I’m at the FamilySearch conference today. Right now Phil Windely is talking about open data and the related technical formats – REST, Json, RDF, and Microformats. I think this is good information for this crowd since sharing data is key to genealogy research. For years the methods of sharing data and integrating systems has been…
Category: genealogy
Genealogy at Risk?
The Deseret News writes today, “The Catholic Church has ordered dioceses across the globe not to give information in parish registers to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” This is a very painful blow not only to the LDS church but to genealogists everywhere. For decades the LDS church has been…
FamilySearch Developer Webinar
I just got an invite to a FamilySearch Webinar. I imagine you are supposed to be a member of the developer group to attend, but I doubt they would throw you out. Here’s the details: FamilySearch Developer WebinarJoseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB) 5th Floor, West Lobby Conference Room 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Agenda: Introduce…
Journal Writing Sucks, Blogging is Cool
The LDS cultural has encouraged personal history and journal writing since its inception. Ever since then the vast majority of the members have ignored this council and the overall level of guilt among the LDS faithful has continued to rise as each successive generation followed the example of the previous. Technology now provides some relief…
Family Tree Read
What do we read out of family search? Person Information Search Match Authorities Data – places LDS Ordinance Information Objects available in the new FamilySearch Person Search Data Contributor Information Place Standardization Data Can output XML, JSON, and XML-FastInfoset. Request can be gzipped if client supported. Locate a resource via NFS Id – ‘KWCD-QBC’, Ancestral…
Family Search Conference
I am at the FamilySearch conference at BYU today which means that I had to get up at 5:30 this morning which is one my least favorite things in the world. Luckily caffeine is my friend and I managed to stay awake for the drive down. I did discover this morning that my truck’s top…
Family Search API
If these posts don’t make sense sorry. They are for my notes. API is based on REST. A lot of data is sensitive so they use SSL to secure data transfer. Prefer XML elements over XML attributes. Everything is UTF-8 encoded. Right now user access is limited to LDS members. That is interesting. I guess…
Ruby fs-api
I am in the Ruby-fs API presentation now. Funding for the library came from USFamilyTree.com. It is REST based. Data model is: Person Person has many Assertions Assertion has one Contributor, Citation(not yet implemented), Note Each person has a lot of data associated with them so you don’t want to be parsing xml data on…
Family Search Write
We’re back from lunch. I had a great chat with Alan Braverman the CTO & founder of Geni. They are doing some cool things by connecting living people with their families and to the larger family graph. They also let you upload photos and other digital assets then assemble that into a timeline. Eventually you…