Adobe launches open source project to encourage multi-device Flash players

David May 1st, 2008

I have been impressed with how much Adobe has been utilizing the open source methodology as of the last few years.  Just a year ago they released the Flex source code as open source.  To encourage porting Flash content to mobile devices, Adobe has started Open Screen Project in partnership with media companies ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC.

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ — that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

devices

Specifically, this work will include:

  • Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
  • Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
  • Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
  • Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Of course video content is not the only functionality that will benefit from this arrangement. FamilySearch Labs have several applications which utilize Flash.  Won’t it be nice to use your mobile device to look up scanned census records or browse your family tree using a player designed specifically for your it?

Official statement on the future of Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

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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Technology-assisted genealogy research may have an impact on US Presidential politics

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!

LDS Church archives to become the Google Books of genealogical records

David March 21st, 2008

FamilySearch logoLast 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?