Genealogy This Week - 17 October 2009
Our weekly compilation of interesting new tools, resources and stories for genealogists:
Facebook's We're Related Application in Trouble Again - We were the first genealogy website to report extensively about privacy issues and Facebook (for the latest see Regulator Finds Facebook has Serious Privacy Gaps). Some of the most egregious privacy issues surround third-party applications on Facebook such as the popular genealogy application We're Related. Now Facebook has taken a hard line with We're Related and another popular genealogy application Family Tree. This time, however, the issue is not privacy but misleading advertising. Both applications have been temporarily suspended. You can find out the details by reading the source article. [Link]
How Big is Facebook? - Speaking of Facebook, have you ever wondered how much data Facebook stores? With over 300 million users, this must be a lot of data. The most recent estimate suggests that Facebook runs 30,000 servers and processes an amazing 25 terabytes of data every day. To put that in perspective, Facebook delivers every day more than 1,000 times the content found in the volume of mail delivered daily by the US Postal Service. And the most popular feature on Facebook? Photographs. People like looking at photographs of their friends. Facebook now has 20 billion photographs. [Link]
Windows 7 Launches Next Week - Windows 7 launches on October 22nd. This is the new operating system from Microsoft that promises to be a marked improvement over Vista and Windows XP. If you are interested in becoming an early adapter of the new operating system, the review by Techradar is perhaps the best one to help you identify which edition of Windows 7 to buy (there are six different versions to chose from). Bottom line - get the Home Premium edition. [Link]
Windows 7 to Usher in a New Era of Computing - The Economist Magazine has a thoughtful article on how Windows 7 will usher in a new era of cloud computing. In the future, less computing will be done on home computers and more will be done in huge data centers known as 'clouds'. For anyone who is a Facebook user, cloud computing has already arrived. Google is also a heavy cloud computing system. [Link]
Google to Launch an Electronic Bookstore - Google announced this week that they plan to launch an online store in the first half of next year that will deliver electronic books to any device with a web browser. This is a market that is currently dominated by Amazon's Kindle. A large fight for the e-book market is looming. [Link]
A Camera That Can Capture Your Entire Life - A new camera will be hitting stores in 2010 that promises to record every day of your life. Called the ViconRevue, the camera was originally designed to jog the memories of people with Alzheimer's disease by reminding them of what they did each day. The camera is worn around the neck like a pendant and takes a picture every 30 seconds or whenever a person enters a new environment. Just think of the genealogy implications. Remember, you read about it here first. [Link]
