Shaping the Future of Family History

Alan E. Mann, AG

alan.familyhistory@gmail.com Accredited Genealogist

UGA Annual Conference 2007 www.alanmann.com/articles

Wednesday, 12 September 2007 2:00 – 3:00

Shaping the Future of Family History:

New Sites and Insights

This session looks at some new ideas for doing family history using technology. It also looks at some new technologies that have not yet been applied to genealogy. I will demonstrate some new technologies or concepts, examine some new services, and give you a few hints on how to keep find more of the same on your own.

New Technology or Concepts

Surface computing

An exciting new technology in Microsoft Surface. The initial introduction only scratches the surface of its potential. The basic idea is that a common surface (initially a table top) become both the display and the input device for a computer, and that the user can use any physical object, from a pencil to a paint brush to a finger, to communicate with the computer. It can accept multiple simultaneous inputs, as well. You lay a wireless device such as a laptop, telephone, PDA, iPod, MP3 player, etc. on the surface and it can interact with the device without any connectors or special software. Thus, lay your digital camera on the tabletop, and the computer grabs the photos off the memory card in the camera and displays them on the table top. Want to share a photo? a favorite sound track? A genealogy database? Just lay the device that has it on the table top and it transfers it. Want to share the file with someone else, lay their device on the table top and drag the file from the table top to the device. Some of the potential can be seen once you consider the surface doesn’t have to be a table top. It could be a wall, or a sidewalk, or a street lamp. For more information, see:

Intro to MicroSoft Surface - www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html and www.microsoft.com/surface/

Examples - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/317737_msftdevice30.html

Social Networking

What if we now combine this with the current phenomenon of social networking—people adding their opinions or contributions to a web site. Popular Mechanics has a demo of how Microsoft Surface can be applied to allow a game of chess. One player is in Tokyo and the other in New York. Each has a MicroSoft Surface computer. Each sees the same chess board and pieces, and actually sees a video projection of the other player’s hand as he reaches out to move his piece. We could collaborate with others more easily, work on projects together with shared charts and forms even though we may be thousands of miles apart, and do so much more.

Two excellent examples of social networking being applied in the genealogical community are www.genesreunited.com and www.familylink.com (part of worldvitalrecords.com). Read about these sites on their home pages. You can listen to a radio show about the new familylink service at www.familyrootsradio.com/2007/05/episode-thirteen-podcast-available.html.

Another type of social network application is a Wiki, a not-so-new concept which is becoming more common place. One of particular interest is the Open University. They have courses designed for online learning. I’ve seen course modules on life stories, war memorials, and family pictures. I believe Genealogy University in a Wiki format is not far off. Check out OU at www.netvibes.com/openlearn. An attempt to make this happen for family history is being tested at www.familysearchwiki.com.

Geography Tools Online

Several efforts are currently underway to capture video data, associate it with geographic coordinates, and make it available interactively. This could have significant impact on many aspects of our lives. Here are some examples:

· Google Street View allows you to see 360° images from street level for those areas that have been photographed with the panoramic camera. This is a recent addition after the Google Traffic maps. See both at maps.google.com, or see a short intro video at http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/.

· http://preview.local.live.com/ walk or drive down the street and see what you would see if you were actually in the position and facing in the direction shown.

· EveryScape is a mapping utility that plans to interface with stores, offices, businesses, museums, etc. See a demo using Union Square at www.everyscape.com. This service plans to let you virtually window shop and get information on the products you see without having to interact with a sales person (although one is instantly available, if you need one…)

· Earthmine plans to “mine” the earth with video. It is done by a van passing down the street, capturing video, but may soon be done by video drones. This site also allows tags (some automatic, some added by customers, reviewers, or owners). It takes it a step beyond Google Street View. See www.earthmine.com.

So, why should this excite a genealogist and what does it have to do with family history? How about a virtual tour of the place where you or an ancestor was born—done without leaving home? How about a virtual visit to a cemetery to see what it says on your ancestor’s headstone?

Reading a headstone may seem farfetched, but it is NOT impossible. I believe it will happen. What if basic imagery like what you see from Google is readily available for free, but higher resolution imagery (enough to read a headstone, for example) required a fee? Or perhaps you could rent a video drone and control it via the Internet, having it visit the cemetery and zoom in on the headstone you wanted to see? Not science fiction, just an idea which is still a few years away (five or maybe ten?).

But this is only the beginning. The possibilities don’t end here. Add GPS and wireless devices, and our whole way of life could change.

What if we stored our genealogy on our PDA or smart phone? Then, these devices could communicate with other devices nearby wirelessly. They could compare genealogies without sharing actual private data. Genealogical application would include:

· Mark a spot with your cell phone, and tag it. You and anyone else can then return to that spot and know where it is (useful for headstones, where pictures were taken, family historical locations, etc.)

· Walking down the street and your PDA/smart phone beeps. The screen displays a message—that lady approaching you is your second cousin three times removed on the Schwitters side…

· Sitting the in the Family History Center and a message appears on your laptop screen. The older gentleman sitting eight feet to your left is working on the Nanninga line in the Krummhorn in 1790. Would you like me to let him know you are working on the same line?

Ubiquitous Video

Recently, lawmakers have been discussing a plan to have video cameras at every intersection. This is being considered despite the incredible cost as a possible way to reduce crime and aid in the capture of felons. Whether or not this scheme succeeds, video available everywhere is probably in our future. Perhaps through video drones or millions of fixed location cameras, but it will happen. This may open new opportunities for genealogists. What if we could connect to a video camera at the cemetery (placed there to catch vandals?) and view what it says on our ancestors

You Tube is a phenomenon. It is video or even television on the web. Innovators are seeking to apply the immense success of YouTube to genealogy. YouTube is getting some genealogy postings, or try Roots Television (rootstelevision.com). Social networking is getting involved again. You can see others’ suggestions and recommendations as you view a particular video. Why not apply this to supporting documentation? Have a video explaining reasoning which also shows the evidence (documents, etc.). Then genealogy enthusiasts add their recommendation or objection to the reasoning and presentation of evidence.

See these examples of videos uploaded:

Family Photo Collage - www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxDp4-G1qM.

Julie Andrews/Gene Kelly song - www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9cnHQKqhF4&NR=1

I am my own grandpa - www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfNpk2Bt0OM

Library VLog - www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiedZAXWrdk

RootsTube – one of many channels on www.rootstelevision.com. The home page gives you a variety of categories of videos, but they are disguised as icons on the right. Hover the mouse of the icons and a tool tip will pop up telling what that icon represents. Click on the icon to see a list of available videos in that category.

Mashups

A mashup (web application hybrid) is a website or web application that combines content from more than one source (courtesy Wikipedia). Thus one can take a geotagged genealogical record database in one source (or on one website), and mash it up with maps on a web site which has nothing to do with the genealogical database. A popular mashup we can use as an example (but which has nothing to do with genealogy) is Zillow, which pulls information from sites about real estate sales, and presents that information on a map from a different site. The result is a map which shows individual homes with their value. It has nothing to do with family history, but it illustrates the idea – see www.zillow.com.

Other non-genealogical mashups of note include:

· FBOweb (www.fboweb.com/fb40/default.aspx) tracks airplanes in flight. It allows you to see in real time where any airplane is (by tail registration, by flight number, or…), including private aircraft. It then allows you to see satellite imagery of the Earth as it would look if you were looking out the window of the plane in flight (except for weather).

· AjaxWindows (www.ajaxwindows.com/apps/windows/content/index.html) is an Operating System which runs in a browser. It allows an individual to have an entire desktop which runs applications, stores files, etc. which is accessible from any web-connected computer. It is particularly web-conscious in that it uses Google Mail for file storage and MP3Tunes for music file storage, thus greatly increasing the storage capacity of the virtual desktop. I imagine they will be interfacing with PhotoBucket or Flickr (or both?) to increase capacity for storing graphics files, a must for genealogists.

Provo Labs is an exciting new company in the genealogy community. Their first major offering is WorldVitalRecords.com. At this site, you can search data that has been tagged with geographic locations. This mashes up with Yahoo! maps to display markers on a map represented by the data. You search the database, get results, click on a result of interest, and get a map of the area showing the area where the event took place. Social Security Death Index, Maine death index, and Louisiana slave index are the first databases they have geocoded.

The Foundation for Online Genealogy is another new company in the genealogy community. Their first product is WeRelate.org, a cooperative site that seeks to enhance good tools through individual participation in the improvement process. At this site, you can search names, places, or sources and then map them through a Google maps mashup. The mapping portion is only visible when doing a sources search at www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate:Sources. They have drawn information from a variety of sources, including the Family History Library Catalog. Try a source search for a state or country and enter a record type into the keywords field. Once you’ve found a record for a place, you can edit the results to add additional valuable information, which will then be available to future visitors to the WeRelate site. It’s an interesting idea, with a lot of potential for the future.

There are also some great US geography resources. Goldbug’s SiteFinder (www.goldbug.com/map/sitefinder.html) asks you to input a place name. It then locates the place and plots it on Google Maps in a basic mashup.

Other Concepts & Services

Widgets are small things that perform some function over the web. There are tens of thousands of widgets. NetVibes uses widgets to allow you to customize your own homepage (www.netvibes.com), and has now made possible shareable, customized, configured home pages. Thus, one can create a home page for family history, or one specifically for family history research for a certain country, and then share it. All of the additions, links, and services can then be seen and used by others. NetVibes calls it the NetVibes Universe. When a widget is added to a web browser, it is called an extension. Many are designed for FireFox web browser, and Microsoft has entered the game by allowing extensions in new Internet Explorer 7. One widget is for translation and dictionary lookups. It is called Babylon6. Check it out at www.babylon.com. It allow you to CTRL-rightclick on a word and get a definition and translation into 85 languages. You can even add it to your web page for others to use. It is free for private, non-profit use, but also has a paid version.

The Family History Library is digitizing records with the intent of making them available online. For two examples, see http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/ and http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titledetails&titleno=23963&disp=A+genealogical+register+of+the+descendan

Another idea which isn’t so new, but is only recently being applied to genealogy is federated searching across different web sites. Some early examples include www.worldvitalrecords.com/InternationalPages.aspx, and www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/myheritage-research.php. The family history library also has an experimental federated search tool on the patron desktop, which works only in the Family History Library.

I’ve often mentioned automatic backup services, and I’ve tried to use several. One of my long time favorites, Mozy, has introduced unlimited size backup service for a fee of only $4.95/mo. Alternatively, you get a free 2 gb (+256 mb if you use this link - https://mozy.com/?ref=6H24GG).

Another technology which is having impact on family history is podcasting. A podcast is a digital audio file distributed over the Internet. In essence, it can be a radio show on the web which you listen to on your computer. With the free iTunes program, you can subscribe to dozens of weekly genealogy podcasts, including the Family Roots Radio Show (www.familyrootsradio.com), Eastmans Genealogy Newsletter Show (http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/podcasts/index.html), Genealogy Guys (www.genealogyguys.com), and DOZENS more!

How to Find More on Your Own

There are thousands more such sites on the internet. It would be impossible to list them all here. Even if I could list them all, there would be more that weren’t listed by tomorrow! So how can you find more? There’s a lot you can do to be aware of developing technology. I would suggest:

Read online newsletters, chiefly Dick Eastman’s newsletter (www.eogen.com). See www.cyndislist.com/magazine.htm#E-zines for a list of many others.

See www.webware.com/8300-1_109-2-0.html for cool web sites & services

Participate in or read technology Blogs (www.mashables.com, www.ldscio.org, www.netvibes.com/techcrunch, http://beta.tech.lds.org, http://labs.familysearch.org, http://eatslikeahuman.blogspot.com or others.

Subscribe to blogs, podcasts, and searches via RSS (see www.rssgenealogy.com, or The Bluster about Blogging).

Linkpendium (www.linkpendium.com)

Search Systems (www.searchsystems.net)

Genealogy Sleuth (www.progenealogists.com/genealogysleuthb.htm)

State Archive site list (www.sos.state.ga.us/archives/what_do_we_have/other _state_archives/default.htm).

Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com/primary.htm#Online)

Genealogy Links (www.genealogylinks.net)

©Copyright 2006-7 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.