Alan E. Mann, AG
Alan.familyhistory@gmail.com
Accredited Genealogist
www.alanmann.com/articles
prepared October 2007
New Technologies and Trends
For Family
History
I will be talking
about technology and trends in the following areas:
|
Social Networking |
Social Bookmarking |
|
VBlogging or Vlogging |
Web Mobility |
|
Web-based programs |
PodCasting |
|
Other ideas |
|
Social Networking
First, there was word-of-mouth advertising. Then there was
general advertising. Then there was targeted advertising. Now there’s social
network-based advertising. Let me illustrate. I regularly receive Genealogical
Computing magazine. Now a social network might know that 67% of Genealogical
Computing subscribers contacted also wanted the Internet Genealogy magazine.
The social network then discloses that fact to me and offers me a trial issue,
which I accept and later buy a subscription. The idea is people can have
information, articles, or ads presented to them which have been vetted by
others with similar interests. Social networking is more that just a minor idea, it is a world-changing phenomenon.
News organizations are fighting this trend. After all, how
can you beat live broadcasts of a breaking event by people at the scene who are
witnessing it? How can you compete with news stories filed immediately by participants?
How does this apply to genealogy? Why not have the ability to send a message
asking someone to look in a record and have the message delivered to a genealogical
researcher on their cell phone while they are standing in the record office
that has the record…or the cemetery where the headstone is located, etc. – even
if you don’t know the researcher or didn’t know they were there? People can
help each other, and value can be drawn from others’ experience or knowledge.
Social networking taps into that experience.
What sort of services are out there? YouTube, ShoutCentral,
MySpace, Facebook, MSNSpaces, and many more. For an interesting short piece on social
networking, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLqGEzU4Aw4&eurl=
Social Bookmarking and tagging
Have you ever heard of favorites or bookmarks? These are
attempts by individuals to mark a site they found on the web so they can easily
return to it. Many of us have numerous sites that we’ve marked for later
return. To aid in finding them again, we start organizing our favorites in some
way, usually in folders by topic or place. Some people would like to share
sites they find that are particularly useful. In fact, this is how Cyndi
Howells set up the infamous Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com).
She found sites and wanted to share what she found with others. Soon people
were looking forward to seeing her list of links. Then she decided to
organize them. The idea of assigning a category to a link is the basic
concept of tagging. We tag links with the category or categories that
apply to that page. Thus, the 1855 census of
One example of favorites in the Family History Library’s
favorites organized in the pattern of the FHLCatalog
(place, then subject). However, adding things to this list takes a lot of time.
Would it be nice if a community of genealogy buffs could all contribute to such
a list? This is one of the central ideas of social bookmarking.
A second concept of social bookmarking is vetting
links. If only one person thinks a link is good, how reliable is that
recommendation? If 5000 genealogists recommend a link, you know it’s a good
one. Thus, a social bookmarking site not only
combines the categorization or tagging efforts of many, but provides a measure
of reliability or vetting by counting the number of people who contribute each
link.
Examples of social bookmarking
services include Del.icio.us, Digg,
Furl, Fungow, Ma.gnolia, BlinkList, Socialmarks, StumbleUpon, iFaves, and more.
Most of these services use a display called a tag cloud. A tag cloud
shows a list of tags (words or phrases), usually in alphabetical order. The
more frequently the tag has been used, the larger the word appears in the tag
cloud.
VBlogging or Vlogging
VBlogging or Vlogging
is creating, editing, reading, or commenting on videoblogs.
A videoblog is a weblog (blog), or journal-style website, which includes video. Do
you have a video of someone telling a family story? Could you video yourself
teaching a lesson on How to research or use a certain record type? These are
ways video might promote family history. Typically, one uses a camcorder, but
you can also use a cell phone or digital camera to create video clips. You
transfer the clips to your computer, then post the
video clip on the Internet. Like most weblogs, videoblogs can be syndicated via RSS. This means readers
who "subscribe" to your RSS channel, which is divided into episodes,
or separate posts of video content. There are several products, like FireAnt which can automatically download videos as soon as
you post them.
FireAnt is a free software application
for Mac and Windows that makes it easy to find and download media from the Web
and play it on your desktop no matter what video format it is, including
QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash, etc. FireAnt also
helps people discover and watch videos online through their FireAnt
Channel Directory.
If you are interested in vlogging,
see FreeVlog.org for a really great step by
step tutorial on how to create a weblog, upload
video, and create an RSS channel using free tools and services.
Web Mobility
This is a concept rather than a specific product. The idea
is people can store their data on the web, then access it, view it, and even
update it from any computer or mobile device which can connect to the Internet.
Products supporting this include ElephantDrive,
Box.net, and FileMobile (www.filemobile.com). FileMobile
alpha testers get 250 mb free storage space for
audio, music, video, document, image, or photo files. Note: it’s free partly as
a thank you for participating in the testing of their new system and partly as
a teaser, hoping that you will pay for additional storage space once the site
goes live. From any computer, phone, camera, camcorder, or microphone you can
transfer audio, video, graphics, or text to any MP3 player, iPod,
computer, phone, or blog. It has a site tour,
tutorials on how to do things (upload, download, etc.). Another example would
be the Flock/Photobucket marriage where you can use a
browser to view/move photos around in free storage space (see http://flock.com/photobucket/tour/)
Web-based Programs
The trend is toward web-based programs, plug-ins, portlets, and scripts. The idea is that you don’t need a
program on your computer. The program is on the web site you visit. Some
examples of web-based programs are:
New
familysearch (the future new.familysearch.org), which will store genealogy
information including names, dates, places, sources, and images online.
ThinkFree.com
– an office suite compatible with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that creates
office documents, spreadsheets, or shows without having any software on your
PC. They give you 1gb of storage so you can access you
documents securely via password from any Internet-connected PC or Mac.
Writely – a new service recently
purchased by Google, which is a word processing program. What’s unique is you
don’t install it. It runs on the web. You visit the site and call up documents
(on your computer or on the web) and edit them, then save them where you want.
Groups can cooperatively work on the same document. Other online office
products include www.thumbstacks.com
(presentations), www.ajaxwrite.com, www.ajaxsketch.com (graphics editor), www.gliffy.com (charts & diagrams), www.SSLBridge.com (network computers and
share files via the web), www.wufoo.com
(forms & surveys), http://snipshot.com
(Online photo editor - formerly pixoh).
Google
Spreadsheets –this one creates cooperative spreadsheets. It was used to keep
track of hurricane Katrina survivors, coordinated by block Captains.
PodCasting
PodCasting is the method of distributing
multimedia files, such as audio programs or music videos, over the Internet via
a technology called RSS for playback on mobile devices and computers. The term
podcast, like 'radio', can mean both the content and the method of delivery.
Usually a podcast features one type of 'show', with new episodes released
either sporadically or at planned intervals such as daily or weekly. This
allows for periodic shows on a theme. There are several genealogy
podcasts, including Eastman’s Newsletter, The Genealogy Guys, Genealogy Tech
Podcast, and Under the Tree.
To best use podcasting, download
the free iTunes program for Windows, launch it, then click on the Music Store, where you will have
the opportunity to buy music or download free podcasts (click on Podcasts). You
can also subscribe to a podcast, which means that new episodes will be
automatically downloaded into iTunes. You can then
listed to your podcasts, burn them to a CD, or download them to your iPod or other audio device. More information about PodCasting and how to do podcast your own audio content is
available from Greg Schwartz at www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/seminar_page.php?sid=62
or check out www.solidcasts.com.
Other ideas
- Guruza (www.guruza.com) is a simple pay for
answer service. The concept has been tried unsuccessfully before, but it
seems to be an idea whose time has come. Free answers are available
at Yahoo Answers, and Ask.Metafilter costs five
dollars one time fee, but answers are sometimes less than accurate. Google
Answers charges fifty cents per question , while Oyogi is free but rarely used. Qunu
requires special software. The best bet for success seems to be Guruza, where the person with a question:
enters a question, a topic and a reward (what he’s willing
to pay for an answer).
receives an Instant Message from an expert who wants to
answer the question.
Makes payment only when satisfied with the answer.
The payment is on the honor
system, but the number of times a person has not paid for an answer is listed
next to the question they post. Experts will tend to pick questioners who
actually follow through with payment.
Age
differentiation is a surprising possibility that a
- Twaingle
(www.twaingle.com) is a driver which
acts like a scanner. You can replace the scanner as an input device with
any image found on Yahoo image search or flickr.
In other words, you can bring images on the web directly into your
genealogy or other software as if they came from your scanner. Could this
apply to source citations…?
- ScanR (www.scanr.com) is a simple service which
does things with images from a camera, scanner, or cell phone. Take a
picture with your cell phone, send it by phone to scanr,
who converts it to pdf, fax, email, or TEXT (via
OCR) and send it to your email or posts it for you on your web
site—automatically.
- ComVu (www.comvu.com) allows for live video
broadcasting over the Internet from any video device, including a cell
phone. The company claims that it is the first live broadcasting
capability from a mobile device. With the push of a button, bloggers, citizen reporters, family members, friends
and corporate professionals can broadcast live events to their families,
friends, communities, or any worldwide audience - simply and
cost-effectively.
- PollyGlotto (www.pollyglotto.com) has to be seen
and heard. It is an incredible text to text to voice translator for many
languages.
- This
is only a drop in the bucket of the ideas currently out there or soon to
come. Want to find more things like this? Try checking out web 2.0
listings such as categoriz.com.
©Copyright 2005-6 by Alan E. Mann. All rights reserved. Written
permission to reproduce all or part of this syllabus material in any format,
including photocopying, data retrieval, or the Internet, must be secured in
advance from the copyright holder.