The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Quiet around here"

We're wandering off topic, but...

skeptic — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:38:45 +0000

I've seen myfamily. There are a number of others too. I think this one looks good.

I'm enjoying the challenge of coming up with something a little different (and I hope better). I plan to charge for it too. I think you are right that the big players (Google, Fox, MSN ...) will eat this space, but maybe there is room for a niche player for a bit longer.

P.S. "sitting out a non-compete, raising two kids, drinking some great wine"?? Man I thought I have a good life...

Have you tried myfamily.com?

Kevin McDonald — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:03:46 +0000

Just wondering if you had tried myfamily.com?
I posted on this topic a while back and have been looking for users of this service to share their experiences.

Keep up the great work on your blog- especially the ITIL-CMDB posts.

CMDB of people?

avallesalas — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:54:21 +0000

But..can you use this for impact analysis? else this is not a true CMDB, just an inventory of people. :-)

Actually, I had something more robust in mind

Charles T. Betz — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 14:43:12 +0000

What I started to build at one point was a database-driven framework to support the following use case:

1. Upload picture
2. Select individual face on picture
3. Associate from picklist of individuals in family tree
4. Repeat 2 and 3 for all faces on the picture
5. Repeat for another picture

The picture, zones, and inviduals would all be stored in a database. This way reports could be run:

1. Show all pictures containing a given individual (sort the pictures chronogically to see the invidual's changing appearance wih time)

2. Show all individuals in a given picture

Yes, it can be done manually as you suggest, but too tedious for end users. I wanted to empower people to do this simply.

-charlie

I can do that

skeptic — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 04:47:27 +0000

...using The Gimp to make html maps. See here http://www.corepractice.org/: check out the "Navigating CoPr" image on the left column.

The CMS I use (Drupal) stores an image as a "node" or entity in its own right. I have bult a modification to the taxonomy system so each person in the family tree and each place is automatically a taxonomy term, so they can be used to associate anything. So if I query "Uncle Jim" i get all images, documents, places, stories and other people linked to him in one result. Likewise if I query "11 Neika Avenue". I've also built a Source manager that links any data to its source (document, story, transcribed interview, web link ...) and tracks the authority level of that source and hence the overall authority level for the data on a person.

Right now I'm building the people engine: i.e. a CMDB of people hahahaha. Birth parents, legal parents, couples, life events, attributes ....

Then I'll build a family tree viewer/walker.

Cool eh?

Genealogy software

Charles T. Betz — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 02:49:34 +0000

interesting. I'm the family genealogist myself. One thing I've wanted to do is more effectively combine old photographs with genealogy and I have some ideas for an open source project. Basic idea would be to support the hyperlinking of GIF or JPEG zones to the personal records, so that if you click on Great Aunt Margie's face in that huge family gathering picture taken in 1940 it goes to her entry.

Charlie