LDS Tech

kbaker April 22nd, 2008

A few months ago my eleven year old daughter came home from school and said her class had spent the day watching the movie "We Are Marshall". Now I won’t get into the whole topic of whether I felt that was a good use of my daughter’s school time or not. But I will tell you one of my first thoughts was "What is the school showing to my kid without my permission."

Having not seen the movie I wanted to know what it was about and if it contained anything inappropriate. We subscribe to Netflix and it has been a good service for us. One of the great things Netflix does is include the review and rating of a movie from www.commonsensemedia.org. This has proven very helpful to me in choosing what movies and programming I should rent.

Using Common Sense Media, I read the review and ratings of "We Are Marshall" and was relieved to find it was a decent movie for my daughter to watch. I did rent the movie from Netflix after the fact and generally agreed with Common Sense Media’s assessment.

And the great thing about Common Sense Media is you don’t have to be a member of Netflix to use it. It is it’s own site and open to everyone! Actually, Common Sense Media is a non-profit with the mission statement of being "dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of kids and families." They offer a synopsis of a movie and rate the content in terms of age appropriateness. Their rating categories include sexual content, violence, language, social behavior, commercialism, and drug/alcohol/tobacco use. From all this information you as a parent are better informed about what is out there and what your family is watching.

There are other sites out there that provide similar services. One mentioned to me by a friend was www.kids-in-mind.com. These are all resources we need to know about and use. Happy watching!

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David April 14th, 2008

Genealogy expert, DearMYRTLE, raised a concern about my previous quote regarding PAF.  She did some research into whether my sources were considered "official" or not.  Contacting Gordon Clarke, LDS Family History Department, directly she found that Paul Nauta was the only person who can make "official" statements such as this. 

I’ll concede that this statement on the future of PAF is a bit premature for the general public.  Nevertheless, for software engineers who will be using the New FamilySearch API or the PAF API to create plugins for PAF, this statement from the Family History department makes some good suggestions for how new products can complement the technology offerings which the LDS Church has made and will be making to the community.  The Ancestry Insider has offered some additional insights into specific areas of this message.

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David April 14th, 2008

Back in March, I had commented briefly about the rising costs of wheat and other commodities.  From CNN this afternoon (April 14, 2008), it looks like that trend isn’t getting better any time soon.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said the surging costs could mean "seven lost years" in the fight against worldwide poverty…

"In just two months," Zoellick said in his speech, "rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come. In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice … now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family."

The price of wheat has jumped 120 percent in the past year, he said — meaning that the price of a loaf of bread has more than doubled in places where the poor spend as much as 75 percent of their income on food. 

As an LDS Church member, I have been encouraged to prepare for these types of crises.  I have been doing what I believe is most important for my family, but there is so much more that seems to be left undone.  It is sad to see how this can affect the poor of the world so directly.  There are a whole host of things that we can do to alleviate the pain and suffering of those less fortunate as ourselves.

I have noted a number of attempts that people have made to help alleviate problems such as these.  Some of the most effective I have seen have revolved around the LDS Church Welfare programs to distribute food to those needing it immediately after disasters and educating others on how to be more self reliant (such as digging wells and burying water lines to villages in Africa). 

A few years ago, my wife and I started using the Square Foot Gardening program for ourselves and have been impressed with how well it works for our own needs.  SFG has formed a non-profit foundation to educate the poor around the world to help them provide food for their own families.  They continue to look for volunteers willing to help educate the poor in how to raise their own produce.

Do you remember the old saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” ? We believe that the same can be accomplished by teaching a person to garden in a simple easy way that they can do, like the Square Foot Gardening method.

Even SFG techniques are the tip of the iceberg in permaculture (sustainable agriculture) options.  Since the 1970s, researchers have been investigating how we can design systems which replenish each other.  I did my own research a few years ago by building a small "chicken tractor" (movable chicken coop), multiple compost bins (for mulch and manure), and incorporating Native American gardening techniques such as "Three Sisters." It was a neat experience and one that I would be happy to share with others.

There is a whole host of common sense technologies and techniques that have been lost in the last few generations where we as a people haven’t needed to learn how to produce our own food in sustainable ways.  But by harnessing the knowledge of experts and sharing that information over the internet, we can recapture some of this knowledge and share it with those that need it the most.  (Too bad the 90% of the world that can’t afford a computer with internet access can’t directly learn from this information.)

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David April 8th, 2008

There are now thousands of instances where developers and businesses have used Google Maps APIs to create maps integrated with their own data (also called mashups).  Where geographic data used to be limited to specialized developers and organizations with a large budget, this ability is now in the hands of high school students with pet projects. 

Last night Google launched a preview release of Google App Engine, "a way for developers to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure."  This promises to be equally enabling but not limited to a specific function like mapping tools.  Any generic application which requires an application server, web server, and database can be powered by this infrastructure.

With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There’s more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)

…This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please sign up, download the SDK, and start your engines.

Here is a geeky step by step video for using Google App Engine with Python:

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David April 3rd, 2008

I don’t know about you, but I have been surprised lately with the availability of online multimedia content.  I’m not just talking about the popularity of YouTube with user-contributed content or downloading music from the Apple iTunes Store.  I’m talking about traditional media entities offering professionally written content on their web sites. Radio stations such as National Public Radio (NPR) not only have recorded podcasts of their broadcasts, but regularly suggest additional content for their listeners to find on their web site.  Do you hate missing the KSL Greenhouse Show on Saturdays?  Like many other sites, you don’t have to miss it if you subscribe to a podcast on the station web site.  Offering a mix of traditional and new media sources, here are the top sources for online news, ranked by the number of visitors (from Ars Technica):

Yahoo News

MSNBC

CNN

AOL News

New York Times

Gannett

ABC News

Google News

USA Today

CBS News

While most of these sites are offering short video and/or audio clips, some media sites are now offering premium content that they normally reserve for television or radio (together with new advertising).  Did anyone see the NCAA Basketball finals on CBS.com?  Did you miss seeing who was eliminated from American Idol on Fox?  (you can also see their recent performances on their web site) 

Most of these sites are using Adobe Flash streaming technology (like YouTube), but others are starting to use HD video plugins such as those created by American Fork, Utah company, Move Networks, including ABC, Discovery, FOX, ESPN, and Oprah.com.  BYU Television, also using Move Networks’ HD video plugin, is one of the first stations that has around the clock broadcasting content on their site.  In comparison, the lds.org site will host transcripts, video, and audio downloads of LDS General Conference once they become available, but BYU.tv promises to include live HD video of for all morning and afternoon sessions.  LDS Church members in Utah may not appreciate how rare it is to be able to watch Conference in your own home around the world as it is being broadcast. 

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David March 31st, 2008

The Salt Lake ColdFusion Users Group (SLCFUG) is sponsoring a Rich Internet Applications (RIA) conference this Friday, April 4, 2008.  If there is still room, you can register here. 

You’ll learn about cutting edge Flex, AIR, and AJAX programming. You’ll be readying for the next phase of web development.

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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.

Continue Reading »

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David March 27th, 2008

Despite their ideological differences, genealogists have found that the leading US presidential candidates are tied more closely than previously thought. Barack Obama is a distant to cousin to the current President George W. Bush and the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchhill. Senator John McCain is related to the current first lady, Laura Bush. Senator Hillary Clinton has ties to entertainers Celine Dion and Madonna. (See CNN, Family ties: Candidates’ ancestry makes for strange bedfellows)

The New England Historic Genealogical Society, founded in 1845, says it is the oldest such organization in the country. Members spent three years tracing the lineage of the candidates. … Most surprisingly, Obama — the man who could become America’s first African-American president — is linked by ancestry to Robert E. Lee, who commanded the armies of the Southern slave-holding states during the American civil war.

You don’t have to be a presidential candidate to be able to look up your ancestry easily. Digital Roots, a BYU Computer Science research foundation, has created Relationship Finder. This tool duplicates the years of research that the NEHGS did for the presidential candidates in only a matter of seconds. For its data it uses the Ancestral File, so if you don’t have family members who have contributed data to this previously, you won’t get many results. [Note: You’ll need the Ancestral File Number (AFN) from as many of your last three or four generations of ancestors as you have available as input for this search. You can look this up at FamilySearch.org.] Give it a try, you’ll be surprised at how many people you are related to!

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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.

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David March 21st, 2008

Last night I attended the Utah Java Users Group (UJUG) meeting and heard a presentation by senior developers and leadership from the LDS Church FamilySearch Digital Pipeline teams. I believe that it is certainly worth mentioning.

To give you a little background…

If you haven’t had a chance to see how the Google Books indexing project is coming along, take a look. They are taking scanners into university libraries across the US and scanning and indexing the full text. Not all of this is searchable online because of copyright issues but nevertheless huge number of books are now available because the copyright is out of date or because the publisher has granted Google rights to make them available.

The LDS Church has been scanning historical documents since the 1930s onto microfilm and microfiche and stored them at the Granite Mountain Vault for safekeeping. Now they are digitizing these scanned records as well as digitizing other records as they become available.

FamilySearch Indexing

With the newest scanning technology, they anticipate being able to completely scan all documents in the vault in 8 to 10 years. With terabytes of digitized images of censuses, birth / marriage / death certificates, and other records, the next step is to index this data. The technology for automatic indexing of handwritten documents is still not ready for production use but when you have an army of 130,000+ volunteers, you can utilize the strengths of technology to present the necessary information quickly and use the strengths of individuals to identify handwritten text. Doing so, they have been able to index up to 500,000 names per day. This includes double entry (two separate extractors) and arbitration if the data doesn’t match perfectly.

The Granite Mountain Vault isn’t the only digital data that is being processed by this program. Several US states have donated their records to the Family History Department to scan and preserve their data. The LDS Church is under negotiations with other public entities to extend the records that will be available. If you want to participate in this program, go to http://familysearchindexing.org. Don’t worry, they won’t run out of work for you to do any time soon!

FamilySearch Record Search

Although this isn’t open for public beta yet (summer 2008) all of the records that these volunteers are indexing are already available at http://search.labs.familysearch.org. They have developed Rich Internet Applications (RIA) utilizing a RESTful Web Services framework running on Java and open source technologies. They are building a highly scalable, parallel architecture to handle 100 requests per second (currently handling 80/sec). The presenter, Rob Edwards, said that in early negotiations with a 3rd party development company who supports eBay Japan (their architecture handles 3 requests per second) walked away from negotiations because they didn’t believe that their technology would handle so many more transactions.

They didn’t say this, but in a competitive work environment I’m sure that many companies are trying to recruit developers from these teams because they have been able to solve problems top companies are currently facing. Did I say that they are hiring?

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