Monday Recap for the Week of Dec. 13-19, 2010

The past week has been a very active one for the technology side of things, including a couple really big announcements last week from our engineers at Geni 🙂

The Genealogy Sphere

• More celebrities sign on to trace their genealogy (Denver Post) – Guests are revealed for the new season of Who Do You Think You Are.
• Tracing the Past Street by Street with AddressingHistory (Programmable Web) – Very interesting app for Scottish researchers.
• Distance Teaching in Genealogy (Famhist Blog) – Lee provides some great tips on how to conduct remote learning for genealogists.
• Iowa families preserve recipes for future generations (Des Moines Register) – Do you have a family cookbook?  I use mine every time I make lasagna 🙂
• Family Tree Week (The Messenger) – The UK’s inaugural family history awareness campaign kicks off next week.  Interestingly, their survey says 42% of responders have already begun researching their family history.  That’s a pretty good percentage.
• Word Lens: Augmented Reality App Translates Street Signs Instantly (Wired) – Very cool app that I had a chance to test this weekend.  My review: still has a little bit of work to go, but it’s definitely magical the first time you see it work.
• Find out what’s in a word, or five, with the Google Books Ngram Viewer (Google) – Definitely worth checking out for its significance in research, both of language itself and for historical trends.
• Applying The Scientific Method to Genealogical Research (Steve Danko) – A great, running series (this is part 1, with future articles linked at the bottom) for treating genealogy as more than just a hobby.
• Mac or Windows for Genealogy? (About.com) – Kimberly: They both have web browsers 🙂

On Geni

• Updates: Removing Media and Private Profile Discussions – A couple minor enhancements.
• Featured Project: American Football Players – Reveals some great profiles for football players past and present.
• Geni API Feedback – Some initial feedback on the Geni API.
• Translating Websites – We announce the release of our translation software to the open source community.
• Visiting Cemeteries – Genealogy tips for trips to find your ancestors’ gravestones.
• Introducing the Geni API – Our official release of the Geni API.
• Season of Sharing – Guest article by Grant Brunner with some good tips for the holidays.
• Interview with Todd Knowles – Short interview with a sharp genealogist.
• Family Tree Tuesday: Charlotte Gainsbourg – We highlight the talented tree of the actor/singer.
• Introducing Surname Pages – Surname pages have been a big hit in the past week.  Have you checked yours out yet?
• Monday Recap for the Week of Dec. 6-12, 2010 – Last week’s recap.

Last Week’s Highlighted Profiles

• John Abraham
• Jeff Bridges
• Stephen Colbert
• Jane Birkin
• Dick Van Dyke

If you are interested in sharing links with us for our Monday Recap’s, please feel free to contribute by creating a new discussion in the Geni Blog project. Just paste the link to the article and why you think it’s valuable to the community.