inspire you. 

Life's not just about sharing the minutae of every day life, it's about sharing the experiences and things that change you – that inspire you. So we've created a neat, (and free!) sticker system that makes it easy for you to do that. If you loved a book, a film or some music, don't just leave it on your shelf to gather dust – let it do it's work where it can be enjoyed by others and who knows, it may even inspire them, and you would have made that happen. 

To find out more about how to get your free stickers – and learn more about the whole idea take a look at the 'I'm not lost' page on our website. 

If you still need covincing – why not visit Seth Godin's blog about 'Emptying your library' – he's all for sharing his inspirations!

History in the making, the dawn of the next decade

So, we’ve come to the end of the first decade of this century, a decade that was full of surprises and shocks, disasters and deaths, amazing achievements and remarkable feats. This past 10 years has seen our generations see change that will fill history book after history book.

What began with the fear a bug in computers might crash and we’d all go down with them when in fact they have become a hugely embraced integral part of not only our working life but many aspects of our everyday life.

We’ve been spoiled with three Olympics, two winter Olympics and Paralympics and been inspired by amazing individual and team achievements. We’ve had two wonderful World Cups and we leave this decade with the hopes and dreams of many nations (unfortunately not Ireland!) in the hands of teams of lads who will no doubt break hearts and bring grown men to tears one way or another.

We’ve also seen the crashing down of the twin towers, killing nearly 3000 people, terrorist attacks around the world killing thousands, innocent people and young soldiers dying in different wars, natural disasters, including the Tsunami that took the lives of nearly 250,000 people.

In this decade the face of the world changed forever, and today we are still trying to make sense of it all. Trust in fellow humans has taken a beating but I believe goodness will prevail, we have to make it happen.

My mother always said she’d never see a black American president in her life time, well boy did that come around quicker than she thought. How wonderful for her to experience such a wonderful change in peoples opinions and she’s only in her 60’s!

You can be there’s lots of things we all think we’ll never see, cures for diseases, man on the moon, wars coming to an end, but 10 years ago did we think we’d see half of what we saw from 2000-2009?

There were many other things that happened that would take me 10 months to write about but whether it’s my age (mid thirties) or not personally the ‘noughties’ were a time of self recognition. I’ve at times questioned a lot of things, I’ve searched for inner peace or a calming contentment, frustrated at my ‘need’ for material things, not always wanting them but having them.

I think ‘in my mind’, that the our everyday life is like two people in a long term unhappy relationship, who have forgotten to see the beauty and love they once saw in each other when they first fell in love. We have all forgotten to look at the beauty the world still offers us. The inspiring people around us, the wonderful countries unexplored by lots of us, the singing of birds, the roar of thunder or the crashing of the waves, the laughter on a strangers face, the simplest of gestures, a hello from a neighbour, a child's first experience of anything. There’s so many things we don’t see around us they’re not begging for recognition but bulging with offerings of satisfaction.

There’s a phrase ‘children are our future’, maybe occasionally we should start looking at the word through a child's eyes and rediscover the beauty that is there. OK, so it won’t fix a lot of the worlds problems but it will certainly help each of us heal and cope from the ever changing world. We are lucky to be part of it we are in the here and now and we should be making our mark in the simplest of ways. By helping myself, I hope it helps me help those around me. Come what may, good bad or indifferent, my New Years resolution is to Open My Eyes!

Have an Odbody year guys – we wish you all that you wish yourself.

Sandy

 

 

 

 

What to do with your relatives at Christmas

Ah, the Christmas holiday's are with us once again... the season of goodwill, peace amongst all and, lets be honest... politely catching up with your older relatives at the Christmas table.

The usual conversations seem to start out with how things have been over the last year, but as the brandy soaked Christmas pud starts to take hold and the Christmas merriment takes hold generally the conversation starts to turn to reminiscing about the 'good old days'. So why not, this year, make use of this time and start to discover the real stories of Great Aunt Ethel and Uncle George?

Simply adding a few details about their past on Odbody could end up with you rediscovering their stories and finding people that were at the same events as them. Imagine finding some of the folks your dad was in the war with, or discovering stories about the street that your mum grew up in? This isn't just finding your genealogy, it's about matching people with actual events in the past.

By adding an event on Odbody, you create an opportunity to match those events with others who were also there, the event is also indexed by search engines so they can be stumbled upon by others using Google, Bing or other search engines.  

If you hadn't already heard our recent success, we've recently reunited after 50 years two people who grew up in a childrens' home, simply by one of them adding the event to Odbody.

Maybe this Christmas, you might unwrap more than just a pair of socks, you could actually rediscover the events that shaped your loved ones lives.

Want to know how to find someone through Odbody or match your events with others who were there? Read our recent blog.

Finding people you didn't go to school with...

We've recently reunited after 50 years two people who grew up in a childrens' home, simply by one of them adding the event to Odbody. We're obviously delighted and we want to add more success stories to our belt, we want to reunite others through their life experiences, and that's where you come in. 

Have you or one of your family shared an experience with others that you've since lost touch with? We know that there's always Facebook, Reunion and Friends Reunited for old school mates, but how do you go about finding someone who lived on the same street, was in the same infantry or who shared a house with you? 

Odbody offers you two ways to start the ball rolling: 

 1. Search for a specific person – if you know can describe the person, and give some basic details about them, like where you met and what they were like, using the Odbody person search feature you can create a search for the person. That search stays active, if the description matches any of our users they'll get an alert. If not that search stays active until you do find that person. 

 2. Match an event with others – If you wish to find others who were at a particular event or place, you can add that event to Odbody, again giving as much detail as possible, things like where it happened, who was there and any other detail that you can add. It's best to title the event with something recognisable like the name of the event or place. Once you've saved you can use the 'matches' button to see if there's anyone already who has recorded this event – if they have it will appear here. Don't worry if they don't, the event stays live and can be matched with anyone who joins in the future. Added to that, your event is now indexed by the search engines* and if anyone else looks for that event using a search engine they could now find you! 

Events can take the form of loads of things – actual events, places, websites, you can also find out who else has been inspired by the same books as you.

You can see a list of our live person searches without logging in – however for matches to work you need to join the fun.

We're committed to collecting and preserving life's experiences, but linking them with the people who were there – now that's what really floats our boat. 

*Matches and searches will only work if your event is set to public, otherwise no-one would be able to find you. We take your personal information very seriously and at anytime you can choose to change individual events or your whole profile to confidential or 'friends only'.

Odbody's recent radio interview

This is the recording of the recent BBC Radio Suffolk interview with Odbody following the success of reuniting two people half a century since they last saw each other.

For the full story, click here.

To listen to the radio interview:

Click here to play interview

Development Update 5

We recently rolled out a whole new batch of features and improvements, including:

1. Links to external sites and bold/italic text are now allowed in the event detail. We've also fixed a bug that stopped spaces between paragraphs appearing.
2. We decided to merge the synopsis and description fields, as many people didn't use both. The short introductory text in the event list and life path is now automatically trimmed from the first few words of the merged description.
3. Linked events, where you have confirmed a connection to a friend, are now much clearer on the life path.
4. All messages sent to you are fully duplicated in the email that is also sent notifying you.
5. We vastly simplified the sign-up process to the site.
6. After running A/B tests we launched a new home page. 
7. A number of improvements have been made to the sites appearance in IE6/7/8
8. After user feedback we tweaked a couple of words used to describe people you've met..
9. Some of the the detail collected in each event is now displayed much more prominently on the journal page.

Some users may have noticed some downtime on Thursday of last week. A planned database change, connected to the above updates, appeared to fail and the site was taken offline for a few hours as a precaution while the cause was tracked down. In the end, nothing untoward was found and no data was lost. Thanks for your patience during this time.

We hope you enjoy the improvements - we'd love to know what you think. More really exciting features are planned for release over the Christmas period. 

The Odbody Team

Reunited after 50 years – Childrens' Home friends reconnect through Odbody

This is the recording of the recent BBC Radio interview with Natasha Acres and Julie Acres following the recent inspiring result.

ODBODY INTERVIEW - click to play

For the full story, click here.

Reunited after 50 years through Odbody.com

Two friends who grew up in a childrens' home in Northamptonshire in the 1950s have finally been reunited through social media website, Odbody.com.

William (Billy) Collins and Julie Acres (formerly Freeman), both grew up in the NCH Evenley Hall Childrens' Home but lost touch once they left to start their own way in the world. 

Both now retired, they wanted to rediscover their past and the people they knew. Julie started to use the website Odbody.com to save her life's events and began a search for some of the people she knew from the Childrens' home.

Unbeknown to Juile, around a month later, Billy started to search for others he grew up with and, when he searched on the internet for 'Evenley Hall', the search engine brought back Julie's journal on Odbody.com! 50 years since they last met, they finally made contact through the site.

The site, Odbody.com, was actually the brainchild of Julie's daughters, Miranda and Natasha. "The idea behind the site was to develop a place that can capture the events that shape people's past and match those events with others." Natasha said, "All too often social media is about the now and the immediate whereas we wanted to capture the things that really matter to people – allowing them to rediscover past experiences and treasure them for generations to come. The current main sites such as Facebook, FriendsReunited or Geni.com focus either only on current friends, your ancestors or people you went to school with, yet a person's life is made up of so much more."

Miranda added "We're even more excited by this result - not just because it's our mum, but because this wouldn't have happened without Odbody.com. Our mum and her generation wouldn't generally create a blog and, although she uses Facebook, she finds it all a bit confusing... as we're developing the site, we're constantly refining it to be 'mum-proof".

She goes on to say "As children it's amazing to get a glimpse of your mum's life: Billy sent through a photo of Evenley Hall and we got to see the place that was such a big part of mum's early years – it's truly magical to share that."

Odbody allows you to create people searches that stay active until the right result is returned. You can use it to record the events that happen to you that have made a difference. But what about privacy, a key concern with internet users?  Natasha says "We've built the site to give you the control over privacy: we're aware that there are things you don't want to share but they are a big part of you, so each event can be made either confidential, shared with just your friends or public – which would then enable Google to help with any searches that you may initiate. It's important to us that users feel safe and secure - they are sharing their memories on Odbody and that's pretty precious stuff. We appreciate that and we don't take that lightly." 

"We're always trying to balance the level of privacy with the possibilities that come from sharing events – although we're in our infancy, we're building a site that allows users to connect through events in time. It works in two ways, matching the title of the key event with others – if you added, for example, "The Eiffel Tower" it will match with anyone else who found the Eiffel Tower inspiring. Secondly, it collects information about the event through the details or descriptions that a user records and indexing them for search engines to find them. 

It's early days but we hope our searches and matches will become refined overtime."

Going back to Billy and Julie, they've already begun contacting each other and the plans for the future are to meet up and reminisce about their time growing up. Billy says, "Hopefully, on the back of this we'll be able to find more people that we grew up with and start sharing our stories together".

Natasha and Julie were on BBC Wiltshire Radio on Tuesday 8th December. You can listen to the interview here.

SERVICE UPDATE: Bug all fixed and back up online, actually transpires it affected a minority of users and so you may not have even noticed any disruption in service.
Thanks for your patience.

We have an issue with our database server at present so no-one is able to log in, we're working on the issue and will give you a full update as soon as we can.