David March 31st, 2008
Today FamilySearch has released news regarding future support for PAF. The decision to not expand PAF’s functionality to interface with the new FamilySearch doesn’t come as a surprise to me. The Church isn’t in the business of commercial software. Did you know that the Windows version of PAF was adopted from a previous version of Ancestral Quest? (See Information for Users of PAF) In addition, years ago the Church has opened up the PAF API to commercial developer to create add-on applications, such as PAF Insight. The new FamilySearch will have public APIs so that these competing commercial products will have access as well as PAF add-on products so that users most comfortable with the existing PAF interface can continue to use it for years to come.
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David March 25th, 2008
Those LDS Church members who have been following the counsel of their Church leaders may very likely have a large supply of wheat and other essentials for use in an emergency or lean times. The scripture, “…if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear.” (D&C 38:30) comes to mind as one that motivates people to actually do something as significant as a year supply of food for their families.
In just the last few weeks, there have been world trends that further validate the value in being prepared.
What’s Driving Up Grocery Prices? (NPR, March 11, 2008)
Buying wheat now takes a lot more ‘bread’ (Deseret News, March 15, 2008)
That said, what about including technology needs in your preparedness list? If you had a gas leak in your house and you had only moments to grab a few irreplaceable items what would you take? I have heard consistently from victims of the hurricane Katrina about all the family photos they lost and can’t replace. What if you knew that all of your important data (including digital family photos) was backed up securely in another location. Wouldn’t that give you a huge peace of mind?
Just last week, I was chatting with my sister. The hard drive on her PC crashed and she lost over two years worth of digital photos. Yeah, she didn’t lose her whole house in a fire or flood, but emotionally she lost a piece of her identity and the special memories she shared with her spouse and children. I’m not going to go into all of the reasons or methods for backing up your computer data, but here are a few straightforward options to consider.
- Keep data organized on your hard drive and burn a CD or DVD of critical content regularly. Take an older copy of this disc to the house of a friend or family member for safekeeping. (Having copies of your confidential data floating around isn’t the most secure option.)
- Purchase an external hard drive. There are a number of backup software utilities available that will automatically create a backup of all files in the event of a hardware failure. (This won’t help if you have a natural disaster)
Use an internet based backup service such as Mozy (free version). The software you download from this service will automatically backup your critical files to their servers in a secure encrypted format. (This option seems to have few down sides.)
There isn’t a one size fits all solution for including data recovery in your emergency preparedness plan, but there isn’t a standard solution for your food storage needs either. Let me know in the comments if you have found any other data backup strategies that have worked for you.
David March 19th, 2008
Much the same way that various site have used GoogleMaps to create their own web content, the LDS Church has released an API to the scriptures so that this data can be redistributed and utilized for other applications. I’m excited to see more and more of these kinds of services being offered by the Church.
There is a lot of interest in the community to offer scriptures services. Here are a few that I have found:
Prototype of mobile scriptures: http://cameronmoll.com/sandbox/mobile/v2.php
Another version of scriptures, with social networking features: http://www.scripturesapp.com
BYU project to cross reference General Conference talks with the scriptures: http://scripturalindex.byu.edu/
Index for Jesus the Christ (Talmage) with the scriptures: http://www.connorboyack.com/blog/jesus-the-christ-index
Wiki-like project for the Bible in multiple languages (including Hebrew): http://biblos.com/
List of open source projects utilizing the scriptures: http://ldsoss.org/index.php/Religious_Study
Mormon Documentation project: http://mdp.nephi.org/