Our Story
Our Story
I didn’t wake up one morning after watching “Dragon’s Den” wanting to be an entrepreneur, I woke up one morning and discovered that my Mother had cancer.
So, Mindings didn’t come from an analysis of market demographics and deciding that I could make a product to fit a niche, it came from a very personal need.
In the Autumn of 2007, just as my wife and I discovered to our delight that we were going to have a baby, we discovered that my mother had cancer. As my sister has already announced she wasn’t going to have children, I was to be the sole grandchild provider – so I wanted to give Mum as much of the ‘Grandmother experience’ as possible.
To keep Mum’s spirits up I’d started sending her photographs in the post, from holidays snaps to pictures of our nursery decoration, literally printing out 6×4 prints at my local copy shop, putting a stamp on the back, and posting them. One day I thought, “I’m a geek, surely I can do better than this..!”.
So, I went online and bought one of the first wireless digital picture frames and gave it to Mum and Dad for Christmas. It was an instant hit, and despite its poor quality and very limited functionality, it enabled me to send photos to my parents just by emailing them.
On the day of the birth of my daughter (in fact five minutes after the birth!) I was able to email a photo of CJ, Mum’s new granddaughter, straight to the picture frame. I phoned Mum up, told her to switch the picture frame off and on again (the only way to see the latest picture) and moments later tears followed. I knew at that very moment that this was something really powerful, and if it could be easier to use it would be a wonderful blessing for families everywhere who have relatives that aren’t as tech-savvy as we “young folk”.
So, the Mindings journey began.
By trade, I’m a multi-media producer. For fifteen years I’ve worked in television, advertising, events, theatre and the corporate world. If it has moving images, it’s live, or is interactive, I’ve done it. I have a few industry firsts under my belt and I’ve picked up a handful of awards along the way. And, of course, as I mentioned, I’m a geek! So, I bought a better quality digital picture frame, and by connecting some RSS feeds together and other such messing about I discovered that I could email a photo to a Flickr account which could be displayed on the picture frame, and I could change the pictures being displayed without manually having to switch the frame off and on again – all straight from my iPhone!
However, I knew I could make it do even more, and more importantly do it effortlessly. It could receive text messages, it could connect to Facebook, I could have a calendar on it that I could run remotely, it could have a feedback loop so that I’d know that content had been received, and so much more! I slowly began to realise that not only would Mindings be able to help me better connect to my family, it could help me look after them too.
Drawing upon the talents and skills of some great industry colleagues I’ve worked with in my professional life, and some new ones who I’ve met more recently who share my vision, Mindings is very close to launching.
To get people using Mindings now, we have developed webMindings. So many people have been saying to me, “can’t you just make it run on an ordinary computer – we bought Mum/Dad/Gran/Auntie/etc a laptop and they never use it”. The answer was “yes”, so we did it! We’re testing it now and we’ll be launching very soon.
I hope that you will join me on our journey. Can you help us? Can we help you? What would you like Mindings to do? Would you like to help us test webMindings? We would love to hear from you.
My dream for Mindings is that it will connect the disconnected. I built it for my family, and I hope to share it with your family very soon.
Stu
Stuart Arnott
Founder
Mindings
stuart@mindings.com
PS: Why “Mindings“? Well, “Minding” is actually a real word that my Scottish Granny used to use when being told off by my Mum for buying me yet another toy – “och, it’s just a wee Minding”. A Minding is “a small gift or token of goodwill, often of little or no value, given to the recipient simply to let them know they’re being thought of”. Quite.
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Dec 03, 2011 @ 12:53:57
I learned about your startup on Fandango re. Naming companies. I love the concept and the apparent ease of using your product. Will it be iPad compatible?
Dec 03, 2011 @ 14:48:26
Hi Midge
Thanks! We will be launching webMindings soon, we start beta testing next week. We already have an Android App (which we used during the clinical study – http://www.mindings.com/2011/11/24/mindings-clinical-study-first-results/) but we are testing it further, and an iPad version is certainly planned (soon!).
Thanks for commenting!
Stu
Dec 17, 2011 @ 18:18:18
Hi Midge
This wasn’t planned, but it seems that webMindings is iPad compatible, so it might be coming sooner rather than later…
Watch this space.
Stu
http://www.facebook.com/Mindings
http://twitter.com/MindingsStu
Dec 03, 2011 @ 13:50:01
Why, oh why do I have to join Facebook to use this? I absolutely refuse to become part of their mass madness! And, twitter is something my kids use. I am definitely interested in this, as I have elderly parents, one of whom is computer-enabled and one of whom has computer-phobia. They could benefit from your application, but I don’t know how to go about it. I would be excited to be part of a testing group if that is still happening. I am 47 and computer literate. I have 2 kids, 16 and 18, one of whom lives away from home, on campus at college. My parents are 80 and 81. So, we have 3 generations who could explore the possibilities of this for you. I use both a desktop and a laptop, for personal use and to attend online classes. My daughter, at 16, uses a tablet mostly. My son has his own laptop. My folks have a desktop computer. This could provide good insight about usage for you. Do you have any suggestions to get us started? I love the idea behind this and can see many uses for it. I just don’t know what to do next. Thanks for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Tammy
Dec 03, 2011 @ 14:53:48
Hi Tammy
Thanks for commenting.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to use Facebook, or Twitter! It’s just easier to keep up with the latest news about Mindings by subscribing to Facebook or Twitter. There will be a proper mailing list running in a couple of weeks so I’ll add you to that.
I would love you to be a beta tester – computer-phobic parents are who Mindings is made for!
webMindings will be launched in a few weeks (actually we’ll be internally testing it next week). That will be the first way to use Mindings – by downloading it onto a PC. More details will follow, though.
I really appreciate you contacting us, I hope we can had you trying out Mindings for us, maybe even before Christmas…!
Stu
Dec 16, 2011 @ 23:31:10
Hi Stuart,
I’ve just read the article on the Guardian website about Mindings and it sounds great – my husband and I are in Australia with all his family back in the UK. My four month old son has a 99 year old great-granny who has a computer but is a bit overwhelmed at Facebook and Mindings sounds like a great way to get all the info we want to send to her without having to go through my in-laws (they live three hours away from her so she doesn’t get updates as often as we would like). We would be really keen to be part of the beta testing!
Cheers
Emma.
Dec 17, 2011 @ 18:15:39
Hi Emma
Thanks for getting in touch!
I totally understand your situation. My friend lives in Perth (Western Australia Perth, as opposed to Perth Scotland!). Some time back he posted a picture of his son’s first day at school, in his cute school uniform, on Facebook. I, in London, saw it seconds after it was posted. His parents, in my hometown in Scotland, saw it a week later – my pal had to email it to his sister who printed it out on paper and took it to their house. Crazy, huh?
webMindings will be *perfect* for your Great Granny, she’ll love it. We’ll definitely get you on the trial. If I haven’t got in touch by the third week of Jan give me a shout and remind me.
Very best.
Stu
http://www.facebook.com/Mindings
http://twitter.com/MindingsStu
Jan 19, 2012 @ 04:26:21
Hi Stu,
It’s the third week of Jan, so just sending a sneaky reminder about getting me on the beta test, as requested! Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year.
Cheers
Emma.
Jan 21, 2012 @ 14:01:42
Hi Emma
Thanks for writing again.
I will be writing a news/blog post about this shortly – but don’t worry we’ll still be having our “soft launch” very soon. We’ve just got a few tweaks to make, plus we’ve been approached by a couple of organisations who want to trial Mindings too (more on that soon), so it’s been stretching us a bit thin.
Don’t hesitate to ping me personally for updates.
Stu
stuart@mindings.com
Dec 18, 2011 @ 07:26:41
Really looking forward to seeing Mindings up and running! Have followed you on Twitter and ‘liked’ you on Facebook so hoping to be able catch up with the next steps of this fabulous project right away!
Dec 18, 2011 @ 09:22:21
Hi Mary. Thanks for joining us!
We’ll be testing the latest version of webMindings over Christmas (including setting it up at my Dad’s and Mother-in-Law’s!). Then in early January we’ll be releasing it to beta testers.
We have some really exciting things coming up, including new features and some amazing organisations and charities we’ll be teaming up with.
In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely Christmas!
Stu
Jan 11, 2012 @ 11:54:19
Happy New Year!
This looks like an amazing idea, congratulations! I’d love to be part of any trials/tests going on. Myself and my sister are from Scotland but live in Barcelona, our Dad, who is not so well and elderly, lives in Malta. He can send sms’ but calling each other is too expensive for all of us, and he is not able to use a computer at all. We often only speak around once every 3-4 months, although we send sms’ much more often. Mindings would be the perfect solution for us to let him see photos of what we are up to and we could also help to remind him of doctor’s appointments etc. I would love to be added to the mailing list and find out about when the official launch will take place.
Good luck with all the trials!
Mhairi
Jan 21, 2012 @ 14:14:40
Hi Mhairi
Happy New Year and thanks for your kind comments.
I’m so sorry I missed your comment and didn’t reply sooner. It’s been rather relentless and I must have overlooked it.
As a fellow Scot I’d be delighted to have you using Mindings and we plan to be “soft launching” very soon.
We’re tweaking at the moment plus we’ve been stretched a bit thin as we’ve been approached by a couple of organisations who want to trial Mindings too (which is exciting!).
Your Dad is the very kind of person that Mindings was created for, so you are definitely on the list and I will be in touch personally in a few weeks.
Thanks again for writing, and apologies again for not replying sooner.
Allrabest,
Stu