Major improvement in iPhone text input, iPhone is now usable for text input

I found an application that is super fast and accurate for entering text into an iPhone. It is called Writing Pad from a company called ShapeWriter (www.ShapeWriter.com). It is a replacement for the notes application. It is not a complete replacement for text input in other applications such as SMS, but you can use it to create emails.

It is a free app and I strongly recommend that you try it out. I have been very impressed by it.

It is roughly 2-3 times more efficient than Graffiti text recognition, which was my favorite. I suspect that once I have become more comfortable with PI will be almost as fast as typing on a full size keyboard. And probably a lot faster than typing on a blackberry or other similar small keyboard device. I noticed that WritingPad is covered by a patent.

Unless you miss type a word, this system is amazingly accurate. It is even somewhat forgiving for mistypes (or miss-strokes) in suggesting real words that are close to what you entered.

The only downside is that you do need to be looking at the screen of the iPhone when entering data. With graffiti you didn't have to look at the screen, just write. I could actually type graffiti while I was driving and not even look at the screen of the Palm Pilot. The way WritingPad works is that you put your finger down on the screen and then drag it from key to key on the displayed keyboard. This takes much less effort and is more accurate and forgiving than picking up and dropping your finger on the next keys.

The number of strokes for the word "work" is 3 versus 10 strokes in Graffiti. This is three times more efficient. This would be less than the same number of strokes as typing only the first letter "W." using Graffiti.

And now that I think about this process, it is 2 times more efficient than typing on a keyboard as well plus it is more accurate. This is because with each keystroke, you have to a) identify the next key, b) move your finger to hover over the the key, c) drop your finger to touch the key, d) lift your finger. Using WritingPad you leave out the lifting and the targeting of the next key step is easier.

It has an optimized keyboard like a Dvorak keyboard which has all of the most used letters in the middle of the screen. I imagine that if someone took the time to learn that system they could enter text faster than on a full sized keyboard.

The application loads a 60,000 word dictionary into memory and it gives you several words to choose from if it doesn't recognized what you typed. You can also scroll through a bunch of similar words so you can select what you really meant. That has been one of my main complaints about the regular text input on an iPhone. If you don't get it right the first time, the iPhone seems like it picks the wrong word more often than what you wanted. Since data input has been the most disappointing feature of the iPhone, this is a huge step forward.

After using this application for a few days, it has led me to believe that it might be the most optimize data input device. I will still need to practice using it, but each time I use it, I am impressed with the genius behind it.

The experience of entering data using Writing Pad is a combination of Graffiti, cursive writing, and Chinese calligraphy. However, there are no curved lines, all of them are straight lines. Short words are a amazingly fast and easy. Longer words become a type of design that has an artistically random appearance. The lines that you draw stay on the screen until the word is complete.

Let me give one example of how well this application has worked for me. I composed a 6 paragraph email on my iPhone using WritingPad. I would have given up during the first paragraph if I had been using the regular iPhone keypad. Oh, and did I mention that I composed the email while on a plane was going through some major turbulence? I was able to compose a 6 paragraph email while the plane was bucking like a bronco. This would have NEVER had worked on the iPhone keyboard. I was very impressed with how accurate this was.

There are also a couple of other applications that have made the iPhone more useful. With useful tools like WritingPad and practice the iPhone can actually be used as a productive tool.

MyWay News: Web networking photos come back to bite defendants

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080719/D920QGJG0.html

Web networking photos come back to bite defendants
19, 4:36 AM (ET)
By ERIC TUCKER

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.
Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."

The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)

Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person's real name. But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person's MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.

"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."

Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a drunken driving crash that killed her passenger last year - until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.

The page featured photos of Buys - taken after the crash but before sentencing - holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.

"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."

Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.

But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.

One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.

Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.

"When you take those pictures like that, it's a hell of an impact," he said.

Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.

Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures - which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton's page - into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.

One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"

Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.

"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.

Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accurately reflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made it more likely he'd get prison over probation.

"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn't know how to react."

Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.

"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."

FoxNews: House Atwitter Over Rules Governing Video, Blog Posts

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,383444,00.html

House Atwitter Over Rules Governing Video, Blog Posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — Texas Rep. John Culberson uses his Blackberry to post blurbs about his work onto Twitter, a social networking site on the Internet. The Internet has set him free from unfair media reports and other barriers between him and his constituents, enabling him to better represent them in Congress, he says.

But Culberson's actions have put him in possible violation of House rules that appear to ban blogging or other work-related activities on non-House Web sites.

Current rules "have been interpreted to prohibit (House) members from posting official content outside of the House.gov domain," Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., chairman of the Congressional Commission on Mailing Standards, better known as the franking committee, wrote in a report late last month.

In a series of recommendations sent to House Administration Capitol Security Subcommittee Chairman Robert Brady, Capuano said some rules are necessary so as not to mix House official messages with commercial or political campaign material.

"Members of Congress who use taxpayer money to communicate with constituents should be held to the highest possible standard of independence — and the appearance of independence," he said last week.

"Official content" — like video — that is posted outside the House.gov domain should be clearly marked, should not appear alongside commercial or campaign content and should contain an exit notice for people linking out from the House.gov domain, Capuano recommended.

But those recommendations have riled Republicans like Culberson, who argue they limit his communications. The spat has reached the highest levels of the House, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi backing Capuano by saying his work won't restrict but will rather loosen the rules. In response, House Minority Leader John Boehner has rung alarm bells over possible Democratic-led censorship of the Internet.

By communicating on Twitter, Culberson said he can tell his constituents to watch a live video he's about to broadcast on a site called Qik.com. By blasting an announcement that he's going to hold a town hall meeting, Culberson said anyone with a mobile e-mail device, an Internet connection or a phone can tap into the discussion. Or if a vote on a confusing or quickly-moving bill is coming up he can shoot out marching orders as needed to his supporters.

"It's a great way to instantaneously communicate with a large number of people," Culberson said.

Banning video postings by House members also hands the media an advantage they wouldn't have if he were allowed to use new technology to get out his side of the story, beating biased reporters to the punch, he said.

"How do I distinguish between Twitter and e-mail? There is no distinguishing. How do I distinguish between my interview with you on FOX News, and this live video that I'm broadcasting through Qik? How do you distinguish between my interview on Qik, which is live, with an interview on The New York Times?" asked Culberson, pronouncing the Web site as "quick," in an interview with FOX News last week.

Culberson said he believes lawmakers should face few, if any, restrictions on Internet use. If House members run astray of good taste, their constituents will let them know.

But Capuano counters that the rules — while they don't specifically address capabilities of sites like Qik — appear to ban such activity for good reason, and Culberson learned the lesson last week when the two men got into a one-on-one confrontation.

In a video posted online of his interview with FOX News, Culberson relayed how Capuano got irritated when Culberson apparently tried to get Capuano on camera, but hadn't asked him first. After the video was posted, Capuano ended up receiving a torrent of e-mails and phone calls from Culberson backers.

Admitting he might have jumped the gun by posting the confrontation, Culberson said he apologized to Capuano and pledged not to film him again without his permission.
Still, Culberson defended his decision to go to Qik to post the video, saying he thought a rule was going to be voted on and he felt it was his only recourse to let Capuano know how the public felt.
"I told him today — and he's a good guy, and he understood this — I said, 'Mike, you're going to have about as much luck regulating the Internet as King Knut did when he ordered his men to put this throne on the beach, and he tried to order the tide to stop," Culberson said, summing up the phone call in a video message to his constituents.
Click here to view the Culberson video of the interview with FOX News.
FOX News' Chad Pergram and Gregory Simmons contributed to this report.
/**/

FamilySearch Web Site Enhanced by FamilyLink

(From page 80 of the July 2008 Ensign magazine)
News of the Church

FamilySearch Web Site Enhanced by FamilyLink

A partnership with FamilyLink.com will improve navigation on FamilySearch.org, reduce research time, and allow major search engines to comb the Church’s Family History Library Catalog.

The new Web elements provided by FamilyLink.com will allow users to link directly to other sources, post comments, and make contributions, such as adding missing information to a source. Some of the enhancements will be implemented in 2008.

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=8ac43645a2cba110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1
Ensign
July 2008
Volume 38, Number 07

LinkedIn networking site joins $1bn club

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/446fef0a-3ca0-11dd-b958-0000779fd2ac.html

LinkedIn networking site joins $1bn club
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: June 18 2008 01:52 Last updated: June 18 2008 01:52

The biggest online social network intended for professional use has been valued at more than $1bn, putting it among a small group of private internet companies to have crossed that threshold before going public.
LinkedIn, whose members use the site to do things such as making professional contacts, recruiting staff or finding new jobs, said it had raised $53m from a group of venture capitalists led by Bain Capital, taking the total raised to $80m in all.

The latest investment, for about 5 per cent of the company, gives LinkedIn a “pre-money” valuation of $1.015bn, said Dan Nye, chief executive.

Though it pales beside the $15bn valuation for Facebook implied by a Microsoft investment of $240m last year, the latest stake in LinkedIn is still one of the most eye-catching investments in the fast-growing social networking business.

News Corp paid $580m for the parent company of MySpace, then with 17m members in the US, just as the social networking boom was taking off three years ago. This year, AOL paid $850m for Bebo, which claims more than 40m members.

Asked if he had held talks about selling out to a bigger media company, Mr Nye said LinkedIn “had discussions with the cast of characters” but decided to go it alone because of the company’s significant growth potential.

Launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, a veteran of online payment company PayPal, the network has 23m members, with more than 1m new ones joining each month. Though it has its headquarters in Silicon Valley, it also claims to operate the largest online professional network in Europe.

The company’s record in finding ways to make money sets it apart from other social networks that have struggled to meet high expectations for advertising revenue, said Jeff Glass, a partner of Bain Capital.

Besides carrying job advertising, LinkedIn charges members a subscription for “premium” services that let them do things like make professional introductions through the network.
It also has a “software as a service” business, charging a subscription to corporate recruiters to help them manage their hiring on the site.

It will generate revenues of $75m-$100m this year, more than double 2007, Mr Nye predicted.
The company has been profitable since 2006 and raised its latest round of capital to strengthen its balance sheet rather than to fund operations, he added.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Facebook heads MySpace in unique visitors

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/302914bc-40a7-11dd-bd48-0000779fd2ac.html

Facebook heads MySpace in unique visitors
By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Published: June 22 2008 23:32 Last updated: June 22 2008 23:32

Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time, according to one popular measure of internet traffic.
Facebook attracted more than 123m unique visitors in May, an increase of 162 per cent over the same period last year according to ComScore, a company that monitors websites. That compared with 114.6m unique visitors at MySpace, Facebook’s leading rival, whose traffic grew just 5 per cent during the same period, ComScore said.

The findings mark the first time that Facebook, launched in 2004, has taken a significant lead in unique visitors, after ComScore’s April traffic figures showed the rivals in a virtual tie. They come at a time of change inside Facebook, as the one-time upstart attempts to transform itself into a leading media company. Several members of the original executive team have left the company in recent weeks.

The departures include Adam D’Angelo, chief technology officer and personal confidant of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 23-year-old founder and chief executive; and Matt Cohler, Facebook’s first official hire, who was in charge of product development.
Mr Zuckerberg has appointed Sheryl Sandberg as his second-in-command. Ms Sandberg, who helped develop Google’s lucrative advertising business, is expected to play a crucial role in the development of Facebook’s revenue model.

The management changes come as the company is under pressure to justify the $15bn valuation it drew last year in an investment round with Microsoft.
Facebook is a private company and does not disclose official sales or profit figures. But people close to the company have claimed that it made $150m in sales last year. That figure is expected to grow to $300m-$350m this year as it attempts to broaden its revenue stream.
Counting unique visitors is just one way to measure the website popularity. Many sites, including Facebook, measure audience engagement by tracking the number of repeat, or “active” users of their sites, leaving out those who visit a site once and never return. MySpace claims to have about 110m active users, Facebook about 80m.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Yahoo! News: McCain says using Google to vet VP candidates

McCain says using Google to vet VP candidates

Mon Jun 9, 4:56 PM ET
It turns out choosing a vice president isn't that complicated after all.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain joked on Monday that Google, the popular Internet search engine, had made investigating his list of potential candidates a little bit easier.

"You know, basically it's a Google," he said to laughter at a fund-raising luncheon when asked how the selection process was going. "What you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

Vice presidential candidates go through rigorous screening to determine whether they would help a White House aspirant in a general election -- and to make sure there is nothing in their background that could be damaging down the road.

McCain, 71, has faced high scrutiny in his search because of his age.

The Arizona senator, who wrapped up his place on the top of the Republican ticket earlier this year, said he still had some time to complete the search for a number two.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, editing by Alan Elsner)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

TimeOnline: First preview of Google's Android phone

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4032446.ece


From Times Online
May 30, 2008
First preview of Google's Android phone

The device allows owners to unlock it by drawing on the screen, and includes a built-in compass to help with navigation

Jonathan Richards



Click here for a slideshow of Android prototypes and other phones

Owners of the new Google-powered mobile phone will be able to unlock the handset by drawing a secret shape on the screen.

The new 'signature unlocking' tool was among the features revealed during a sneak preview in California yesterday.

Other highlights include a built-in compass that will allow people to orientate maps as they use their phone to scout out a restaurant or venue, and a customisable homepage that lets people bookmark their favourite web pages.

The device - which is unlocked by drawing a shape only the owner knows on a nine-square grid - will also include a magnifying tool, to make zooming in on web content easier on a small screen, and a mobile version of the game Pac Man.

Demonstrating the device at a developers' conference in San Francisco, Andy Rubin, who heads up the project at Google, declined to give a release date, but said that the first phones powered by Google's Android operating system will appear in the second half of the year.
Google will not make the phone, but has helped develop the software that handset manufacturers will install in their devices. Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, and Motorola are among the companies that have said they will produce phones that run on Android.

The device on which Mr Rubin gave the demonstration (a video is here) had a touch-sensitive screen, but the software will work equally well on other devices, he said, including those with a so-called 'tracking ball', which has been used by BlackBerry.

Observers of the demonstration said the software bore a resemblance to that used on Apple's iPhone, which is also a touchscreen device, and which allows owners to place icons linking to sites such as YouTube on the homepage.

Google demonstrated the device to about 3,000 software developers at an annual conference, and said that it hoped developers would create all kinds of applications that owners of Android phones will be able to download from the internet and install on their devices.

Android is what is known as an 'open-source' operating system, meaning that developers can access the code and create software that works with the device. Apple has announced a similar inititiave which allows developers to create software for the iPhone.

Google, which handles about 80 per cent of search queries in the UK, also hopes that by helping to produce a phone that will make it easier to use the web, it will tap a new source of revenue - namely advertisements that appear on web pages viewed on mobile phones.

The search company reported revenues of just over $5 billion in the last quarter, but the vast majority came from adverts viewed on personal computers. In Western Europe, the spend on mobile advertising is expected to rise from $1 billion in 2008 to $1.5 billion this year.

In a bid to take on Google in mobile, Microsoft announced last week that users of its e-mail and messaging tools on mobile phones would for the first time see ads on such services.

According to a M:Metrics, a company which tracks use of the mobile internet, 62 per cent of search queries by UK mobiles are performed by Google, compared with 7 per cent by MIcrosoft.

Breitbart: Google blurs faces in street view map pictures

[I read this article with interest, as I have family member's whose faces apear in Google's Street Level View.]
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080514214733.2n13nqsx&show_article=1
Google blurs faces in street view map pictures

May 14 05:48 PM US/Eastern
Google said Wednesday it is blurring the faces of people in street scenes pictured at its free online mapping service.

The US Internet colossus said it was testing the technology in updated "Street View" pictures woven into its map of Manhattan and, if successful, would put it to work across its mapping website.

While blurring faces may reduce complaints that snapshots of street life posted with Google Maps results could violate people's privacy, that is not the motivation for applying the technology, a Google spokeswoman told AFP.

"It is something we have been looking into for quite some time," she said.
"The purpose of Street View isn't looking at people, it's looking at buildings and locations. Obviously, we want to take steps in protecting people's privacy, but from the beginning we've been committed to doing this."

Google has been working for a year on a way to automatically detect and blur faces in pictures, company software engineer Andrea Frome wrote in a Google blog post.

"Working at Street View-scale is a tough challenge that required us to advance state-of-the-art automatic face detection," Frome wrote.

"We continue working hard to improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery."
Frome pointed out that Manhattan street view pictures were also modified to allow people to look up to admire skyscrapers and the cityscape.

Street View photos were added to Google online maps of major US cities a year ago.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Family History Experiences at the "Who Do You Think You Are Conference" in London, May 2008

We had some great family history moments at the Who Do You Think You Are conference in London on May 2-4, 2008. Many of the attendees to the conference were new to doing their family history research. Many of them were inspired by the Who Do You Think You Are TV show and wanted to know more about their own family histories. That TV show does a great job of showing that everyone has a rich family history and now everyone wants to know more about their own family history. I am looking forward to the American version of that TV show that is supposedly coming soon to our country.

You can see the look in someone’s eyes or in their expressions when you have found a major breakthrough in their family history. There were many experiences that I witnessed in our booth at the conference. It is so exciting when people have that “Ah-ha” moment and make a valuable connection with their past. I will recount a few of these that I got to see.

The first one is one of the more exciting break- throughs that I have seen first -hand. This was when a nice lady was inquiring about her grandfather. She knew her grandfather’s name and that was about it. I typed the name into the ‘global search box’ on the front page of WorldVitalRecors.com. Frequently I have no idea what the results will be, especially if the surname is rare. In this case there were not that many results for “John” and “Kyberd”. The UK census had great multi-generational information for the Kyberd family. However, the results from one of our great Quintin Publication databases showed the true power of the large and rapidly growing collection that we have on WorldVitalRecords.com. In the book titled “East Anglian Pedigrees” we hit the jackpot, so to speak. There was a type of pedigree chart on page 130 of that book that had the entire Kyberd family tree dating back to the 1500s. This chart had husband, wife, and children’s names along with birth, Baptism, Marriage, and Death dates along with geographic locations. This single search found information that would have taken a life time to discover any other way. The look in the eyes of this delighted family history research changed from shock and amazement to profound gratitude to whoever had worked the many hours to compile such a great resource for them.
(http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/SingleIndexIndView.aspx?ix=qcd521_EastAnglianPedigrees&hpp=1&rf=*,z*&qt=i&java=NO&highlight=kyberd,john&zpage=136#centerapplet)
Another example was of husband and wife and their teen-aged daughter that were trying to find out more about their family tree. The husband knew the name of his grandmother and her approximate birth location and birth year. After searching for her, we found once again the multi-generational family information available in the UK Census. To his delight and amazement, he found that his name “Jonathan” was also shared by his great-grandfather which he had never been told. For him to realize that he was named after his great-grandfather gave him a new connection with his past and the desire to know more about him.

Another curious example was by 2 sisters that wanted to learn more about their grandfather. He was a famous chef at a prestigious hotel in London. I guess that he was famous like a Wolfgang Puck and hat quite the reputation that the family enjoyed. However, he was born in Switzerland and I know that we have a very small (but growing) Swiss collection on our site. However, we typed his name into the global search box and found 2 instances of him in the Ellis Island collection. The sisters looked puzzled and said that can’t be him because he lived here in England. He did not immigrate to the US. So we clicked through to the links for more information. It turned out that as a young man their grand-father had been the chef on the 2nd largest passenger ship behind the Titanic. I guess that after the Titanic sunk, the ship that their grand-father worked on was the largest in the world. He had been the chef and had to register each time his ship dropped off passengers at Ellis Island and he went a-shore to look around. They then began discussing what it meant for him and his career that he had learned his art as a chef on a luxury ship.

One of the things that I learned at the conference in London is how much the world is really connected. We had some trepidation about how well our collection of billions of names and thousands of databases would be receive in the UK. Even though our non-US collection is growing rapidly it is still just a portion of our U.S. collection. U.S. Data is typically much easier to acquire that international data. However, almost every one of the hundreds that came to our booth had a reason to search for data in the UK and in the rest of the world especially the US, Canada, and Australia. To prove this point, a nice lady said that her entire extended family lives in the UK. She has done most of the genealogy for these relatives. However, she said “My grandfather had 2 brothers. One immigrated to Australia and one to America.” I know nothing about what became of them so I need your web service find about them and their families.

I love genealogy and family history. I love helping others find out more about their own family. This labor of love provides such great emotional pay off for those that feel the desire to learn more about their family history.