No Rubbing Required

Here's an account of Yang Cai's tombstone-reading software in action.

"This is just kind of a fun project ... but I think it's very meaningful to have something where people feel excited," said Cai, director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab's ambient intelligence lab, as research assistants cloaked in black focused a beam of light and a digital camera on Isabelle Seville's weathered gravestone. "We take this as a combination of science, art, technology and culture."

The Rev. Richard Davies couldn't read the worn indentations in Seville's tombstone. Charcoal or crayon rubbings revealed little. But Cai's technology constructed a 3-D image, complete with Seville's name, and her place and date of birth -- London, 1781. [Link]

The End of Illegibility?

CMU professor Yang Cai has developed software that can decipher illegible inscriptions on ancient tombstones. He's testing it on stones at Old St. Luke's Church in Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

During the past two weeks, Cai's research team trekked through the church's three-acre cemetery, scanning unreadable gravestones and then storing the images on laptops.

"We are exploring new 3-D reconstruction technology to decipher the gravestone names," said Cai. "Essentially, we reconstruct the tombstone surfaces by applying filtering and detection algorithms for revealing the words on the archaic surfaces," he said.

In addition to discovering who is buried in the church cemetery, Cai is developing a digital cemetery for Old St. Luke's Church. [Link]

Nothing Will Save Us From Boredom

Mike Elgan—who finds genealogical research "boring"—looks forward to "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases," which he expects to appear in ten years or so.

Such a database would enable you to do absolutely amazing things. For example:

• Enter your unique ID info (probably your Gmail username) and that of any other person, and the site would trace you both back to the most recent common shared ancestor.
• Follow a timeline that shows the locations and migrations of ancestors all leading up to the descendant that is you.
• Track down every living relative.

Boy, that'll be great.

Here are a few quick observations:

• Not all ancestries are traceable.
• DNA cannot solve every genealogical mystery.
• Records, even if digitized, require interpretation.
• Data submitted to websites—even Web 2.0 sites—can be incorrect, inconsistent or incomplete.
• That computer algorithm that can reveal your genetic ancestry "in minutes" won't reveal your ancestors' names—even if you give it a couple of hours. Finding common genetic ancestry ("We're both Chinese!") is not the same as finding a common ancestor ("We're both descended from Jackie Chan!").

The gist of the article seems to be that aggregating and "mashing up" content from disparate sources will somehow fill gaps in our genealogical knowledge left by traditional ("Web 1.0") methods. This may be true to some extent, but not to the extent Elgan predicts. If "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases" exists in ten years, it will only be as accurate and useful as the data it contains. Rooting out errors and omissions would require more than an algorithm; it would require good, old-fashioned, boring genealogy.

Bringing Down a Website in One Step

The Ancestry Insider explains this morning how even a well-intentioned effort to make genealogical data more accessible can step on the toes of other webmasters. (I would add that Mr. Morse offers a tutorial on how to subvert his own well-intentioned efforts.)

Law and ethics have a hard time keeping pace with technology. Some of you old-timers might recall the Genealogy Message Searcher. That was a tool at GenCircles that cached and searched messages from the Ancestry.com and GenForum boards simultaneously, but was shut down in 2002 over concerns that it violated Genealogy.com's new terms of service. With the help of Google, I just created The New Genealogy Message Searcher in about two minutes. Granted, it's not nearly as functional or comprehensive as the original, and doesn't provide links to cached copies, but... Wait, are those lawyers from Utah I hear outside my door?

Genealogy in 3D

Want to see what it would be like to fly through a three-dimensional family tree? Of course you do.

Birthday Greetings From the Grave

Researchers at Microsoft are working on an "immortal computing" project, which would "let people store digital information in physical artifacts and other forms to be preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations."

One scenario the researchers envision: People could store messages to descendants, information about their lives or interactive holograms of themselves for access by visitors at their tombstones or urns.

And here's where the notion of immortality really kicks in: The researchers say the artifacts could be symbolic representations of people, reflecting elements of their personalities. The systems might be set up to take action -- e-mailing birthday greetings to people identified as grandchildren, for example. [Link]

How long will it work before Grandma gets the Blue Screen of Death?

Let Your Relatives Get Under Your Skin

A new product from VeriSci Corp. promises to make finding cousins easier than ever. VeriSci is known for those tracking devices that allow pet owners to retrieve lost animals. The same technology is now being used on humans to store medical data, and—starting today—genealogical data.

A VeriSci press release describes how it works:

The GenTracker chip will be implanted under your skin in a painless procedure. Your doctor will upload your medical history, drug allergies, etc., leaving room for up to twenty generations of your family history. Using our software and any wireless-ready computer, a file in GEDCOM format may be quickly loaded into the subcutaneous memory chip.

What's really cool is the way the chip can interface with any computer on any wireless network. When you go to the library, your GEDCOM file will go with you. Hard drive crash? Your family tree is safe.

For a little more money, you can upgrade to a non-passive RFID GenTracker, with other cool features. The chip will detect any related person within 20 feet of you, and send out electronic pulses alerting you to his or her presence. (Of course, this will only work if both of you have GenTrackers implanted, and have uploaded your family trees.) The strength of the pulses will vary according to the degree of relation: a seventh cousin twice removed might barely register, while a sibling might cause your arm to twitch.

I don't know if I want to carry my family around with me everywhere (imagine the twitching at family reunions!), but this is certainly an exciting new way to combine my hobbies of genealogy and body mutilation.

[Image source]

Mom, This is Boring. . . Can I Watch Cartoons?

From webpronews.com:

This Grave Brought To You By...

Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer | 2005-09-09

Here's a nice formula: Technology + Creativity=I Have No Idea What To Make Of That. A Miami man has invented a video headstone to help extend the commemoration of the dearly departed.

I can see it now.

"Grandpa: Sponsored in part by Jack Daniels and Ben Gay. Thanks for the Memories."

The Vidstone Serenity Panel, the brainchild of Floridian inventor and entrepreneur Sergio Aguirre, is a tombstone equipped with a solar panel powered weather resistant LCD screen designed to play a 10-minute video dedication to the deceased.

With a $1500 price tag, visitors can enjoy the presentation at the rate of $100 a year. It has a shelf life of about 15 years (or until the warranty runs out, sometime between one and ten years).

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

New Ways to Enliven Your Gravesite

From the The Beaver County (Pa.) Times/Allegheny Times:

Memorable trends
April Johnston, Times Staff
06/12/2005

The death industry hasn't changed much over the years. Most people get laid out and buried. It's solemn, it's simple, it's predictable.

Until now.

[snip]

[W]ith the growing popularity of genealogy, [monument dealers] Steckman and Dioguardi are recommending their clients not only carve the years of their birth and death into their gravestone, but the day and month, too.

[snip]

Enter Robert Barrows.

Barrows is a sculptor, television commercial producer, songwriter and author from San Mateo, Calif., who could soon add patent-holder to his resume.

He is in the process of patenting the "Video-Enhanced Grave Marker," a hollowed-out headstone that holds a computer chip and flat-screen TV, so people can record video messages before they die for loved ones and even strangers to watch - using remote controls and headsets - after they've passed. He estimates his invention would add $4,000 to the cost of a headstone.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Putting days and months on gravestones? Now, that's nuts.

Dead Dude, You're Gettin' a Dell

From the Los Angeles Times of June 5, 2005:

History Exhumed Via Computer Chip

Embedded electronic devices allow a cemetery's visitors to connect with some of the dead and learn their stories.

By Cecilia Rasmussen, Times Staff Writer

In Altadena, from 6 feet under, the dead speak.

Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum was founded in 1882, the year downtown Los Angeles first glowed with electric lights. Now the graveyard is illuminating Los Angeles' past: A high-tech headstone "library" tells the stories of the dearly departed.

Jae Carmichael, whose family founded the cemetery, hopes that a little technology can help visitors who want to know more about the dead than is told by two dates separated by a dash. The cemetery plans to embed a Memory Medallion, a coin-sized, stainless steel-encased computer chip, in 50 of its tombstones. About a dozen are in place so far.

[snip]

The devices coax stories out of stones, offering text and images about the dead in four- to five-minute silent minimovies. Visitors can take laptop computers among the giant oaks and Himalayan deodar cedar trees or use a hand-held computer with assistance from the cemetery office. The medallions are activated when connected to a "touch wand," allowing visitors to download photos and a narrative. Although the medallions are wired for sound, audible stories are not yet available.

[snip]

Computerized grave markers eventually could be able to simulate the deceased's image in a hologram, allowing visitors to carry on virtual-reality conversations with the dead. But dubious observers worry that such technology could be used to rewrite history.

"While this offers an exciting chance to hear voices from our past, at the same time, it provides descendants a tempting opportunity to beef up Grandpa's resume," said Michele Zack, Altadena historian and author of the recently published book "Altadena: Between Wilderness and City."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]