New App revolutionises how we remember Huge Life Events

Life-changing experiences will never be the same again, thanks to a new App that is making huge waves in social media circles.

Insta-Mem, which has been downloaded 6 million times since it hit the App Store this weekend, automatically takes your boring, unspecial photos and diary entries from incredible experiences and journeys and converts them into a more representative and social-media friendly format.

“Times have changed, and with ever-ubiquitous modern technologies in our increasingly digitalised world, it’s about time we updated and modernised the way we remember the special moments in our life,” said creator of the application, Ian Staygram. “Let’s say I went to Naples and lay on the warm white shores of the Mediterranean, gently out my slowly-bronzing legs out on the beautiful soft sands just meters from the warm waters and taking in the simple pleasures of life in a moment that hope will stay with me until I die - how am I supposed to remember that without multiple selfies, social media check-in posts and filter-heavy shots of the local cuisine?”

Thousands have agreed.

“What, really, is the holiday of a lifetime if it isn’t posted online for your friends to like and comment on? And if you do take photos of the mountains or scenery, how am I supposed to know that I, or anyone who was apparently there, was *actually* there?” asked internet user and fervent Mem-er Jake Henderson. “I think we can all agree that, whether you’re diving in the Pacific Ocean with Whalesharks and Sunfish, or sitting on Mount Everest watching the sun rise over the distant smoky hills like a magnificent orb made from burning gold, the most important thing is that everyone you know knows that you – you, with your face, maybe your mouth curled into a cheesy grin with an accompanying peace sign or thumbs-up – were there. Everything else is meaningless.”

Social-media users no longer need to fear forgetting these magical moments, says Staygram.

“The app is so simple to use, that even a Twitter user wouldn’t struggle. All you do is take a photo of yourself, and our Smartscan technology will do the rest. All those yawn-provoking shots of the scenery and panoramic views of the island snoozefest you were staying in will now be updated to have you in them, even if you didn’t take any selfies on the trip,” he said. “Hell, if you didn’t even take pics at the place, the app just searches Google for sunsets and snaps in that area and edits those into your album. It’s not like anyone will be able to tell the difference between sunsets or check that you actually took the pictures.”

The app also automatically adds a relevant filter and hashtags.

“When I visit memorable locations, I don’t want to have have the stress of taking periodic selfies that reaffirm that I do actually exist and am actually in Paris,” said another user Mary Marie. “I don’t want to bother with the profound hassle of picking between ten slightly different pre-set image filters, or the philosophical wrestling match of coming up with seventeen hashtags that adequately sum up the profound, life-altering trip I’ve taken. With Insta-Mem , never again will I forget that I travelled and visited the Top Ten places in Paris that I read about in a listicle."

Already, many thousands are wishing they had had this app when they travelled the globe to broaden their understanding of the myriad different cultures and peoples of our beautiful, rich planet.

“Nowadays I just sit in my chair trying to work out what I did between the years of 1968 and 2010,” said senior citizen Jerry Attrick. “We didn’t have Twitter or Facebook back then, so how were we supposed to remember those moments that changed us deeply and profoundly for the rest of our lives?”

Staygram now says they have their eyes set on video format technologies.

“Let’s say you go to a concert and forgot to record the entire thing from eighty-seven seats back in the cheap section on your 2.8 megapixel cameraphone. Well, with the app we’re developing, we’ll just take DVD-quality official footage and convert it to be smaller, blurrier, and filled with uncompressed, low-quality sound complete with barely audible songs being drowned out by the cheering and screaming. Imagine you’re bobbing for apples in a tub of Vaseline after corneal damage.”

Photos: Everest by Luca Galuzzi; Great Wall of China by Severin.stalder. Both Creative Commons.

Vodacom client accidentally climbs Kilimanjaro

South Africans made the history books again this morning, after 26-year-old Johannesburg-based salesman and Vodacom cellular services user Khanyi Yermenouw was awarded the Guinness Book of World Records title for “Youngest South African to Accidentally Summit Africa’s Highest Peak”.

Yermenouw was all humility and modesty at the media press conference in Johannesburg this morning, where he watered down the monumental achievement with such self-deprecating statements as “It was nothing, really” and “it just happened – really, I was just trying to get more than one bar on my cellphone.

He first started training for his huge event in 2009, when he signed up for Vodacom.

"I remember he would be running around, climbing trees, getting to the tops of tall buildings, hiking to the tops of hills,” said his mother. “He seemed like he was born to get to really inaccessible areas in the hopes of not having his call inexplicable dropped.”

Vodacom, she said, is every would-be mountaineer’s mobile carrier of choice, with the telecommunications giant covering 98% of the country that you aren't in right now.

Yermenouw told stunned reporters of his inspiration for this accomplishment, his best friend Hwata Bowtnouw.

“I was one the phone with him chatting about the Springbok’s game last weekend, when the line started going all funky. So I went outside to get some signal. It kept wavering between one and two bars, so I just kept going. Next thing I know, I look up and BLAM!, I'm in Kenya. Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

After a gruelling three hundred hours of performing the beginning of the Lion King with his Samsung S4 smartphone, he suddenly realised that he was at the peak of Kilimanjaro. The spot, he told, was incredible.

“Yes, almost two bars of signal. I could almost have a halfway decent conversation,” he said, before adding that, yes, the view was also quite nice.

Yermenouw now expresses an interest in sky-diving and “doing that Felix Baumgartner thing – he must have had at least three bars up there!”

Vodacom has since expressed its pleasure at seeing this massive achievement.

“We have been huge fans of mountain climbing since we first started providing a cellular service,” he said. “Every night, when I go to bed, tired and worn out from counting how many billions of rands we’re pulling in with our ‘really low’ rates, lol, and rock-bottom data costs, superlol, I sleep well knowing that for that whole day we’ve done our bit helping professional climbers and mountaineers take one step closer to their dream.” He added that it was definitely this feeling and not the R80 000 posturepedic, memory-foam luxury matteress with thousand-thread-count imported Egyptian silk sheets and duvets stuffed with endangered Alaskan Ice Goose feathers that helped him sleep so well.

“It’s all about selfless charity,” he said.

The intrepid young South African mountaineer is now set to be congratulated by the South African government with an awards dinner in his honour in Johannesburg next Saturday. Speaking over the phone to reporters from Muse and Abuse, he told of how honoured he felt.

“I’m really pleased with this award and I hope that… What? I’m sorry, this line is screwy, can you hear me now? What about now? Oh, Jesus, not this aga-“

We expect to hear from him when he summits Everest next June, where he will hopefully have enough signal to finish his sentence.