Echo Lake

Echo Lake is a fun and easy way for you and your family to create Multimedia Albums from your own stories, pictures and sounds. With Echo Lake you can capture special moments and treasured experiences and make them last. Add words, voice, music and sound effects to photos, video clips and pictures and capture the good times for generations to come. Echo Lake lets you create Multimedia Family Albums in a way that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard before! All this from your own stories, pictures and sounds.

The Cabin
This is where it all begins. The setting is a lakeside retreat in the country. Head for the Cabin, sit back and let your mind wander back to a place and time that holds a memory waiting to be told. Now you and your family are ready to begin on your first multimedia album. Tell your story in simple straightforward text or enriched with photos, personal voice, sound and video clips.

Echo Lake can capture family memories in any way you want it to. As a simple collection of writings or writings enhanced with voice, sound, music, photos and video clips or combinations of these elements. All this at your desktop. A wonderful activity for the whole family and a great way to document your family’s life and times for the generations to come.

You can virtually do anything from this desk... create and arrange your family's books, write stories, store sounds and music, photos & video clips, adding them when you're ready. You can even get help if you need inspiration or want to jog your memory.

The Book Shelf
The books here represent stories that have already been created. You can add more stories whenever the mood strikes or take a book off the shelf for someone else to read. With Echo Lake locating albums is a breeze. Just run the cursor over any book on the shelf and the title automatically appears! It’s that simple!

Share your stories
With Echo Lake you can even give your stories away to family and friends! You can print a beautiful storybook complete with pictures and give them to friends, aunts, uncles and grandparents! Or you can save your story to disk and present them to friends and loved ones. And the good thing about it is they don't even need to have Echo Lake on their computers to view your album.

What do you do if you want to keep an album confidential? See this portrait here? Well, it’s more than just a pretty picture.... It's actually a wall safe! You can use it to hide any book you want . Make up a password and no one else will ever get to see it ... not unless you tell!

The Fun Part - Getting Started
Now let's take a closer look at the desktop which is where you edit and create your multimedia albums. Click on the picture icons to see screenshots of the different features available in Echo Lake.

The tree ring is the center of Echo Lake and you can use it to navigate between all the different stories you’ve created. Every person that has created a book has a tree ring. And, like in a tree, the rings represent the years in a person's life. The center of the tree ring represents birth, the outer most ring represents the present and all the other rings, the years in-between.

The text controls in Echo lake are similar to what you’d find in a word processor. You can choose from different type faces, font sizes and alignments. It’s all designed to make it easy for you to tell your stories.

You can spice up your stories by adding pictures, sound and video clips. Simply open the media drawer, your store-house of filed away sounds, photographs, video clips and pictures. To add a picture, drag the picture icon onto the selected spot of your storybook page. If your computer is capable of sound, you can add narration, sound effects and music in much the same drag-and-drop manner. Once your story’s been told, how about prettying up your album with a picture frame. Media Drawer has a ready collection of picture frames to give your albums that finished look.

Snap forms are another special feature of Echo Lake. If you're wondering what snap forms are, read on. Echo Lake snap forms are some really neat documents which can be anything from diplomas and marriage certs to pet licenses, birthday cards and theatre programs. Use these realistic looking snap forms to give your stories that authentic feel.

What if you can't think of a thing to write? What if you've got writer's block? Don't worry, Echo Lake has included a handy inspirator feature called the inspirator. All you have to do is click on the inspirator and it’ll help you recall events in your life. This handy little feature has over a thousand prompts and ideas to get you inspired! The “Historical Blast from the Past” and real life interview prompts will get your memories flowing. The Inspirator is even smart enough to give you ideas relevant to your age group. Nothing could be easier or more fun than turning to the Inspirator for .... inspiration !

Start Telling your Story Now
Introduce your family to Echo Lake and you'll open their eyes to an enjoyable and meaningful activity for the whole family. Echo Lake’s innovative and interactive way of capturing memories means you and your family can share your experiences-sight, sound and motion - with family and friends, near and far.

So just sit back and let your mind wander back in time. Tell your stories and those your dad, grandfather, aunts and uncles told you of their lives and times, and pass on this priceless legacy to your children and grandchildren. They’ll thank you for it!