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50 Reasons to Use P.Bio

This list may be long, but that just shows how useful P.Bio is!

1. To help you remember events in your life
Why do people take digital pictures? It's so they can look at them again later, to recall a friendly face, a fun moment, or a significant event in their life. P.Bio preserves memories of various things in your life such as what you bought, and who you communicated with (as well as making it easy to view those pictures too!) for a similar reason. So even if there are days when you didn't take a picture, P.Bio will provide other things to jog your memory about that day.

2. To let you browse your life
P.Bio creates a timeline of your life which you can browse by going from one day to the next, viewing the pictures and events from each day. No other software lets you read the story of your life this way.

3. To make it easy to find and look at pictures
Even if you take a lot of digital pictures, how often do you look at them? They are usually hard to find, scattered in different folders, and not organized by date. With P.Bio it doesn't matter where you save your pictures on your computer's drives - just go to the date when you took the pictures and you'll see them! Even if you didn't use any other features of P.Bio this alone makes it a great tool!

4. For looking up important details for warranties, insurance, etc.
Suppose your DVD player stops working and you wonder if it's still under warranty. Suppose you bought it at Best Buy... simply search your P.Bio with the phrase "Best Buy" and you'll see a list of every day you bought something at Best Buy. Click on each day until you come to the one when you bought the DVD player. Much better than looking through boxes and drawers for an old receipt!

5. To inspire you to keep in touch with friends
P.Bio shows you when a friend contacted you, and makes it easy to see your entire history of contacts with that person. This can often lead you to think "Gee, it's been a while since I've called so-and-so... that was a fun weekend we had together! I'm going to give her a call and see if we can get together again!"

6. To recall the background of a rekindled friendship
Suppose someone you barely remember calls you... Enter their name into your P.Bio and you'll see the entire history of every contact you had with that person.

7. To inspire you to have a interesting life
As you browse your life or when you look at P.Bio's calendar summary of each month you'll see how some days are filled with activity while others don't have much at all. This can inspire you to think "I want to make every day as interesting as possible!" and encourage you to recognize the value of every day and to do things you might not otherwise do.

8. To inspire you to take the time to not always think about "what's next" but also reflect on what has happened
Chances are you've had a lot of interesting or fun little moments in your life - but when do you ever stop to reflect on them and recall those nice memories? Spend a few minutes using P.Bio to browse random days from your life and those warm moments will return, bringing a smile to your face.

9. To search for events from your past
Because P.Bio has gathered phone numbers, store names, digital picture filenames, journal entries and other facts about your life it is easy to type in a few digits of a phone number, part of the name of a restaurant or any other fragment of information from your past and then use P.Bio's powerful search capability to find all days related to that bit of information.

10. To write a memoir
You may not want to write a memoir today, or even in the next year, but what if five years from now something inspires you to start a project like that? If you are using P.Bio now that project will be immensely easier. On the other hand, maybe having P.Bio will inspire you to start writing a memoir if your life right now!

11. For compiling a family history
If the members of your family have any interest in compiling a family history now or at some time in the future everyone should be using P.Bio now because it will make it so much easier to put that family history together later. The person who likes to take pictures will have lots of photos of family gatherings, the person who does most of the party planning will have records of the shopping for big family meals; the person more inclined to creative writing may have precious journal entries...

12. Your small investment of $50 could have value for a lifetime
What's $50 these days? One month cell phone bill; one nice dinner at a restaurant; one family outing to see a movie... Spend that on P.Bio and you'll have something which will be of value for the rest of your life!

13. To answer the question: Where have the years gone?
Don't we all wonder this at one time or another? "What! It's been four years since we last visited you in Florida! Where have the years gone?" If you have P.Bio you can answer that question in minutes... You review last year and see you got an invitation from a friend to visit Utah and so you skipped Florida. And the year before is when you spent the summer in Paris; and the year before that your sister in Florida visited you instead - that was a great visit! - and the year before that was when you renovated the house (look at all those purchases at Home Depot - remember how much you worked that summer!) So that's where the years went - Utah, Paris, visit from your sister, and fixing the house. Hey, those have been a pretty active, fun years! Not bad!

14. To answer basic questions about your past
Now and then we all try to recall things like "what year was it when I visited New York City - was it 2002 or 2003?" Or "when did I buy that bicycle - was it last June, or was it in July?" It can be surprizing how hard it can be to remember the year a pretty basic thing in your life occurred. With P.Bio handy it only takes a few seconds to get this kind of information (and if P.Bio inspires you to browse your life occasionally, you'll probably have a more vivid memory of your life anyway).

15. To inspire you to re-do fun things you did before
You're spending a few minutes browsing your life and you come upon pictures of the day you and friends went down to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and it reminds you of how fun that was. Next thing you know, you're calling your friends and suggesting you do it again!

16. To document the milestones of your life
Even if you are good at bringing a digital camera to important events, what about those days you forgot your camera, or your batteries died. With P.Bio you have backup documentation to remind you of these events - people calling you to find out when you are leaving for a friend's wedding, stopping at the grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine or supplies for the graduation potluck, your social networking messages reminding people to show up for an anniversary...

17. To help you realize the significance of things from your past
You have a great job and live in a beautiful city, but two years ago things were quite different. How exactly did that change happen? You backtrack through your P.Bio and come across that phone call from a high school buddy 2 1/2 years ago when he said he'd be in town and like to go out for a beer. You see the receipt from Beckett's pub and recall that's where you met the guy who gave you his business card. You see you called that guy the next day, he connected you with someone else, and the next thing you know your career changed. It all started with that phone call from a friend!

18. To keep an eye on your financial activities
You probably don't look at your bank statements every month, so you might not notice a $500 charge for Bob's Paintball Park (which you have never visited)... But if you are looking through your P.Bio and you notice that item on the purchases panel you'll be motivated to log into your online banking to check up on it, and then call the bank to investigate this bogus charge.

19. To show you how your tastes change, and how your personality evolves
You're browsing your life and you notice that three years ago many of your purchases were at Seven Eleven... Later P.Bio's purchase panel shows a shift to purchases from Safeway (because you discovered the virtues of cooking fresh vegetables), then last year Safeway purchases faded away and Whole Foods started showing up all the time as your taste shifted to healthier, organic food. No wonder you've lost 15 pounds in the last three years! Now it's hard to believe you used to shop at Seven Eleven three times a week - but P.Bio shows you it really used to be that way!

20. Every day you delay starting with P.Bio the records of your life are being lost - so why not start now?
OK, maybe P.Bio doesn't seem very useful right now... but records of your activities are often stored only temporarily, so those things are disappearing and can't be recovered if you start using P.Bio a year from now. So why not start now, get those things saved in P.Bio, and then if you come to appreciate it later you'll be glad you didn't lose the information when you had the chance to save it.

21. To cut down on clutter
Do you save scraps such as movie ticket stubs, rave flyers, postcards, birthday cards, etc. so you can look at them later to recall memories? But is your box of scraps overflowing and becomeing a burden? From now on, just take a picture of these little mementos and then you'll see them on the day of the event (with P.Bio you can re-date the picture to assign it to the day of the event). Usually a picture serves the same purpose as the scrap itself (to trigger a memory) but without the clutter.

22. To get organized
Do you have piles of old photos mixed with old receipts, credit card statements, postcards, and all sorts of other stuff you want to eventually sort out and organize - but you never do? P.Bio can be a great tool to finally get all those things organized!

23. To inspire journal writing
Many people have discovered the virtues of writing journals. P.Bio makes it very easy to take up this rewarding pastime. Right now this might not be something you feel like doing, but if that day comes P.Bio will make it so much more fun and easy to do.

24. To show your life to your friends
You come back from a fun vacation somewhere and the soon your friends want to hear all about your trip. Just open up P.Bio, go to the day the trip started, and there are the pictures you took, the map of all the places you stayed, had meals, and did fun things. Nothing could be easier!

25. To track sports, exercise, diet, etc.
You can use P.Bio's custom panels to track sports scores, your exercise workouts, your meals and diet, your health... all sorts of things besides the basics.

26. To see where you've been, and when
If you travel a lot it can be very helpful to open P.Bio's "Travel Overview" and see the paths of all your travels over a ten year span... Was it 2002 or 2003 when you visited New Mexico? The green line on the map is for 2002 - that's when you went to Idaho; but the pruple line for 2003 shows you driving across Texas and over to New Mexico. Question answered!

27. To see your spending habits
One of P.Bio's tools is a summary of your purchases - your average purchase, the top ten places you spend money, and in which cities you most frequently make purchases. The results might not be what you expected!

28. To see who you contact most
P.Bio has a tool to summarize all your contacts with people - total contacts over time, how many times you've contacted all the people in your BioBook, earliest and most recent date of contact, and other cool things.

29. To see how you spend your time
As you browse your life with P.Bio you may see things you didn't expect... a Blockbuster rental every two days - maybe you didn't realize how much time you spend watching movies! A purchase at Safeway nearly every day... maybe you should consolidate your shopping visits. An average of 30 phone calls per day! Yowza! That adds up to a lot of time! Maybe you've never stopped to think about how many times you're on the phone every day...

30. To see where your money is going
You're browsing P.Bio and you notice Exxon - $35 in the purchases panel; two days later it's there again: Exxon - $42... Two days later it's there again... Wow. You do a search on Exxon and you've got ten to fifteen entries per month! Hmmm... maybe it's time to start taking public transit to work!

31. To remember long lost loves
You're looking up when you bought your DVD player and P.Bio takes you back to April 3, 2003. OK. But wait... who's that in the contacts panel? Michelle! That's right, you bumped into her at Best Buy, started talking DVD players, she asked if you could help her hook hers up to her TV, you gave her a call, ended up going out for dinner, and so on... But dang it, three days later she headed off on her plan to help starving children in Africa... but what a weekend that was! Ahhh... Isn't that one reminder of that magical weekend worth the price of P.Bio?

32. To see all your social networking activities in one place
If you like social networking you're probably on several sites: MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc. Until you started using P.Bio you had to log in to each site one at a time and check for messages, winks, comments, etc. But now that you've got P.Bio you just click on the refresh button and in a couple of minutes you see a summary of your social networking activity on all of those sites! If there's a message of interest you click on it and P.Bio will log you in to the site and let you see the details. What could be easier?

33. To spot trends and habits in your life
Sure, you know you like to watch football, and you like sports bars too. But just for fun you click on P.Bio's date navigator to jump a week at a time from one Monday to the next and lo and behold, you see a bar tab from O-Reilly's pub on every Monday from September to Decemeber for the last four years! You haven't missed a single game! You take your laptop down to the pub and show Patrick the bartender. He knew you were a loyal customer, but even he didn't realize how consistent you've been. Free Guiness for the rest of the night for his #1 Monday night football fan!

34. To settle friendly disputes
You are quite sure you bought the big sofa AFTER getting the big screen TV, but your wife is equally certain that you got the sofa first, then used that to justify getting the TV. OK, just search for "Sofa Warehouse" in P.Bio and jump to the date of that purchase. Click forward and back a few days - there's the purchase of the big screen TV the weekend before you got the sofa! In fact, when you go to the day you got the big sofa your wife took pictures of you and your friends moving the sofa into the living room, and what's in the background of the picture? The big TV! Case closed!

35. To note first impressions and feelings of the moment
Even if you don't use the journal panel for detailed journaling, it's fun to enter a sentence or two on some days. When you go back to look at those notes years later they can be pretty interesting... You might find it amusing to see a note you made after a dinner date saying "Dinner at Raleigh's was actually a blind date with a guy named Bob; he seems kind of dorky - I don't think it's going to go anywhere..." How interesting that Bob is now your husband and the father of your three kids!

36. To share memories with someone
Suppose you visit your mother on the other side of the country once a year... You two might get a kick out of looking at your P.Bio together, reviewing the things you did and the photos you took last year at this time.

37. To encourage you to expand your horizons
Maybe you notice from the maps in your P.Bio that every time you go off on a weekend day trip you always head north. You never really thought about it before, but P.Bio shows you that's what you do every time. So how about heading south for a change this time?

38. To track your interests
Although P.Bio automatically tracks things such as purchases and contacts, you can also create custom panels to track anything you want - the clothes you wore each day, the meals you had, video game scores, joke of the day, the movies you watched (along with your personal rating) - almost anything you can imagine!

39. To turn your appointment book into a diary
P.Bio provides an appointment book, and it can be viewed in the past, like everything else. This turns your appointment book into a diary. Why use a separate application for appointments and do lists when P.Bio provides all you need, and lets you go back and view it years later?

40. To exercise your creativity
It's not too difficult for you to design your own themes for P.Bio! You can then post them for other people to download too.

41. To preserve info about your friends
P.Bio's BioBook isn't just an address book - it's also a place to save favorite pictures of your friends, links to the BioPages of their friends and family, your contact history with your friends, and your personal notes. Years later it will be fun to be able to look back on these profiles of the people who mean so much to you now.

42. To fill in the gaps in your memory
Even if you have an excellent memory, there are bound to be gaps in your recollections. P.Bio can fill in the details for days when you don't remember anything of great significance, but which still might be of interest.

43. To uncover connections between things
When you have a thorough overview of your life of the kind provided by P.Bio you may discover connections between things that you never realized before. You may notice that within a week or two of your semi-annual visit to the Museum of Modern art (you see the ticket purchase in the Purchases panel) you either buy art supplies (you can see the purchase from the Artifactory) or you sign up for an art class (you see tuition fees from The Learning Center). Maybe it's about time you finally let your inner artist free and take a sabattical from work to exercise your artistic side!

44. To discover unexpected things about yourself
With the overview of your life P.Bio can provide you might discover things about yourself you never realized before. Maybe you think of yourself as someone who doesn't use the phone much, but P.Bio shows you that you actually talk with friends on the phone an average of twenty times a day! Hmmm, maybe you should upgrade to a fancy new phone after all... Maybe you think of yourself as a "health food nut", but you discover that you actually shop at Safeway seven times more often than at your local health food shop. What does that tell you?

45. To help you realize your life is more interesting than you thought
Maybe you were putting off getting P.Bio because you thought "my life isn't interesting - every day is basically the same..." but you decided to give it a try anyway. A year later, you spend a couple of hours browsing your life and you realize that you have more friends than you thought, and you actually get together with them for dinner pretty regularly, and when you get together you all end up having a lot of fun judging from the funny pictures you've got. These are small things compared to a trip to the Himalayas, but they still add up to a fun, interesting life.

46. To inspire you to change your life in positive ways
Maybe you've always thought of yourself as an adventurous traveller, and perhaps that was true when you were very young. But you start to think "when was my last big trip to someplace - a year ago, maybe two?" You start to browse P.Bio - checking out the travel summary - and you realize in all of last year you only got out of the city once! And the year before that your only major trip was a quickie to visit your sister and her kids. Hey! It's time to start travelling again! You vow to make next year's P.Bio much more interesting by doing at least two hiking trips in the mountains and one big adventure to another country!

47. As people go through major stages of life, P.Bio will be documenting it
A college student today will be going through graduation, getting a career, meeting a spouse, and having their first child over the next ten years. It will be a busy time - too busy for daily journals. But with P.Bio running "in the background" it will be creating a biography of all these important stages. The purchases panel will go from pizza and textbooks to buying working clothes, to restaurants and nightlife, to diapers, formula and baby toys. On special days such as anniversaries and birthdays the P.Bio user may appreciate looking back over the history of how life has progressed.

48. To rotate, crop, resize, label, and add notes and keywords to your pictures
P.Bio makes it easy to do basic image editing, rename pictures, add notes, and searchable phrases to digital pictures, making them easy to access via searching and easy to recognize years later.

49. To provide a way of transitioning from paper records to compact, portable computer records
An earnest P.Bio user will want to take digital pictures of their old printed photographs, handwritten letters, postcards and other items from their past, making them easy to search, store, and backup - giving them all the advantages of the new digital age of data.

50. Because it's fun, looks cool, and it's new and exciting - and you'll be a trailblazer!
Be one of the first to use this cool new technology. In a few years, when everyone has P.Bio, you can say you were one of the first to use it! Like being one of the first to use a walkman, a cell phone, or an iPod. It's fun to be a trailblazer!