Tuesday, August 19, 2014

MyCanvas Not Being Discontinued - Alexander's Will Adopt It

I received this in my email from Ancestry.com today:

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Check out the blog post below from Eric Shoup. http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/08/19/mycanvas-is-sticking-around/


Great news: MyCanvas finds a new home in Alexander’s
(Author: Eric Shoup)

This past June, we announced that we were retiring the MyCanvas website and service in September 2014.

We’ve heard from many people who love MyCanvas and hate the idea of it going away. Well, we have some good news for you: It’s not going away after all. We listened and decided not to retire MyCanvas, but instead transfer the website to Alexander’s.

Founded 35 years ago, Alexander’s is a Utah-based printing production company that has been the long-term printer of MyCanvas products including its genealogy books, calendars, and other printed products. This makes the transition of MyCanvas to Alexander’s a natural fit.

It’s our hope that this agreement will not change the experience for MyCanvas customers. In fact, Alexander’s plans to make some exciting improvements we think you’ll love. Additionally, MyCanvas will continue to be available from the Ancestry.com website as we believe in the importance of sharing family history discoveries and see MyCanvas as a way to deliver this ability to our customers.

The transition of MyCanvas will take about six months. But in the meantime, all MyCanvas projects will remain accessible on Ancestry.com until it moves over to Alexander’s next year. We will continue to communicate details as the transition moves forward.

We want to thank our loyal MyCanvas customers for all the projects you have built and printed with us over the years. We’re excited about this new owner of MyCanvas—and we think you will be too.

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This is, indeed, good news for users of MyCanvas to create quality family history books with photographs, charts and narratives.  

The blog post above states that MyCanvas will be available from the Ancestry.com website.  This doesn't explicitly state it, but it implies that the information in the Ancestry Member Tree of the user will be accessed in order to create a new or revised book.  

Obviously, this is a really smart move by Alexander's - they get to continue producing one of their products which probably is a significant part of their business.  My guess is that they will hire some of the Ancestry.com personnel who developed the technology to turn the family tree information into the book format, and the technology and website to do it will be part of the transition process.  


copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


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