Web Service CueMemories by 6S to Store and Retrieve Digital Media

Edinburgh-based company 6S Ltd have launched CueMemories, a web service to store and retrieve digital media by replicating the simple and effective functions of the human brain.

This patented technology is based on episodic memory – the memory which stores personal experiences – and negates the need for the time-consuming process of semantic tagging we are used to applying to digital content.

CueMemories users join private groups based on friendships, families or important social gatherings such as weddings, big birthdays and bar mitzvahs. Group members share a common past, which the system uses to reference content without the need for laborious descriptive tags.

Real social groups interact with one another through shared knowledge and experience. CueMemories recreates this completely natural and human system online, making it the ultimate application for rich and collaborative digital storage and retrieval.

The application uses a new patented tagging process known as Cues. Group members need only add their content and tag it with any or all of the three contextual markers, time, people and event type – descriptive tags are redundant thanks to the group’s shared autobiography.

There is no need to categorise media by its format: all content – images, audio and video – is treated the same. As a result, when group members retrieve their content using these broad and meaningful cues they immediately receive a dynamic multimedia presentation of the experiences and memories they have shared.

The application offers end users three distinct benefits:

• Collaboration – group content can be added to by anyone, shared by everyone and is uniquely relevant to all the group.
• Richer memories – all media are tagged with the same cues making all types of digital content straight forward to store, retrieve and combine.
• Instant slideshows – these tags which describe the context of our lives and experiences can be selected to dynamically create new slideshows, delving into the past in new ways time and time again.

Users can add content directly to the service or import from existing media channels – Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

CueMemories is available as a free basic plan, as a subscriber service with unrestricted uploads or as a one-off subscription package for special events or occasions.

6S began work on its digital storage and retrieval system based on human episodic memory 13 years ago. The technology is patented in the US and the UK with a further three US patents pending.

Work began on the commercial system in 2009 and the CueMemories web service has been available in beta from June 2011.

The company’s founder, Liz Sharpe, was previously a successful venture capitalist specialising in early stage software companies and has worked with a range of companies including AOL, Broderbund, Cognex and Symbolics.

About human memory
The existence in humans of distinct types of memory was first put forward by Dr Endel Tulving in 1972 and his discovery is now one of the main areas of research in psychology and neuroscience.

The difference between semantic and episodic memory is defined by the distinction we make between what it is to remember and to know. Our semantic memory stores factual and impersonal knowledge while our episodic memory holds the individual experiences and emotions that allow us to relive events from the past.

To look at the pricing of CueMemories