Alicia and I had a scrapbook from our trip to Dallas and three albums of photos from our wedding and honeymoon. On our honeymoon in French Polynesia the only way to communicate with the U.S. was via FAX, so we sent one FAX daily. When we made our trip to Mount Rushmore, I took a laptop computer and an Olympus C-2020 Z 2.1 megapixel digital camera along to see if we could post updates to a web page I had set up. This was back in the days of dial-up modems, so I had to scale down the image sizes, but this seemed like a promising idea!

Despite encouraging results from our preliminary work, nobody seemed interested in the idea of publishing web pages for important events. We envisioned demand for specialty web pages for engagements, weddings, and births, and created special packages for each. We even proved the worth of the concept when Alicia was sent to Louisville for emergency neo-natal care. I updated web pages on my laptop in Alicia's hospital room and uploaded the latest status via dial-up or, in extreme circumstances, using a PDA. We could then just direct inquiries about Alicia's condition to the dynamically updated web pages. I don't know if it was too soon or too complicated, but Cyber WebSmith never gained traction. Eventually Facebook and smart phones came along and filled the need Cyber WebSmith hoped to meet.

When my father-in-law, Dr. Sells, asked me to evaluate the web sites available for dentists I found the offerings lacking. It seemed that there was a business opportunity there so we launched Dental WebSmith. Luckily Dental WebSmith did take off and allowed Bill to spend much needed time with our family when Alicia had pregnancy difficulties and during the early years of our sons' lives.

I have now retired from Dental WebSmith and Alicia has taken over. I am now spending my spare time creating the resource I had envisioned over 20 years ago.

This web site is what I envisioned people would want many years ago before Facebook existed. I find myself desirous of such a site as a singular, editable, uncluttered, interlinked and linkable resource that I can create in a format of my choosing. With so many channels of communication and so many repositories of images and information, it is often difficult to direct someone to even rudimentary information about a specific family event. Also, the narrative is often cluttered up with third-party comments. That is not the case here. Enjoy!