David Lifferth on Technology

KSL: More people getting fired because of online posts

2009-08-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

More people getting fired because of online posts
August 11th, 2009 @ 5:20am

By Paul Nelson
SALT LAKE CITY -- Some people on social-networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn may be a little too social.

The e-mail security vendor Proofpoint recently released its sixth report on Outbound Email Security and Data Loss Prevention.

"Seventeen percent, nearly one-in-five large U.S. companies, actually investigated a leak of confidential information to a social-networking site," the company's director of market development, Keith Crosley, said.

Crosley says 8 percent of companies have fired an employee for something they posted on social sites in the past 12 months, which is up from 4 percent last year.

Even the micro-blogging site Twitter can be problematic. Crosley says people can post links to sensitive information using URL shorteners.

"You could post something somewhere else, use a URL shortener to point to that, and you could actually leak masses of information that way," he said.

E-mail is a bigger problem.

"It's much easier to get fired over e-mail. In fact, it's almost a third of companies [that] terminated an employee for violating an e-mail policy in the last 12 months," Crosley said.

He says 31 percent of companies fired someone because of an e-mail, and 9 percent of companies have fired someone because of a blog.

The Proofpoint survey also found:

•E-mail still the No. 1 threat: 43 percent of U.S. companies surveyed had investigated an E-mail-based leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months. Nearly one-third of them, 31 percent, terminated an employee for violating E-mail policies in the same period (up from 26 percent in 2008).
•Blogs breaches continue: 18 percent of companies had investigated a data loss event via a blog or message board in the past 12 months. Seventeen percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly 9 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation (both increases from 2008: 11 percent and 6 percent, respectively).
•Video exposure: Given the rapid adoption of video and audio media within the enterprise--and the popularity of media sharing sites like YouTube--it's no surprise that more U.S. companies reported investigating exposure events across these channels (18 percent, up from 12 percent in 2008). As a result, 15 percent have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing/posting policies in the past 12 months while 8 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation.
•Friends or foes?: Concerning social networks, U.S. companies are also experiencing more exposure incidents involving sites like Facebook and LinkedIn as compared to 2008 (17 percent versus 12 percent). U.S. companies are taking a much more forceful approach with offending employees--8 percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation as compared to only 4 percent in 2008.

E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7491222

UK Times: India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards

2009-07-14T19:27:00.001-07:00

The Times July 15, 2009

India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards

(Zuma/eyevine)
Millions of Indians who live in remote rural areas will finally have proof of their existence thanks to biometric identity cards
Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

It is surely the biggest Big Brother project yet conceived. India is to issue each of its 1.2 billion citizens, millions of whom live in remote villages and possess no documentary proof of existence, with cyber-age biometric identity cards.

The Government in Delhi recently created the Unique Identification Authority, a new state department charged with the task of assigning every living Indian an exclusive number. It will also be responsible for gathering and electronically storing their personal details, at a predicted cost of at least £3 billion.

The task will be led by Nandan Nilekani, the outsourcing sage who coined the phrase “the world is flat”, which became a mantra for supporters of globalisation. “It is a humongous, mind-boggling challenge,” he told The Times. “But we have the opportunity to give every Indian citizen, for the first time, a unique identity. We can transform the country.”

If the cards were piled on top of each other they would be 150 times as high as Mount Everest — 1,200 kilometres.

Related Links
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India’s legions of local bureaucrats currently issue at least 20 proofs of identity, including birth certificates, driving licences and ration cards. None is accepted universally and moving from one state to the next can easily render a citizen officially invisible — a disastrous predicament for the millions of poor who rely on state handouts to survive.

It is hoped that the ID scheme will close such bureaucratic black holes while also fighting corruption. It may also be put to more controversial ends, such as the identification of illegal immigrants and tackling terrorism. A computer chip in each card will contain personal data and proof of identity, such as fingerprint or iris scans. Criminal records and credit histories may also be included.

Mr Nilekani, who left Infosys, the outsourcing giant that he co-founded, to take up his new job, wants the cards to be linked to a “ubiquitous online database” accessible from anywhere.

The danger, experts say, is that as one of the world’s largest stores of personal information, it will prove an irresistible target for identity thieves. “The database will be one of the largest that ever gets built,” Guru Malladi, a partner at Ernst & Young who was involved in an earlier pilot scheme, said. “It will have to be impregnable.”

Mr Nilekani will also have to mastermind a way of collecting trustworthy data. Only about 75 million people — or less than 7 per cent of the population — are registered to pay income tax. The Electoral Commission’s voter lists are thought to be largely inaccurate, not least because of manipulation by corrupt politicians.

He will also have to persuade as many as 60 government departments to co-operate. The Government has said that the first cards will be issued within 18 months. Analysts feel that it will take at least four years for the project to reach “critical mass”.

Such is the scale of the project that analysts believe India will have to develop a new electronics manufacturing base to supply information-storing servers, computer chips and card readers.

For the time being Mr Nilekani has more mundane matters on his mind. “I’ve only just left my previous job,” he said. “First I have to find a new office.”

Keeping tabs around the world

• Compulsory national identity cards are used in about 100 countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain

• ID cards are not used in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Irish Republic or Nordic countries

• German police can detain people who are not carrying their ID card for up to 24 hours

• The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001

• In Australia street protests in the 1980s forced the Government to abandon its plans for a card

• Plastic cards are favoured over paper documents because they are harder to forge

• Most identity cards contain the name, sex, date of birth and a unique number for the holder

• South Korean, Brazilian, Italian and Malaysian ID cards contain fingerprints. Cards in some countries contain information on any distinguishing marks of the holder

• Objections to card schemes have focused on the cost and invasion of privacy

• Supporters say that they prevent illegal immigration and fraud

• In the European Union some cards can be used instead of a passport for European travel

Sources: Privacy International; Times database

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6710764.ece

NYTimes: Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books

2009-01-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

Google Hopes to Open a Trove of Little-Seen Books

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: January 4, 2009

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Ben Zimmer, executive producer of a Web site and software package called the Visual Thesaurus, was seeking the earliest use of the phrase “you’re not the boss of me.” Using a newspaper database, he had found a reference from 1953.

Google’s book program makes it possible to read on a computer screen a page scanned from a rare Bible that is centuries old.

But while using Google’s book search recently, he found the phrase in a short story contained in “The Church,” a periodical published in 1883 and scanned from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Ever since Google began scanning printed books four years ago, scholars and others with specialized interests have been able to tap a trove of information that had been locked away on the dusty shelves of libraries and in antiquarian bookstores.

According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers.

Google’s book search “allows you to look for things that would be very difficult to search for otherwise,” said Mr. Zimmer, whose site is visualthesaurus.com.

A settlement in October with authors and publishers who had brought two copyright lawsuits against Google will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection.

The agreement, pending approval by a judge this year, also paved the way for both sides to make profits from digital versions of books. Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line.

“We did not think necessarily we could make money,” said Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, in a brief interview at the company’s headquarters. “We just feel this is part of our core mission. There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site.”

Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google’s collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category.

Even if Google had gone to trial and won the suits, said Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at the company, it would have won the right to show only previews of these books’ contents. “What people want to do is read the book,” Mr. Macgillivray said.

Users are already taking advantage of out-of-print books that have been scanned and are available for free download. Mr. Clancy was monitoring search queries recently when one for “concrete fountain molds” caught his attention. The search turned up a digital version of an obscure 1910 book, and the user had spent four hours perusing 350 pages of it.

For scholars and others researching topics not satisfied by a Wikipedia entry, the settlement will provide access to millions of books at the click of a mouse. “More students in small towns around America are going to have a lot more stuff at their fingertips,” said Michael A. Keller, the university librarian at Stanford. “That is really important.”

When the agreement was announced in October, all sides hailed it as a landmark settlement that permitted Google to proceed with its scanning project while protecting the rights and financial interests of authors and publishers. Both sides agreed to disagree on whether the book scanning itself violated authors’ and publishers’ copyrights.

In the months since, all parties to the lawsuits — as well as those, like librarians, who will be affected by it — have had the opportunity to examine the 303-page settlement document and try to digest its likely effects.

Some librarians privately expressed fears that Google might charge high prices for subscriptions to the book database as it grows. Although nonprofit groups like the Open Content Alliance are building their own digital collections, no other significant private-sector competitors are in the business. In May, Microsoft ended its book scanning project, effectively leaving Google as a monopoly corporate player.

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said the company wanted to push the book database to as many libraries as possible. “If the price gets too high,” he said, “we are simply not going to have libraries that can afford to purchase it.”

For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Mr. Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free.

For the average author, “this is not a game changer” in an economic sense, said Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers and president of the digital media investments group at Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

“They will get paid for the use of their book, but whether they will get paid so much that they can start living large — I think that’s just a fantasy,” Mr. Sarnoff said. “I think there will be a few authors who do see significant dollars out of this, but there will be a vast number of authors who see insignificant dollars out of this.”

But, he added, “a few hundred dollars for an individual author can equate to a considerable sum for a publisher with rights to 10,000 books.”

So far, publishers that have permitted Google to offer searchable digital versions of their new in-print books have seen a small payoff. Macmillan, the company that owns publishing houses including Farrar, Straus & Giroux and St. Martin’s Press and represents authors including Jonathan Franzen and Janet Evanovich, offers 11,000 titles for search on Google. In 2007, Macmillan estimated that Google helped sell about 16,400 copies.

Authors view the possibility of readers finding their out-of-print books as a cultural victory more than a financial one.

“Our culture is not just Stephen King’s latest novel or the new Harry Potter book,” said James Gleick, a member of the board of the Authors Guild. “It is also 1,000 completely obscure books that appeal not to the one million people who bought the Harry Potter book but to 100 people at a time.”

Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. “I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way,” said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale.

Others said they thought readers would continue to appreciate long texts and that Google’s book search would simply help readers find them.

“There is no short way to appreciate Jane Austen, and I hope I’m right about that,” said Paul Courant, university librarian at the University of Michigan. “But a lot of reading is going to
happen on screens. One of the important things about this settlement is that it brings the literature of the 20th century back into a form that the students of the 21st century will be able to find it.”

Google’s book search has already entered the popular culture, in the film version of “Twilight,” based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Bella, one of the main characters, uses Google to find information about a local American Indian tribe. When the search leads her to a book, what does she do?

She goes to a bookstore and buys it.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 5, 2009, on page B1 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/technology/internet/05google.html?_r=1

Wired: Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'

2008-12-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'
By Noah Shachtman December 18, 2008 4:53:03 PM
Categories: Info War

Online jihadists have already used YouTube, blogs and other social media to spread their propaganda. Now, a group of internet Islamic extremists is putting together a plan for "invading Facebook."

"We can use Facebook to fight the media," notes a recent posting on the extremist al-Faloja forum, translated by Jihadica.com. "We can post media on Facebook that shows the Crusader losses."

"We have already had great success in raiding YouTube," the poster adds. "American politicians have used Facebook to get votes, like the house slave Obama."

Groups like al-Qaida were pioneering users of the internet — to train, share ideas and organize. But some observers, like George Washington University professor Marc Lynch, see a reluctance to embrace Web 2.0 tools like Facebook. "One of the biggest problems for a virtual network like AQ today is that it needs to build connections between its members while protecting itself from its enemies. That's a filtering problem: How do you get your people in, and keep intelligence agents out?" he asks.

But as Jihadica.com author and West Point Combating Terrorism Center fellow William McCants notes, the proposed Facebook invasion "is not an attempt to replicate [existing] social networks." Instead, "the members of the campaign want to exploit existing networks of people who are hostile to them and presumably they will adopt new identities once they have posted their material."

The al-Faloja poster suggests seven "brigades" work together within Facebook. One will distribute videos and writing of so-called "martyrs." Another will spread military training material. Most of them will work in Arabic, presumably. But one of the units will focus just on spread English-language propaganda through Facebook.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/online-jihadist.html

Daily Herald: Eagle Mountain Councilman blogs the good, bad and ugly

2008-12-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Friday, 12 December
Eagle Mountain Councilman blogs the good, bad and ugly
Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD
CRAIG DILGER/Daily Herald Eagle Mountain blogger and city council member David Lifferth - Friday, December 12, 2008.

Looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly in Eagle Mountain? One councilman here has a blog for you. Over the past three years, DavidLifferth.com, owned by the city's namesake councilman, has drawn nearly 300,000 page views from 84 countries by tracking all things Eagle Mountain.

Lifferth is hoping more elected officials will follow his lead into cyberspace.

"People just like someone who is going to be open about government," he said. "If I was not on the council, I would want someone who was in the know to blog and talk about things."

"This blogging that I have done consistently for four years now has forced me to read, understand, and explain the good, the bad, and the ugly here in Eagle Mountain," Lifferth wrote in a recent e-mail to his fans. "I have been praised for my openness and candor while at the same time I have been threatened with a half dozen lawsuits for my openness. This openness and candor caused the readership of my blog to been massive."

Lifferth said his site "has frequently been the most read Web site in all of Eagle Mountain and surrounding areas. My Web site frequently had more page views than Eagle Mountain City's site, the local newspapers sites covering Eagle Mountain, blog and forum sites, and any of the developers' sites."

All this attention is one of the best things that could happen to city government, he said.

"The quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis comes to mind: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'"

Lifferth said one of the highest compliments paid his site came from a friend who said "the bad guys fear your Web site."

Lifferth is not exactly a cyber newbie, so to speak. He runs about 30 online sites, earning money from advertising on most, if not all, though he does not make money from his site dedicated to city politics, he said.

To draw readers, he makes sure his posts are enticing. Take this recent example: "Reagan Caused Global Warming," a post which documents why, in Lifferth's view, a significant cause of the statistical increase in average global temperature has been the reduction in temperature reporting stations in the former Soviet Union" and Reagan's role in that.

Getting 500 hits a day, Lifferth's most lucrative site is surprisingly -- not political at all -- it is a James Bond fan site, 007BondMovies.ning.com. He also runs JunkScience.ning.com and PonyExpress.ning.com, to name a few.

Lifferth said he tries to have fun with his sites. During his interview with the Daily Herald, he surprised this reporter by bringing up a photo on his Web site of this reporter perusing a competitor's weekly newspaper during a slow moment in an Eagle Mountain City Council meeting. Lifferth said he took the photo from the council dais during the meeting using his cellphone. This reporter never even knew the photo existed.

"You've taken some jabs at me and once in a while I want to take some jabs back," he said with a laugh. "... I do think I have fun with my site. I have a playful attitude."

Jokes aside, every elected official should consider blogging as a way to give information directly to the public, he said. At least several Web sites allow anyone to set up their own blog for free, so getting started is easy.

"I think elected officials should talk about what the issues are, and why things are happening," he said, noting some elected officials in Utah Valley are starting to follow suit, including council members from Payson and Saratoga Springs.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/292207/17/

TimesOnline: Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

2008-12-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article5311241.ece
From Times Online
December 9, 2008
Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.
A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks". Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.
There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.
Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive. The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's CCTV control room.
Russia and China 'harbour cybercriminals'
A report claims that several countries are providing criminal gangs with 'political cover' against prosecution
Koobface virus worms its way into Facebook
Closure of ‘spamming gateway’ McColo Corp gives respite from junk e-mails
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'Mumbai mastermind' arrested in Kashmir raid
Indian space agency to launch Google Earth rival
The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiber, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.
Ansari was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last month, a senior police officer told The Times.
Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks.
In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists.
Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said.
In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earth – something it had done previously.
South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of air bases was revealed.
The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of nearby sensitive locations, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
The complaint comes just weeks after India said it would launch its own version of Google Earth.
The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), is being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.
It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on USD2 a day or less.
Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, birds-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google.
Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the subcontinent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.
The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which India's cities are growing.
About 2.5 million people used Google Earth in the UK last month, according to Neilsen, the web analysts, making it the web's seventh most popular application behind tools such as Apple's iTunes (fourth with 5.7 million users) and Windows Live Messenger (first with 14.8 million).

Reuters: "Koobface" virus turns up on Facebook

2008-12-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

"Koobface" virus turns up on Facebook
Fri Dec 5, 2008 8:32am EST

By Jim

BOSTON (Reuters) - Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed ''Koobface'' that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers. It...";

By Jim Finkle
BOSTON (Reuters) - Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed "Koobface" that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers.

It is the latest attack by hackers increasingly looking to prey on users of social networking sites.
"A few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways to propagate themselves," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. He said a "very small percentage of users" had been affected by these viruses.

"It is on the rise, relative to other threats like e-mails," said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee Inc.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like, "You look just awesome in this new movie," direct recipients to a website where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe Systems Inc's Flash player.

If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according McAfee.

McAfee warned in a blog entry on Wednesday that its researchers had discovered that Koobface was making the rounds on Facebook.

Facebook requires senders of messages within the network to be members and hides user data from people who do not have accounts, said Chris Boyd, a researcher with FaceTime Security Labs. Because of that, users tend to be far less suspicious of messages they receive in the network.

"People tend to let their guard down. They think you've got to log in with an account, so there is no way that worms and other viruses could infect them," Boyd said.

Social network MySpace, owned by News Corp, was hit by a version of Koobface in August and used security technology to eradicate it, according to a company spokeswoman. The virus has not cropped up since then, she said.

Privately held Facebook has told members to delete contaminated e-mails and has posted directions at www.facebook.com/security on how to clean infected computers.
Richard Larmer, chief executive of RLM Public Relations in New York, said he threw out his PC after it became infected by Koobface, which downloaded malicious software onto his PC. It was really bad. It destroyed my computer," he said.

McAfee has not yet identified the perpetrators behind Koobface, who are improving the malicious software behind the virus in a bid to outsmart security at Facebook and MySpace.
"The people behind it are updating it, refining it, adding new functionalities," said McAfee's Schmugar.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle, Additional reporting by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE4B37LV20081205

Sun UK: YouTube bans 'suggestive' vids

2008-12-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

YOUTUBE is cracking down on sexy videos in a bid to clean itself up.

In a blog posting, the video-sharing website revealed it would be enforcing a "stricter standard for mature content".

The popular site – which already bans porn – said it will be "tightening the standard for what is considered 'sexually suggestive'".

"Videos with sexually suggestive (but not prohibited) content will be age-restricted, which means they'll be available only to viewers who are 18 or older," the Google-owned website said.

"Our goal is to help ensure that you're viewing content that's relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn't."

Provocative

YouTube also said videos which contain sexually suggestive content or profanity would no longer appear on its lists of 'Most Viewed' or 'Top Favorited' videos.

The internet's top video-sharing site also said it would step up enforcement of rules banning misleading descriptions in the tags and titles of a video.

And thumbnails will now be randomly selected to cut down users who manipulate frames within their videos to get a provocative thumbnail to appear with their video listing.

Some YouTube users have been known to give videos misleading titles such as "sexy" in a bid to increase the view counts of a particular video.

YouTube, which receives 13 hours of video from users every minute, said repeat violators of the new rules will have their accounts terminated.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2000335.ece

Ning: The End of the Red Light District

2008-12-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3451&p_sid=y1_SUrkj

The End of the Red Light District

As individuals and as a service, we stand for the freedom to create your own social networks for anything. We believe that people should be able to set their own social norms and Ning, as a broad-based service, is designed to respect many different perspectives and enable them to co-exist seamlessly and effortlessly.

We architected Ning so many diverse types of social networks could create their own social space and this is still one of the proudest achievements we have of the service today. It’s from this foundation that we’ve seen Ning grow to hundreds of thousands of social networks and millions of users around the world.

Therefore, the decision we’re announcing today to discontinue our Red Light District is a tough one. However, from a practical perspective, this difficult decision is the right one.

As of January 1, 2009, we’ll no longer support adult social networks on the Ning Platform.

We’re not discontinuing the Red Light District because we no longer believe in the freedom to create your own social network for anything as long as it’s legal. We do. Practically though, supporting adult networks no longer makes sense. Here is what we’ve seen in practice to date with respect to adult social networks on Ning:

Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight. Specifically, they require other social networks to work harder because they don’t generate enough advertising or premium service revenue to cover their costs. Plus, our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue. We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that’s where this is heading.

By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks. We are always going to do the right thing as it pertains to social networks that are illegal or violate our Terms of Service. That’s non-negotiable. However, the time involved in reporting and assisting the authorities on illegal adult social networks is simply too time and cost intensive for the benefits derived by having adult social networks on Ning.

Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team. We respect intellectual property rights and comply with the DMCA. Compared to our other social networks on the Ning Platform, the additional work created by adult networks alleged to have violated the copyrights of others is enough for us to discontinue adult networks in favor of investing time and energy in growing the Ning Platform from here.

Our focus is on creating incredibly simple, beautiful software and rapidly adding new features for the benefit of all. We can’t do that as efficiently as we need to and still support adult networks on Ning. It’s that simple. We’ve discussed and debated various ways to keep adult networks on Ning operating, including requiring them to be private networks or partnering up with someone who can make them self-sustaining. While there are strong cases to be made for either one of these solutions, they don’t enable us to focus our team on the most efficient execution of the Ning Platform possible.

This is important in all circumstances, but in this recession we have to be relentless in providing the most compelling service in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, from a practical perspective, the only practical answer we see is a clear elimination of adult networks from the Ning Platform altogether.

As part of this transition, we are exploring ways for adult networks that will no longer be available on Ning to export their content in addition to their members, which is available today from the Manage Members page. As we make progress on the specifics, we’ll communicate them in the here.

Again, this was not an easy decision and we did not make it on philosophical grounds. We made it on a purely practical one. We’re happy to answer any questions you have on this decision here and sincerely appreciate the hard work that all of you affected have put into your social networks on Ning.

Press Release: Family History 3 named Family History Software of the Year for 2008

2008-11-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Howard Luxenberg
President, Enteractive Distribution Co.
phone: 860-236-8600; fax: 860-232-7575
hluxenberg@sprynet.com http://familyhistorian3.ning.com

Family History 3 named Family History Software of the Year for 2008

West Hartford, Connecticut, November 25, 2008 -- Your Family Tree magazine (UK) named Family Historian 3 the Family History Software of the Year for 2008. Family Historian 3 beat out other popular genealogy software programs such as Roots Magic 3 and Legacy 7.

"I was thrilled that Family Historian 3 won this this prestigious award from one of the U.K.'s leading genealogy magazines," Howard Luxenberg, president of Enteractive, stated.
Due to its easy to use features and product quality, Family Historian 3 has won many major awards and recognition from the top reviewers including Windows XP Magazine, Family Tree Magazine, Which? Computing, Univadis and others.

In recognizing Family Historian 3, the editors of Your Family Tree magazine particularly liked the extensive range of charts, "including the stunning All Relatives [chart]" They went on to add: "Apart from its charts, the program offers a good range of reports all of which you can customize to meet your exact needs - website and family CD creation and a powerful merge and compare feature to import data from other GEDCOM files."

Product Features

According to Luxenberg, "This is a quality product that manages to combine ease of use with a remarkably rich set of features." The following are just a few of the important product features of Family Historian 3:
· 100% compatible with GEDCOM 5.5, the standard for shared genealogical data
· Lets you easily create beautiful family trees, CDs/DVDs & websites
· Family trees can include data, photographs, even video files
· Diagrams are interactive, so you can work visually
· Unique "All relatives" diagram shows all descendants and all ancestors (and their spouses)
· Bonus features: Six month subscription to WorldVitalRecords.com and CD Book "Getting Started in Genealogy Online"

More information about this Family History Software of the Year award from “Your Family Tree” magazine can be found on Enteractive Distribution web site http://FamilyHistorian3.ning.com.

Family Historian 3 runs on Windows Vista, XP Home and XP Professional, 2000, ME and 98.

# # #

Breitbart.com: Army manipulated general's photo

2008-11-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

Army manipulated general's photo

Nov 14 08:18 PM US/Eastern
By RICHARD LARDNER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Associated Press on Friday suspended the use of photos provided by the Defense Department after the Army distributed a digitally altered photo of the U.S. military's first female four-star general.

The image of Army Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody is the second Army-provided photo the AP has eliminated from its service in the last two months.

The AP said that adjusting photos and other imagery, even for aesthetic reasons, damages the credibility of the information distributed by the military to news organizations and the public.
"For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image," said Santiago Lyon, the AP's director of photography.

Santiago said the AP is developing procedures to protect against further occurrences and, once those steps are in place, it will consider lifting the ban. He said the AP is also discussing the problem with the military.

Col. Cathy Abbott, chief of the Army's media relations division, said the Dunwoody photo did not violate Army policy that prohibits the cropping or editing of a photo to misrepresent the facts or change the circumstances of an event. She did not know who changed the photo or which Army office released it, she said.

Dunwoody was promoted to full general on Friday at a Pentagon ceremony attended by Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff.

In the original photo, the general appears to be sitting at a desk with a credenza and bookshelf behind her. Three stars on her uniform identify her as a lieutenant general, her rank before Friday's promotion.

The altered photo, distributed by the Army and run on the AP's photo wire Thursday, shows Dunwoody in fatigues in front of an American flag. Her rank, affixed to the front of a soldier's tunic, is not visible.

"We're not misrepresenting her," Abbott said. "The image is still clearly Gen. Dunwoody."
In September, the AP banned use of a photo of Army Staff Sgt. Darris Dawson, who was killed in Iraq. Dawson's face and shoulders appeared to have been digitally altered.

Abbott said Dawson's unit did not have an official photo of him and wanted one that could be used for a memorial service.

"That photo was released to the public strictly by accident," she said. "We apologized for that."
Bob Owen, deputy director of photography at the San Antonio Express-News, was the first to notice the changes in the Dawson and Dunwoody photos, finding the earlier versions on the Internet.

Owen said he views all photos supplied by the Defense Department skeptically.

"Photo journalists lose their jobs over this," he said.
___
On the Net: U.S. Army: http://www.army.mil Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

DesNews: Owner says Prop 8 opponents hacked into LDS site

2008-11-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705262907,00.html

Owner says Prop 8 opponents hacked into LDS site

By Carrie A. MooreDeseret News
Published: November 13, 2008

Owners of a Web site that specializes in advice and information for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say their site was attacked the day following passage of Proposition 8 by people they believe opposed the measure.

Scott Proctor of Meridian magazine said the site was hacked into early Nov. 5, and its home page was replaced with "horrible, explicit lesbians films placed all over the cover." Engineers took the site down immediately after the break-in was discovered, he said.

The company's Internet technology director said the electronic breach occurred in "a very elegant way. They had to have someone who really knew what they were doing to accomplish it the way they did it."

The Web site was down for half a day as engineers worked to remove the pornographic material, he said. Proctor and his wife, Maurine, founded the site several years ago as a forum for information of interest to Latter-day Saints, and Maurine Proctor often writes articles about issues of importance to the LDS Church that are posted there.

"We feel like this was very specific targeting," by people who oppose the Web site's conservative content. The church's support of Prop. 8 has been among a variety of topics chronicled on the site. "We get hate mail all the time over this issue," Proctor said.

"It's like they have a little network that they e-mail and ask people to send mail in. Every time we post something (about same-sex marriage) we get a few dozen letters with the same tone, similar wording, and the most horrible language and hatred."

Proctor said the attack and the e-mails won't have any impact on the site's content. "You just have to keep going and present things as you see them," he said.

Press Release: The #1 Rated genealogy software in the UK is now available at 1500 Target stores

2008-11-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Howard Luxenberg
President, Enteractive Distribution Co.
phone: 860-236-8600; fax: 860-232-7575
hluxenberg@sprynet.com
http://familyhistorian3.ning.com

The #1 Rated genealogy software in the UK is now available at 1500 Target stores

West Hartford, Connecticut, November 12, 2008 -Family Historian 3, the highest rated family tree software in the U.K. is now available in the United States and Canada. This top rated software is initially being distributed in the nearly 1,500 Target stores nation-wide.

"Enteractive is thrilled to be bringing what is simply the best genealogy software product in the world to the U.S. and Canadian consumer," Howard Luxenberg, president of Enteractive, stated.

Due to its easy to use features and product quality, Family Historian 3 has won major awards and recognition from the top reviewers including Windows XP Magazine, Family Tree Magazine, Which? Computing, Univadis and others.

Family Historian 3 was named “Winner” and "Editor's Choice" by Windows XP Magazine in its August 2007 review of Family Historian, Family Tree Maker, Roots Magic, and Legacy genealogy software. The editors said that Family Historian 3 was "Packed with features, but the charts alone put this package in a class of its own." In this comparison of the top products, Family Historian was declared the "All-round winner."

Personal Computer World gave Family Historian 3 an overall rating of 5 Stars (out of a possible 5) and said "The range of features and sheer ease of use makes Family Historian an excellent tool for any genealogist" in its May 2006 review.

Family Tree Magazine (www.familytreemagazine.com) said "The best genealogy package just got better" in its review in July 2006.

Which? Computing (www.which.co.uk) rated Family Historian as the "Best Buy" and gave it the highest overall rating in its July 2008 comparison of the top 10 genealogy applications.

Univadis (www.univadis.co.uk) rated Family Historian 3 a "Strongly recommended" product and said "The programme is brilliant and dead easy to use and is ideal for beginners and experts alike."

Australian Family Tree Connections said "With the release of version 3 Family Historian has become one of the best, if not the very best, in its class."

In an indication of the powerful features and ease of use of Family Historian 3, the producers and researchers of the very popular BBC TV genealogy series "Who Do You Think You Are?" use Family Historian 3 as their family tree application of choice.

Product Features

According to Luxenberg, "This is a quality product that manages to combine ease of use with a remarkably rich set of features." The following are just a few of the important product features of Family Historian 3:
· 100% compatible with GEDCOM 5.5, the standard for shared genealogical data
· Lets you easily create beautiful family trees, CDs/DVDs & websites
· Family trees can include data, photographs, even video files
· Diagrams are interactive, so you can work visually
· Unique "All relatives" diagram shows all descendants and all ancestors (and their spouses)
· Bonus features: Six month subscription to WorldVitalRecords.com and CD Book "Getting Started in Genealogy Online"

Enteractive Distribution also announces a new web site to provide useful information to consumers and genealogists. This new web site http://familyhistorian3.ning.com provides modern consumer features such as a product blog, updated news about the product, discussion forum, store locator, FAQ, product support groups, and easy to use customer support features.
Family Historian 3 runs on Windows Vista, XP Home and XP Professional, 2000, ME and 98.

# # #

Ups and downs of a digital-age campaign

2008-11-09T15:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/11/08/ups_and_downs_of_a_digital_age_campaign/

Ups and downs of a digital-age campaign
By Eric Fehrnstrom
November 8, 2008

EARLY ON, I had a feeling the 2008 election was going to be different. As we prepared for the launch of Mitt Romney's national campaign, we looked to clean up his biographical entry on Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia edited by its users. Notoriously unreliable, it would serve as the first source of information for people curious about the then-unknown governor from Massachusetts.

A prankster beat us there: Romney's entry falsely claimed he spoke fluent Swahili and several different Bantu dialects. Despite our efforts to correct the record, over the course of the campaign more than one supporter would marvel to me about Romney's felicity with African languages.

There's something to be said for the old media filter. Despite its shortcomings, I kind of miss it.
In one positive sense, the still-evolving digital age means citizens with video cameras can have more impact than seasoned political reporters. The press corps may not have thought John McCain singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" was news at first, but they reconsidered when the Drudge Report linked to the video. Early GOP front-runner George Allen's "macaca" moment not only strangled his infant candidacy for president, but it torpedoed his 2006 reelection to the US Senate.

The lesson for us media handlers: Beware the innocuous-looking person with the YouTube account silently taping everything. He could destroy your day. Far less threatening was the reporter who abided by the conventional rules of journalism and knew the meaning of "off the record."

Yes, the Internet kept the mainstream media honest, and it opened new doors for candidates. Networking with tens of thousands of friends on MySpace and Facebook, it became easier to recruit volunteers. To raise money, there was no longer a need to rent a room and invite wealthy donors to munch on food and sip cocktails. Instead, donations came pouring in through the Web in response to an e-mail. In February 2007, Romney forever changed the traditional fund-raiser when he raised $6.5 million in a single day by gathering supporters at the convention center in South Boston and giving them laptops and phones.

But the Internet also allowed dirty politics to go viral. In 2004, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth paid millions of dollars for ads suggesting John Kerry's military service was dishonorable. In 2008, not a penny was spent to spread the false claim that Barack Obama was a Muslim. It received so much attention that an election-eve poll in Texas showed that nearly one-quarter of voters there believed it. Thanks to the irresponsible reporting of the left-wing site Daily Kos, another myth had it that Sarah Palin was not the mother of her infant son, Trig, and that the child actually belonged to her eldest daughter, Bristol.

Here in Massachusetts, a fringe group e-mailed conservatives around the country the absurd claim that it was Romney, not the Supreme Judicial Court, who legalized gay marriage. During the primary, I lost count of how many times Romney was asked about a feared North American union of Mexico, Canada, and the United States - a conspiracy spread by right-wing bloggers who believed all three countries would be linked by a single government, a common currency, and a 10-lane superhighway.

Where are the online gatekeepers? Gatekeeping is the most important function for the offline media. Editors decide which stories get published. They make sure rumors aren't printed. Sensitive information is double- and sometimes triple-sourced. Gatekeeping serves an important purpose in establishing the ethics of journalism. Sadly, it doesn't exist on the Web.
What can be done? Citizen-journalists and bloggers need to provide links to websites that contain factual data backing up their assertions. These connections add credibility. And while Internet libel suits can be difficult to win, they should be pursued more often.

Moreover, it would help if TV and newspapers resisted the temptation to get edgier in their own reporting. If you can't be "first" with the rumors, be first with the most comprehensive and factual account. In the current Wild West state of political reporting, you will be rewarded with loyal readership in search of honest and objective coverage.

Eric Fehrnstrom was senior communications adviser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Breitbart: Internet collaboration still in infancy: Wikipedia founder

2008-11-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Internet collaboration still in infancy: Wikipedia founder

Nov 1 11:49 AM US/Eastern

The age of public collaboration over the Internet is still only in its infancy, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told AFP in an interview.

The 42-year-old web guru, in an effort to show Wikipedia's impact thus far, referenced a recent trip to a slum in India where he "met this young man on the street who told me that he had used Wikipedia to pass his 11th grade exams."

"Wow, that's really cool, right? We've had some impact, even in such a place where I'm talking to this guy, and there's mud streets, and cows, and it's really quite a different environment from London."

Wales's popular online encyclopedia allows anyone with an Internet connection to make entries and edit content.

Speaking on the sidelines of an awards ceremony in London, Wales said: "We're really just at the beginning, still, of collaborative efforts."

"In video, right now, we're still back in many ways in the Web 1.0 era," he said, referring to the age before so-called Web 2.0, the peer-sharing model of the Internet of which Wikipedia is almost the definitive example.

"If you look at almost everything on YouTube, it's individuals doing videos, either funny cat videos, or drunk girl videos seem to be quite popular there," he said with a smile.
"What we haven't seen yet in video is large-scale collaborative projects."
Off the top of his head Wales suggested a 90-minute collaborative web video created by interviewing people from all around the world, giving their views on the war in Iraq.
He joked: "This isn't going to be that popular, frankly, a 90-minute movie with people talking about Iraq -- it's going to have a small audience. This can't be produced in the old-fashioned way. It's totally possible now.

"That's just one dumb idea of mine, right? Imagine what we could get if we could get 100,000 people thinking about collaborative video efforts to create documentary films, or comedy, or art, or who knows what.

"So, I think we've still got a long way to go."
He acknowledged collaboration has its limits, noting that if "we said we want to write a novel about loss, and redemption, probably not so much public collaboration, that's really an individual vision and a view of the world."

"But for basic factual information, I think having an open public dialogue and debate and democratic process, seems to be very powerful."

Wales also warned that major steps had to be considered to stop governments abusing ordinary people's personal information, which is increasingly stored in vast computer databases.
He described potential government misuse of private citizens' data as a "concern."

"One of the interesting things to really think about is how, as we're using the Internet, we leave an enormous digital footprint everywhere," he said.

"And not just the Internet, but cell phones, everything else. I'm assuming, if anybody really cares enough, my movements all around the planet are pretty trackable by somebody.
"That's something most people don't think much about, and they don't think much about it because, frankly, no one cares what most people are doing."

He said, however, that as computing power increases, "we need to really think about what are the political controls we need to have in place to prevent governments from abusing that kind of information."

Wales's remarks come after a report last month which warned that European governments are rapidly eroding civil liberties in a bid to gain "unfettered" access to individuals' personal data in the name of tighter security.

The document by Statewatch, a non-profit online civil liberties monitoring group, criticised the EU for viewing data protection and judicial scrutiny of citizens' private information as "obstacles" to law enforcement.

Copyright AFP 2008

Breitbart:US Army warns of Twitter dangers

2008-10-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers

Oct 25 02:22 PM US/Eastern

A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools.
The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion, posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants.
The posting of the report on the FAS site was reported Friday by Wired magazine contributing editor Noah Shachtman on his national security blog "Danger Room" at wired.com.
The report is not based on clandestine reporting but drawn from open source intelligence known as OSINT.
A chapter on "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter" notes that Twitter members sent out messages, known as "Tweets," reporting the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements.
"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.
Hacktivists refers to politically motivated computer hackers.
"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the report said.
"Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance," it said. "This could theoretically be combined with targeting."
The report outlined scenarios in which militants could make use of Twitter, combined with such programs as Google Maps or cell phone pictures or video, to carry out an ambush or detonate explosives.
"Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool," it said. "However, it is unclear whether that same theoretical tool would be available to terrorists in other countries and to what extent."
Besides Twitter, the report examined the potential use by militants of Global Positioning Systems and other technologies.
"GPS cell phone service could be used by our adversaries for travel plans, surveillance and targeting," it said, noting that just such uses have been discussed in pro-Al-Qaeda forums along with the use of voice-changing software.
"Terrorists may or may not be using voice-changing software but it should be of open source interest that online terrorist and/or terrorist enthusiasts are discussing it," the report said.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Probe into how Google mix-up caused $1 billion run on United

2008-09-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

This is a facinating article on how technology is not perfect and that automation can create un expected consequences.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4742147.ece

These are the key paragraphs to what caused the problem for United Airlines, Tribune Publishing, a Florida investment firm, and Google and their Googlebots.

The comedy of errors began with just one reader who went to the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s website and viewed a 2002 article on United Airlines’ bankruptcy.
That single visit in the early hours of Sunday morning, a period of low traffic, apparently bumped it into a "Popular Stories" in the business section.
At 1:37am, an electronic Google program swept through the paper’s website for new stories and spotted the link.
Google says its program scanned the piece and, seeing there was no 2002 dateline, indexed the article for inclusion on its news pages.
Three minutes and two seconds later, Google News readers started viewing the story on the Sun Sentinel’s Web site.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said that the only date the automated Google News software found on the Sun Sentinel site was from early Sunday eastern time.
It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself,” he said.
The page also fooled Bloomberg. Bloomberg News staffers posted headlines noting first the UAL share price drop, and then, at 11:06 a.m. EDT, a bankruptcy denial from United.
A different Bloomberg News staffer working the story found the bankruptcy story on the Sun Sentinel site and, at 11:07a.m., posted a headline about the bankruptcy.

As a result of this technological comedy of errors, United's stock dropped from $12 per share down to $3. I had heard it reported that it had dropped to less than $1 at one point.

Major improvement in iPhone text input, iPhone is now usable for text input

2008-08-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

I found an application that is super fast and accurate for entering text into an iPhone. It is called Writing Pad from a company called ShapeWriter (www.ShapeWriter.com). It is a replacement for the notes application. It is not a complete replacement for text input in other applications such as SMS, but you can use it to create emails.

It is a free app and I strongly recommend that you try it out. I have been very impressed by it.

It is roughly 2-3 times more efficient than Graffiti text recognition, which was my favorite. I suspect that once I have become more comfortable with PI will be almost as fast as typing on a full size keyboard. And probably a lot faster than typing on a blackberry or other similar small keyboard device. I noticed that WritingPad is covered by a patent.

Unless you miss type a word, this system is amazingly accurate. It is even somewhat forgiving for mistypes (or miss-strokes) in suggesting real words that are close to what you entered.

The only downside is that you do need to be looking at the screen of the iPhone when entering data. With graffiti you didn't have to look at the screen, just write. I could actually type graffiti while I was driving and not even look at the screen of the Palm Pilot. The way WritingPad works is that you put your finger down on the screen and then drag it from key to key on the displayed keyboard. This takes much less effort and is more accurate and forgiving than picking up and dropping your finger on the next keys.

The number of strokes for the word "work" is 3 versus 10 strokes in Graffiti. This is three times more efficient. This would be less than the same number of strokes as typing only the first letter "W." using Graffiti.

And now that I think about this process, it is 2 times more efficient than typing on a keyboard as well plus it is more accurate. This is because with each keystroke, you have to a) identify the next key, b) move your finger to hover over the the key, c) drop your finger to touch the key, d) lift your finger. Using WritingPad you leave out the lifting and the targeting of the next key step is easier.

It has an optimized keyboard like a Dvorak keyboard which has all of the most used letters in the middle of the screen. I imagine that if someone took the time to learn that system they could enter text faster than on a full sized keyboard.

The application loads a 60,000 word dictionary into memory and it gives you several words to choose from if it doesn't recognized what you typed. You can also scroll through a bunch of similar words so you can select what you really meant. That has been one of my main complaints about the regular text input on an iPhone. If you don't get it right the first time, the iPhone seems like it picks the wrong word more often than what you wanted. Since data input has been the most disappointing feature of the iPhone, this is a huge step forward.

After using this application for a few days, it has led me to believe that it might be the most optimize data input device. I will still need to practice using it, but each time I use it, I am impressed with the genius behind it.

The experience of entering data using Writing Pad is a combination of Graffiti, cursive writing, and Chinese calligraphy. However, there are no curved lines, all of them are straight lines. Short words are a amazingly fast and easy. Longer words become a type of design that has an artistically random appearance. The lines that you draw stay on the screen until the word is complete.

Let me give one example of how well this application has worked for me. I composed a 6 paragraph email on my iPhone using WritingPad. I would have given up during the first paragraph if I had been using the regular iPhone keypad. Oh, and did I mention that I composed the email while on a plane was going through some major turbulence? I was able to compose a 6 paragraph email while the plane was bucking like a bronco. This would have NEVER had worked on the iPhone keyboard. I was very impressed with how accurate this was.

There are also a couple of other applications that have made the iPhone more useful. With useful tools like WritingPad and practice the iPhone can actually be used as a productive tool.

MyWay News: Web networking photos come back to bite defendants

2008-07-19T06:23:00.000-07:00

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080719/D920QGJG0.html

Web networking photos come back to bite defendants
19, 4:36 AM (ET)
By ERIC TUCKER

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.
Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."

The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)

Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person's real name. But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person's MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.

"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."

Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a drunken driving crash that killed her passenger last year - until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.

The page featured photos of Buys - taken after the crash but before sentencing - holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.

"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."

Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.

But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.

One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.

Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.

"When you take those pictures like that, it's a hell of an impact," he said.

Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.

Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures - which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton's page - into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.

One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"

Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.

"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.

Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accurately reflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made it more likely he'd get prison over probation.

"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn't know how to react."

Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.

"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."

FoxNews: House Atwitter Over Rules Governing Video, Blog Posts

2008-07-16T08:31:00.001-07:00

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,383444,00.html

House Atwitter Over Rules Governing Video, Blog Posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — Texas Rep. John Culberson uses his Blackberry to post blurbs about his work onto Twitter, a social networking site on the Internet. The Internet has set him free from unfair media reports and other barriers between him and his constituents, enabling him to better represent them in Congress, he says.

But Culberson's actions have put him in possible violation of House rules that appear to ban blogging or other work-related activities on non-House Web sites.

Current rules "have been interpreted to prohibit (House) members from posting official content outside of the House.gov domain," Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., chairman of the Congressional Commission on Mailing Standards, better known as the franking committee, wrote in a report late last month.

In a series of recommendations sent to House Administration Capitol Security Subcommittee Chairman Robert Brady, Capuano said some rules are necessary so as not to mix House official messages with commercial or political campaign material.

"Members of Congress who use taxpayer money to communicate with constituents should be held to the highest possible standard of independence — and the appearance of independence," he said last week.

"Official content" — like video — that is posted outside the House.gov domain should be clearly marked, should not appear alongside commercial or campaign content and should contain an exit notice for people linking out from the House.gov domain, Capuano recommended.

But those recommendations have riled Republicans like Culberson, who argue they limit his communications. The spat has reached the highest levels of the House, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi backing Capuano by saying his work won't restrict but will rather loosen the rules. In response, House Minority Leader John Boehner has rung alarm bells over possible Democratic-led censorship of the Internet.

By communicating on Twitter, Culberson said he can tell his constituents to watch a live video he's about to broadcast on a site called Qik.com. By blasting an announcement that he's going to hold a town hall meeting, Culberson said anyone with a mobile e-mail device, an Internet connection or a phone can tap into the discussion. Or if a vote on a confusing or quickly-moving bill is coming up he can shoot out marching orders as needed to his supporters.

"It's a great way to instantaneously communicate with a large number of people," Culberson said.

Banning video postings by House members also hands the media an advantage they wouldn't have if he were allowed to use new technology to get out his side of the story, beating biased reporters to the punch, he said.

"How do I distinguish between Twitter and e-mail? There is no distinguishing. How do I distinguish between my interview with you on FOX News, and this live video that I'm broadcasting through Qik? How do you distinguish between my interview on Qik, which is live, with an interview on The New York Times?" asked Culberson, pronouncing the Web site as "quick," in an interview with FOX News last week.

Culberson said he believes lawmakers should face few, if any, restrictions on Internet use. If House members run astray of good taste, their constituents will let them know.

But Capuano counters that the rules — while they don't specifically address capabilities of sites like Qik — appear to ban such activity for good reason, and Culberson learned the lesson last week when the two men got into a one-on-one confrontation.

In a video posted online of his interview with FOX News, Culberson relayed how Capuano got irritated when Culberson apparently tried to get Capuano on camera, but hadn't asked him first. After the video was posted, Capuano ended up receiving a torrent of e-mails and phone calls from Culberson backers.

Admitting he might have jumped the gun by posting the confrontation, Culberson said he apologized to Capuano and pledged not to film him again without his permission.
Still, Culberson defended his decision to go to Qik to post the video, saying he thought a rule was going to be voted on and he felt it was his only recourse to let Capuano know how the public felt.
"I told him today — and he's a good guy, and he understood this — I said, 'Mike, you're going to have about as much luck regulating the Internet as King Knut did when he ordered his men to put this throne on the beach, and he tried to order the tide to stop," Culberson said, summing up the phone call in a video message to his constituents.
Click here to view the Culberson video of the interview with FOX News.
FOX News' Chad Pergram and Gregory Simmons contributed to this report.
/**/

FamilySearch Web Site Enhanced by FamilyLink

2008-07-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

(From page 80 of the July 2008 Ensign magazine)
News of the Church

FamilySearch Web Site Enhanced by FamilyLink

A partnership with FamilyLink.com will improve navigation on FamilySearch.org, reduce research time, and allow major search engines to comb the Church’s Family History Library Catalog.

The new Web elements provided by FamilyLink.com will allow users to link directly to other sources, post comments, and make contributions, such as adding missing information to a source. Some of the enhancements will be implemented in 2008.

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=8ac43645a2cba110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1
Ensign
July 2008
Volume 38, Number 07

LinkedIn networking site joins $1bn club

2008-06-23T08:40:00.001-07:00

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/446fef0a-3ca0-11dd-b958-0000779fd2ac.html

LinkedIn networking site joins $1bn club
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: June 18 2008 01:52 Last updated: June 18 2008 01:52

The biggest online social network intended for professional use has been valued at more than $1bn, putting it among a small group of private internet companies to have crossed that threshold before going public.
LinkedIn, whose members use the site to do things such as making professional contacts, recruiting staff or finding new jobs, said it had raised $53m from a group of venture capitalists led by Bain Capital, taking the total raised to $80m in all.

The latest investment, for about 5 per cent of the company, gives LinkedIn a “pre-money” valuation of $1.015bn, said Dan Nye, chief executive.

Though it pales beside the $15bn valuation for Facebook implied by a Microsoft investment of $240m last year, the latest stake in LinkedIn is still one of the most eye-catching investments in the fast-growing social networking business.

News Corp paid $580m for the parent company of MySpace, then with 17m members in the US, just as the social networking boom was taking off three years ago. This year, AOL paid $850m for Bebo, which claims more than 40m members.

Asked if he had held talks about selling out to a bigger media company, Mr Nye said LinkedIn “had discussions with the cast of characters” but decided to go it alone because of the company’s significant growth potential.

Launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, a veteran of online payment company PayPal, the network has 23m members, with more than 1m new ones joining each month. Though it has its headquarters in Silicon Valley, it also claims to operate the largest online professional network in Europe.

The company’s record in finding ways to make money sets it apart from other social networks that have struggled to meet high expectations for advertising revenue, said Jeff Glass, a partner of Bain Capital.

Besides carrying job advertising, LinkedIn charges members a subscription for “premium” services that let them do things like make professional introductions through the network.
It also has a “software as a service” business, charging a subscription to corporate recruiters to help them manage their hiring on the site.

It will generate revenues of $75m-$100m this year, more than double 2007, Mr Nye predicted.
The company has been profitable since 2006 and raised its latest round of capital to strengthen its balance sheet rather than to fund operations, he added.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Facebook heads MySpace in unique visitors

2008-06-23T08:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/302914bc-40a7-11dd-bd48-0000779fd2ac.html

Facebook heads MySpace in unique visitors
By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Published: June 22 2008 23:32 Last updated: June 22 2008 23:32

Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time, according to one popular measure of internet traffic.
Facebook attracted more than 123m unique visitors in May, an increase of 162 per cent over the same period last year according to ComScore, a company that monitors websites. That compared with 114.6m unique visitors at MySpace, Facebook’s leading rival, whose traffic grew just 5 per cent during the same period, ComScore said.

The findings mark the first time that Facebook, launched in 2004, has taken a significant lead in unique visitors, after ComScore’s April traffic figures showed the rivals in a virtual tie. They come at a time of change inside Facebook, as the one-time upstart attempts to transform itself into a leading media company. Several members of the original executive team have left the company in recent weeks.

The departures include Adam D’Angelo, chief technology officer and personal confidant of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 23-year-old founder and chief executive; and Matt Cohler, Facebook’s first official hire, who was in charge of product development.
Mr Zuckerberg has appointed Sheryl Sandberg as his second-in-command. Ms Sandberg, who helped develop Google’s lucrative advertising business, is expected to play a crucial role in the development of Facebook’s revenue model.

The management changes come as the company is under pressure to justify the $15bn valuation it drew last year in an investment round with Microsoft.
Facebook is a private company and does not disclose official sales or profit figures. But people close to the company have claimed that it made $150m in sales last year. That figure is expected to grow to $300m-$350m this year as it attempts to broaden its revenue stream.
Counting unique visitors is just one way to measure the website popularity. Many sites, including Facebook, measure audience engagement by tracking the number of repeat, or “active” users of their sites, leaving out those who visit a site once and never return. MySpace claims to have about 110m active users, Facebook about 80m.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Yahoo! News: McCain says using Google to vet VP candidates

2008-06-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

McCain says using Google to vet VP candidates

Mon Jun 9, 4:56 PM ET
It turns out choosing a vice president isn't that complicated after all.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain joked on Monday that Google, the popular Internet search engine, had made investigating his list of potential candidates a little bit easier.

"You know, basically it's a Google," he said to laughter at a fund-raising luncheon when asked how the selection process was going. "What you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

Vice presidential candidates go through rigorous screening to determine whether they would help a White House aspirant in a general election -- and to make sure there is nothing in their background that could be damaging down the road.

McCain, 71, has faced high scrutiny in his search because of his age.

The Arizona senator, who wrapped up his place on the top of the Republican ticket earlier this year, said he still had some time to complete the search for a number two.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, editing by Alan Elsner)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

TimeOnline: First preview of Google's Android phone

2008-06-01T03:24:00.000-07:00

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4032446.ece

From Times Online
May 30, 2008
First preview of Google's Android phone

The device allows owners to unlock it by drawing on the screen, and includes a built-in compass to help with navigation

Jonathan Richards

Click here for a slideshow of Android prototypes and other phones

Owners of the new Google-powered mobile phone will be able to unlock the handset by drawing a secret shape on the screen.

The new 'signature unlocking' tool was among the features revealed during a sneak preview in California yesterday.

Other highlights include a built-in compass that will allow people to orientate maps as they use their phone to scout out a restaurant or venue, and a customisable homepage that lets people bookmark their favourite web pages.

The device - which is unlocked by drawing a shape only the owner knows on a nine-square grid - will also include a magnifying tool, to make zooming in on web content easier on a small screen, and a mobile version of the game Pac Man.

Demonstrating the device at a developers' conference in San Francisco, Andy Rubin, who heads up the project at Google, declined to give a release date, but said that the first phones powered by Google's Android operating system will appear in the second half of the year.
Google will not make the phone, but has helped develop the software that handset manufacturers will install in their devices. Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, and Motorola are among the companies that have said they will produce phones that run on Android.

The device on which Mr Rubin gave the demonstration (a video is here) had a touch-sensitive screen, but the software will work equally well on other devices, he said, including those with a so-called 'tracking ball', which has been used by BlackBerry.

Observers of the demonstration said the software bore a resemblance to that used on Apple's iPhone, which is also a touchscreen device, and which allows owners to place icons linking to sites such as YouTube on the homepage.

Google demonstrated the device to about 3,000 software developers at an annual conference, and said that it hoped developers would create all kinds of applications that owners of Android phones will be able to download from the internet and install on their devices.

Android is what is known as an 'open-source' operating system, meaning that developers can access the code and create software that works with the device. Apple has announced a similar inititiave which allows developers to create software for the iPhone.

Google, which handles about 80 per cent of search queries in the UK, also hopes that by helping to produce a phone that will make it easier to use the web, it will tap a new source of revenue - namely advertisements that appear on web pages viewed on mobile phones.

The search company reported revenues of just over $5 billion in the last quarter, but the vast majority came from adverts viewed on personal computers. In Western Europe, the spend on mobile advertising is expected to rise from $1 billion in 2008 to $1.5 billion this year.

In a bid to take on Google in mobile, Microsoft announced last week that users of its e-mail and messaging tools on mobile phones would for the first time see ads on such services.

According to a M:Metrics, a company which tracks use of the mobile internet, 62 per cent of search queries by UK mobiles are performed by Google, compared with 7 per cent by MIcrosoft.

Breitbart: Google blurs faces in street view map pictures

2008-05-15T11:06:00.001-07:00

[I read this article with interest, as I have family member's whose faces apear in Google's Street Level View.]
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080514214733.2n13nqsx&show_article=1
Google blurs faces in street view map pictures

May 14 05:48 PM US/Eastern
Google said Wednesday it is blurring the faces of people in street scenes pictured at its free online mapping service.

The US Internet colossus said it was testing the technology in updated "Street View" pictures woven into its map of Manhattan and, if successful, would put it to work across its mapping website.

While blurring faces may reduce complaints that snapshots of street life posted with Google Maps results could violate people's privacy, that is not the motivation for applying the technology, a Google spokeswoman told AFP.

"It is something we have been looking into for quite some time," she said.
"The purpose of Street View isn't looking at people, it's looking at buildings and locations. Obviously, we want to take steps in protecting people's privacy, but from the beginning we've been committed to doing this."

Google has been working for a year on a way to automatically detect and blur faces in pictures, company software engineer Andrea Frome wrote in a Google blog post.

"Working at Street View-scale is a tough challenge that required us to advance state-of-the-art automatic face detection," Frome wrote.

"We continue working hard to improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery."
Frome pointed out that Manhattan street view pictures were also modified to allow people to look up to admire skyscrapers and the cityscape.

Street View photos were added to Google online maps of major US cities a year ago.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Family History Experiences at the "Who Do You Think You Are Conference" in London, May 2008

2008-05-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

We had some great family history moments at the Who Do You Think You Are conference in London on May 2-4, 2008. Many of the attendees to the conference were new to doing their family history research. Many of them were inspired by the Who Do You Think You Are TV show and wanted to know more about their own family histories. That TV show does a great job of showing that everyone has a rich family history and now everyone wants to know more about their own family history. I am looking forward to the American version of that TV show that is supposedly coming soon to our country.

You can see the look in someone’s eyes or in their expressions when you have found a major breakthrough in their family history. There were many experiences that I witnessed in our booth at the conference. It is so exciting when people have that “Ah-ha” moment and make a valuable connection with their past. I will recount a few of these that I got to see.

The first one is one of the more exciting break- throughs that I have seen first -hand. This was when a nice lady was inquiring about her grandfather. She knew her grandfather’s name and that was about it. I typed the name into the ‘global search box’ on the front page of WorldVitalRecors.com. Frequently I have no idea what the results will be, especially if the surname is rare. In this case there were not that many results for “John” and “Kyberd”. The UK census had great multi-generational information for the Kyberd family. However, the results from one of our great Quintin Publication databases showed the true power of the large and rapidly growing collection that we have on WorldVitalRecords.com. In the book titled “East Anglian Pedigrees” we hit the jackpot, so to speak. There was a type of pedigree chart on page 130 of that book that had the entire Kyberd family tree dating back to the 1500s. This chart had husband, wife, and children’s names along with birth, Baptism, Marriage, and Death dates along with geographic locations. This single search found information that would have taken a life time to discover any other way. The look in the eyes of this delighted family history research changed from shock and amazement to profound gratitude to whoever had worked the many hours to compile such a great resource for them.
(http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/SingleIndexIndView.aspx?ix=qcd521_EastAnglianPedigrees&hpp=1&rf=*,z*&qt=i&java=NO&highlight=kyberd,john&zpage=136#centerapplet)
Another example was of husband and wife and their teen-aged daughter that were trying to find out more about their family tree. The husband knew the name of his grandmother and her approximate birth location and birth year. After searching for her, we found once again the multi-generational family information available in the UK Census. To his delight and amazement, he found that his name “Jonathan” was also shared by his great-grandfather which he had never been told. For him to realize that he was named after his great-grandfather gave him a new connection with his past and the desire to know more about him.

Another curious example was by 2 sisters that wanted to learn more about their grandfather. He was a famous chef at a prestigious hotel in London. I guess that he was famous like a Wolfgang Puck and hat quite the reputation that the family enjoyed. However, he was born in Switzerland and I know that we have a very small (but growing) Swiss collection on our site. However, we typed his name into the global search box and found 2 instances of him in the Ellis Island collection. The sisters looked puzzled and said that can’t be him because he lived here in England. He did not immigrate to the US. So we clicked through to the links for more information. It turned out that as a young man their grand-father had been the chef on the 2nd largest passenger ship behind the Titanic. I guess that after the Titanic sunk, the ship that their grand-father worked on was the largest in the world. He had been the chef and had to register each time his ship dropped off passengers at Ellis Island and he went a-shore to look around. They then began discussing what it meant for him and his career that he had learned his art as a chef on a luxury ship.

One of the things that I learned at the conference in London is how much the world is really connected. We had some trepidation about how well our collection of billions of names and thousands of databases would be receive in the UK. Even though our non-US collection is growing rapidly it is still just a portion of our U.S. collection. U.S. Data is typically much easier to acquire that international data. However, almost every one of the hundreds that came to our booth had a reason to search for data in the UK and in the rest of the world especially the US, Canada, and Australia. To prove this point, a nice lady said that her entire extended family lives in the UK. She has done most of the genealogy for these relatives. However, she said “My grandfather had 2 brothers. One immigrated to Australia and one to America.” I know nothing about what became of them so I need your web service find about them and their families.

I love genealogy and family history. I love helping others find out more about their own family. This labor of love provides such great emotional pay off for those that feel the desire to learn more about their family history.

Catholic bishops told to withhold parish information from Mormons

2008-05-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_9151351

Catholic bishops told to withhold parish information from Mormons
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:05/04/2008 02:50:56 PM MDT

The Roman Catholic Church recently directed dioceses worldwide not to give parish information to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The move is "an effort to block posthumous rebaptisms," according to an article reported Friday by Catholic News Service. CNS cites an April 5 letter from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy that directs all Catholic bishops "to keep the Latter-day Saints from microfilming and digitizing information contained" in parish registers.

A main tenet of LDS Church doctrine is to baptize posthumously, by proxy, all who have died without an LDS baptism, to enable them the opportunity to accept the faith in an afterlife. Baptisms for the dead are performed in LDS temples worldwide. The church collects birth, death, christening, marriage and other related information of deceased people, from archives and registers of churches and denominations, when access is permitted.

The Vatican letter calls LDS baptisms for the dead a "detrimental practice" and directs each Catholic diocesan bishop "not to cooperate with the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," CNS reported.

LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said today that he hasn't seen the Vatican letter. "It would really be premature for us to say anything," he said. Church leaders will obtain and review the letter Monday, he said.

"Who Do You Think You Are" initial report

2008-05-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

The magnitude of the "Who Do You Think You Are" conference in London is hard to describe. By its sheer numbers it is 5 times as big as NGS or FGS in the United States. I have heard that there will be 15,000 attendees. Most of the conference attendees purchase a 1 day pass so each day there will be 5k.

There is a huge drive in the UK to better understand who you and your relatives are. This is drive in no small part by the very popular "Who Do You Think You Are" TV show.

The conference is held in a massive exhibition hall. I walked around the balcony to see the bird's eye view of the booths, exhibits, classes, and the attendees. I didn't count my steps around but it must have been between a quarter and half mile to walk around the balcony.

Being a huge history buff, I definitely appreciated many of the WWI and WWII exhibits. There was even the tank from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

There was a recurring humorous skit performed by 2 men in a WWI bi-plane.

Only a few of the attendees that visit our booth had heard of WorldVitalRecords.com or FamilyLink.com. However, of those that had heard about us a large percentage were members including this member, who I will have to ask his name again today.

Love-Hate relationship with my iPhone

2008-04-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

We at FamilyLink are now developing iPhone applications and we had to get iPhones for use and testing. iPhones are all the rage and are the new status symbol the way that Blackberries and Treos used to be. I do think that in the future, more applications will be on the hand held devices and thus require fewer people to own desktops. With the volume of iPhones that are sold, more development resources will be directed to this platform.

I am a mobile device “power user” and probably use more applications than the average user. I rely heavily on my mobile device and I expect it to work as hard as I do. I don’t carry it around to make a statement, unless that statement is that I am busy and I have a lot I need to get accomplished.

Things the iPhone does well

The Safari browser implementation on the iPhone shows that you don’t need a desktop to use the internet. The browsers on the Treo and Blackberry do not provide a strong user experience. Thus the iPhone takes a huge leap forward in reducing the need for laptop computers. Mankind will still need to have desktops and laptops, but that need is diminished by the iPhone and similar devices. More on this later in the comparison below.

Apple does a great job on human interfaces and usability. Almost to a fault, even when the interface looks great there may not be any substance behind it. This was the case in the early Apples, Apple IIs, Macintoshes, etc. In fact the early Macs were such a joke because they looked good but were completely inadequate for doing anything other than playing games or drawing pretty pictures. Later they became serious business machines with serious applications that made them the best tool for certain jobs.

Over time the substance behind the interfaces has been able to mature to the point of being useful. I am hoping that will be the case with the iPhones. Steve Jobs, someone whom I admire (not always agree with, but admire), has announced the iPhone business productivity enhancements (or whatever it is called) for June. I am looking forward to these much needed upgrades.

I have been using a Treo on the Sprint Network. I have used a Blackberry and other devices described in the comparison below. I know that you can get a Treo on the AT&T or other networks, but I chose the Sprint network for its nation wide speed advantage. This is why my company’s Air Cards are on the Sprint network as well.

My review of my first month of using the iPhone is as follows: Looks great, doesn't do much (yet).

I love the form factor of the iPhone. It is the same weight as my Treo, but half the thickness. This makes it 2x more carry-able in my mind. However, since I am still packing around my Treo with it's phone service turned off, that negates the form factor. (More on why I am still carrying around the Treo later in this comparison) Form Factor Advantage iPhone.

I love the Safari browser implementation on the iPhone. In fact, I like it more than sitting at desk and using IE or Firefox to browse the internet. This browser is 10x superior to the user experience on the Treo or Blackberry. However, this is the only advantage that is clearly in favor of the iPhone. I wish that the rest of the iPhone had been as well thought out as internet browsing. Huge Browser Advantage iPhone.

However, it is great at home, at work, as the city office building, at BYU, which are the the main places that I stay for any period of time. However, in any other place the network feels like molasses. I have had some problem with connecting to some Wi-Fi networks, even though I am properly authenticated. A friend told me to reboot my iPhone and that has solved the problem for now. I really like the Wi-Fi implementation on the iPhone. Huge Wi-Fi advantage iPhone.

The AT&T Edge network is painfully slow compared to modern 3G networks. I loved the Sprint network and still have my regrets about leaving it. Some of the features of the iPhone (like iTunes) don't work unless you are in range of a WiFi system. It was a huge coup for AT&T to lock up the contract with Apple for iPhones, however, it is frustrating users who have experienced better network speed. I have commiserated with others who have changed to the AT&T network, only to have buyer’s remorse. We may love/like/tolerate the iPhone, but we hate the AT&T network. Advantage Sprint network and Treo.

I like the email implementation on the iPhone. It has some advantages and disadvantages compared to a Blackberry or Treo. But I don't feel like I have lost any email functionality with the iPhone. Email Advantage even.

I also like the camera implementation. It is on par with my Treo. However, there is no 'Cam Corder' mode to create video. I have used video from my Treo for many things including videos that I have uploaded to YouTube. This is a slight step down from my Treo. Slight Camera/Camcorder advantage Treo.

I like the Google Maps implementation on the iPhone. It looks better than on my Treo, but has the same functionality. Google Maps Advantage even.

Now for the serious downsides to iPhone.

User input on the iPhone is abysmal. I hate entering text into the iPhone. It is the worst implementation of data input into a PDA type device that I have ever experienced. Shame on Apple for releasing something this awful! I had an Apple Newton 15 years ago that is light years ahead of the iPhone for data input. Every Newton, Palm, Windows CE, Blackberry, Treo, cell phone, Nintendo GameBoy, Nintendo DS, generic PDA, etc that I have ever used is better than the iPhone for data input. I have come to realize how important it is to be able to get information into a PDA.

I take copious notes in the various meetings that I am in. I have given up doing that on the iPhone.

I tried to connect a BlueTooth keyboard to the iPhone that I have used with my Treo. No drivers exist for BlueTooth keyboard on the iPhone. Another missed opportunity for the iPhone.

I hope that someone develops a "Graffiti" text input application for the iPhone. That would be a big improvement. You couldn't use a stylus because of the nature of the iPhone touch screen, but if it accepted finger tip movements then it would work just fine. On this subject you can use a gloved finger or a stylus on the iPhone. This means that you have to take your glove off to answer the phone if you are in the cold. I don't like that, but I can tolerate it. One thing that Graffiti could do that takes a lot of practice on any other device is the ability to input text without looking at the device. Some people can do that with Blackberries and Treos and cell phones, but it takes a lot of time to train your fingers to do that. However, I could take notes on my Palm Pilot and Apple Newton without looking at the device. This was very convenient. Huge Advantage Treo, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, Apple Newton.

I tried to move the hundreds of memos from my Treo to the iPhone, but it can't be done. Interestingly enough, some of those memos were originally written on my old Apple Newton. However, they are stuck on my Treo, which I will continue to carry around for looking up my personal notes. I can drag and drop this memo structure onto any computer or device except my iPhone. This is a limitation of iTunes as much as the iPhone, but since the iPhone is dependant on iTunes, the iPhone takes another hit. Huge advantage Treo.

This brings up the syncing process between my desktop and my mobile device. I have several computers that I store my important data and all of them are Windows based computers. Maybe my experience would be different if I used a Mac; I have heard that is the case. However, I don’t use a Mac.

The only thing that easily came across from my Treo to the iPhone was my photos. That was nice. However, my personal notes, contacts, schedule, and documents didn't. It took some work and I was finally able to move my contacts across from my Treo to the iPhone, but that process scrambled the type of contact info so now most of the cell mobile numbers that I had in my Treo were all remapped as either "work" or "home" numbers. I can't easily text people that I could with my Treo. Huge data advantage Treo.

I used DataViz Documents to go on my Treo. I had 100 megabytes of MS Word documents, MS Excel spreadsheets, .PDF files, MS Power Point slides, etc on the 2 gig SD card in the Treo. I could pop that card out and plug it into a variety of computers and copy files to or from that card. That was a very nice way to conduct business. I even had a 10 megabyte spreadsheet that I could open and search on that SD card. It was so convenient to have that ability. None of that works on my new iPhone. I can't sync documents to my iPhone. I can view attachments, but the doesn't let me edit or create them on my hand held device. This lack of support for standard business files indicates to me that the iPhone is not a serious business device. Huge document usage advantage Treo.

I am experimenting with alternatives to native support for MS Office documents. I like what I have seen so far with Zoho.com's suite of online document types. I like how Google documents look on my iPhone, but I can't edit them or create new ones like I can with Zoho's. I am still looking for solutions and am not satisfied yet. I use about 60 Google Docs to manage my company and I need to edit them on my portable device. Online Documents Advantage Even.

The iPhone does not have a way to be a digital recorder. I used mVoice software on my Treo to record meetings or special events. This is something that should be added to the iPhone to compensate for the lack of data input capabilities. Digital Recorder Advantage Treo.

PocketTunes on my Treo combined with the speed of the Sprint network allowed me to listen to streaming internet audio from various news and talk stations. I listened to local news and sports no matter where I traveled in the country. I could pipe that audio from my Treo into my car's audio system and listen to my favorite programs. I was able to listen to my home news while watching my son play soccer in Oregon. That was a beautiful system that was almost like magic. But that magic doesn't exist on the iPhone. I can listen to KSL in iTunes on my computer, but not on my iPhone. Streaming Audio Programs Huge advantage Treo.

I am not happy with the implementation of Google Chat on the Treo or iPhone. I like it on the Blackberry. The chatting capabilities of the Treo and iPhone are adequate, but not as good as the Blackberry. I am hoping that Google or someone else will implement a Google Talk for the iPhone. The alternatives that I have seen are inadequate. Google Talk Advantage Blackberry. I had hoped that someone would have implemented a Skype client for the iPhone. I read several blogs that claimed it was going to happen, but I haven’t seen it yet. Skype Advantage Even.

Results of comparison

Huge Advantages iPhone: 2
• Safari Internet Browser
• Wi-Fi

Advantages iPhone: 1
• Form Factor

Even: 4
• Email
• Google Maps
• Online document usage
• lack of Skype client

Advantages Treo, Blackberry, or other device: 4
• Speed of cellular network
• Camera/Camcorder
• Digital Recorder
• Google Talk

Huge Advantages Treo, Blackberry, or other device: 5
• Text input
• Transferring data between computer and hand held device
• Syncing between computer and hand held device
• Use of MS Office Documents
• Streaming Audio

Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain

2008-03-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece

From The Times
March 8, 2008
Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain
Alexi Mostrous
Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.
The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.
Gordon Brown announced last month that he would force supermarkets to charge for the bags, saying that they were “one of the most visible symbols of environmental waste”. Retailers and some pressure groups, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England, threw their support behind him.
But scientists, politicians and marine experts attacked the Government for joining a “bandwagon” based on poor science.
Lord Taverne, the chairman of Sense about Science, said: “The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.”
Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.
They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”
He added: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species.For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either.”
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”
In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.
Regardless, the erroneous claim has become the keystone of a widening campaign to demonise plastic bags.
David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace, told The Times that bad science was undermining the Government’s case for banning the bags. “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags,” he said. “The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags.
“It doesn’t do the Government’s case any favours if you’ve got statements being made that aren’t supported by the scientific literature that’s out there. With larger mammals it’s fishing gear that’s the big problem. On a global basis plastic bags aren’t an issue. It would be great if statements like these weren’t made.”
Geoffrey Cox, a Tory member of the Commons Environment Select Committee, said: “I don't like plastic bags and I certainly support restricting their use, but plainly it’s extremely important that before we take any steps we should rely on accurate information. It is bizarre that any campaign should be endorsed on the basis of a mistranslation. Gordon Brown should get his facts right.”
A 1968 study of albatross carcasses found that 90 per cent contained some form of plastic but only two birds had ingested part of a plastic bag.
Professor Geoff Boxshall, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum, said: “I’ve never seen a bird killed by a plastic bag. Other forms of plastic in the ocean are much more damaging. Only a very small proportion is caused by bags.”
Plastic particles known as nurdles, dumped in the sea by industrial companies, form a much greater threat as they can be easily consumed by birds and animals. Many British groups are now questioning whether a ban on bags would cost consumers more than the environmental benefits.
Charlie Mayfield, chairman of retailer John Lewis, said that tackling packaging waste and reducing carbon emissions were far more important goals. “We don’t see reducing the use of plastic bags as our biggest priority,” he said. “Of all the waste that goes to landfill, 20 per cent is household waste and 0.3 per cent is plastic bags.” John Lewis added that a scheme in Ireland had reduced plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.

Interesting "Street Level View" photos in Google Maps

2008-03-08T01:55:00.000-08:00

I have been amazed by the power and impact of the new "Street Level View" in Google Maps. Tis a very powerful resource that also borders on invading person privacy. This is one of the challenges of modern life. In my own street level view, you can see the neighborhood kids (including my own) playing across the street. It is an interesting time capsule of what was going on at the time the Google Map vehicle drove by.

I found this article that identifies unusual photos in the "Street Level View" of Google Maps
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1870949.ece
From Times Online
June 1, 2007
10 bizarre sights in Google Street View
Drive around America's biggest cities in a black VW Beetle with a huge panoramic camera bolted to the roof, and you're sure to see something unusual along the way

The Google Street View camera van captured all kinds of street life - now bloggers are hunting for the most entertaining sights - like these two distracted men in San Francisco to not show

Tom Whitwell

Without any context or timeline, it's hard to tell exactly what you're seeing in the extraordinary panoramic images captured by Google's magic van. But in the days since the service was launched, numerous blogs have appeared, linking to the most interesting sights. Here are a selection found at Google Sightseeing, Steetviewr, and Threat Level.
1. Someone apparently climbing over a fence in San Francisco
2. Borat peeking out of a window in San Jose, California
3. The already infamous 'Hot Babes' poster van driving alongside the Google truck in Las Vegas
4. A girl bending over, and two guys watching her...
5. Ambulance driver stops for a sandwich
6. A canine disagreement
7. Strange, headless figures next to what looks like a newly dug grave
8. Giant robot attack
9. The alien invasion begins
10 The moment when the Google van stopped for lunch, and the road takes a detour in the McDonald's car park

BBC: Warning given over techno addicts

2008-02-21T03:40:00.000-08:00

BBC: Warning given over techno addicts
Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 17:17 GMT

Warning given over techno addicts

Researchers are looking at how widespread the problem is

A growing number of people are becoming addicted to their mobile phones, Blackberries and other digital devices, researchers are warning.

Techno addiction can become so bad that people wake up several times a night to check their e-mails and text messages.

It can even interfere with an addict's job as he feels he has to be linked up all the time, says Professor Nada Kakabadse of Northampton University.

She is conducting research into how widespread the addiction may be.

You would be surprised how many people had their PDA or Blackberry next to their bed heads
Prof KakabadseNorthampton University Evidence emerging from a small-scale study of 360 people carried out by Prof Kakabadse and her colleagues suggested up to a third were addicted.
People could become addicted to just about anything, she said.

"We are creatures of habit and we can get addicted to quite unusual things.
"Technology has become much more interesting over the past 10 years with the internet and everything.

"It is much simpler and much more portable which makes it more accessible.

"You would be surprised how many people had their PDA or Blackberry next to their bed heads."

She added: "Those who are addicted will get up in the middle of the night and pick up messages on their PDAs two or three times a night."

'Too late'

The addiction could also lead to problems with relationships as the addict became more and more withdrawn from their family.

And there were other social consequences as the addict suffered from anxieties and sicknesses, she said.

Prof Kakabadse said in the early stages of addiction, workers were often very productive, replying to e-mails and messages, but as time went on there were more serious consequences.
"Some people are very anxious when they don't have their technological gadgets next to them.
"They might get into trouble with their employers as they spend more and more time checking messages."

She said it was often difficult to detect when someone had become an addict, "And when it is detectable it is often too late".

She stopped short of calling for warnings to be put on all gadgets, but said employers should provide training on the safe use of technological devices they provided to their staff.
Prof Kakabadse has looked in detail at case studies but now intends to see how widespread the problem is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7253493.stm

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

2008-02-10T18:33:00.000-08:00

I used this graphic in my presentation entitled "Innovations in Genealogy and Family History."

I thought it would be funny to display this pedigree chart and have the audience figure out the word game.

It didn't take too long and someone yelled out "Necessity is the Mother of Invention."

FamilyLink.com at the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Expo Feb 8-9 '08

2008-02-10T16:50:00.000-08:00

FamilyLink.com, Inc. and WorldVitalRecords.com had a memorable event at the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Conf. Feb 8-9, 2008.

This was a great winter time get away for us from Northern Utah. When we left Provo it was snowing! We arrived in St. George to beautiful spring like weather. It was warm but had recently snowed on the beautiful red rock mountains above St. George. The colors of Red, White, and Blue were very vivid. The sky was clear and cobalt blue.

One of the first people that I ran into after we got there was Dear Myrtle. I gave her a big hug and thanked her for her designation of WorldVitalRecords.com as the BEST Database Site. She did this in her BEST of the Internet for Genealogists Award on 3 Feb 2008. I later had a chance to sit down and visit with her in her booth.

This was the first conference that we had our new booth. I sure like how it looks and how it represents our company and products. The booth is fairly quick and easy to set up and it down. This is Amy and Ryan setting up the booth.

The new booth turned out to be a hit. It was always a busy beehive of activity. We had numerous compliments on the form and function of the booth, even from my friends at Ancestry.com. We had so much traffic to our booth that we have decided to double out booth space from 10x10 to 20x10 for next years conference.

We had our new video playing non-stop on a projector in our booth. Our video touches people in a way that they can relate to. As I watch people that are viewing the video, they are all nodding their heads to indicate that they have the same feeling about doing their family history research. RootsTV has uploaded the video to their site. So our WorldVitalRecords.com video is now on YouTube and RootsTV.

We had numerous opportunities for FamilyLink representatives to speak to large groups of genealogy enthusiasts. Yvette Arts, Jason McGowan, and I addressed large crowds.

Now that we have over 25,000 subscribers to WorldVitalRecords.com and over 50,000 members on FamilyLink.com, and over 2 million users four Facebook applications such as "We're Related" and "Family Groups" everyone seems to know who we are. I spoke with a lady that she was one of our first members and she talked with me at last year's St. George expo and requested that we add several new features. We have since added those features to our web sites and she thanked me for listening.

Probably due to our increased profile in the industry and our success at putting 6,000 databases with 1 billion names on line, we now have a steady stream of organizations and individuals that want to license their content to us. In the early days of our company (last year) it was sometimes a tough sell to get content owners to license their content to us. This is good news to our subscribers as our content pipeline is growing and flowing.

As a sponsor of the St. George "My Ancestors Found" Expo and CD syllabus, we will be able to make the electronic syllabus available for our users as a reference on WorldVitalRecords.com. Watch our newsletter for when we announce upcoming content on our site.

New videos of testimonials for WorldVitalRecords.com

2008-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

We have recently completed a video that contains testimonials about WorldVitalRecords.com. I sure appreciate the cameo appearances by Susan Black and Leland Meitzler.

We now have this video on the front page of our web site and are using it in various campaigns. There are currently 2 versions of the video a longer 5 minute version and a shorter 2 minute version. We may release a much longer version that includes many more testimonials and more time from each interview. We have quite a few testimonials, success stories, and endorsements by our partners and subscribers on video, but we limited this release to just a few for the sake of time.

We have made the decision to use the YouTube resources to distribute this video instead of hosting it and streaming it from our servers. I have blogged before about the benefits of YouTube for distributing marketing materials and we are tracking the results to see if it meets our needs.

WVR mentioned prominently in the 3 of top 4 Gen. News Stories of '07

2008-01-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

World Vital Records (and FamilyLink.com) is mentioned prominently in 3 of the top 4 Genealogy news stories of 2007 as reported by Family Tree Magazine. The other top 4 story "Record Digitization Accelerates" is something that we are actively involved in, but we did not get mentioned by name.

We appreciated this recognition as we feel that it indicates our leadership and innovation are changing and improving family history and genealogy.

www.familytreemagazine.com/insider/PermaLink,guid,550a49eb-2aa2-4da7-a2e3-051d308a2971.aspx

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
10 Biggest Genealogy News Stories in 2007
Posted by Diane Haddad

Here are the top genealogy developments of 2007… at least in our humble opinion.

Competition comes back
For a few years there, after industry leader MyFamily.com (now The Generations Network) purchased second-place Genealogy.com in 2003, industry competition ebbed and online innovation slowed. Today The Generations Network is still the giant, but the growth of relative newcomers including World Vital Records and Footnote, plus FamilySearch’s records-digitization initiatives, are keeping the genealogy business on its toes.

Records digitization accelerates
In October, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced it was teaming up with FamilySearch to digitize case files of approved pension applications from widows of Civil War Union soldiers. That’s part of an even bigger arrangement that has FamilySearch volunteers stationed at NARA to scan all kinds of records. Footnote also has agreements to digitize NARA records, and FamilySearch has mobilized thousands of volunteers to index scanned records.

Partnerships proliferate
Organizations are joining forces right and left. World Vital Records, which launched in 2006, has built its genealogy database largely through partnership agreements. That site, Footnote, ProQuest and the Godfrey Library announced in May they’d provide access at FamilySearch’s Family History Centers. Nonprofit libraries and archives, including NARA, are using partnerships to increase records access without blowing their budgets.

Social networking explodes
As contributing editor Rick Crume points out in his January 2008 Family Tree Magazine social networking guide, Web 2.0 has allowed sites to be more interactive than ever. In addition to the popularity of photo- and family-history-sharing sites such as Geni and Amiglia, and genealogy networking sites such as FamilyLink and WeRelate, database sites such as FindMyPast have added social networking features.

SNAP Facebook Conference 10/26/07

2007-10-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, October 26, 2007, five of us from World Vital Records went to the Facebook conference in San Francisco. Our CEO, Paul Allen, is emphatic about each of us going to conferences and trade shows to make sure that we have access to the latest information and best practices in our respective areas of responsibility. So even though we are all swamped with our day to day responsibilities and dealing with the rapid growth of our user base, we stopped what we were doing and went to San Francisco for the day.

The immediate detail that jumped out to me about the conference is the real-time exchange of information with everyone else that is dealing with the same issues that we are. Speakers would say things like "earlier this week we tried this, and it didn't work so we tried this and it did." In the rapidly changing technology world real time sharing of information is powerful and valuable.

I know that Paul has expressed his frustrations about the Provo Labs Academy and how he wasn't able to accomplish what he wanted to with that project. However, those who participated benefited greatly. Listening to the experts that are working in the trenches to solve the same problems that we are is worth many times the price of admission. I know that I learned a lot from the Provo Labs Academy lectures and hardly a day goes by that I don't use something that I learned in those classes.

The key focuses of the SNAP sponsored Facebook conference that appealed to me were scalability and monetization of Facebook apps. Both are issues that we are working on at World Vital Records. Scalability is critical so that we can still rapidly expand our user base to meet the demand while maintaining a positive user experience. There were several references to Amazon's EC2 and S3. The main downside to those services is the lack of load balancing in their server clouds. I expect Amazon to address those issues in the future.

Monetization is critical in that now that we have huge installed user bases, we need to generate the revenue to take care of those users and installed systems. We will begin our monetization plans later this week based on what we learned at the conference.

We think that our We're Related app on Facebook will be the first of the 2nd generation apps on Facebook. Most of the 1st generation apps were 'internet toys.' But now serious apps like ours are giving people real reasons to benefit their lives by using practical and real world applications.

We have adopted the industry term 'Social Graph.' We have used other terms to describe that, but it makes sense for us to use the common terminology.

One other thing that stood out to me is one of the strategies to virality. The viral triggers need to be initiated during the first 20 clicks that a person does on your app, or it won't happen. Now that I have learned that I have noticed that feature on a half dozen sites. I wouldn't have recognize that without that concept that was discused at the conference.

Lastly, while this was Facebook specific confernce, over 85% of the things that were discused apply outside the Facebook arena. I plan to implement things that I learned on our We're Related Facebook app, WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilyLink.com, and even my personal web sites.

Chief Justice John Roberts speaks at BYU

2007-10-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of working next to the BYU campus is that I can occasionally attend the forums and devotionals that they hold every week. I enjoyed attending them while I was a student at BYU.

One of the most memorable devotionals was when President Benson spoke to a completely packed Marriot Center crowd.

Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court spoke to a large BYU crowd on Tuesday, October 23rd. The crowd was about 3 times larger than the crowed that listened to Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, who spoke two weeks before.

Judge Roberts started with a joke about why he doesn't tell 'lawyer jokes' any more. The lawyers don't think the jokes are funny, and no one else thinks they are jokes.

Judge Roberts proceeded to give an exceptional dissertation on the United States Constitution.

He pointed that out that France has had 10 constitutions in the same time that we have had our original. He joked that French bookstores don't sell their constitutions because they don't carry periodicals.

The US Constitution is a bill of rights that sets us apart from other nations in that it sets up rights by its creators: 'we the people.'

He said that our constitution has been put down by critics because it it 'all sail and no anchor.'

Our constitution sets up the balance of powers with the legislative, executive, and judicial and separate and equally powerful branches of government. Roberts stated that the founders of the constitution intentionally made it difficult to make laws. They made it even more difficult to amend the constitution. Laws could be created but it required a lot of support. Amending the constitution required a 2/3 majority of both houses and a ¾ of all state legislatures to ratify.

Roberts described difference between the US government and Great Britain's. The government in the UK is not divided. The Parliament elects the Prime Minister and the equivalent of the supreme court from among themselves. He said that they have recently made progress in dividing the governmental powers. This was the very reason that we fought to leave them and now, over 200 years later, they are following our leave.

The framers of the constitution recognized the need to have a powerful executive to counter balance the congress and the senate. He said he thought that they made the president more powerful than they needed to because they new that the first president would be Washington. They had just separated themselves from the King and yet the set up a very powerful president as the executive officer.

He pointed out that the 1st building to be build in Washington DC was the White House. The 2nd was the US Capital. However, the Supreme Court didn't get a building until 1944.

The grand words in the constitutions of other countries are just empty promises unless the courts are powerful enough to uphold the rights guaranteed to the citizens. The constitution of the old Soviet Union had a lot of beautiful and flowery words, but they failed to create a court system to guarantee individual rights. Brutal dictators did not fear their constitution, nor their courts.

Judge Roberts reiterated that Judges must not abuse their independence to write law into their decisions. They must interpret the law set by the legislative branch, not take that power unto themselves.

Judges must show the lonely courage of a patriot in their decisions.

Our country only has 1 Supreme Court unlike other countries that have have multiple overlapping supreme courts of their countries. You can imagine the confusion and court shopping that this creates.

There have been 11,000 proposed amendments to the US Constitution, yet only 27 have been ratified.

Judge Roberts praised former BYU president and Supreme Court Solicitor General Rex Lee. He described arguing a case before the Supreme Court and against Rex Lee. Roberts went on to lose in a 9-0 decision in Lee's favor. Roberts' client asked him why the lost 9-0, and Roberts responded because there were only 9 justices.

Chief Justice Roberts went on to praise Rex Lee as a modern example of the founders of the constitution. It made me wonder if President Lee had not died of cancer, if he would not be on the Supreme Court now.

Another great success story from WorldVitalRecords.com

2007-10-05T14:08:00.001-07:00

We love to keep track of the many success stories that our customs have when working with the ever-growing collection of databases on WorldVitalRecords.com.

There are 2 that I repeat to others when they ask about how things are going at WorldVitalRecords.com.

The first of many examples that I use happened at the FGS conference in Ft. Wayne Indiana this past August. A nice lady from one of the large state genealogy societies came by the World Vital Records booth. She said that she has a rate name in her family that she uses to see how complete a genealogy site's databases are. The rare name that she uses for this test is "Frink." She said that in most other genealogy database sites, she finds very little useful information about the Frink family.

I typed then surname "Frink" into our global search and even I was amazed by the search result. The top search result in the Family Histories was a small database that is part of the Quintin collection entitled "Records From the Bible of Eliza Gold Frink, Brunswick County, North Carolina." This small database contained 18 pages from the 1832 family bible of Eliza Frink. These pages contained the pedigree charts and family name lists for 8 generations of the Frink family! She had never heard of Eliza Frink, but she immediately recognized some of the names on those pages from the Frink Family Bible. This was a gold mine of family history research for her.

The next example of an amazing success on WorldVitalRecords.com happened just this week. We had a prospective business partner from Seattle that came to Provo to visit with us. She was not that familiar with our site or with genealogy database sites in general. I explained what we did and how our business model worked. I wanted to give her an example of some of the databases that we had on our site. I asked her where her family was from. I navigated to the state of Washington to see all of the data that we had for Washington state. I scrolled down through the roughly 50 databases that we have that pertain to Washington state. About halfway down the list, she saw the Deer Park Tribune and the Deer Park Union newspapers. These are part of the SmallTownPapers® collection that we have on WorldVitalRecords.com.

She exclaimed, "that is where I am from." She then began to browse through the newspaper and found where both her husband and herself were listed as being on the honor roll in their high school. Both of us were amazed by her quick find. We printed off the newspaper pages so that she could take them back to Seattle to show to her husband. She quickly gained an understanding of the power of the ever-growing database collection on WorldVitalRecords.com.

Heritage Map from the 2000 US Census

2007-08-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Largest Ancestry: 2000

I have had a copy of this map posted by my computer monitor for several months now. It was created by the US Government as part of their report for the 2000 Census. This fascinating map shows a map of the heritage/ethnicity/ancestry of the largest population for each county. There is a smaller version of of the US map of heritage/ethnicity/ancestry for each state.

The Mason-Dixon line basically separates the north from the south. It also separates the German or "Pennsylvania Dutch" population of the north and west from the "American" and "African American" of the south.

Since I consider myself to be mostly of German descent and a member of the Germanic Genealogy Society, I spend a lot of time reading about and researching the German migrations to North America. It is interesting to see the influence of this migration across roughly 75% of the US. This covers almost everything outside of the south.

I grew up in Tennessee and see the contrast in this heritage map. Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia are the only states with majority "American" heritage.

It is interesting to see how Utah, where I now live, is almost dominated by "English" heritage. Utah, Maine and Vermont are the only states that have a majority of English heritage.

In the south from Louisiana to Maryland, excluding Florida, is majority "African American."

In the Southwest from Texas to California the heritage is primarily "Mexican."

The "4 corners" area of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico and the north and west of Alaska are a majority "American Indian" and or "Aleut/Eskimo."

I would be very interested in seeing this map over time from the first US census in 1790. However, heritage, ethnicity, and ancestry has not always been quantified in the census so that it could be mapped and tracked as well as the 2000 US Census.

Decreased cost of doing business, especially disk storage

2007-08-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

In preparation for a presentation that I am doing today at the BYU Genealogy and Family History, I have done some research on the reduced costs of modern technology businesses. One of the distinct advantages that WorldVitalRecords is enjoying is the reduced cost of doing business over our more established competitors.

These cost reductions include not just hardware such as disk space, RAM, and CPU speed (MIPS) but also the cost reduction of using open source operating systems and applications such as search engines. Linux and Lucene are two of examples of open source OS and applications that we use.

The cost comparison between a server operating system (OS), such as XP Server, and Linux incalculable because you will get a “divide by zero” error. Linux, the denominator in the equation, is free. Plug the cost of any serious server OS prior to LINUX into the equation and the can see this cost is zero. So the practical reduction in business costs is $X down to $0.

The cost reduction of disk storage space is spectacular and almost as dramatic. This price reduction has been fairly constant since the 1950s. I found this great chart that shows the dramatic decline in costs: www.berghell.com/whitepapers/Projecting%20the%20Cost%20of%20Magnetic%20Storage%20Over%20the%20Next%2010%20years.pdf.

The term Terabyte, which means one thousand Gigabytes, first entered my vocabulary in the early 1990s. It was use to describe the size of the Library of Congress. That was difficult for me to fathom. At that time gigabyte (a thousand megabytes) was still almost too big to understand as well.

At that time, I still had a hard rive on my personal computer that was measured in megabytes. And it took me 6 months to save money to buy that 19 megabyte hard drive. Before that, the first hard drive that I had easy access to was a mere 5 megabyte drive. That was all you could get on an IBM XT in 1983. Before that, PCs only had floppy drives that were measured in hundreds of kilobytes.

To illustrate the size and scope of these changes in costs and capacity, I recently purchased a 4 gigabyte “postage stamp size” SD chip for my Treo. That paper thin chip has 200 times capacity than my first 19 megabyte hard drive. That hard drive was about the size a shoe box AND made an annoying high-pitched whine AND put off enough heat to heat my office in the winter.

Back to the point of this BLOG, ten years ago, when Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org were scaling up to store census images, the cost per Terabyte for Hardware RAID (redundant and self correcting storage) had a cost of USD $110,772. During the past 10 years that number has fallen to USD $505. This is the equivalent cost of 2 quarters compared to a hundred dollar bill.

This means that now that WorldVitalRecords.com is scaling up to store the thousands of databases that we are adding at a rapid rate we can buy storage space for less than 1/2 of 1%. This amazing cost reduction allows us to buy new, high-speed hard drives for less than then carrying cost and maintenance of the hard drives of the past.

The timing of our company launch gives us a cost advantage of these recent price reductions. This is just one of the reasons that we can offer a much lower priced membership than our older and more established competition.

Is Utah the Hot Spot for Genealogists?

2007-07-12T16:18:00.001-07:00

It is probably conventional wisdom that Utah is the hub or capital of the genealogy world. There are companies like The Generations Network (TGN, Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, et al.), Heritage Makers, Heritage Quest, Ancestral Quest, Legacy, Everton's, FamilySearch and the LDS Church, WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink, just to name a few.

I go to many if not most of the Genealogy and Family History conferences and many of the companies with the largest footprints are from Utah.

Genealogy and Family History is an activity that many members of the LDS (Mormon) Church are actively involved in. There are are many Mormons that live in Utah, myself included.

We are very close to getting our 10,000 paid subscriber and I am analyzing the demographics of our customers.I was working on a report that identified the location of our customers and was surprised where Utah was in the ranked list of our subscribers.

It turns out that of the United States, Utah is ranked 17th for the most number of our user in a state. California, Texas, and Florida should come as no surprise because they are very populous states. However, I would have thought that Utah would have been in the top 5 if not the top 10. But 17th?

I would never have guessed that New Jersey, the beautiful Garden State where I have spent quite a bit of time on business, would have more of our users that Utah.

My home state of Tennessee rounded out the top 20 at #20.

According to our Google Analytics on July 11, 2007, this is the ranked order of the top 20 states from where WorldVitalRecords.com's users are from:

California
Texas
Florida
Georgia
Ohio
Illinois
Missouri
Washington
Pennsylvania
New York
Michigan
Arizona
Virginia
North Carolina
Colorado
New Jersey
Utah
Oklahoma
Kentucky
Tennessee

David Lifferth interview with RootsTube (Roots Television) at So.Cal. Genealogy Jamboree June 8, 2007

2007-07-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

Report on WorldVitalRecords Press Conference at NGS 2007

2007-05-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

WorldVitalRecords Announces Partnerships: FamilySearch™, Ellis Island, & Quintin

Yesterday WorldVitalRecords.com hosted its first press conference at the National Genealogical Society (NGS) conference in the Greater Richmond Convention Center in Richmond, Virginia. The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, FamilySearch™ (formerly the Genealogical Society of Utah sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and Quintin Publications participated in the conference.

Shown above from left to right: David Rencher, Director, Records and Information Division, Family and Church History Department, Walt Fuller, President, Everton Publishers, David Lifferth, President, WorldVitalRecords.com, Phil Quintin, President, Quintin Publications, Leland Meitzler, Managing Editor, Everton PublishersLink to press address: QuickTime Movie

The first announcement was read by David Lifferth, President, WorldvitalRecords.com, and came from Steve Briganti, President/CEO of The Statue of Liberty Foundation-Ellis Island who was unable to attend.

Shown above: David Lifferth, President, WorldVitalRecords.comLink to press address (Steve Briganti ): QuickTime Movie

This announcement included a three-way agreement between WorldVitalRecords.com, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, and FamilySearch™.

As part of this agreement, more than 25 million records of individuals who immigrated from the Port of New York to Ellis Island between 1892-1924 will be available online, free of charge, at WorldVitalRecords.com.

“The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is pleased to announce this partnership today whereby the historic passenger arrival records for the Port of New York and Ellis Island will be freely available through WorldVitalRecords and FamilyLink. This expanded availability continues our long-standing commitment to helping families better understand their personal connection to the history of American immigration,” Briganti said.

Since first being made available online in April 2001, this collection of nearly 25 million records has proven to be one of the single most-important and popular record collections anywhere in the world. Arrivals through Ellis Island represent more than 150 different ethnicities, reinforcing the worldwide importance of these records.

“As a nonprofit Foundation, we continue to be thankful for the support of individuals and corporate sponsors whose generosity makes it possible for us to continue our important work of preservation, restoration, and education. We also appreciate and recognize our long-standing partnership with FamilySearch and the work of their wonderful volunteers who made possible the original launch of these historic records in 2001. As we now welcome World Vital Records to our successful alliance, we are excited that an even larger worldwide audience will be reminded of the importance of the Ellis Island records,” Briganti said.

The second announcement between FamilySearch™ and WorldVitalRecords.com was that WorldVitalRecords.com will soon be available for free at more than 4,500 family history centers throughout the world.

”We are extremely pleased to be working with WorldvitalRecords.com. We are trying to make information more widely available. We are also very interested in others who can facilitate and grow this industry. They are doing a great job of putting up records that we would prefer that we don’t have to put up. WorldVitalRecords is a key component, along with several other companies that will help up post records and make them available,” said David Rencher, FamilySearch ™ .

Shown above from left to right: David Rencher, Director, Records and Information Division, Family and Church History Department, Leland Meitzler, Managing Editor, Everton Publishers, David Lifferth, President, WorldVitalRecords.com Link to press address: QuickTime Movie

The final partnership was announced in which Quintin Publications will provide WorldVitalRecords.com with more than 10,000 books and articles, which will go through an OCR (optical character reading ) and indexing process, and made available to members at WorldVitalRecords.com.

“Quintin Publications is very excited about this venture with Paul Allen, Yvette Arts, David Lifferth and the rest of the crew at WorldVitalRecords.com. I think this will greatly improve accessibility of research in family histories for generations to come. My Father, Robert J. Quintin would definitely be left speechless for the attention his hobby has received,” said Phil Quintin, President, Quintin Publications.
Shown above: Phil Quintin, President, Quintin PublicationsLink to press address: QuickTime Movie

WorldVitalRecords.com previously partnered with Everton Publishers, one of the oldest genealogical publishing companies in the US, last year. Walt Fuller, President, Everton Publishers and Leland Meitzler, Managing Editor, Everton Publishers also participated in the conference.

“I am excited about this for a number of reasons. First off, this is wonderful for genealogists. WorldVitalRecords.com has put up the Genealogical Helper. It is the first time that it has been indexed in the history of the magazine. It is going to be available at the family histories. We never could get 4,500 family history centers to buy the Genealogical Helper, but now we have got it in there anyway. Now the Helper and all of the pedigree and family group sheets that are totally unique to Evertons will be available to thousands of genealogists free of charge. I’m pretty fired up about everything that is going on. Congratulations to everyone involved,” Meitzler said.

Shown above: Leland Meitzler, Managing Editor, Everton PublishersLink to press address: QuickTime Movie

The Genealogical Helper is the oldest continuing publication in the industry. It was started in 1947. The Everton Genealogical library is one of the largest private genealogical collections in the country.

”As a WorldVitalRecords.com partner, Everton Publishers is both pleased and very proud to be a part of these announcements,” said Walt Fuller, President, Everton Publishers.

Great announcements for WorldVitalRecords at NGS

2007-05-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

WorldVitalRecords.com held a press conference yesterday and announced several important industry announcements. This was somewhat of a novely, because there aren't that many press conferences held in the genealogy and family history indstry. I think that some people showed up just to see what the excitement was all about.

I think that these are industry changing announcments and demonstrate the growth and progress in the Genealogy and Family History communities.

Our three announcements were:

1) The three-way partnership with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Foundation, FamilySearch (formerly the Genealogical Society of Utah sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and WorldVitalRecords.com to provide the index of 25 million immigrants that came through the Port of New York and Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924 on WorldVitalRecords.com.

This is the statement that I read from Stephen Brigante the CEO of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation:

"The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is pleased to announce this
partnership today whereby the historic passenger arrival records for the
Port of New York and Ellis Island will be freely available through
WorldVitalRecords and FamilyLink. This expanded availability continues our
long-standing commitment to helping families better understand their
personal connection to the history of American immigration.
Since first being made available online in April 2001, this collection of nearly 25 million records has proven to be one of the single most-important and popular record collections anywhere in the world. Last month, the Foundation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the busiest day in the history of Ellis Island – a day when 11,747 passengers were received through the Great Hall that now serves as a museum and research center for millions of visitors each year. Arrivals through Ellis Island represent more than 150 different ethnicities, reinforcing the worldwide importance of these records.

As a nonprofit Foundation, we continue to be thankful for the support of individuals and corporate sponsors whose generosity makes it possible for us to continue our important work of preservation, restoration, and education. We also appreciate and recognize our long-standing partnership with FamilySearch and the work of their wonderful volunteers who made possible the original launch of these historic records in 2001. As we now welcome World Vital Records to our successful alliance, we are excited that an even larger worldwide audience will be reminded of the importance of the Ellis Island records." said Stephen Briganti, President/CEO of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation

Wayne Metcalfe, Vice President of Records Services for FamilySearch commented, “We were pleased to provide assistance to the Foundation for the opening of their family history center in 2001 and are equally excited to see the expanded availability of these important records via the Internet. We were equally pleased to work in conjunction with World Vital Records in our new Records Access program. World Vital Records is part of a growing group of new breed online genealogical service providers who are seeking to promote the needs of records custodians and foundations like Ellis Island around the world.”

Link to press release: blog.worldvitalrecords.com/?p=186

2) Agreement between FamilySearch (formerly the Genealogical Society of Utah sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and WorldVitalRecords.com to provide access to the subscription databases on WorldVitalRecords.com in ovre 4,500 family history centers throughout the world.

“We are looking for a new breed of genealogy websites that are willing to work
with FamilySearch to meet the needs and interests of record custodians and our
patrons. WorldVitalRecords.com was uniquely positioned because of its rapid
growth in the industry and potential for success, along with additional
genealogical providers to fill this void. We are certain this agreement with
WorldVitalRecords.com will greatly benefit a worldwide audience of genealogists
with this free service,” said Paul Nauta, Manager of Public Affairs,
FamilySearch ™.
“Our mission at WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com is to make high value resources and tools available to genealogists and family historians throughout the world. We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to fill the void left by Ancestry in the FamilySearch operated Family History Centers,” said David Lifferth, President, WorldVitalRecords.com.
Link to press release: blog.worldvitalrecords.com/?p=188

3) A partnership with Quintin Publications to host over 10,000 of their CD based databases on WorldVitalRecords.com. Quintin Publications’ partnership with WorldVitalRecords.com, an international genealogical company, will provide increased exposure to thousands of out of print volumes that Quintin has converted into PDF files. Some of these works include an extensive French-Canadian started by founder, Robert J. Quintin, who recently passed away.

As part of the partnership, Quintin Publications will provide WorldVitalRecords with more than 10,000 books and articles. WorldVitalRecords.com will OCR (optical character reading), and index the material, and then make it available on its site.

“My father would definitely be left speechless at this point by the attention
his hobby has received. This partnership opens a new avenue for the next
generation to realize that we are out here and still available.
“We chose to partner with WorldVitalRecords.com because we have watched their solid pattern of growth and felt it would be an excellent venue for the material we have collected and enhanced during the past 30 years,” said Phil Quintin, President, Quintin Publications.
Link to press release: blog.worldvitalrecords.com/?p=187

Problems with our Immigration Policies

2007-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of discussion over the past dozen years of the problems associated with US immigration policy. Some, including myself, have been accused of being soft on immigration because of our pro-business and pro-economic development growth positions.

I have been consistent in my statements that we need to control and monitor immigration and keep the bad guys out, but that we need to do it in such a way that we don’t ruin the economy in the process. In reviewing history, there was a period of time that the US did not have any immigration problems. If we want to stop immigrants from coming to the US we can just re-create the economic conditions that kept people from immigrating: we can have another depression just like we did in the 1930s. If there is not economic demand, people won’t come. However creating a depression to keep people from immigrating is the wrong step to take to solve this problem.

Let me share my personal recent experience in dealing with US immigration policy.

I am the president of an internet technology company. I employ some of the best and brightest mind in my industry. Let me tell you about one of my employees. He is a BYU graduate. He is an absolute genius. He knows Internet marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keyword campaigns, Omniture, and other key technologies better than almost everyone on the planet. He is amazing. He is a soft spoken guy that we can bill out at his time at over $100 per hour. He is extremely valuable to us and we consider him part of our competitive advantage in our industry.

Oh, did mention that he is from Spain. His wife if from Japan and they have 3 small children. Both he and his wife came to the USA legally on their appropriate education visas. They are law abiding citizens and have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars to make every attempt to be legal and law abiding residents while here in the US. My company has spent thousands of dollars to make sure that we are also legal and law abiding as an employer.

Now that my employee from Spain has graduated he has applied for a worker visa that would allow him to work in the United States and contribute to our economy. Unfortunately, he has been denied a worker visa that would allow him to continue to work in the United States. I will explain the process that he went through to try to get a worker visa below. However, US immigration policy has just denied a valuable and brilliant person from contributing to our economy and to my company specifically.

He came in ‘through the front door’ and now being asked to leave. He did not cross our borders illegally, he did not sneak to get in, he did not use fake documents, he is not posing as someone else, he has done everything the right way, legally, and completely above board. He has been educated in our university system, he has learned a great deal about our internet technology industry, he is extremely valuable to my company and our economy, and now he is being told to leave our country and go provide a benefit to another country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

I know that there is a considerable amount of political energy focused on immigration. There are some that say send them all back where they came from. There may be some that say that my employee is taking the job of a US citizen. The reality is that it will be a hardship on my company to find and train some else with his specializations. My company will probably miss opportunities because he is no longer allowed to work for us in the US.

One of the most absurd events in this process of my employee trying to get an H1b visa was ‘the lottery.’ An H1b visa is the visa that allows people from foreign countries to work in the US. There were approximately 160,000 foreign nationals that applied for an H1b visa. The requirements for these visas are very high and include a college degree. However the number of H1b visas that are allowed has been reduced to 65,000. Therefore, only 1/3 of the applicants were selected by the random selection process. This means that there were about 100,000 foreign nationals with college degrees that have been told to leave our country.

It is a sad state of affairs when we are exporting some of our best and brightest to other countries so they can compete against us on both a company and country level.

I will soon be in the Washington DC area on business. While I am there I will take the time to talk to my elected representatives to request that we improve our immigration policy so that we are not hurting ourselves in an effort to solve the immigration problem.

Internet connection types for WorldVitalRecords.com users

2007-04-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

I need to blog about technology much more than I do. There are great nuggets of technology details that cross my desk every day that I need to share. I have the goal of blogging about technology at least once a week, if not more.

As part of our research at WorldVitalRecords.com we need to know how fast our users connect to the internet. This allows us to provide the best user experience based on environment that our users have.

80.7% of our users have a high speed connection versus 89.5% of all internet users. 18.7% of our users use a dial-up modem for their internet connections. Only 9.9% of total internet user use a dial up connection.

High speed connections allow for richer multimedia usage such as flash and video. High speed also allows for large downloads such as audio or ebook downloads. And over 80% of our members can support that. But we need to ensure a quality user experience for the 20% of our users that have a dial up connection.

Why WorldVitalRecords.com instead of Ancestry.com?

2007-03-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

I frequently field questions from members of WorldVitalRecords.com as well as people who are considering purchasing a membership. This is an email that I got from Lee, an individual that is curious about WorldVitalRecords.com.

David,

I've been a member of Ancestry.com for about 10 years. I have found a lot of information there that has furthered my research. I don't see anything about census records. Do you have them, like Ancestry.com ? If I upload my Ged file are you going to end up selling my work and still charge me? How accurate are your family files? What percentage of entries come with source's?

Please tell me why I should switch.

Thank you,
Lee

Dear Lee,

You ask some very good questions. There are lots of answers, but let me give you a few reasons.
We are very quick to tell everyone that WorldVitalRecords.com doesn't have as many databases as Ancestry.com. Ancestry has a 10 year head start on us. We are growing rapidly, but we are still smaller than they are. We have great exclusive content on our site that they don't have on theirs, and vice versa.

Ancestry has great content. I have a great respect for their content. When I worked there I was responsible for putting over 1 billion records on line. Another of our employees, John Ivie, put 3 billion records online on their site when he worked there. I can't say anything bad about their content. The have the best collection in the industry.

However, we try to be a lower cost alternative for those who can't afford the more expensive memberships at Ancestry. Some of our members have told us that they have subscribed to us specifically because they could no longer afford to be an Ancestry member. I am glad that we are able to provide our site for people who can't afford Ancestry.

We are putting price pressures into the online genealogy space, and I am frequently notified when Ancestry lowers their cost or adds new features to respond to what we are doing. As a businessman I know that increased competition improves the products for all in the industry. Everyone benefits, even if they are not a member of WorldVitalRecords.com

We have some census records and are in negotiations to get a lot more. Despite our small census collection, we are ranked by Alexa as the Number 1 Genealogy Census Site. We are the 3rd most popular Genealogy Database site. We are the 14th most popular of all genealogy sites.

We are adding at least 1 new database a day, in reality it is between 5 and 10 a day. On March 1st alone, we released over 100 databases. We have great content partners that want their content on our site. In fact, we have more than one partner that want their content on our site because we "are not Ancestry."

We have a series of announcements over the next month or so that will put us on the map as one of the major players in the Genealogy space. We have some announcements that will change the Genealogy and Family History industry. You should sign up for our free weekly newsletter so that you can be aware of our exciting announcements.

We also try to be innovative and provide new functionality and features on our site that are not available at Ancestry or anywhere else: Geo Mapping, Google Books, Country Specific Search Engines, Double Metaphone searching, and much more.

Thanks for your interest and I hope that you will consider a membership at WorldVitalRecords.com.

Sincerly,

David Lifferth
President, WorldVitalRecords.com

Folio Corp's Information Democracy video ca.1993

2007-03-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

I worked at Folio Corporation from 1990-1994, just a few months shy of 5 years. I started work there while I was still going to BYU. Much of my professional career has been influenced by my work at Folio Corp.

We had the slightly audacious slogan "we don't want to change your oil, we want to change the world." This was a play on the Jiffy Lube campaign at that time that said the opposite: "We don't want to change the world, we just want to change your oil."

Folio, in the late 1980's and 1990's created information sharing technology that has never been equaled. At that time their products were DOS, Windows, Mac, local network, CD, and floppy disk based. When the internet began to attract its first significant use base, Folio released a very weak attempt to migrate their technology to the web. Folio has been bought and sold several times and has lost all of the passion and spirit that many of us had in the 1990's.

The internet has exceeded Folio's reach and made information readily available to almost anyone world wide. However, there are still significant features that Folio had pioneered ten to twenty years ago that you still can't do and probably never will be able to do on the internet.

The following video was prepared for the 1993 Folio Industry Conference. We would hold these annual events in the early days at Snowbird, Little America, and later at the San Diego Convention center to hold the thousands of participants.

James Earl Jones, the famous African-American actor, narrated the video. He filmed this for us when he was in Utah filming the movie "Sand Lot." Many people know him as the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. He played a significant role in the civil rights
movement in the 1960s and is one of my favorite actors. I think that I first saw him as a child in "Roots" the epic African-American genealogy mini-series written by Alex Haley.

At Folio, I shared an office with Kevin Wade. He and Mark Allen where the primary developers of this "Information Democracy" video. It demonstrates the urgency and passion that we all had about making information available to the world.

As the video describes, information tore down the "iron curtain." Information overthrew dictators. Information is the strongest liberating weapon for oppressed people.

This video is 14 years old and yet it still brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.

I had family members who were oppressed and lived behind the iron curtain. When the Berlin Wall was torn down as documented in the video, my relatives came to visit us in America. They thanked us, the US, for our role in freeing and democratizing Eastern Europe.

The video was recently released to former employees at a Folio employee reunion held at Thanksgiving point a couple of years ago. I was thrilled to get a DVD of the video. I found the video again while preparing a DVD for Zack Durant's upcoming Eagle Court of Honor.

I hope that you enjoy the video as much as I do.

FinancialTimes: Microsoft attacks Google on copyright

2007-03-05T18:41:00.000-08:00

Financial Times FT.com
COMPANIES
Media & internet

Microsoft attacks Google on copyright
By John Gapper in New York
Published: March 5 2007 22:08 Last updated: March 6 2007 00:19
Microsoft on Tuesday launches a fierce attack on Google over its “cavalier” approach to copyright, accusing the internet company of exploiting books, music, films and television programmes without permission.
Tom Rubin, associate general counsel for Microsoft, will say in a speech in New York that while authors and publishers find it hard to cover costs, “companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the back of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising and initial public offerings”.
Mr Rubin’s remarks, presaged in an article in Tuesday’s Financial Times, come as Google faces criticism and legal pressure from media companies over services allowing users to search online for books, films, television programmes and news. Viacom, the US media group, instructed YouTube, which Google owns, to remove 100,000 clips of copyright material.
The Authors Guild and a group of publishers backed by the Association of American Publishers have separately sued Google for making digital copies of copyrighted books from libraries without permission.
Mr Rubin will tell the AAP’s annual meeting that Google’s decision to take digital copies of all books in various library collections, unless publishers tell it not to, “systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create”.
He will say Google is breaching copyright law because it has “bestowed upon itself the unilateral right to make entire copies of copyrighted books”. Google thinks it is acting legally because it publishes only “snippets” of copyrighted works unless it has the publisher’s permission.
But Mr Rubin will say in Tuesday’s speech: “Google is saying to you and other copyright owners: ‘Trust us, you’re protected. We’ll keep the digital copies secure. We’ll only show snippets. We won’t harm you, we’ll promote you’.
“But . . . anyone who visits YouTube . . . will immediately recognise that it follows a similar cavalier approach to copyright.”
Microsoft is trying to differentiate itself from Google by portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders than Google, and has sent a letter to executives of big media conglomerates, offering to work with them to eliminate piracy from Soapbox, a new video service on MSN.
Patricia Schroeder, AAP president, said it had agreed to work with Microsoft and others to develop principles on responsible book search.
Google said it believed it was acting legally and ethically in providing snippets of in-copyright books and added that it removed books promptly when contacted by publishers. It said it generated more than $3.3bn of advertising revenues for other internet sites last year, which showed that it did not simply exploit the content of others.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. © Copyright Ltd 2007.

WorldVitalRecords.com ranks very high on MSN

2007-03-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

We, at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/, track our search engine rankings very closely.

Paul B. Allen has convinced us that every employee is not only tied the bottom line for revenue, but also tied directly to our Search Engine Rankings. Using SEO (Search Engine Optimizations) we carefully construct each page on our web site so that it earns the highest possible ranking on the primary search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN).

As part of our recently released Country Specific Genealogy Search Engines, we optimized each of those pages as well. These pages are listed on our International Pages: www.worldvitalrecords.com/InternationalPages.aspx.

The efforts have paid off. While we typically talk about our rankings on Google, because they are #1, we our very proud of our MSN rankings. We are first in 8 of the searches, and very high on all of them! Below are our rankings for each of the searches in quotes.

#6 Argentina genealogy
#8 Australia genealogy
#2 Brazil genealogy
#2 Austria genealogy
#1 China Genealogy
#1 Chile genealogy
#4 Denmark genealogy
#10 England genealogy
#2 France genealogy
#3 Germany genealogy
#3 Hungary genealogy
#3 India genealogy
#13 Ireland genealogy
#3 Italy genealogy
#2 Japan genealogy
#1 Kenya genealogy
#10 Ontario Canada genealogy
#6 Newfoundland Canada genealogy
#1 Philippines genealogy
#5 Poland genealogy
#1 Portugal genealogy
#2 Russia genealogy
#25 Scotland genealogy
#5 Slovakia genealogy
#4 South Africa genealogy
#7 Sweden genealogy
#1 Tonga genealogy
#1 Turkey genealogy
#2 Ukraine genealogy
#1 Vietnam genealogy
#11 Wales genealogy

Country Specific Genealogy Search engines (partnership with Google Co-op)

2007-02-26T13:32:00.000-08:00

In what has become another leading edge innovation, we at WorldVitalRecords.com have implemented Country Specific Genealogy Search engines. This is a partnership that we have created using the Google Co-op technology.

We are soon to announce another partnership with Google technology that will dwarf anything that we have done so far! Stay tuned for that exciting announcement. It will probably be announced next week, the first week of March 2007.

This is amazing technology that is getting very favorable reviews. This has been fairly easy to set up and manage. That is easy for me to say, I wasn't the developer of this tool. However, it has been my oversvation in watching this happen, is that it is easy to develop.

We have created 37 country specific genealogy search engines so far. There are 3 others that are almost finished and should be announced soon. We will have over 50 online by the end of 2Q'07.

With these new additions to our web site, we are climbing the rankings for the various country genealogy in the search engines. For example, we are now #4 on Google for "Tonga Genealogy", #9 or "China Genealogy" and #19 for "Kenya Genealogy" to name a few.

Below are the ones that we have currently on WorldVitalRecords.com. Try them out, they work great! Best of all, they are free for now!

Argentina Genealogy Search

Australia Genealogy Search

Austria Genealogy Search

Brazil Genealogy Search

Chile Genealogy Search

China Genealogy Search

Denmark Genealogy Search

England Genealogy Search

France Genealogy Search

Germany Genealogy Search

Hungary Genealogy Search

India Genealogy Search

Ireland Genealogy Search

Italy Genealogy Search

Japan Genealogy Search

Kenya Genealogy Search

Newfoundland, Canada Genealogy Search

Ontario, Canada Genealogy Search

Philippines Genealogy Search

Poland Genealogy Search

Portugal Genealogy Search

Russia Genealogy Search

Scotland Genealogy Search

Slovakia Genealogy Search

South Africa Genealogy Search

Sweden Genealogy Search

Tonga Genealogy Search

Turkey Genealogy Search

Ukraine Genealogy Search

Vietnam Genealogy Search

Wales Genealogy Search

Report from 2007 St. George Genealogy Jamboree

2007-02-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

I have really enjoyed the St. George Genealogy Jamboree. WorldVitalRecords.com has received a different reception than at previous conferences. We are recognized as a major player in the industry. I met many people who are our paid subscribers or newsletter subscribers. I had many people give great testimonials of how they love and are using our site.

At previous conferences we would talk about things that we were going to do and content and features that we were going to add. We had to apologize that we had so few indexes and records. However, we have done a lot and we have hundreds of indexes with hundreds of millions of records. We have a great story to tell and we have a great value for the money that we provide to our subscribers!

I still had to explain who we are and what we do to some of the attendees. But close to half of the people that I spoke to already knew something about us. I don’t have “rock star” status but a lot of people knew me that I had never met before.

Many of the most prominent presenters at the conference took the time to stop by our booth and talk. Barbara Renick, Kip Sperry, Dick Eastman, Don Snow, Pal Larsen, Bret Peterson all came to the WVR booth. Kip Sperry, Don Snow, Trisha Malone-Williams, and apparently others talked about WVR specifically in their classes.

I also had some great experiences in talking to people about our site.

I had a lady stop by the booth and I told her what we do. She said that there was a great uncle that they had lost track of and had no genealogy information on him. She had tried to find any record of his existence without success. She was overwhelmed when I did a search for him in our global search and found a completely filled out family group sheet in the Everton Family Group Sheet collection on her great uncle including his children that she never new existed. I emailed the links to those Family Group sheets to her. She bought a subscription.

A lady from Australia said that she had no information on her grandfather. She had no records of any kind and only had estimate on his birthday. We don’t have any records for him on WVR, so I tried the new Australia Country Search Page. The search brought up a police record where her grandfather was arrested in 1905. I thought that it was kind of embarrassing, but she was overjoyed to finally have any kind of record on her grandfather. She bought a subscription.

Ron Colman was a volunteer in the Washington County PAF Users Group in the booth next to ours. I told him about our relationship with Everton and how we have 60 years of the Everton Genealogy Helper on our site. He said that he is a professional genealogist that had advertised in the Helper in the 1980’s. I typed in his name and found his advertisements. He was amazed and bought a subscription.

Dick Eastman stopped by the booth. He is well informed about WVR and enjoyed talking about the innovative things we are doing. He said that he will write a BLOG that will be about WVR. He is very enthusiastic about what we are doing.

Paul Larsen stopped by the booth and gave us a copy of his “Crash Course in LDS Family History” book. I will hook up with him next week and work out some sort of arrangement. I told him that I wold like to sell his book on our site. There are many other ways that we can collaborate with him.

Trisha Malone-Williams talked about us in her class which was the last of the conference. We had 6 sales as a direct result. Trisha has been a WVR member since November 8th. She was a great salesperson for us. We need to thank her for her recommendation.

And before I forget, I need to recognize the great work by my wife. After everyone else in the company determined that they could not go to St. George (or at least they didn’t want to go to the conference as long as I went), I took my wife Mary. She has natural sales ability which she gets from her father. She did a much better job of selling our web site than I did. After listening to my sales pitch to several conference attendees, she pushed me aside did a great job in talking to conference attendees. When it was busy we were both taking orders. It was fun and as far as I can tell she made a significant contribution by working in our booth.

Asking the right question

2007-01-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

In some of the books that I have read about internet marketing, including the one that I am reading now, "Call to Action" by Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg, it says that calls to action can be a question. I have heard this from other people involved in internet marketing.

It makes sense, ask someone a question to get their interest and get them to take action.

This week we at WorldVitalRecords.com have worked on several email campaigns. The consistent theme this week has focused on training. We launched our training programs this week and that is the subject of our campaigns.

We are testing server A/B/C messages including:
Are you ready to start your Genealogy?
Are you ready to start your Family History?
Are you ready to start your Genealogy and Family History?

They each look like they are doing fairly well from an open rate and click through rate. They are getting more opens and click throughs than the last campaigns that did not ask a question in the reference line.

However, it appears that some spam blockers are filtering the emails out because of the phrase "Are you ready" in the subject line. Apparently, some of the spam filters have recognized the use or over use of that phrase.

So it appears that asking a question is a productive and effective technique. However, the question needs to be asked without using standard questions that have been over used in the past by others.

The most valuable usage of YouTube

2007-01-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

In today's Provo Labs Academy class, there was an intense discussion about the pros and cons of YouTube.com.

Examples of some of the absolute garbage that is on YouTube were given. Paul Allen talked about Mark Cuban's blog post that discusses the videos with the top 20 viewership. Cuban has been critical of the Google purchase of YouTube, and is not shy in identifying the problems.

There were examples of postitive and productive uses of YouTube from finding videos of actual quality to using YouTube for marketing purposes. The "Will it Blend" marketing by BlendTec (WillItBlend.com) got a lot of free marketing.

I proposed that the best and most valuable usage of YouTube is that you get to use their storage and bandwidth for free.

In the past I have worked with IT departments to set up video servers, primarily for training. When video on demand was in its infancy, and before services like YouTube.com, Revver.com, and OurMedia.org each company had to buy the expensive and frequently proprietary hardware, storage space (expensive hard drives), the fastest and most expensive servers available for video rendering and scaling, and the most expensive burstable bandwidth. This was easily over $100,000 for any company that wanted to play that game.

Yes, prices on hardware and bandwidth have dropped significantly. However, that $100,000 video on demand systems has been completely replaced by YouTube.com and its competitors.

All you have to do now is upload whatever video you have at whatever size you have to YouTube. Then put the simple html code on your pages to display the video inline on your pages. YouTube pays for the hard drive space and the bandwidth.

Do you know any other technologies where the price has dropped from $100k to $0 in a few years? I would like to see the automobile industry repeat that price reduction. ;)

Google Ranking Variables

2007-01-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the Provo Labs Academy lecture was about Google Ranking Variables. This was a follow up to a recent lecture by Paul Allen about improving natural search rankings. In yesterday's class the top 15 or so Google Ranking Variables were discussed. There are about 100 or more, but we talked about the most influential.

At the end of class Paul ranked the variable. The list is below:

Page Rank of incoming links. (Meaning links to your page(s) come from pages with high rank themselves).
Anchor text of incoming links. (What are the descriptions of the links that come to your pages)
Quantity of links that come to your site.
Links from your site to other high ranking sites with relevant anchor text
Relevant Text in Title Tag of your page
Relevant text in Heading Tags H1, H2, etc.
Keyword density above the fold, meaning closer to the top of the page than the bottom. (This used to be the primary factor in the days before Google)
Internal site links, PR for your own site, anchor text, etc.
Your domain name (Is it relevant to the search terms)
Full URL names (Is the subfolder name relevant to the search terms)
File names (Are images, .PDF, .HTML pages named with relevant terms?)

The other variables that impact natural ranking but were not ranked in the top 10 are:

Relevant Content on your page
Click Through rates to your page
Web presence
Fresh content (this also drives click through rates, and page ranking)
XML site map presented to Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.

One of the more enthusiastic discussions was about whether the folks at Google 'cook the rankings.' Paul was adamant that they don't and that everything is formula based. I gave the example of searching for 'analytics' on Google and surprisingly enough 'Google Analytics' comes up first. Paul pointed out that that ranking comes because of the formula. Since 'Google Analytics' is free, it gets more hits that other paid analytic sites.

I tested this on both MSN and Yahoo and sure enough 'Google Analytics' is their top result also.

Paul said that everything Google does is formula based so it can scale. It would take too many employees to monitor and tweak the results.

I guess that there were quite a few 'conspiracy theorists' that still believe that the search engines are 'cooking the results.' We have seen in the past how Microsoft would 'enhance' their operating systems (OS) so that their competitors struggled with desktop applications. Many people still consider this part of the game to give yourself an advantage.

We read part of the original student thesis by the founders of Google. All of this stuff was well thought out long before it was implemented by the billionaires at Google. Their original idea was to rank citations from research, scholastic, and education materials. It turns out that the same algorithms apply to the web as well.

I learned that Google actually used to be the search engine for Yahoo. Amazing.

Paul recommended anything written by Matt Cutts (MattCutts.com) and John Battelle (Battellemedia.com). These guys are the gurus and know what goes on 'under the hood.'

Interesting User Locations for WVR

2007-01-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

At WorldVitalRecords.com we spend a lot of time reviewing our performance in dozens of critical metrics. Tracking performance against goals is critical to success. Paul Allen continuously drives home the importance of tracking our results.

One of the metrics that we track is the geographic location of our subscribers. We are trying very hard to be a truly international organization with an emphasis on vital records from around the world. We even ran a special promotion to get more subscribers from around the world.

I am looking at one of our an analytic tracking screens that shows a map of the world. Where there are higher concentrations of users the circle is larger. As expected the circle around Provo, Utah, where WVR is headquartered, and Salt Lake City, Utah are 2 of the larger dots on the screen.

We have dots that literally cover the US; Canada; Europe; metropolitan South America; East and West Coasts of Australia; New Zealand; metropolitan Asia including Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Seoul, and Tokyo; and the Middle East: Israel, Egypt, Dubai, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

What is surprising to me is the size of the dots over Oslo and Trondheim, Norway, Seattle WA, Houston TX, and Los Angeles CA. For the past week we have had more usage from Norway than Canada or the UK. That is an interesting trend that needs to be tracked.

I know that we have subscribers in those areas, as I have checked our user subscriber databases. I also know of high profile technology companies in those geographic areas.
Either we are getting the attention of some of industry leaders or these areas are concentrated areas of family history and genealogy research. I would like to know.

Spam Laws

2006-12-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

We at WorldVitalRecords.com send out a lot of email to various targeted email lists. These lists are to our own clients and users as well as to our partner's clients and users (Everton, etc.). I was recently remined of the legal requirements when sending email. These laws were implemented to limit unwanted and unsolicited spam. However, they are also a good idea to make sure that you have a postive working relationship with your own clients.

We sent a couple of emails out where the footer with the 'opt out' instructions were not displayed and we got a few phone calls and emails reminding us to do so. We are working hard to have a very customer friendly service reputation. Complying with industry standard, best practices to maintain our reputation is extremely important.

I copied the follwing text from www.spamlaws.com/federal/108hr2515.shtml which lists the requirements for mass emails.

SEC. 101. RESTRICTIONS ON COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL.
(a) REQUIRED INCLUSIONS IN COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL-
(1) INCLUSION OF IDENTIFIER, OPT-OUT, E-MAIL ADDRESS, AND PHYSICAL ADDRESS- No person may initiate in or affecting interstate commerce the transmission, to a covered computer, of any commercial electronic mail message unless the message contains all of the following:
(A) IDENTIFICATION- Clear and conspicuous identification that the message is a commercial electronic mail message.
(B) NOTICE OF OPT-OUT- Clear and conspicuous notice of the opportunity under subparagraph (C) to decline to receive future commercial electronic mail messages from the sender or any covered affiliate of the sender.
(C) E-MAIL ADDRESS OR OTHER MECHANISM TO OPT-OUT- A functioning return electronic mail address or other Internet-based mechanism, clearly and conspicuously displayed, that--
(i) a recipient may use to submit, in a manner specified by the sender, a reply electronic mail message or other form of Internet-based communication requesting not to receive any future commercial electronic mail messages from that sender, or any covered affiliate of the sender, at the electronic mail address where the message was received;
(ii) in the case of any such other Internet-based mechanism, when so used, directly submits such a request or clearly and conspicuously provides a manner for submitting such a request; and
(iii) remains capable of receiving such messages or communications for no less than 30 days after the transmission of the original message.
(D) STREET ADDRESS- A valid physical street address of the sender.

MyWay: New Rules Make Firms Track E-Mails, IMs

2006-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

New Rules Make Firms Track E-Mails, IMs
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061201/D8LNRQB80.html

Dec 1, 12:26 AM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.

The rules, approved by the Supreme Court in April, require companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce "electronically stored information" as part of the discovery process, when evidence is shared by both sides before a trial.

The change makes it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where. Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of "virtual shredding," said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.

James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co. (HAL) (HAL), said that large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data to comply with the rules. In addition to e-mail, companies will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards, he said.

Both federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of relevant electronic documents during discovery, but the new rules codify the practice, legal experts said.

The rules also require that lawyers provide information about where their clients' electronic data is stored and how accessible it is much earlier in a lawsuit than was previously the case.

There are hundreds of "e-discovery vendors" and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006, Wright said. That figure could double in 2007, he added.

Another expense will likely stem from the additional time lawyers will have to spend reviewing electronic documents before turning them over to the other side. While the amount of data will be narrowed by electronic searches, some high-paid lawyers will still have to sift through casual e-mails about subjects like "office birthday parties in the pantry" in order to find information relevant to a particular case.

Martha Dawson, a partner at the Seattle-based law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP who specializes in electronic discovery, said the burden of the new rules won't be that great.

Companies will not have to alter how they retain their electronic documents, she said, but will have to do an "inventory of their IT system" in order to know better where the documents are.

The new rules also provide better guidance on how electronic evidence is to be handled in federal litigation, including guidelines on how companies can seek exemptions from providing data that isn't "reasonably accessible," she said. This could actually reduce the burden of electronic discovery, she said.

Republicans Outnumber Democrats Online

2006-11-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

Republicans Outnumber Democrats Online, According to Nielsen//NetRatings

"Moderate" Is the Most Common Political Leaning Among Web Users

NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- November 01, 2006 -- Nielsen//NetRatings (NASDAQ: NTRT), a global leader in Internet media and market research, announced today that 36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans, 30.8 percent are Democrats and 17.3 percent are Independents. With campaign Web sites becoming increasingly important to reaching the electorate, candidates need to keep their fingers on the political pulse of the Internet.

The Web site with the highest concentration of Republicans was RushLimbaugh.com, with an 84.8 percent Republican audience (see Table 1). NewsMax.com and Bill O'Reilly.com ranked No. 2 and 3, with audiences that were 65.4 percent Republican. The Drudge Report and Salt Lake Tribune rounded out the top five Republican sites with 59.0 and 57.9 composition percent.

Among Democrats, the top three sites were BlackAmericaWeb.com, AOL BlackVoices and BET.com with audiences that were 79.9 percent, 64.8 percent and 58.6 percent Democratic, respectively. Salon.com and Village Voice ranked fourth and fifth among Democrats, with 55.3 and 55.2 composition percent.

"The fact that the online population is more heavily composed of Republicans than Democrats is principally a function of the Republican party's higher composition within the overall electorate," said Nielsen//NetRatings analyst Ken Cassar. "This is exacerbated by the fact that online penetration continues to be deeper among affluent households, which have historically skewed Republican," he continued.

Table 1: Top 5 Sites among Republicans and Democrats (U.S., 18+ Online Population) Site Site
Composition - Composition -
Site Republican Site Democratic
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
RushLimbaugh.com 84.8 BlackAmericaWeb.com 79.9
NewsMax.com 65.4 AOL BlackVoices 64.8
Bill O'Reilly.com 65.4 BET.com 58.6
Drudge Report 59.0 Salon.com 55.3
Salt Lake Tribune 57.9 Village Voice 55.2
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings @Plan, Fall 2006 Release

Newspaper of Choice
Political party members also have distinct tastes in online newspapers. WSJ.com has predominantly Republican readers, at 40.2 percent. Democrats make up 25.8 percent of WSJ.com's readership, closely followed by Independents at 24.3 percent.
The New York Times online is a favorite among Democrats, who make up 52.3 percent of its readership. Independents compose 22.6 percent and Republicans 18.3 percent.

Political Leaning
When respondents were asked about their political leaning, the largest segment, 36.1 percent, identified themselves as "Moderate." The second largest segment, 32.5 percent, identified themselves as "Conservative/Very Conservative," while 19.8 percent of respondents identified themselves as "Liberal/Very Liberal."

Demographics
Perhaps contrary to assumptions about who's a Democrat and who's a Republican, neither party seemed to favor a particular gender or age group. Among racial groups, African Americans skewed Democratic; with a composition index of 231, they were over twice as likely to be Democratic as the average Web user. Asians were 36 percent more likely than the average Web user to be Democratic, and Hispanics were 28 percent more likely. White people were slightly more likely to be Republican.

About Nielsen//NetRatings
NetRatings, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRT) delivers leading Internet media and market research solutions, marketed globally under the Nielsen//NetRatings brand. With high quality, technology-driven products and services, Nielsen//NetRatings is the global standard for Internet audience measurement and premier source for online advertising intelligence, enabling clients to make informed business decisions regarding their Internet and digital strategies. The Nielsen//NetRatings portfolio includes panel-based and site-centric Internet audience measurement services, online advertising intelligence, user lifestyle and demographic data, e-commerce and transaction metrics, and custom data, research and analysis. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.

Editor's Note: Please source all data to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Contact:
NetRatings, Inc.
Suzy Bausch
(408) 941-2965
Leilani Han
(408) 941-2930
SOURCE: Nielsen//NetRatings

EMI Music CEO says the CD is 'dead'

2006-10-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

EMI Music CEO says the CD is 'dead'
Last Update: 8:38 AM ET Oct 27, 2006
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy Friday told an audience at the London Business School that the CD is dead, saying music companies will no longer be able to sell CDs without offering "value-added" material.
"The CD as it is right now is dead," Levy said, adding that 60% of consumers put CDs into home computers in order to transfer material to digital music players.
EMI Music is part of EMI Group PLC (EMI.LN).
But there remains a place for physical media, Levy said.
"You're not going to offer your mother-in-law iTunes downloads for Christmas," he said. "But we have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content."
Record companies will need to make CDs more attractive to the consumer, he said.
"By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material," Levy said.
CD sales accounted for more than 70% of total music sales in the first half of 2006, while digital music sales were around 11% of the total, according to music industry trade body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
CD sales were worth $6.45 billion and digital sales $945 million, the IFPI said.
Levy said EMI is continuing to hold talks with Google Inc. (GOOG) on an advertising-revenue sharing partnership with the community video Web site YouTube, which the Internet search giant acquired in October for $1.6 billion in stock.
EMI's rivals, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG), Sony BMG - a joint venture between Sony Corp. (SNE) and Bertelsmann AG - and Universal Media have all signed content deals with YouTube.
"The terms they were offering weren't acceptable," Levy said, adding that EMI continues to be concerned about copyright issues.
Company Web site: http://www.emigroup.com

NewYorkTimes: Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data

2006-10-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

October 26, 2006
A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks, searching Google for “Jon Kyl,” the Republican senator from Arizona now running for re-election, will produce high among the returns a link to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly.

Mr. Kyl “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right,” the article suggests, “very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

Searching Google for “Peter King,” the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined “King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.”

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.

The project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Chris Bowers, who conceived it, thought some of the negative articles too partisan.

The articles to be used “had to come from news sources that would be widely trusted in the given district,” said Mr. Bowers, a contributor at MyDD.com (Direct Democracy), a liberal group blog. “We wanted actual news reports so it would be clear that we weren’t making anything up.”

Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: “When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican’s name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens.”

An accompanying part of the project is intended to buy up Google Adwords, so that searches for the candidates’ names will bring up advertisements that point to the articles as well. But Mr. Bowers said his hopes for this were fading, because he was very busy.

The ability to manipulate the search engine’s results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for “miserable failure,” for example, produces the official Web site of President Bush.
But it is far from clear whether this particular campaign will be successful. Much depends on the extent of political discussion already tied to a particular candidate’s name.

It will be harder to manipulate results for searches of the name of a candidate who has already been widely covered in the news and widely discussed in the blogosphere, because so many links and so many pages already refer to that particular name. Search results on lesser-known candidates, with a smaller body of references and links, may be easier to change.

“We don’t condone the practice of Google bombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results,” said Ricardo Reyes, a Google spokesman. “A site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.”

The company’s faith in its system has produced a hands-off policy when it comes to correcting for the effects of Google bombs in the past. Over all, Google says, the integrity of the search product remains intact.

Writing in the company’s blog last year, Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer Web products, suggested that pranks might be “distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.”
Still, some conservative blogs have condemned Mr. Bowers’s tactic. These include Outside the Beltway, which has called him “unscrupulous,” and Hot Air, which declared the effort “fascinatingly evil.”

But Mr. Bowers suggested that he was acting with complete transparency and said he hoped political campaigns would take up the tactic, which he called “search engine optimization,” as a standard part of their arsenal.

“I did this out in the open using my real name, using my own Web site,” he said. “There’s no hidden agenda. One of the reasons for this is to show that campaigns should be doing this on their own.”

Indeed, if all campaigns were doing it, the playing field might well be leveled.

Mr. Bowers said he did not believe the practice would actually deceive most Internet users.
“I think Internet users are very smart and most are aware of what a Google bomb is,” he said, “and they will be aware that results can be massaged a bit.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

USA Today: Tech industry spews Web companies, doohickeys so fast we can't keep up

2006-08-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Great Quotes and a reality check from this article in USA today:

USA Today: Tech industry spews Web companies, doohickeys so fast we can't keep up
Posted 8/29/2006 9:52 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2006-08-29-web-bubble_x.htm

Ten years from now, when someone wants to identify a moment that epitomizes the nuttiness about this Web 2.0 stuff, I vote we designate an entry in popular tech blog GigaOm this week:

"A couple days ago, we pointed to Mooglets widgets, the creation of Rome-based Mad4milk.net. Today, we are shocked to learn that Mad4milk has been acquired by Freewebs. The Web host says it will repackage Mad4milk's JavaScript effects library, offering developer community site Freewebs Farms, and soon a widget library."

...

The tech industry is frothing. It is spewing companies and Web doohickeys and blog amalgamizers and Internet contraptions like video social-networking wiki cooking sites.

...

There is so much coming so fast from so many corners that nobody can possibly keep track, much less ever, ever try using it all.

Money is flying into ventures that most people east of Palo Alto, Calif., would find incomprehensible. Dash Navigation got $17 million from high-profile venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Dash bills itself as a "social network of traffic data" — allegedly getting cars to wirelessly talk to each other about where they are and reporting to the network if they're wheezing through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Hard to say if it will work, but if you add "social network" to anything right now, you can get $17 million. Walk into a venture firm's office and say, "I've got a social network for hermits." Boom. Seventeen million dollars.

Which is crazy, because no one needs millions of dollars to build a consumer Web business anymore. In fact, that's why there are so many new sites. Creating a complex site is way easier and probably 10 or 15 times cheaper compared with six years ago, tech entrepreneurs say.

At the same time, ad dollars are rushing to the Web. David Court of consulting firm McKinsey says, "In the next 24 months, we will see demand for online advertising actually outstrip the supply." That's why we're getting so many consumer websites: They're easy to build and a booming market for ads.

Pretty soon, neighborhood kids will stop setting up lemonade stands and instead build Ajax-driven photo-tagging recommendation engines, or some other confluence of buzzwords.

You can tell that some insiders sense a bubble-ishness in the air.

...

Earlier this month, tech bloggers ecstatically wrote that newcomer Digg is going to replace The New York Times as a venerable news source. Digg is basically a band of a few thousand loyal Digg fans rating stories they like from all around the Web, so the stories rise to the top of the site. Here's the profound, worldly headline the Diggettes voted best on Monday: "What are the top 100 viewed Wikipedia pages?"

...

Of course, you can't win if you tell techies sites like Digg or Dash or ThisNext are just interesting tweaks to the landscape, not a reordering of the cosmos. It's like arguing against someone who fervently believes the world will end in 2012. The only way to prove your point is to wait until 2013.

Guess we'll see. Web 2.0 is a broad term for a new generation of websites that are more interactive and multilayered than the 1990s batch of websites. And right now, Web 2.0 is like a water balloon being filled by a fire hydrant. Industry jokesters call it Bubble 2.0.

A lot of the new sites are fun. I'm glad people are creating them. But it's hard to imagine how the world can absorb everything being pumped out there.to use them all. Will these enterprises fare better than the 1990s batch? "Guess we'll see."

DesNews: 'Wiki wars' rage in political arena

2006-08-23T09:14:00.001-07:00

Deseret Morning News, Wednesday, August 23, 2006
'Wiki wars' rage in political arena
By Alan Bjerga
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — While politicians campaign and vacation over the August congressional recess, battles over their biographies and reputations are raging on the Internet.

Along with blogs, meet-ups and other Net innovations, 2006 is featuring full-scale "Wiki wars," as partisans from right and left edit candidate information on Wikipedia biographical entries to gain political advantage at the popular reference site.

Candidates across the country have been caught doctoring their own entries, erasing politically embarrassing facts and spinning their positions on issues. But their political opponents also change information, straining Wikipedia's strength as a reliable resource.
"Our primary goal is neutrality," said Wayne Saewyc, a Wikipedia spokesman in Vancouver, British Columbia. "In election years especially, people don't want the articles to be neutral."

Wikipedia, found at www.wikipedia.org, is an online encyclopedia available to anyone who uses the Internet. Unlike a traditional reference book, it's written by the readers. The idea is that people who know about a topic will add their knowledge to an entry, building an extensive information source from the ground up.

Since it started in 2001, the system has proved incredibly popular: In July, Wikipedia sites had more than 28 million visitors, ranking 18th among all Web sites on Earth, according to comScore Media Metrix, an online popularity rater.
Wikipedia is more popular online than Disney, Wal-Mart and ESPN. And as more people view it, its offerings grow more extensive. But its open-source approach creates problems when it is applied to controversial topics, as contributors use sites to push their versions of "the truth."

Last week, Wikipedia briefly banned all editing of entries done from computers linked to congressional offices, after staffers for Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., were found deleting a promise Gutknecht once made that he would limit himself to 12 years in office. That promise was about 12 years ago. Gutknecht is campaigning for re-election this fall.

Staffers for Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and others have been found doctoring entries in the past year. But although congressional offices have come under fire for trying to make lawmakers look good, Wikipedia is also filled with examples of political opponents trying to make lawmakers look bad.

Last winter, for example, the entry for Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., focused first on his career as a 1960s track and field star, then on his political career.
Now, his entry devotes more space to the 2000 purchase of a Washington, D.C., townhouse from a family values group connected to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff than to any other aspect of Ryun's life, which includes a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics and world records in the half-mile and mile.

The townhouse information includes footnote references to The Washington Post and to Talking Points Muckraker, the investigative offshoot of a blog that promotes Democratic candidates.

Some politicians shrug off the news of bio editing. Ryun spokeswoman Michelle Schroeder said Wikipedia monitoring isn't a high priority in the congressman's office.

But Brian Hart, spokesman for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said he monitors his boss' site regularly and at times has tried to reason with "editors" whom he finds hostile to his boss.

Brownback, who opposes abortion, favors citizenship for some currently illegal immigrants and is contemplating a 2008 bid for the White House, attracts fire from some Wikipedia contributors that isn't always fair, he said.
"With Wikipedia everyone knows you need to take things with big grains of salt," he said.

Saewyc said debates on controversial topics can become incredibly time-consuming and sometimes maddening. In the entry covering Scientology, for example, contributors argued for nine months over whether the Scientologist method of childbirth should be called "silent birth" or "quiet birth."

Wikipedia monitors can take several steps to control political squabbles, Saewyc said. Along with blocking access from entire sectors, such as Congress, it can freeze sites, ban users who abuse the system or slow the rate at which people can post changes.

Open-source editing itself can fix many of the abuses, especially on entries that get a lot of attention, Saewyc said. But no solution is perfect, due to the site's nature.

"Sometimes you end up with the least offensive language that both sides can live with, but it's not the most accurate or in-depth information you could have," Saewyc said. And with thousands of political candidates now having bios online, close monitoring of all of them is highly difficult, he said.

In some ways, Saewyc said, the debates over Wikipedia entries are the same debates that writers and editors have always had over reference articles — the open process just makes them much more public and much less polite.

But that's true of many Internet innovations, from blogs to discussion groups to Wikipedia, he said. For its strengths and weaknesses, Wiki wars are here to stay.

"It's always a work in progress," he said.

DesNews: 'Wiki wars' rage in political arena

2006-08-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Deseret Morning News, Wednesday, August 23, 2006
'Wiki wars' rage in political arena
By Alan Bjerga
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — While politicians campaign and vacation over the August congressional recess, battles over their biographies and reputations are raging on the Internet.

Wikipedia, found at http://www.wikipedia.org/, is an online encyclopedia available to anyone who uses the Internet. Unlike a traditional reference book, it's written by the readers. The idea is that people who know about a topic will add their knowledge to an entry, building an extensive information source from the ground up.

The townhouse information includes footnote references to The Washington Post and to Talking Points Muckraker, the investigative offshoot of a blog that promotes Democratic candidates.

Some politicians shrug off the news of bio editing. Ryun spokeswoman Michelle Schroeder said Wikipedia monitoring isn't a high priority in the congressman's office.

But Brian Hart, spokesman for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said he monitors his boss' site regularly and at times has tried to reason with "editors" whom he finds hostile to his boss.

Open-source editing itself can fix many of the abuses, especially on entries that get a lot of attention, Saewyc said. But no solution is perfect, due to the site's nature.

But that's true of many Internet innovations, from blogs to discussion groups to Wikipedia, he said. For its strengths and weaknesses, Wiki wars are here to stay.

"It's always a work in progress," he said.

Female Given Name Distribution in 1990 Census

2006-08-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

The most popular female names according to the 1990 Census is:
Surname.....%......Rank
MARY............ 2.629...........1
PATRICIA...... 1.073...........2
LINDA.............1.035...........3
BARBARA......0.980...........4
ELIZABETH....0.937...........5
JENNIFER..... 0.932...........6
MARIA............0.828...........7
SUSAN............0.794...........8
MARGARET.. 0.768...........9
DOROTHY......0.727........... 10

The top 10 names represent only 10% of all female names. This means that female names have a greater variety than male names, where the top 10 male names make up almost 25% of all names.

Mary clearly has its roots in Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the other Marys in the New Testament.

Linda and Maria both have roots in both English and non-English ethnic groups. This allows them to rank much higher than male names and surnames which are predominantly English in origin.

Mary and Elizabeth are also names of famous English Queen's names.

Male Given Name Distribution in 1990 Census

2006-08-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to yesterday's blog about surname distribution, I wanted to talk about the most popular given names in 1990 Census.

The top 10 male given names in the 1990 census are:
Surname..........%......Rank
JAMES 3.318 1
JOHN 3.271 2
ROBERT 3.143 3
MICHAEL 2.629 4
WILLIAM 2.451 5
DAVID 2.363 6
RICHARD 1.703 7
CHARLES 1.523 8
JOSEPH 1.404 9
THOMAS 1.380 10

James is the most common male first name with over 3%. I wonder if this popularity has its roots in King James of England, the person responsible for commissioning the King James Bible. It could be a result of James, the apostle, in the New Testament.

Myself and two of my 4 sons have a first name listed in the top 10. My son Stephen is the 34th most common name. My son Andrew has the 35th most common first name.

It is interesting to note that the top 10 male names make up almost 25% of all male given names. So there is a 1 in 4 chance that a male name will be in the top 10.

It is also interesting that each of these top ten names are common English names. The most common name that is not of English origin is Jose, which is the 28th most common name.

Surname Distribution in 1990 US Census

2006-08-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

One of the quick tests that we use to evaluate how results are handled at WorldVitalRecords.com it to search a data set for the surname “Smith.” We also used this at Ancestry.com. It must be a fairly common test in the Genealogy and Family History industry.

In working with some United States Census data I came across the distributions for surname and both male and female given names. This data is very telling and there are many stories that can be told from this type of
name analysis.

It turns out that our instinct to use the name Smith is a good one. Smith is the most common surname (or last name) in the 1990 Census. Over 1% (1.006% to be exact) of all people counted in the 1990 census had the last name of Smith. Since this is the most common last name, it is a good way to test for results when doing a search in a genealogy database.

Below are the top 10 surnames according to the 1990 United States Federal Census:
Surname.....%......Rank
SMITH ........1.006 .....#1
JOHNSON.....0.810 .....#2
WILLIAMS ..0.699.....#3
JONES ........ 0.621 .....#4
BROWN ........0.621.....#5
DAVIS.........0.480 .....#6
MILLER.......0.424 .....#7
WILSON......0.339 .....#8
MOORE........0.312 .....#9
TAYLOR.....0.311 .....#10

All of these names are common names in England. This is a clear indication of the genealogy roots from the USA that link to England.

The first name in the surname distribution that is not a common English surname is Garcia at #18. That is the most common Hispanic surname and the most common surname of any ethnic group other than English. Martinez #19, Rodriguez #22, and Hernandez #29 are other high ranking Hispanic names.

“Lee” #24 benefits from having both ethnic English and Chinese bearers of that name.

My last name, Lifferth, is so uncommon that it does not even appear in the surname distribution. That may be the reason that my wife and I named all of our children with common names. I will report on that and common given names in a future BLOG.

Funny story from Genealogy Conference

2006-08-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

I heard this funny story as told by Rebecca Olpin of the LDS Church History Department. It is one of those urban legends that is not true but it sure is funny. I don't have the exact version of the story that she told, but I found a close version on the internet. Her purpose in telling this is to show how much effort can be put into family history to 'paint the picture' of a relative.

Remus Starr

An amateur genealogical researcher discovered that his great-great uncle, Remus Starr, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription: Remus Starr; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, Escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged 1889.

In a family history subsequently written by the researcher, Remus's picture is cropped, scanned in as an enlarged image, and edited with image processing software so that all that's seen is a head shot.

The accompanying biographical sketch is as follows:

Remus Starr was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.

Demographics of BYU Genealogy Conference Attendees

2006-08-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Demographics of BYU Genealogy Conference Attendees

This following is not a scientific analysis of a complex survey of the attendees at the 38th BYU Genealogy Conference. These demographics are based on my observations. These demographics are not intended to offend or upset anyone. As a key member of the WorldVitalRecords.com team, it is important that we understand who our customer is and provide quality products and services to meet the needs of our customers. The following are the frank and candid observations that I made about the attendees.

Older demographics: Most of the attendees are in the 50+ age category. This was also skewed by the fact that many of the attendees are retired and this is how they choose to spend their available time.

Very few are in their 20's or 30's. Most of the younger people in attendance were from technology companies such as WorldVitalRecords.com, Ancestry.com, etc that were presenting or selling products. I have to face the fact that I am now getting into this older demographic and am no longer in the 20’s and 30’s.

Predominantly Female: there was a two-one or three-one majority of females that were in attendance. There were many men in attendance. The presenters had about a 50-50 split between males and females.

Heavier: Most of the attendees are living the good life because they appear to be large people. This may be a reflection of the population in general, or it may be an indicator that the attendees spend their time sitting doing genealogy instead of working out at the gym. (I am trying to use some humor here and not offend any of the attendees.) This may have been more noticeable because the conference was packed and that most of the BYU facilities are planed with teen sizes and shapes in mind. The over crowding seemed to pack the conference rooms, halls, and stairs. I didn’t notice the cramped conditions when my sons went to BYU soccer camp earlier this summer.

Cheerful: These people are genuinely happy. They all seemed to have smiles on their face. It was clear to me that they enjoy what they do and attending the conference made them happy. This may be true of all attendees to conferences of any type. I can only imagine that Star Trek fans would be very happy to attend a Star Trek conference. However, I did get the feeling that these conference attendees are people who are happy and content with their lives and chosen hobby.

This is also tied to the fact that most are extremely out going and talkative. Almost everyone was very willing with only the least amount of prompting to share story after story about themselves or their ancestors. There were very few shy wall flowers in attendance. Maybe the shy ones don’t bother to attend a conference with thousands of fellow genealogists.

Technical: The conference attendees were extremely technical and knowledgeable of modern technology. I am sure that in the age demographic that they are in, they are more technical than their peers. They were all able to quickly give their email address when asked to do so. Almost all of them had personal access to high speed internet. Many of them carried CD’s with their personal genealogy records on them they had burned themselves on their own high end computer.

One of my memories of the conference was of a 50 something lady sitting next to me. She won a drawing for a 256 megabyte flash drive. She was very excited to win it. The lady sitting behind her was 60-something and she wanted to see it and excitedly claimed that she wanted a flash drive for herself. Flash drives are “all that” in the teen and 20 something demographics. It was telling that genealogy and family history has driven technology into the hands of an older demographic. They have watched Genealogy technology change from odd size paper and binders to leading edge database merge technologies and server farms and digital cameras and PDA’s. They are fearless in adopting technology that works and adapt much quicker than the general population.

In addition I noted that they almost all:

have and use email
have and use internet
have and use technology: cell phones, digital cameras, pc's, etc.
have disposable income to invest in newer and better ways to do things.

Dedicated: It is clear to me that the attendees at this conference are dedicated to their work. They have honed their family history skills through years devoted to their labor of love. They participate in every aspect family history, from data extraction to writing personal histories.

Opinionated: Because of the time spent in their chose field, to a person they are very pointed and are quick to explain why they feel the way that they do. They know why that have stuck with PAF over the years or which PC based PAF competitor they use and when they changed to it. They are quick to jump into the free versus paid resource model debate. They will tell you which subscription model works for them. Most of those that prefer free resources are willing to support their cause with their own time and effort. Very seldom did I hear the phrase “I don’t know.” Because of this, they are willing to share their ideas and hard earned experiences with others. They are very willing to teach others because the have confidence in their own opinions.

Notes from 38th BYU Family History Conference

2006-08-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Family History Conference
BYU
August 1-4, 2006

Keynote Address
Elder Marlin K. Jensen
(his mother wrote his intro)
•Elder Jensen’s talk was supposed to be a devotional on family history.
•His talk is for those devoted to family history.
•Attendees at the conference known as 'enthusiasts'
•Hard at work developing an Internet based system
•One of the biggest challenges that they are addressing is dealing with duplication of work
•Their goals are to consolidate software and simplify steps
•They want to use technology that the lord has blessed us with

Major components of new system:
•'Common pedigree' begins with self-info
•Tell at a glance if temple work has been done
•Providing support for members
•New section of genealogy handbook for temple and family history
•New structure for support
•Make more records avail over internet/digitize records/2 billion microfilmed names/described and indexed
•Family search index w/links to original documents
•Allow users to participate and contribute to extract names
•Ohio genealogy society is currently cooperating w/church fhd
•FamilySearchHistory.org
•Online research help/assistance
•Family History Research should be the primary source of names for temple work

•Beta 2 will begin soon
•Those who create seek to copywrite and profit, we should share their works as a Christian act
•He hope that system will be simple and attract new participants
•Enthusiasts should share their personal spiritual experiences
•We need to get along with our living relatives as part of our efforts to work on our genealogy efforts for people on the other side
•We have an obligation to become better acquainted with those known members in family tree if pedigree is 'done'

•Alma 5: Do you look forward with an eye of faith?
•Spirit of Elijah: have been touched turning hearts of children; Elijah came to restore - manifestation of Holy Ghost confirms importance of family ties
•Unequaled satisfaction of helping the lord to save souls
•Obadiah described the “Saviors on Mount Zion

Impact of technology on Genealogy & Family History
Claire V. Brisson-Banks,BS
Cave drawings to flash drives
Demonstration of time lines-chronologies
Demonstration of drop line direct line charts
circle charts
Google easy genealogy searcher

The primary steps of Genealogy haven't changed with the advent of new technology
What do you know
What do you want to learn
What researches do you need
Search Locate
Record

Elder Jensen's talk is available on familyhistoryconferences.byu.edu

8.2.06
Jay L. Verkler
Wed Keynote
"sorting out the roots with family branches"
New system runs on 1500 computers; large scale
Member focus
Education management
The role of the church in the genealogy industry: new partnership; previously the dominant provider
Digital images and data
New learning & cognitive models
World wide support organization; same language and time zone
The Family History Library teaches the teachers that then teach others
Bring data, tools, and expertise together to create the community
A non-LDS author compiled a book containing 1,200 supernatural experiences in a book describing genealogy experiences
Enable other organizations to connect with the community
Think about the whole user experience, not just the tool
Collaboration unavoidable: we must overlap with others. We find out when we submit to the temple about duplicate work. We need to learn earlier that we are duplicating work. Hundreds of duplicates. Experience must be collaborative
Show data in context of family relationships
Preserve links
Families include both living and dead
It will include a rich set of tools for editing & maintaining data

FamilySearch Release Strategy
v0.9 release for members only
v1.0 general public
v2.0 gen pub more functionality

1 billion records are part of the Family Search data

Warnings:
overly combined persons
duplicate persons
duplicate family members
relationships to wrong people
ordinances applied to wrong person
inaccurate gen info

Combined records experience demo. Maintain person identifier.

World Vital Records: Can we license a re-badged/OEM version of family search?

New Family Search
allows evergreen picture of data
links individuals together
provide framework
reduce massive duplication
used for entire process

There will be a lot of work to organize, clean, verify
The framework for additional sources, info, collaboration

#32. What's new on Familysearch.org
Stephen W. Anderson
*repeat of presentation at BYU genealogy technology conf last February

LDS and non LDS participate in Family History at same rate
Launched site 1 year ago
Next site version will launch 1q07
Search box on home page
7 search boxes
Search on home page increased traffic by 20%
Getting started button: research guides, on homepage
Immediate success gets people more involved
They add 6k films each month
Digital family histories are being added at BYU, over 5K in .pdf
Option to add your own family tree info
1 million names submitted every 3 weeks
lot of submitted names come from non- LDS
3 sets of english probate maps
Register to set up profile of interests, get newsletters, press releases, etc.
>6 billion people on earth 2 billion will die w/o any record of their existence
Who will preserve the records of the remaining 4 billion?
Vital records are being destroyed every day

record, access
digital capture
online indexing
online availability
enter into fam tree
collaboration
record & preserve

digitizing Granite Mountain vault
scan
digitize
qc
cut into images
post online

Online Internet extraction
real time updating of index
indexes are linked to original images
lds and non lds extractors
worldwide operation

familysearchindexing.org
log in
get batch of records
Automatic highlighting of field that should be extracted
drop down boxes to select from known fields
double blind test of double keying, if match then it goes live, otherwise it is sent back to editors

Jim Green
New FamilySearch & its Family Tree

Rumor
people may stop work until the new software comes out
"a rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way"
- Jim Tudor

Ending duplicates
Replacement for temple ready
PAF will need to bring paf up to date
Connect with digital pipeline
Provide records

No longer creating microfilm
Family tree is global pedigree chart

Duplicate efforts=wasted effort
Eliminate dulication
Simplify the temple process
There is an estimated 5% duplicate work

Audience continuum
Ordinary member---enthusiast
Scared of each other
Technology can break down the wall or divide

Patrons no longer start with a blank page
not much info on living people unless you enter it yourself

2 ways to add Data: GedCom or by hand

each life event is recorded as a stand alone document
objective to store recorded events in a common personal folder
personal folder in a pedigree
Titus Billings has been baptized 25 times; endowed 21 times: sealed to wife 18 times: sealed to parents 16 times; definitely
Preserve all data, only contributor can remove
combine instead of merge
“separate” instead of uncombined

Rich Running
Bill Mangum
Opening the Granite Mountain Vaults

The Granite Mountain Vaults has been an icon for church since 1960's
2.4 million microfilm rolls
1.7 million microfiche
Need first pres approval to get into Granite Mountain Vaults
Most secure place church owns
Family history center in Granite Mountain Vaults
Film is $5.50 to order

Targeting: what content to deliver
Record acquisitions:
Photograph: 200 cameras worldwide, 60 are digital: 15 megapixel cameras

2-3 terabytes of data sent to salt lake each week
digital processing to deskew, contrast, sharpness
Can't digitize as fast as they are creating it
1 photo 100 feet long 2 inches tall, then cut into individual frames
136 terabytes of info in lib of cong
18 petabytes of info at gmv
Decreased cycle time from 18 months to 4 hours
Family finder

He did a demo of Family Finder

Six years to scan entire vault at full capacity using current technology

System to vote on which films to digitize

DesNew: Utah's economy strong in first half

2006-07-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

Deseret Morning News, Thursday, July 27, 2006

Utah's economy strong in first half
Wells Fargo economist predicts modest slowing during latter 2006

By Jenifer K. Nii
Deseret Morning News

Utah's economy in the first half of 2006 was "possibly the strongest economy we've ever had," a Wells Fargo economist said Wednesday.

Deseret Morning News graphicAnd, while Wells predicts some modest slowing during the latter part of the year, 2006 could still outpace 2005, according to Kelly K. Matthews, executive vice president and economist for Wells Fargo, which released its midyear report Wednesday.
"Just possibly, it's the strongest economy we've had, that I'm aware of," Matthews said. "While we are clearly going to have some slowing, the extent of that slowdown, at least for the second half of this year, is going to be very moderate. That being the case, it's possible that 2006, when we're all said and done, will be as good, if not better, than 2005 was."

Matthews used local data on population, employment, housing, retail sales and interest rates in his report — which seem to be fitting together rather nicely at the moment.

Using numbers from the Utah Population Estimates Committee, Matthews projects that Utah's population growth will reach 79,000 this year, which is about the same as last year and well ahead of the 1999-2004 period, when population gains averaged 54,600.

Those people will be looking for places to live, work and spend their money — which Utah should be able to accommodate, Matthews said.

"If we combine the number of people we have and the growth in jobs and how much housing is being constructed and how much money is being spent, we don't have any excesses or major problem areas appearing," Matthews said. "I've gone back and looked historically, and if we have the amount of jobs being created and the amount of people, we can absorb the amount of homes being built."

Single-family home building permits by year's end, projected to total 20,330, are expected to run about level to 2005's, while current mortgage rates of 6.8 percent are expected to end the year a bit higher than last year's 6.1 percent year-end figure, according to the Wells report.
Meanwhile, home price appreciation soared to 38.4 percent in St. George for the first quarter and was estimated between 15 percent and 20 percent statewide, Matthews reported. Though the St. George rates are not sustainable over the long term, Matthews said, "at least through the second half of this year, Utah can continue to pretty much maintain the same extraordinarily strong pace without getting into any major stresses and strains."

Utah's job growth for the second half of the year is projected to be 4.5 percent, the Wells report stated, trailing slightly the pace set during the 4.7 percent set in the first six months but dusting the 1.4 percent national average reported for June 2006. The state's projected unemployment rate for the latter half of the year is 3.4 percent, compared to June's 3.1 percent.
Taxable retail sales are forecast to be up 9 percent by year's end, according to the Wells report. The first half of 2006 saw 11 percent growth, making for a 10 percent average for the year. Wells estimated a 5 percent increase in retail spending per job over last year, to $20,300 in 2006, which is weighed against a 4.2 percent average monthly rate increase estimated for 2006.
"That suggests that there probably isn't much savings going on," Matthews said. "But, at the moment, it would seem to be somewhat in equilibrium. We're not spending that much more than we have."

Assuming that crude oil prices remain stable and that inflation and interest rates are kept under control, and barring geopolitical or natural disasters, Matthews said 2007 should be another good year.

"Obviously, things won't be as good in Utah as they are right now, but it will be a pretty darn good economic environment," he said. "Interest rates and the energy environment really become the two critical factors. If they behave themselves, I feel pretty good about 2007."

AdSense competitor

2006-07-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

I chuckled this morning as I saw the following ad in my GMail:

I wonder how long until Google figures out that some of the ads they are posting are for their competitors? You go JumpFly.com! Good luck in sticking it to the man!

DesNews: Venture capitalists plug Utah industry

2006-07-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

click here to link to article
Deseret Morning News, Saturday, July 08, 2006
Venture capitalists plug Utah industry
By Dave Anderton
Deseret Morning News

Utah's venture capital community is light years ahead of states such as Florida and Tennessee but could improve in commercializing more ideas from its universities, according to Mark Heesen, president of the Virginia-based National Venture Capital Asso- ciation.

Heesen was in Salt Lake City Friday to join with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and other venture capitalists plugging the state's growing venture capital industry.

In 2005, Utah captured $248 million in venture capital money, a 28 percent rise from $193 million raised in 2004, according to the MoneyTree survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Venture capital money is money invested into private companies, usually at early stages of growth.

Huntsman said the state is on track to reach the $300 million mark. Still, Heesen said Utah could compete better by creating a closer relationship between its VC firms and universities.

"I don't know how many companies that you have taken out of the university setting, but I would assume that it is pretty low compared to some other states," Heesen said. "And it's not simply your public universities, but also your private universities in trying to have an understanding of moving ideas out of the academic setting."

Jack Brittain, vice president of the University of Utah's technology venture development, said the U., over the past 10 years, has created about 3.5 companies on average annually. However, in the past fiscal year ended June 30, roughly 20 companies were created.

In the past, Brittain said, the university simply "sold off" its technology ideas, something known as "tech transfer."

"That was very much, 'throw it over the wall,' " Brittain said. "Now we really focus on getting commercialized and creating jobs. We're making companies."

In addition to commercializing more ideas, Blake Modersitzki, partner at UV Partners, said Utah should be more active in pushing science, technology and biology at both the high school and college levels.

E-mail: danderton@desnews.com
© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company

SLTrib: Utah proves magnet for venture capital

2006-07-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

click here to link to article in the Salt Lake Tribun

Article Last Updated: 7/08/2006 02:52 AM

Utah proves magnet for venture capital
Edge: A business-friendly stance is cited as a factor giving the state an advantage

By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune

Mark Heesen listened Friday as preceding speakers talked about the need to lure more venture capital to Utah's burgeoning technology sector.

Then the president of the National Venture Capital Association told leading state entrepreneurs they already had most of what today's investors yearn for - smart, innovative workers, and a cultural and recreational environment that's hard to beat.

"There are some very positive things we're seeing in Utah," Heesen said at an afternoon venture capital seminar at the Governor's Mansion. "Quality of life is an extremely important aspect" for a strong entrepreneurial base."

He compared a relatively smooth commute from a downtown Salt Lake City office to an affordable, spacious home to a trip of hours out of San Francisco to a "two-bedroom, $1 million" home in the suburbs.

"The people who are here want to stay here," Heesen said. "[That is] a very important distinction."

He also praised the Legislature's pro-business stance - especially its recent creation of a $100 million "Fund of Funds" designed to attract both dollars and venture capital firms to Utah.

But in comments echoed by other speakers Friday, Heesen cautioned that the state must continue to build its venture capital infrastructure to include so-called "C " and "D" series fund-raising, which takes promising startups through expansion to profitability.

Dinesh Patel, co-founder of vSpring Capital, agreed that capital for those later stages of corporate development are still lacking, though he was optimistic time - and "a very vibrant" investment climate in Utah - could close that gap.

In 2005 alone, Patel said, deal trackers identified $417 million invested in 84 Utah transactions that ultimately will produce more than 20,000 jobs. (Other VC estimates range both lower and higher).

In earlier opening remarks, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. also saw success in his efforts to help make Utah "attractive to capital," vowing that, "We in state government are doing everything we can to create an environment of [economic] growth."

Through incentives and successful entrepreneurship, Utah must become "a safe haven" for investors. Further, Huntsman said, a capital-friendly environment depends on tax reform, proactive investment in research commercialization at the state's public universities, and promoting the state's natural beauty and tourism opportunities.

bmims@sltrib.com

Investing in Utah

* Venture capital is money invested in private companies with the goal of taking a business public (trading stocks), or having it acquired.

* Utah ranks 15th nationally for venture capital invested, according to thePriceWaterhouse Coopers-Thomson MoneyTree Survey.

* In 2005, the MoneyTree Survey put Utah venture capital investments at $248 million, up 32 percent from 2004. (Other estimates range as high as $447 million in VC for the state last year).

The Meteoric Rise of WorldVitalRecords.com

2006-07-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here is another Alexa chart of interest. This is the Daily Traffic Rank Trend for yesterday, July 6, 2006. The Daily Traffic Rank Trend shows where a site ranks in page views compared to all other sites on the internet. Yahoo (#1), Google (#3), and eBay (#9) are all in the top 10 sites on the internet. This chart tracks and compares of all internet web sites.

This chart shows that after starting completely unranked, WorldVitalRecords.com has shot up to around 15,000. MyFamily.com is at around 3,000. FamiySearch.com is at around 9,000. And in a week WorldVitalRecords.com has had a meteoric rise all the way up to 15,000!

As we at WorldVitalRecords.com continue to add more content and more and more people use and talk about the site, our ranking will continue to climb. This is only the beginning.

WorldVitalRecords.com has gone viral!

2006-07-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

According to the Alexa rankings on July 6th, 2006, the World Vital Records genealogy site(WorldVitalRecords.com) has gone viral!

The Daily Pageviews chart from Alexa shows the usage spike going from 0 on June 28th to 8 million page views per day on July 5th.

The Daily Reach Alexa chart shows the daily reach going from 0 to 40 million.

There was no historic daily traffic trend data until July 2nd. On July 2nd the raking is over 100,000. On July 5th, the daily traffic trend moved to between 22,000 and 20,000.

This is a serious usage spike!

From the analytics that we are tracking, most of this traffic is from the many genealogist bloggers that are now discussing WorldVitalRecords.com in their blogs. A big chunk of this traffic was generated from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter blog by Dick Eastman (http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/07/worldvitalrecor.html).

www.WorldVitalRecords.com is now live!

2006-07-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

We were able to roll the content and feature set from our development server to the http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ site.

This initial site has 3 vital record indexes to start with: Social Security Death Index, Maine Death Records, and Louisiana Slave Index. Total, these indexes represent about 77 million names. The "global search" page returns the results from each index listed in alphabetical order.

On the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) results page, the vital records for each person is displayed: Name, Birth Date, Death Date, Issuing State, residence at Death, and Social Security Number. There are also links to see 'Neighbors' which are people who died in the same zip code near the same time. There is a link to generate a SS5 letter and down load the GEDCOM file for this person.

As a demonstration of the web 2.0 technologies that we are implementing, there is a Google map of the location of the Death Residence. This map is zoomable and scrollable as well as being able to display both the road and geographic boundaries and satellite images. Clicking on the 'Hybrid' button super imposes the map data onto the satellite image. This is the first of many value added features that we are working on for improving the display of vital records.

RSSJAM is one of the best RSS clients that I have seen

2006-07-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

Tyler Jensen of Provo Labs has come up with another great tool. He frequently comes develops powerful tools that are amazingly simple to use. He has done it again.

His latest creation http://www.rssjam.com/ is a very straight forward way compile, manage, and display your favorite RSS feeds.

I like the simple and clean display. This will help me find what I am looking for in the most optimized use of time.

Thanks Tyler!

Try it out at: www.rssjam.com

BLOG on 6th Annual Family History Technology Workshop

2006-06-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

(Sorry for the long post. However, my notes from this conference have come up in conversation recently, so I wanted to post them online. They were previously circulated via email.)

6th Annual Family History Technology Workshop

Conference notes by David Lifferth of Provo Labs.

I was able to attend the 6th (or 7th depending on who you ask) Family History Technology Workshop at BYU yesterday. The 1 day conference was packed full of great information that was relevant not only to Family History, but to almost every other information technology or Internet based industry. I am very glad that I went and there are dozens of ideas that we can apply directly to what we are doing in our business models. I have the conference notebook if anyone would like to see the papers that were presented there. I also digitally recorded several of the key presentations if anyone would like to listen in.

The day started off with the Keynote Address by Peter Norvig of Google. He is an amazing individual with an incredible background. He is the Director of Machine Learning at Google and has been at Google since 2001. Prior to that he was a Fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence, a senior computer science at NASA, and head of the Computational Sciences Division at Ames Research Center. He has written a number of books and for someone as technical as he is, he came across as very personable and easy going.

Since his presentation was the main reason that I went to the conference, I took a lot of notes. I will summarize them and attempt to extrapolate what he said into our business modes.

Norvig displayed a map of the world that showed the density of Google queries. He quoted "the best way to predict the future is to invent it." That came from several sources. "Search engines should be as useful as HAL 2000 in the Space Odyssey but not kill anyone."

He presented the "6 W's" of improving searching:
Who-Queries need to be customized to who you are. This requires personalization.
What-What type of information do you really want. Don't return results that you don't want.
Where-Localized results including search results from you own computer and local servers.
When-Results should be timely (current results) and fast
How-results beyond 2.5 query terms and top 10 results.
Wallet-Make it easy to buy info and goods

Topic of Who (search query personalization)

He gave the example of searching for the term Jaguar. (This is also the search example that we use) He doesn't want anything about cars, animals, or sports teams only about the Mac OS. Search results should also include results from files on his local machine and file servers. He described the value of FlikR type tagging for images and other media objects. (We should allow tagging of our image collection.) Blogs and forums are valuable if they are relevant to you. He showed an example of a lady that participates in camera and photography blogs and has averaged 200 entries a day for several years. He likes the Wikipedia because it is up to date.

Britannica encyclopedia also has errors and typos but it takes several years to get their content to market. Blogs needs search engine optimization. He likes type-ahead features that show current similar queries that others have used.

General knowledge must be understood in order to share ideas.
Communication is only effective if we have a common understanding. His example of "Water flows downhill" is that unless you understand that principle that other related ideas can't be effectively communicated. He said that artificial intelligence can play a roll in helping general knowledge become useful in conveying ideas. What Google is indexing the close captions of video to allow video to be searched.

Where
He talked about applications that use Google maps combined with other datasets. Google maps and Craigslist is a powerful combination. (We are pursuing this with our data as well.)
He talked about how years ago the "Brown Corpus" was a tool used by many to research. It had 1,000,000 words or 10 to the 6 power. The Internet is 10to the 13 power and allows research to continue on a much larger scale.

Sentences that use the format "X such as Y" are great for classification of elements. For example "Phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T" let us know that AT&T and Verizon are categorized as phone companies. There are millions of sentences like on web pages.

Google's success has been because they organize the world's information and make it more accessible and useful. We have heard the expression that a picture is worth a 1,000 words-from a technology standpoint a photo or videos is significantly more expensive in terms of storage than 1,000 words, but infinitely more useful in certain disciplines. Images are currently best searched by the surrounding text (this is how we are indexing the images from Wikipedia in our own image search). However, in the near future computers should be able to interpret images for their content. Facial recognition is coming, especially with the homeland security and defense dollars being thrown at it. Currently technology is very accurate at identifying males or females in images. Google is good at removing duplicate image of the same item even if taken from different cameras at different angles under different lighting conditions. This will save space while maintaining unique images.

Google is working on technology to differentiate in searches when some types carpenter if they mean the surname or the occupation and similar problems. They are working on a feature called "Google Base" that would allow any one to upload a table or database and they will store it and serve up the data appropriately. This could facilitate genealogy and all information sharing.
(This is an area that we could also compete, more on that later.) Google has a feature called "Site Seer" that allows publishers to upload articles for publishing and searching.

Words on a website page and links between pages are Google's primary mechanism for relevancy ranking. Official tags are no longer used, as they are prone to abuse by what he called 'spammers.' They spend a lot of time trying to weed out the spammers and others that try to bubble their pages to the top artificially. He described a contest where a group of tech savvy people tried to get the top page on a completely new and meaningless phrase.

The winner won by having everyone that read his blog to link from their web pages to his page about the meaningless phrase. Everyone else went to a great deal of effort to create thousands of bogus web pages and other tricks, but they lost.

Peter described the "demo effect" where some applications are very easy to demonstrate and get people to like it because they are so easy to demonstrate. However, 5 minutes later the easy of use becomes cumbersome in regular use. (This means that we need to provide very easy to use applications that can be bypassed for more serious use after users become more comfortable with the application.) Tree navigational structures are powerful, but are difficult to manage as they become more complex and include more nodes.

One of Google's most powerful features is multiple language searches where alternative words are searched on and the results are machine translated from their source language into the viewer's native tongue.

We need better and more intelligent queries. The average Google search is 2.5 words. However, when speaking into a microphone the search terms increase by a factor of 10. He gave the comparison of going to a library and asking the librarian for a book and trying to get the right book by only saying 2.5 words. (This ties directly to the next generation search technology discussion that we are having. If we know what question the user is asking (I am looking for a book with the following terms, or I am looking for a product with the following features, or I am trying to find pages about the following person, then the search results will be more relevant that just looking for matching terms.) He described how Asian searches are different that roman based languages. Because character entry is very difficult in Asian languages, users will type in a single work (character)and then navigate through hundreds of results rather than enter a 2nd word (character) to narrow the search. There must be a better way, and probably voice recognition will be the better way. Bill Gates has claimed for 10 years that desktop voice recognition is 2 years away, and we still don't have it.

People want unbiased reviews when shopping, but it is too difficult to remove the sales hype from real reviews. Voter ranking can help, but it is also easily manipulated by unscrupulous sales and marketers. They are working on this feature.

Six months ago, Google increased the number of words in a search from 10 to 256. This was due to user demand. However, the average number of words in a query has not increased.

Peter described the "~" tilde search operator to help users find what they want. It provides synonym, stemming, and variations of that word. Someone requested that the search terms generated by the tilde be viewable by the user so they can remove and add to them. Peter said they would investigate if there was a way to do that without tipping off their competitors.

Google is trying to assess the truthfulness of statements, and may add user rankings of sites and statements in the future.

Peter described how to make online communities successful. 1)Have easy to understand rules.2)Have a very low barrier to entry. 3)Allow easy or low effort participation. 4)Provide easy linking between ideas and communities.

Web pages now are more complex with embedded java. This makes parsing indexing more difficult for search engines.

Other presentations

Deryle Lonsdale a professor at BYU described work that he was doing to vocalize or Romanize Arabic script names. This was obviously a Homeland Defense funded project. Several times he referred to the project sponsor with out saying who that was. This is a huge challenge but important to the safety of the free world.

Bruce Brown, a grad student, presented a paper on the correlation between a Chinese name and its geographic origin. There is a tight correlation even though some thought there would be none.

Matthew Smith, a grad student, presented a paper on Genealogical Implicit Affinity Networks. This described the linking or networking based on similarities between extended family members. He used the Star Wars family of Luke Skywalker as a example. I told some of the folks at MyFamily.com that they could provide this a perk for people that uploaded GEDCOM files to encourage participation.

Don Curtis, from MyFamily.com, discussed challenges of binarization in preparation for OCR processing. Don has several patents relating to this process. He has 3 patents at MyFamily.com and 7 when he worked for Microsoft. Binarization was a recurring theme throughout the conference as it is a problem that everyone that is converting printing to digital is facing. The LDS has some challenges with their microfilm at the Granite vaults that was discussed later.

Douglas Kennard, a BYU grad student, described the challenges in creating searchable indexes for handwritten documents. At first I just blew this presentation off because I didn't think that it was practical. In my mind, re-keying is the only way to deal with handwritten source material. But he described the various challenges in definable metrics to show when handwritten text can be computer interpreted. It does require lots of similar content (in this case 1,000 pages of George Washington's personal scribe). There are still major challenges that keep this from being a viable alternative to re-keying the data.

Shane Hathaway, of the LDS Church's Touchstone Team, described the Bit Mountain project. This is a project to store the massive amount of digital information in perpetuity and never lose anything due to hard drive crashes and storage media failure. They described the need for an 18 Petabyte digital repository. A Petabyte is 1,000,000 gigabytes. This is massive project, but Doug McKay calculated that they could do it with $4 million using today's technology. However, the size of their data set is growing every day. Their theory is that excess computer hard drive space all around the world could be used to store redundant pieces of data. They called this MAID (Massive array of Idle Disks.) This would also use forward error correction, which is basically self mirroring in reduced storage space.

Part of that idea is that there would be a massive index that could be stored on hard drives that could be powered off for months at a time to keep the media and ball bearings from wearing out. This is a massive project that they didn't have a real solution for, but they described the specifications that would allow someone to develop the solution and then sell it back to the Church when it is ready for use.

Heath Nielson, of the LDS Church, described the challenges of digitizing the church's vast microfilm collection. There are problems with the way that the images were originally scanned that can be overcome with improved digitizing. However, they are scanning at 200dpi and I don't think that will be high enough resolution for all of their needs. They also have to configure the digitizing for each image and not for a roll or 'region' of the roll at a time. I don't think that they have this problem fully resolved yet, which means that it will probably have to be re-done at a great expense in the future. This is problematic because each use of the microfilm reduces its life expectancy.

Burdette Pixton described using neural networks to do automatic genealogy name linking.

Jim Wray, who I worked with at MyFamily.com, described how they merged 2 different indexes for the 1920 census. The original index was head of household only, the newer index has every person. The original index was not done very well and they are basically using that one to check the new index. The problem was doing the merge without doing the 3.9 quadrillion lookups which would have taken 12 years.

One of the best presentations of the day was one of the lowest quality presentations. It was how to use Google, Yahoo, and MSN to do genealogy lookups on de-centralized data. The debate continues as to whether centralized data, organization, and retrieval (likely MyFamily.com and the LDS Church) or de-centralization like everyone else is better. Dallan Quass, from the foundation for On-Line Genealogy, described methods focusing the standard search engines for finding genealogy info. While it is not an exact science, and won't replace MyFamily.com or FamilySearch.org it has promise for the future, especially if genealogy standards can emerge for the web. However, one of the points that was made by many at the conference is that many of the legacy standards -even cultural standards are prohibitive of moving some genealogy data to the web.

Grant Skousen of the LDS Church presented their prototype for "Family Finder." The goal is to make genealogy as easy to use as the Internet it self and overcome the fear factor which keep some from genealogy research. It prompts users on their next steps and poses questions that they could ask to further their research. I think that it appeared easy. But some of the MyFamily products (OneWorldTree) are easier. I think that "demo effect" described by Norvig from Google may apply here. If a product is too easy to use, it becomes cumbersome as the users increase their abilities. I did like the interface and the icons were cheerful. I did like the time line feature that allows users to organize data in a chronological order.

Kevin Bottoms, a BYU Grad student, designed a single front that would interface with the various back ends (MyFamily, FamilySearch, web, etc). I don't know how practical it would be and I don't know if MyFamily would allow their info to be used this way.

Q&A at end of conference
Deryl Londsdal said that Utah has specialties: Genealogy, Linguistics, and computational technologies that set us apart from the rest of the world.
There are 6500 active languages in the world.

Dan Olsen: Family history should be about lives and memories and not about data elements.
Panelists provided 3 Things that are needed to improve Genealogy:Dan Olsen:
*Digital Libraries: families live in homes and data must be accessible from home
*Sources should volunteer and not have to be hunted down.
*WE need better geographic relations in our genealogy data

Deryl Lonsdale:
*We need a neutral, friendly location to share and collaborate our data
*We need to ability to evaluate and rate information. We must define who is the authority for data repositories.
*Better assimilation of data to make sense out of it

Curt Wincher:
*Capture, store, and share any digital anything without fear of losing it

David ___ (of LDS Church):
*Long term preservation of valuable content.
*Critical mass of data collections (1/3 of all live births today are not
documented)
*Improved user experience
*Establish authorities and standards
*Improve search results by removing 'noise'

Lunch presentation by Curt Wincher:We need to do a much better job of sharing important information with members of our family and affinity groups.

"It is in there, but we can't find it." We need better access to information that we know exists. We want to use all of our toys. Personal documents, email, digital photos,analog photos, maps, gps, URL, etc. Many more genealogists are digital and web only than the previous generations of analog genealogists. Google has raised everyone's expectations for ease of use in finding information.

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

2006-06-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Why does the NSA need to go tap phones when people are posting all sorts of private data on public forums?

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025556.200

"New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

Al Jazeera links to WorldHistory.com

2006-06-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

A very interesting thing happened yesterday (June 8, 2006) on WorldHistory.com. This was the day that the international news story broke about bombing and killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He is second only to Osama bin Laden in being wanted by Allied forces. Both of them have a $25 million bounty on their heads. Al-Zarqawi was the day to day operations manager for Al Qaeda and fighting on the front lines of the insurgency in Iraq, while Osama is the world-wide, philosophical leader who hides out in caves along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.

A U.S. F-16 dropped 2 five hundred pound bombs on the house that Al-Zarqawi was in. This action launched news headlines around the world. Al Jazeera (www.aljazeera.net or english.aljazeera.net), an Arabic equivalent of CNN, posted several links on their web site to relevant articles on WorldHistory.com. Al Jazeera regularly links to WorldHistory.com for background information on news stories. WorldHistory.com has in-depth articles on Osama bin laden (www.worldhistory.com/article.php?q=22468), Iraq (media.worldhistory.com/ciawfb/file/iz.htm), Afghanistan (media.worldhistory.com/ciawfb/file/af.htm), and even Zarqa, Jordan--the city where Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is from (www.worldhistory.com/article.php?q=1175187).

Yesterday, WorldHistory.com experienced a 622% spike in page views. Links from the Al-Jazeera web site accounted for 80% of the page views for the day! The Google Ad Sense revenue for WorldHistory.com increased over 10 fold from the previous day!

WorldHistory.com is such a great resource with all of the word history data that we can accumulate in a fast and easy to use web site. We at Provo Labs are regularly adding high quality content as it becomes available. There are over 20 million records that represent approximately 1 million articles covering everything imaginable. The content on WorldHistory.com comes from the Wikipedia, Cyclopedia of Classified Dates, CIA World Fact book, world classics, several map collections, and much more. There are approximately 250,000 high-quality, full size images that are searchable by descriptive tags.

The WorldHistory.com web site is an amazing resource that is now getting the international recognition that it deserves.

Net ad spend poised to overtake national press

2006-05-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

The following article describes the pace that internet advertising is passing other media.

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto052920061706070914

Net ad spend poised to overtake national press
By Carlos Grande
Monday May 29 2006 16:55
The internet will this year overtake national newspapers to become the third biggest advertising medium by spend, according to authoritative forecasts.
By the end of 2007, internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the number two medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the £12bn-a-year media advertising market.
The projection, seen exclusively by the FT, underlines the pace of growth in internet advertising and the challenge to businesses reliant on traditional advertising revenue.

Productized Features

2006-04-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

We frequently develop features that are not always productized. There were several items that we at Provo Labs built for LDSMedia.com that were shelved and are not currently available online. I have been involved with using computers for gosple and scripture research for over 15 years and I have never seen some of these two items. These features were developed either at the request of Deseret Book or as part of our own R&D initiatives.

One of these is what we called Ranked Search. This is a relevancy ranked result of the scriptures after performing a search. The ranking is based on the number of times that a scripture is referenced or quoted in any of the collection of titles on LDSMedia.com. This feature is absolutely amazing in that the results to searches return the most cited scriptures. The alternative is to display the results in the canonical order that they appear in the scriptures. This way you find the results in Genesis or 1st Nephi first, instead of the most cited scriptures.

The example that I use to describe value of ranked scriptures is how my father in law used the LDS Collectors Library that I gave him for Christmas many years ago (I think it was 1998). He was a Bishop and was preparing a talk. I taught him how to do a search and he typed in the key words for his talk. The first 2 results were in Genesis. While they matched his search result they were obscure scriptures. I know that there were better scriptures for his topic that appeared later in the scriptures. He was pleased that he had 2 scriptures that he could use in his talk. I told him that there were better scriptures, but he felt that the ones that he had were good enough and he used them in his talk. If he had taken the results from a ranked search results he would have quoted a more pertient scripture.

Another tool that we have developed and shelved is a topical search aid. When you type in a word, the results from the 3,000+ topics are listed at the top of the word search results. These are pre-defiend topics, such as those listed in the "Topical Guide." Many of these topics don't have the search word even listed in the verse. If you search for the word "tithing" you will miss the words such as "tithe" or "offering" but they would be found in the topic "tithing." This is similar to the Google feature where you type in words and Google prompts you with something like "did you mean: ?". This feature when combined with the ranked search really optimizes scripture study.

Another feature is a list of all matching scripture references. When you hover the mouse over the word, then the text of the scripture is displayed in a box over the scripure reference as fly-over text. This is a nifty feature, but was shelved because it doesn't conform to the directive that all results be printable. I think that we have learned from this and may use this in other applications.

Upate on the Top 20 scriptures

2006-04-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

I have an updated version of the 20 most referenced scriptures in the 2006 LDSMedia Collection of over 2 gigabytes of LDS content available at www.LDSMedia.com. This is a web site that is a joint venture with Deseret Book.

In the list below the first number is the number of times that that vers is quoted, discussed, or referenced in conference addresses, books, or other current and historical documents.

1043-Moses 1:39
For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
708-Mosiah 3:19
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
663-2 Nephi 2:25
Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.
592-Abraham 3:25
And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;
559-Abraham 3:22
Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;
555-Abraham 3:23
And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.
534-Moroni 10:4
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
504-Abraham 3:24
And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;
502-2 Nephi 31:20
Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
502-John 17:3
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
485-John 3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
479-2 Nephi 2:27
Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.
477-Moroni 10:5
And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
473-James 1:5
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all [men] liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
472-D&C 19:18
Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit--and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink--
466-Malachi 4:6
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
463-D&C 132:19
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them--Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths--then shall it be written in the Lamb's Book of Life, that he shall commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them, in time, and through all eternity; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.
458-Moses 4:3
Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
450-Revelation 14:6
And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
450-1 Corinthians 15:22
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Top 20 most cited LDS Scriptures

2006-03-29T14:12:00.000-08:00

For my first post, I would like to list the top 20 most cited LDS scriptures. This is based on a statistical analysis of the LDSMedia.com content.

Moses 1: 39 For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
John 17: 3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
John 3: 5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
2 Nephi 2: 25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.
Abraham 3: 23 And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.
Abraham 3: 25 And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;
Revelation 14: 6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
Abraham 3: 22 Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;
Moroni 10: 4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Mosiah 3: 19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.
Moroni 10: 5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
Mark 16: 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
James 1: 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all [men] liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Acts 2: 38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Matthew 28: 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Abraham 3: 24 And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;
John 7: 17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or [whether] I speak of myself.
Acts 3: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
Mark 16: 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
1 Corinthians 15: 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.