Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

Genealogy and History

• Michael John Neill at RootDig reminds us, despite what Ancestry's shaky leaf suggestions might say, the SSDI Last Residence is not always the Place of Death.

• The History and Genealogy Dept blog at St. Louis Public Library has been looking at Missouri's Odd Phenomena.  (Part 4) (Part 5)

• Susan Farrell Bankhead at Susan's Genealogy Blog is trying to help the LA Fire Department track down some photographs of fallen firefighters.

Technology and Social Media

• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star discusses the Ethics of Photo Restoration or Editing.  Should we use Photoshop to add someone to a photo, take someone away, or clear up teenage blemishes? His post reminded me of something I wrote in 1987 for a college newspaper, and I blogged about back in 2003. I suspect in 10 years, or earlier, we may be having similar questions concerning video editing.

• Dick Eastman at EOGN looks at a service called 1DollarScan that offers to scan, digitize, and OCR books for a dollar. ($1 per 100 pages.)

• Joanna Geary, focusing on the privacy and social media issues,  describes how she tracked down an entire family starting with one twitter post.

• Some using the Blogger platform may be interested in Google Scribe, which suggests words and phrases as you type.

• Discover Magazine's Not Exactly Rocket Science blog looks at hair-thin electronic skin, that can monitor hearts, the brain, and control video games. io9 also discusses the breakthrough.

Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy 
• Liz Haigney Lynch's Links at The Ancestral Archaeologist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral at Genealogy Insider