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9 Feb 2008
Introduction of Speaker by Brian Cooper
Main Presentation: Gordon Clarke – FamilySearch Web Services and 3rd Party Products
Gordon Clarke joined the Family and Church History Member Needs team over 2 years ago. He is coordinating Developer Services and Affiliate Marketing in addition to his product management responsibility for the FamilySearch Web Services. Previously Gordon was the founder and president of ici MEDIA. Over the last 25 years Gordon has organized and led numerous companies and projects, creating and delivering Internet, desktop computer, audio/video, and enterprise solutions for many different industries.
Gordon Clarke – FamilySearch Web Services and 3rd Party Products
I really enjoy users groups and have been a big advocate of software user groups. I worked with various software developers' user groups in California and now in Utah I work with the Flex user group. Which is geek speak for flash developers that are using flash for enterprise or internet applications. There is some connection from that resent experience and what I am doing now at the Church developing a community for software developers that are working to interface with our new FamilySearch.
Web Services and 3rd Party Products - Web services is where a programmer can access a website. He does it through means different than just launching a browser. 3rd Party Products when you get right down to logic it should probably be second party products. 3rd Party Products is determined in the industry if you look at FamilySearch offering media services and they are offering it through another entity other than FamilySearch we call it 3rd Party. This presentation is going to be about our web services and now it is going to be made available and accessed to third parties.
To kick off the introduction to it I like to play two minutes of Sister Virginia Pierce talk at Presidents Hinckley's funeral where she talked about "7 Generations".
"In the year 1837 in the back country of Ontario, Canada, John E. Page preached the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Wearing the coat that Joseph Smith put on his back in Kirtland, Brother Page and his companion taught the gospel to the Hinckley and Judd families as well as many others. Lois Judd Hinckley, Gordon B. Hinckley's great-grandmother was among those baptized. With her children and other family members she followed the saints south. By 1843 they found themselves in Springfield, Illinois. Her son Ira Nathaniel Hinckley now about 14 years of age found his way to Nauvoo. He became a skilled blacksmith and laborer, he married. In 1850 on their way to the Salt Lake valley cholera claimed Ira's young wife and his half brother. He buried them himself on the same day. And he picked up his 11 month old baby and finished the journey.
Ira would spend the rest of his life answering the needs of a colonizing church. Cove Fort stands today as the product of his able workmanship and devotion. Ira Nathaniel's son Bryant S. Hinckley, father of President Hinckley was an educator, teaching at the Brigham Young Academy and LDS Business College. He was president of the largest stake in the Church for many years. He knew heartache and faced challenges that would test the faith of the strongest saint but he never wavered in devotion to the Lord and his Church.
Speaking at a devotional at BYU in 1999 President Hinckley recalled "These three generations of my forebears who have been faithful in the Church." Reflecting on their lives he said "I look down at my daughter and her daughter who is my grandchild and her children my great-grandchildren I suddenly realized that I stood right in the middle of these seven generations, three before me and three after me. And there passed through my mind a sense of tremendous obligation that was mine. To pass on all that I would receive as an inheritance from forebears to the generations that now come after me." As part of those generations who have would come after him we thank him and our mother for the temple and strength of their wake between our forebears and us. Our parents loved us, they taught us, corrected us, laughed and prayed for and with us, we honor them. And we likewise pledge to pass on to future generations our complete devotion to the Savior and his Church."
What this causes me to reflect about - I really like that 7 generation thing. Again every time I say something I am NOT making a Church announcement that we are going to have a seven generation program. When you get your three generations of descendants totally organized, picture and audio, and then you get your three generations above and put it in some electronic file and ship it to the Church. OK, I am not talking about a 7 generation program. I just want to highlight in your minds the idea that this is about family up and down. Hopefully that message comes across. Especially with the tools that are surfacing on the internet because not only can you learn about your living relatives and share information, and photos and divide up genealogy work. This work of trying to pull together the family both the living and the dead is really what we should be about at this time.
Third-party websites and desktop products are quickly making it possible to gather and share information about our deceased and living relatives. That is what I am thrilled about, third-party programs about desktop products and it's also about web based applications. I am going to share how those can work together.
The press release went out just last week announcing the FamilySearch Developers Conference. We will talk a little bit about this; I will read two paragraphs about that. "FamilySearch announced today its first annual conference for the software and Web application developers. The 2008 FamilySearch Developers Conference will be held on Wednesday, March 12, 2008, in conjunction with the Brigham Young University Computerized Family History and Genealogy Conference in Provo, Utah. FamilySearch engineers and community developers will discuss new FamilySearch Web Services (API) and share best practices from its application to a variety of popular environments. Attendees can register online at http://FamilyHistoryConferences.byu.edu/familysearch.
FamilySearch now has a full platform for software developers – genealogy content, interfaces, tools, code, support and training. This platform enables developers to launch a new business or boost their target markets by adding features that are programmatically linked to FamilySearch's expanding online resources. "Developers can produce solutions that integrate private, shared, and public data about living and deceased individuals, including rich stories, photos, audio, and video. FamilySearch is putting developers into the driver's seat to do what they do best – effectively create and deliver innovative products wherever there is a need and profit," said Gordon Clarke, FamilySearch Web Services Product Manager.
This idea of a platform is a tool so everybody is not waiting for the Church to come out with the next release of its next product. That the whole industry is working on - multiple products for multiple purposes that are sharing some common data amongst them so everybody develops. I put together this little diagram (stadium) that this platform is not just one stadium it's a league. I call it the FSGL – FamilySearch Genealogy League. It's a league and hopefully as big organizations join with us you will have multiple teams and multiple spectators and multiple players. It will be more of a united work that can happen.
Our Wildly Important Declaration
Provide to Software Developers
The Family History Platform of Choice
Technology and Content
Developer Services
Marketing Assistance
My objectives have been in creating this platform is to provide the technology. The FamilySearch group has done a great job on providing content. By content you have heard about new FamilySearch - the all new centralized database that is working on a master family tree. You may have heard about Record Search this is where online you will view the complete archives of the granite vault. It will take about 6 years to get all those microfilms digitized but all of that is going online.
Developer Services I will share a little bit later on what we are doing to make it easier for software developers to make new product. Then, lastly how we can help encourage the development of new product so that there is a financial incentive for this league of software developers.
I made mention about the March 12th Developers Conference. That is a day before the Tech Workshop, which is the day before the two days Family History Computerized Genealogy Conference. At the Tech workshop we are going to have the people that we have products that we have been working with - that interface with new FamilySearch. That was going to be more of a tech talk - it is if their difficulties or methodologies interface with NFS. Then at the Computerized Conference, Friday the fourteenth we are going to have a Product Showcase, so that the early adopters of this interface will be able to show their ability to search NFS and draw associations to choose to synchronize their data with our data. It is all happening the week of March 12th. I am personally quit excited it is a beginning of a new era, I think, in sharing the development of software products and data.
So What About PAF?
I start right out I am talking to a PAF User Group. What About PAF? What I can say, what I won't say, what I can say. No! I am only going to tell you what I can say. What I can say is:
- FamilySearch is very focused on the successful roll-out and maintenance of the New FamilySearch website.
-Support of PAF 5.2 application will continue for many years into the future.
-There are many software companies working on products that will be compatible with the PAF file and the New FamilySearch.
-Some individuals and companies are working on New FamilySearch compatible products using the PAF Add-In Software Development Kit with the New FamilySearch Web Services (API).
The NFS compatible products use something that I'm responsible for and our department has been shipping for four or five years. It's what's called a Software Development Kit and this Software Development Kit gives examples and instruction and sample code so that software developers can create files that create programs that read and write PAF. An example of that is Ohana Software they use the PAF SDK, the shorten version, to make their product. The other organization that is very familiar with the reading and writing of PAF is Ancestral Quest. In fact Ancestral Quest is going to be presenting at the Developers Conference how to use the PAF SDK to store information that is capable with NFS.
Right there before I go on let me tackle the questions so they don't brew. Does anyone have questions about PAF and then I will move on.
(Answers only)
-SDK is a term in the industry for Software Development Kit. It is given to programmers so they know how to write compatible programs with the PAF file format.
- I will make comments about Legacy when I give a complete list later on. They were one of our early affiliates. We worked with about ten of them before opening the doors to anybody else. That smaller group was very, very helpful and successful in getting this interface done.
-Support is looked at more in a training and systems support.
-The question is in layman's term is somebody does product using the SDK what does that mean. The PAF application has a menu that goes across the top. And in that menu across the top when you click on it, it gives a drop down or a sub-menu. The first thing that PAF SDK does is show people how to put new menu items in that tools sub-menu. In that sub-menu they can call their program that will read and write to the same data on the file disk that the PAF application is writing to. So you as a user will seem like you are using one product because it is in the menu and it is writing to the same data the other menu items are writing to. So that means that they can integrate their application add-on with the PAF product.
- Let me clarify that Ohana Software is the company name; PAF Insight is the product name. So if you are familiar with PAF Insight they definitely will have a NFS compatible upgrade or product. I can't make announcements for them in detail but I know they have been working with this. I have seen their demonstrations.
- I can say from my stand point, looking at what is happening in the Third Party market place there is wonderful solutions. Whether or not if the Church will decide to do something new with PAF I cannot comment. The future has unknowns in it.
- I would direct you to a website which is DevNet.FamilySearch.org.
- I can speak for myself and my endeavors that I am seeing wonderful solutions in the third-party market place. Subjects about what the Church will or will not do in the future is that the future has unknowns.
-FamilyTree Maker – the question we paused on here was PAF. Do we have any more PAF questions or I will move on with web services so you can understand how Third-Party Products can access NFS.
- He said that he is aware of a knowledge document that in the cases for questions about PAF's future might answer some of these questions. He is going to route that to me because I was not aware of exactly what that knowledge document says.
What is a Web Service?
I kind of gave you a preview of Web Services. FamilySearch is making it possible for many existing and new software products to work in conjunction with New FamilySearch through the use of Web Services.
Software developers, programmers, web masters, or "computer geeks" will be excited to hear about FamilySearch Web Services. If you are one of these, want to become one, know one, are married to one, or have a son or daughter that is one, tell them about FamilySearch Web Services and the Developers Conference.
(He showed a video of "Got the Knack?" a Dilbert cartoon.)
The point was that engineers are a special wonderful class, but they always talk a different language than we do. They have motives that might be different than our motives. That's my market place. Again, spread the word if you potential one of these geeks, or someone that has the knack. Tell them about what we are doing at FamilySearch Web Services.
How I have to go a little bit into geek talk. I want to do it slow so I can learn if these concepts can be learned by the everyday genealogist. I have been told that the majority of you have been working with computers for a long time.
Simple concepts – Web Services makes it possible to programmatically exchange data with a website. To talk to a website and get data back. So we have a website representing the FamilySearch Tree and we have a product. The way it talks to it is it sends a list of letters. http://api.familysearch.org/familytree/v1/person/N9CR-1M7 And you many have seen these letters coming and going in the location bar the address bar of your browser. I won't go into it but it is readable. What you get back is a bunch of data that is in a format called XML. The reason that is helpful is that it separates all that information so that a programmer can say "Ah, I can write a program that will know what to do with this so it can be displayed on your screen and action can be taken upon it. If you have ever heard of HTML, XML is a Mark-up language that programmers like; it is more machineable if you will than HTML.
(He shows an example of what can be returned in making search into the New FamilySearch web services.) In HTML if you have seen it you have seen the little brackets, the greater than and the less than sign. Those are what isolate these various words so they give meaning to them rather than just have a sentence. So it kind of chops up the sentence so programmers can know what those words are. Basically this is showing the hierarchal order of how information comes out of our NFS. That they are the person, person ID, there is the information about the person, with the gender, the living, alternative arches and the assertions.
This system is all about assertions that relates to the event. Because it has this beginning and ending descriptions programmers can get that text and write a program that knows what to do with it and what the organization is, what assertions is associated with what person and what events are associated with that person. I won't go into this format just saying that XML is the easiest programming data to read. They translate this easy data into stuff that is even more complicated than this.
Remaining Agenda
-New FamilySearch
-The "Pipeline"
-FamilySearch Family Tree & Record Search
Cross-linking ("ornamenting the tree")
-Why use Third-Parties
-Third-party Products
-Developer Services
-Affiliate Programs
-DBA for Genealogy Society of Utah (GSU) sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
-Branding used for Family History products and services
I am training myself to use FamilySearch as we moving more to a non-member market place. To say FamilySearch and in effect that is the organization that I work for. For branding purpose FamilySearch is what we are going to use for everything dealing with genealogy.
-Website for searching and sharing family history information
-Online repository for genealogical records
-Website for learning about and accessing resources from the Family History Library
-New website with a combined, collaborative family tree
-The "new" will go away after more data and features are added to it.
Back last June for certain temple districts those that heard about it saw new.familysearch.org. If you were in that temple district you were able to actually register. We have been rolling-out to the temple districts, there are over 20 now. More and more people are able to access the new.familysearch.org. What I wanted to highlight was that eventually the "new" will go away.
And the process of that is www.familysearch.org an then we have the new.familysearch.org, the new.familysearch.org will be a new program that we have to move data from new resources to and data from the FamilySearch website to. So it has been all combined together. If you go to search by index on the www.familysearch.org you can search by Ancestral File, IGI and other sources. Those have all been merged together on the NFS with the addition of membership historical information and temple historical information. So that is all in one place now and the beauty of the new online system is we will get on going updates from temple activity and from membership activity.
If you are online in your district and your ward person is on the ball and they are recording deaths or baptisms on a regular basis they will show up on the website for those that have the right to see it. If you go through the new process and take the names to the temple because of these on going updates, it is an immediate update really, they get entered in at the temple then the activity that happens at the temple will be recorded on the website.
Before I move onto how programs are moving to locations are there any general comments about all this data being put on the new.familysearch.org. (Answers only)
-Pedigree Resource File had a big merge and then there are some ongoing updates that go to it.
-There would be I think at some point storagement for members to submit to PRF they should be submitting to the new system, because then you have access to it. You should go to the new system directly then trying to get it to go to PRF.
-I will talk about all that new additional data further on in the conversation.
- When will the Wasatch Front get NFS – before the end of the year and it might be sooner.
There is the first look at the data – now we have new features being added to NFS. Every three months we go through new features. Hopefully on this new website before the end of the year we might see indexing on new website. Records Search on the new website.
So there will be new programs accessing new data on the new website. This last screen shows that when the work is all done that they get everything that we need onto the new system what will happen is the old system will fade away. The new system will drop off its "new dot". That is the progression we are going through in a very simple way.
Back to your question about the data – we call it "The Pipeline". There are crews all over the world that are digitizing information with cameras. That is coming in to online systems through many, many value added processes. That is why we call it "The Pipeline". The microfilm out of the libraries it is estimated that six or seven years all microfilm will be digitized and available online.
A third area is that we are teaming up with what is called "Record Access Affiliates". I will give you more clarification on this later. Record Access Affiliates partner with us and people that actually have the data, whether it is a national archive or a genealogy society. To help them get their information digitized and online. So we are in the roll of working with third parties to help additional records get online beyond what we're digitizing ourselves either through crews that go out or working at the granite vault.
The big part of this is the online index. How many of you have used the FamilySearch Indexing? Great! We plan to expand that volunteer force since about 150,000 now we're hopeful to reach a million volunteers doing it. Because if you can imagine all this data that is being put online. It needs to be indexed to be searchable. Not to call it a bottle neck, but I will call it a very, very important step in this pipeline is the indexing of information. There are ways to index it for fast retrieval to at least get people to the image and then there is a way to get all the vital information off of those records so that you have a more detailed search capability.
That will make all that stuff that has been indexed make it available through this word called "Record Search". Record Search you can see working on labs.familysearch.org. I will show you that URL a little bit later. That is where you can see what is coming, were we are prototyping, getting feedback before we actually release it to the Church at large. But there you can see the records search application. I will show you some samples of it. So if you look at the two worlds I am suggesting here the records world and the tree world it is part of the pipeline. Through the goodness of all the work of people that have drawn conclusions about lineages and have submitted that to us and then all of you that are going to be working on the NFS we are going to expand the availability of not only the number of names that we just search but how they are related and build that tree.
The next one is build the tree and draw the conclusions online so that people can share that information and discuss it and collaborate about it. Then on the back end we have a very, very large preservation effort. What that pipeline that I come back to is these two areas – Records Search and new Family Tree. Before I move on any questions about the difference between these two areas?
-I will show you in the next slide. The question was how do you get stuff out of Records Search into new Family Tree?
-Yes, that is what I call cross-linking internally.
Family Tree you have seen the demos you've been to presentations. You might have been on beta a couple of times. So you have a sense of what Family Tree is. (Common Pedigree, Identify Relatives, Reduce Duplication, Collaboration) Here is the look of it (shows slides).
Then Records Search is based upon Records (electronic information), Images (digital captured records) and Collections (Census and Lists, Migration, Military, Court and Legal Records and Vital Records). If you go to labs.familysearch.org you will see screens like this where you can search information, get back reports that you can re-filter and re-sort to narrow in and find people that might be your relative or might be somebody that you are researching. So that's Records Search
Now if you need to correlate data between two websites either you do it manually or if you have web services both directions a program could be written that will bring the both in. What I am looking at here is the idea of what we call it an Affiliate Product. We have a certification program so that if an Affiliate Product is searching the records search, get the information so that that product can be used to review that data and associate it with their local database then that information in the future will be able to put into NFS not all the information, the image doesn't go all the way through, not all the detail data is going to go all the way through, but probably enough to say what the information is and what person does it relate to and how do I get additional information. So with that in the Family Tree then the Family Tree will go back to their original online source if you want to get the image and additional information. So that way everybody doesn't need to get a copy of everything they are concerned about they just have to keep a save and remember how to look it up to get the additional information.
Question was asked and response: Hopefully having the family tree as your back bone that's where you are looking to see where that is happening and where the duplicates are to know where you are at. Where do you see the merging happening? Let me review a little bit about the family tree.
The Family Tree is collaborative non-destructive environment. Presently on the family tree everyone body opinion is valid. Nobody gets to be the authority to say you're right and I'm wrong. In that case the word merge in what you may think about it in a desktop product goes away. You can't put two records together. You can associate them, look at them different ways but you won't be able to put them together. There is no destructive merge on the collaborative tree. You get to see what everybody thinks.
Questions (Answers only)
-The issue here is more so than the ID. There is lots of reasons for alternate IDs. The real issue here and I need to couch this that this presentation is not about NFS or the web application. The point here is every contributor is associated to a fact. You can have ten contributors that are saying this person was born on 10 different dates. That will all show up in the Family Tree.
-She explained what Ancestry.com is doing it is a valuable feature and certainly that makes sense in our world too. The current web app doesn't allow you to automatically search and find things in Records Search. That is definitely the plan so that you can be navigating the tree and look up sources and associate that source with my person then have the tree remember that or a third party product looking both directions at once can do the same thing.
-What we are finding is that it is better to push the responsibility to individual patron the contributor to decide if two people are the same people or if a source is actually tied to that person. Those decisions of what sources and who should be combined more times or not through the elaborate combining work we went to, now we are to the point any additional combining with association to sources is going to be the patrons that do it.
-FamilySearch is the umbrella there are multiple applications. The first application we released is called New FamilySearch it really is a Family Tree application. The second application we are going to release is going to be Records Search and then you have already seen the internet indexing that hasn't been integrated into this new environment. So there will be multiple applications that can work stand alone, then they can share information amongst themselves. That is the direction we are going.
-We can do a ranking and third party products share our ranking and they do their ranking. There are all sorts of tools to help people decide who is a match and who isn't. Then place your vote and push that up to the new system.
- You can contest information, disagreement or dissertation what ever word you like. But you can say I think you are wrong so to speak, have your notes and why and please get in touch with me. That frees the collaboration circle.
This idea of cross-linking can happen between two, third-party products. We want to facilitate it happening between a more uniform way; so that the sharing of genealogy information can go through not only our two or three website applications but with other third party website applications, and for the purpose of ornamenting the tree so to speak.
The new FamilySearch Family Tree has its first type of cross-linking in that it will display on a Google map all of the events of a person you are looking at. The map is not coming from our website the map is coming from Google's website.
Rich media, Geo-mapping, Family Communities, other people and trees, richer information about the place and topics, Research Collaboration - This is the directions but I can't tell you when it all will come together. We will give you announcements are they come up, but this is the direction we are going. The internet is wonderful to share information and associate that information even though it might be coming from multiple vendors and multiple websites.
What About PAF?
Who are some of our current Web Service Affiliates? Desktop Applications that read PAF Files.
-Ancestral Quest*
-Generation Maps
-Millennium (Legacy)
-Ohana Software (PAF Insight)*
-Progeny (PAF Companion)
-Roots Magic
-RC Martin (Has not released a product but has been working with us and will sometime release a product that does read PAF.)
Note: *These programs will Read and Write PAF files compatible with New FamilySearch.
One thing to note this idea of connecting to NFS means you are going to have to do a new process. You are going to have to search, you going to have to compare, you are going to have to say the person that is on NFS is my person in PAF, draw that relationship however the programs does it. You can't just plug in a PAF add-in and have it work magically with NFS. You've got to decide the people in that local database are in NFS and which ones aren't, then push up the new ones or just link the ones that are the same one. If the information changes then you have the choice to push up the new information or keep it local. So it is a new paradigm to look at your own little horde so to speak and then the stuff that you share and contribute to the master family tree. Many of these products I see give you the choice of what you share and what you don't share and how you update your local system with what is happening in the shared community.
Who are some of our current Web Service Affiliates?
-Family Pursuit
-Living Genealogy
-World Vital Records
-GeneTree (Sorenson Media)
-US FamilyTree
-Bungee Labs
-One Great Family
-Find My Past
-The Generation Network (Ancestry.com)
The next list is of people that already have websites that have additional services. They are working with us so that if you are looking at the master tree we are working as a backbone for this correlation that is going on. They are looking to work with us so they know who our people are, you put a media or biography or stuff up on their website for certain people then it can all come together for a common viewing of that.
Family Pursuit is a hosting service specifically to genealogy which has a collaboration element so that you can talk to other family members about what is on that website. Living Genealogy similar situation. GeneTree is an interesting situation, Sorenson Media just announced their new website which they are going to associate DNA information from one of their websites with people information and with our tree and rich media. So that way hopefully these applications will come so that you can on your system look up a person and go hey where can I see additional information about that person in whatever format that it is. The richness of learning about your relatives is what makes us more sensitive to them and is part of the spirit of Elijah but also a part of your own experience of learning about your relatives, or learning about your living relatives. Many of these hosting sites will work for living people of deceased people it is family collaboration.
Looking at this initial list remember it next month is when we are starting to say hey software developers lets give us your best creativity. We are just starting to roll out this idea and these interfaces and the desire to create more applications.
Any questions about these two lists about affiliates that have been working with us to learn how to read and write the NFS through web services? (answers only)
-We feel a responsibility for certain features to give a certification status and a logo that relates to that. That process has not been completed with any of these products. We think most of these early adopters are going to be certified. But there will be a certification process so that we can give you some level of confidence that the product features will work as they are intended to and that we are aware of them and we know how they work. We are not going to say which product from a users stand point is better than another. But we will have a bear minimum standard to say which product we are ok with.
-Later on I will tell you what a Record Access Affiliate is. Footnote is a very meaningful Records Access Affiliate. They haven't yet decided to consume our web services.
-At the Developers Conference we have libraries for Macintosh developers to have them write programs that interface into NFS.
-We are working with companies based in Europe in one of the slides was Find My Past. This is just the beginning to get the starter team together so that we open it up to more. We are just barely starting.
Why Use Third-parties
For a desktop application?
-Integration between Records Search and Family Tree
-Interface that appeals to different audiences
--Age groups
--Genealogical or computer experience
--Counties and cultures (internationalization)
-Ability to work with data offline
-Maintain private, living, and research data as you desire.
For a web application?
-Share with others
-Work with "living" data
-Handle rich content (stories, photos, audio/video)
-Interact with other contributors more effectively
It's one way of intergrading between multiple web services. It makes it possible for software developers to target different audiences. That audience might be an interface that belongs to their computer experience or genealogy experience, language, cultural difference. We want to have all the data roll up and be available to everybody to that they can find their family connections. We are not looking at creating a separate software program for all target markets out there that we see.
This group has been wonderful you have one program that we created a long time ago and it was kind of like one program for all people for all reasons. As you find you have all learned by these users groups of how to stretch it and use it for your needs and work around. By opening this up there will be more products out there, smart developers, smart companies will find special niches and they will make products that are specific to those niches.
The ability to work with data offline is available things which you are used to. Some people love the website orientation where no matter where they are just go to the web if they can get to a computer they can go to our website and they can do their searches, and decisions and make it happen. There are other people that like to deal with bigger volumes of data where they want to download a lot of data, look it over at the time, make decisions and then commit those changes onto the server. The sometimes connected model - a lot of people like that. Many of you are in a situation where you may have never been connected. In a very simple way the PAF product does allow you to do searches to NFS so that is very similar to this situation.
Answer to questions asked:
-The pipeline that I showed you in the very beginning we have tremendous amount of effort. It's kind of like if we are focused on getting records accessible that is a big enough effort it itself. To try to create a product that delivers all those things to different audiences it is too much for us. One of our biggest focuses is the Granite Vault, working with third-parties for all the different records custodians as we call them, in whatever form they might be, they might be libraries, national archives, to digitize all that stuff there is a major, major effort going on and will continue to get billions and billions of names online over the next ten years.
- He is referring to the way we are going about working with various record custodians. We do what is called a request for information. So we might target certain censuses, certain archives and we say hey who wants to join our team in putting these collections online. Then we put together a team and then we sign contracts and we go to work. Those types of announcements you will see again, and again, and again of new projects started to digitized and put information online.
- A few years ago a lot of the contracts that where identified and most that I have heard about have been renegotiated for these types of electronic rights. So there is a major, major effort started even before I came to the Church two years ago to renegotiate the rights of a lot of this stuff. There is so much work to do if there's 10 percent that we don't have rights to right now things might change later. 10 percent I am not quoting I am just saying for instance. There is plenty of work to team up with the market place and our team to digitize.
Why a desktop application through a third-party? This idea of providing your own research your private data and living data and choosing, there are two worlds here, choosing what you want to share and what you want to keep local. As people get more and more into this and understand more how the collaborative experience works I think they will find that they will want to share more and more. They will start to find that the more they share the more other people will share and the more there will be available. This is how communities get built. Contributing to the whole will benefit you individually. But it is a little bit of a different thinking that people have been working on in their one database at times. We are hopeful that this paradigm shift will change.
Why for a web application? The big thing is here is a way to share electronically. A subject matter that you share electronically everybody can look at it and benefit from it. There are some web services that allow you to opt in. Opt in means it's an option - are you sure you want other people to see this data? Do you want them to see under these conditions or not. Third party websites can let you make all sorts of choices of how they allow people to see the data. We have some restrictions that are historical that doesn't make the Church's merger data as open as we would like it. So there will be other websites might be able to share other data that might be more open that ours. So there is going to be a value of having these online resources because it means more possibilities are going to be available to identify your ancestors.
Lastly the whole idea is there are many, many websites just starting up that allow you to collaborate with living people interested in the same subject matter, whether they are relatives or they are just interested in the same line, people and places. That's the beauty of the website it's coordinating and collaborating with living people about the deceased. We see lots of things happening in that area there is very, very fast growth.
My role is to get more developers involved in this work and more companies involved in this work. You may have seen similar things happening on other websites that are out there.
Compared FlickR, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and Google to what FamilySearch will have all of: Registration, Email / List Servers, Forums, FAQs, Knowledgebase, Newsletter, Blog, Documentation, Sample Code, Client Toolkits, Sandbox Testing, and Support
FlickR has web services so that you can pull pictures and everybody that you want to can see the pictures. Because there is a web service there you can have that exchange happen from your program and the website. Yahoo has its web services as do Amazon, and EBay have their web services. You can use the web applications but there are lots of third parties that have created applications that have a different look and feel, but they are getting at the same data. That is the focus of offering web services it is to make the data available and then have people compete to make up various products that expose that data. Google you've all seen Google Maps like Map Quest.
So we've seen and my job is to see what's out there and to make the decisions of what to offer the market place to attach software developers that are interested in genealogy and software development. So that means we have a community we need to create. Where they register, join, they talk to each other, they share their experiences, it's like an online users group. Just like to all do here. Newsletter, blogs, documentation, sample codes, we want to have this website which is started at devnet.familysearch.org. This is where software developers for major commercial companies, individuals or students at university can get together and talk about projects and learn how to write code that will talk to these web services.
Developer Services
--Dedicated email address
--Dedicated toll-free phone number
Tech.LDS.org – A community that has LDS programmers get together and talk about things that are happening in the Church in regards to programming and projects that are happening whether or not it is genealogy based, or family history based.
Labs.FamilySearch.org is family history based it is where we show applications and ideas that we are working on, prototypes of new interfaces. If you go there now you will see what used to be called the Pedigree Viewer is being called the Family Tree, there's a Life Browser, Records Search is there and eventually we will have a new look, where you can go as well to FamilySearch Indexing.
Support – we have developers support isolated from world-wide support and if you call in and ask for developers services you will get routed to people that understand our API and learning more about it everyday. API is geek speak for web services it stands for Application Program Interface. So you are able to interface with the application that is on server programmatically. Web services is a general one that you may have heard that we are usually talking about geek speak as an API. For those that qualify there will be a toll-free phone number to assist developers in working on their projects.
Web Service Affiliates Program
-Marketing incentives
-Church announcements
-Press releases and Industry announcements
-Web marketing activities
-Featured Affiliate product articles
-Affiliate Column in FHC Newsletter
-Benefits according to Affiliate Level
-New FamilySearch exposure
-Trademarks, Logo, and Link Logo Plan
-Certified Features listing
For the marketing incentives we are starting to prepare some press releases of things that are happening. The first one was the Developers' Conference. As products are going to be released from third parties we are going to certify them and announce which products are certified. Press releases, emails, posting on websites - whole lists of things that developers find very valuable and encourage them to develop new products so that they can get some mind share of the market place.
Possible Web Service Affiliates
--Additional Genealogy Software Vendors
--PAF User Groups
--PAF Add-In Developers
--Living data
--Rich Media
--Collaborative Communities
--Images and Records Services
--LDS Open Source Developers
--Ruby, PHP, Java, Perl
--Open Source developers at large
-ADOBE DEVELOPERS (Flash, Flex)
-MS.NET DEVELOPERS (VB.net, XAML, WPF, WPF-E, ASP.net)
My market place is not geographical in a sense it is North America right now, but I can find these geeks different places. They hover around existing software or certain software languages. You may of heard of Open Source, Open Sources developers have different languages they will like, be it Perl, PHP and there are all these buzz words out there. Then there are those developers that are following what Adobe is doing and those developers that are following what Microsoft is doing. So I'm looking for the cross-over between people that are Church oriented or family history oriented and they like programming or have been in the software business. Those are the type of people that were looking for to assist them in creating or improving products.
Types of Affiliates
Web Service Affiliates – Affiliates that create desktop or web products to access FamilySearch Web Services such as Family Tree API and Records Search API
Record Access Affiliates – Third party organizations that assist FamilySearch in helping records custodian provide online access to their collections.
Family History Center Affiliates – Their products or services can be used for free by FHC patrons, who may then choose to purchase them for home use.
Right now we have three different types of affiliates. I'm focusing on affiliates that are going to be consuming our web services; they are going to be using our web services. Then there are the affiliates that are assisting us in putting records online. They're called Record Access Affiliates. You will see press releases about record access affiliates as projects are determined and they sign up for it. Then there is a third area you may have heard about which is a Family History Center Affiliate. These are affiliates, that could either be the two above; that have agreed to offer their product or website through a Family History Center for three years. An announcement has gone on about that. It is a joint thing they get special PR and then we get for patrons free products in our Family History Centers. So those are the three types of programs and agreements and affiliates that we have. My focus is really the top one and then the bottom one is a service that can be offered from the web service affiliates.
Questions and Answers
-Security – We have a higher standard than many of the websites out there. We have studied the techniques. All the big websites have a lot at risk and their techniques to prevent security be it Google, be it EBay with a financial interest, the banks, we have studies all and we are implementing secure measures so that this environment will be able to work between us and other vendors.
-Images – we are hopeful as the volunteer marketing of indexing expands that we will keep up.
-Affiliate collections are owned by companies. We will not make arrangements with organizations unless the indexes the important information, is available for FamilySearch. We want information to a point to flow freely. Now these third parties need their profit incentives and they also want traffic, so there is a payoff here getting the most amount of traffic by what you offer for free verses when you get to the point that you are going to have to charge. Some companies are looking at making everything for free except the actual original image. Other companies looking at a summary citation so vital information about the people will be on the record but if you want to get more detail information you will have to pay. There will become, now the Church won't make you pay, but for some third parties there will be that level that this is free, this is free, and then you will have to pay.
-A big part of this records access program is not only to make all of our data freely available but to have a business strategy method to encourage other parties to make more available. We wouldn't be endeavoring to do this unless we felt very strongly that we have a case to get more information available from third parties.
-We are teaming up together with Footnote.com. They are one of our earliest record access affiliates. We are thrilled with the amount of information that membership is going to get from that arrangement. That is a wonderful example of a very positive arrangement with organizations that knows how to index and understands this world. That's going to make a lot of this information available with the members. There was a press release from the Church about Footnote.
- We will have the records portions of that online before the end of the year, through the roll-out of our Records Search application. So Records Search will be here before the end of the year. If you want to look at it you can go to lab.familysearch.org and see how that all works. That will start showing stuff from Footnote, our archives, the digitization efforts that we are doing with our Church owned teams, we have an enterprise of members and non-member and Church and non-church people working on getting stuff digitized.
-Cindy's List is and Information Portal about genealogy. She is linking to all sorts of resources and gathering some of that herself. I don't know how she fits into this presentation. She is a website that has chosen to gather information about lots of other websites, lots of other resources she is kind of like an online genealogy portal. She is not building a master family tree, and she is not tamped into the actual owners of records. She is on the web providing a great, great service but doesn't really fit into this. I don't see it anyways.
-Have any of your programmer friends drop by DevNet.FamilySearch.org short for developers network have them sign up and register. That is how we communicate with developers.
-The majority of all these applications focus on how do you find the matches and make it easy to combine people to reduce the duplication. So you will find that is a big part of our certification is how do they do the matching and combining. That is a very important process and you are going to find a lot of competition in the interface of how that happens. Have any of you used PAF Insight this comparison I think will work for you. You notice how you have your local data being compared to what's on the IGI. You got it on the right side and on the left side. What I am seeing now is not the combining of the IGI data with your local PAF but what's happening now is you're looking at a list of the person you are concerned about, a list of all the duplicates and that same comparison method you get to in group one by one and I've seen different application in how it will help you through that process for you to say this person is the same as all those people. So a major component of all these third party applications is the matching of duplicates on the family trees so you can actually tie it together.
This presentation is available on DVD #135 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing this overview of what is going on in the Church software program. Very informative.
Hal Richmond, Plano, Texas - May 27, 2008 at 2:55 PM
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text:
We've known for a while that the cost of new nuclear power plants in this country has been soaring.
Before 2007, price estimates of $4,000 per kilowatt for new U.S. nukes were common, but by Oct. 2007, Moody's Investors Service report, "New Nuclear Generation in the United States," concluded, "Moody's believes the all-in cost of a nuclear generating facility could come in at between $5,000 to 6,000 per kilowatt." That same month, Florida Power and Light, "a leader in nuclear power generation," presented its detailed cost estimate for new nukes to the Florida Public Service Commission. It concluded that two units totaling 2,200 megawatts would cost from $5,500 to $8,100 per kilowatt — $12 billion to $18 billion total! In 2008, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intended to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which "triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago." That would be more than $6,400 a kilowatt. (And that didn't even count the 200-mile $3 billion transmission system utility needs, which would bring the price up to a staggering $7,700 a kilowatt.)
Historical data cost on the French nukes have not been as well publicized. But Arnulf Grubler of the International Institute for Applied Systems in Austria, using "largely unknown public records," was able to perform an analysis of French (and U.S.) nuclear plants for Energy Policy, "The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing" [$ubreq]:
Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs.
Before discussing that paper, it is worth noting that renewable energy technologies have classic learning curves. Here is solar:
Wind power looks similar.
While Grubler's Energy Policy paper is behind a firewall, his original IIAS interim report, "An assessment of the costs of the French nuclear PWR program, 1979-2000," is online here.
Grubler explains the reasons for the overall "success" of the French program, at least in terms of scale:
The ambitious French PWR expansion program is legitimately considered the most successful scaling-up of a complex, largescale technology in the recent history of industrialized countries. This paper has argued that above all, the reasons for this success lay in a unique institutional setting allowing centralized decisionmaking, regulatory stability, dedicated efforts for standardized reactor designs (which could long profit from knowledge spillovers via the Westinghouse license), and a powerful nationalized utility, E´ DF, whose substantial in-house engineering resources enabled it to act as principal and agent of reactor construction simultaneously.
He then explores the implications of the cost escalation, the "negative learning":
Despite a most favorable setting, the French PWR program exhibited substantial real cost escalation …
… despite more moderate cost escalation [than the U.S.], the French experience nonetheless raises a number of fundamental issues worth considering in a climate-constrained world …
First, while the nuclear industry is often quick to point at public opposition and regulatory uncertainty as reasons for real cost escalation, it may be more productive to start asking whether these trends are not intrinsic to the very nature of the technology itself: large-scale, lumpy, and requiring a formidable ability to manage complexity in both construction and operation. These intrinsic characteristics of the technology limit essentially all classical mechanisms of cost improvements-standardization, large series, and a large number of quasi-identical experiences that can lead to technological learning and ultimate cost reductions — except one: increases in unit size, i.e., economies of scale. In the history of steam electricity generation, these indeed led initially to substantial cost reductions, but after the late 1960s that option has failed invariably due to continued design changes (leading to higher material requirements per kilowatt — the current EPR design being the most "heavy") and also increases in technological complexity.
As Richard Caperton and I wrote for CNN, new reactors are intrinsically expensive because they must be able to withstand virtually any risk that we can imagine, including human error and major disasters. Why? Because when the potential result of a disaster is the poisoning — and ultimately, death — of thousands of people, even the most remote threats must be eliminated.
Lastly, the French nuclear case has also demonstrated the limits of the learning paradigm: the assumption that costs invariably decrease with accumulated technology deployment. The French example serves as a useful reminder of the limits of the generalizability of simplistic learning/experience curve models. Not only do nuclear reactors across all countries with significant programs invariably exhibit negative learning, i.e., cost increase rather than decline, but the pattern is also quite variable, defying approximations by simple learning-curve models, as shown in Fig. 13 [reprinted above].
Why did the costs escalate? Why was there "negative learning?" He offers this theory:
… with increasing application ("doing"), the complexity of the technology inevitably increases leading to inherent cost escalation trends that limit or reverse "learning" (cost reduction) possibilities. In other words, technology scale-up can lead to an inevitable increase in systems complexity (in the case of nuclear, full fuel cycle management, load-following operation mode, and increasing safety standards as operation experience [and unanticipated problems] are accumulating) that translates into real-cost escalation, or "negative learning" in the terminology of learning/ experience curve models. The result may be a much wider cost variation across different technologies than so far anticipated.
That seems unlikely to change any time soon given recent events in Japan.
In fact, the cost of new nuclear power plants has continued to escalate in the United States, France, and other countries since 2000:
- French nuclear giant "Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns." (May '09)
- Toshiba tells San Antonio its new twin $13 billion nukes will cost $4 billion more. The city balks. (Oct. '09)
- Nuclear bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid. (July '09)
Indeed, the Toronto Star published these stunning details in Canada's largest daily newspaper about Areva's Ontario bid:
AECL's $26 billion bid was based on the construction of two 1,200-megawatt Advanced Candu Reactors, working out to $10,800 per kilowatt of power capacity …
The bid from France's Areva NP also blew past expectations, sources said. Areva's bid came in at $23.6 billion, with two 1,600-megawatt reactors costing $7.8 billion and the rest of the plant costing $15.8 billion. It works out to $7,375 per kilowatt, and was based on a similar cost estimate Areva had submitted for a plant proposed in Maryland …
Stevens said Areva's lower price makes sense because the French company wasn't prepared to take on as much risk as the government had hoped. This made Areva's bid non-compliant in the end. Crown-owned AECL, however, complied with Ontario's risk-sharing requirement but was instructed by the federal government to price this risk into its bid. "Which is why it came out so high," said Stevens.
Hamilton explained, Areva "was deemed non-compliant, however, likely because Areva wouldn't guarantee the price."
Yes, you can buy a terrific low-cost $8 billion nuke from Areva — but the fine print says that if the cost escalates, you swallow the risk, not Areva — a painful lesson Areva learned in Finland.
So the negative learning curve continued with Areva's 2009 bid — $7,375 per kilowatt (your price may vary — upwards, that is). Apparently Areva did learn that it wasn't charging enough for its reactors, which are now nearly off the chart in Gubler's analysis:
New nukes have gone from too cheap to meter to too expensive to matter for the foreseeable future.


text:
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Slots winning strategies and tips #2: In a physical casino search Online Slots for the high traffic slots areas and play at these. Since so plenty of play them they often times have a higher payout, so focus on high traffic slots!
The 50 Lions Free Spins Bonus game is activated when at least 3 Flower Symbols show on reels 1, 2 and step 3. The Free Spins are played automatically by the slot machine and you can game, additional Diamond Bonus Symbols are added to your reels, giving you more odds of building winning lines.
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text:
Wow, that was close. I thought for a minute there, after the election, that Barack Obama was the Anti-Christ.
But thanks to Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, I slept easier last night knowing the Southern Baptists have determined:
Barack Hussein Obama, is NOT the Anti-Christ.
How has he made his determination? He doesn't say exactly, but says "one of the reasons" is that "the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes."
I love how the fundamentalist Baptist mindset works: let's start with the assumption he might be the Anti-Christ. Then look at his poll numbers.
He goes on to say Obama is just "paving the way" for the Anti-Christ, you know, like "John the Baptist" for the Anti-Christ.
In all fairness, let me say to my readers: Robert Jeffress is NOT the Anti-Christ. I am not saying he is the Anti-Christ at all. However, his leadership of at FBC Dallas in convincing the members to spend $120 million on a glamorous new church and fountain while our country suffers economically - he is just paving the way for the gullible sheep to follow the Anti-Christ.


text:
NPB Bullet Points: Mulhern, MLB Scouts, Rakuten Fireworks
Today's news and notes from around Japan, with a focus on scouting and player personnel.
- Daily Sports reports that Seibu is working on signing Ryan Mulhern out of the Mexican League. I had never heard of Mulhern before yesterday, but he's spent the last two seasons in indy ball and Mexico, and prior to that it looks like he'd mostly been an organizational player. It's great to see this kind of player get a shot and I wish him the best of luck.
- Chunichi Sports points out that Ryan Vogelsong is the third non-Japanese player with NPB experience to make an MLB All-Star team. The other two? Cecil Fielder and Alfonso Soriano.
- Wladimir Balentien's contract with Yakult includes language that prevents him from moving to another NPB team after the season. Said someone familiar with the situation: "Discussion about foreign players leaving the team or not ended with Chang-Yong Lim last offseason. New players acquired since then have contractual provisions against moving domestically."
- Sponichi reports that the Rays, Indians, Astros and Angels had scouts at Hisashi Iwakuma's most recent rehab start.
- Hanshin is reportedly looking to acquire Korean slugger Dae-Ho Lee this offseason.
- The "Big 3" college pitchers – Tomoyuki Sugano, Takahiro Fujioka and Yusuke Nomura – have all disavowed interest in skipping NPB in favor of MLB. The trio had been attracting attention from MLB scouts.
- MLB scouts from three un-named teams watched Shoji Yoshimoto, who Nikkan Sports called "the Darvish of
ShimomachiShitamachi." - Rakuten will feature fireworks displays after all 13 of it's home games in August. As an added promotion, 20 families will get to watch the fireworks from the field.
- In more Rakuten news, the Eagles ni-gun team has it's own ustream.tv channel. Unfortunately the angle they shoot the games from is almost unwatchable.
- And now for something completely different: Lotte has stadium and uniform advertising for Nexon this season. I never know what Nexon does, but I happened to find out from this English-language article on Techcrunch.


text:
The Oscar-winning actor George Clooney was arrested this morning, after he and supporters, including congressmen stepped onto the grounds of the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C.
"Before their arrest, the assembled group of congressmen, religious leaders and cultural icons spoke about the humanitarian crisis faced by hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who have been prevented from receiving international aid by president Bashir."Clooney and the group of protesters stepped onto embassy grounds after giving short speeches, at which point they were instructed that they must leave or be arrested. On the third warning, officers told the group they were under arrest, and the protestors lined up to get handcuffed and were removed to a waiting van."
Over the past few days, Clooney has been on a grand tour of the nation's capital. He testified before the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee about the humanitarian crisis on the Sudan and South Sudan border.
"Just back from an eight-day trip to the region, Clooney described a secret, six-hour trip across the border to the Nuba Mountains, with rocket attacks, death and destruction. He recalled how a 9-year-old boy had his hands blown off," the AP reported.
Clooney also attended the White House's state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron.
His arrest today has proven a very popular topic on twitter. Clooney is trending on two langues and the #freeclooney hashtag is one of the most popular.
Here are a few examples:
@jonconnorfilms: O, Brother Where Art Thou?.... Jail, apparently. #freeclooney@megspptc: WOW way to go George standing up for something you truly believe in is NEVER wrong #freeclooney@AliceMartha: Soooo if I posted bail for George he has to come and stay with me...that is the rule right...isn't it? #freeclooneyCopyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


text:
Twelve Anti-Rules For Love
LatestLove will always outwit our fixes. It will always overflow the boundaries that we raise to enclose it. It's in the basic nature of love to be temperamental. Our era is trying to deny this.
It's trying to turn love into something that's rationally controllable. […] Not only is it doomed to fail, but it cheats romance of its enchantment. It turns love into just another page in our investment portfolio. Supposedly, the more prudently we invest, the higher the profits. But, actually, the opposite is the case. In love, it's those who take the biggest risks who reap the biggest gains. Sometimes they lose everything. But when they win, they win the jackpot.
So, no rules. But here are some potent anti-rules to hold up to the self-help vampires lurking in the shadows:
1. Stop trying so hard.
Give up your efforts to force love into a self-help cast. It will never fit, no matter how much you struggle. The only thing you'll achieve are blisters in your brain. And love is not a Rubik's Cube either. You can't solve its riddles by clicking the red, blue, green, yellow, etc., pieces neatly into place. You'll only get blisters on your fingers. So give yourself the heavenly permission to let love do the heavy lifting all by itself. Not only will this feel great, but it will save you a fortune in therapist and manicure fees.
2. Stop being so cautious.
Love is one of those human experiences where caution is overrated. If you want to be safe, go shopping at Zara with your best friend. The worst that can happen to you there is that you won't be able to resist the adorable little black dress on sale. But when it comes to love, don't expect caution to get you anywhere. Applying caution to love is like driving uphill with your emergency brake on. You might be able to keep going for a while, but eventually, you'll need to find a mechanic.
3. Stop analyzing your every move.
The more time you spend analyzing your love life, the less time you'll have left for loving. You'll give yourself a splitting headache. So save yourself the trouble and don't try to think it through. Except, of course, when you start to get that sinking feel- ing in the pit of your stomach that tells you that something is seriously wrong. If you begin to feel injured, damaged, offended, or nauseated, feel free to think yourself right out the door.
4. Stop expecting your guy to act like a caveman.
Unless, of course, you're ready to be dragged through the city streets by your hair. The great thing is that when you stop insist- ing that your guy is the direct descendant of an ape, you might end up with someone as glossy as Gossip Girl's Nate. Okay. Maybe not the actual Nate. But someone who is willing to furrow his brow, flash a smile, and chatter away just like the real one.
5. Stop apologizing for being strong.
This one is worth repeating like a mantra: Stop apologizing for being strong and self-sufficient. Men worth dating are much more likely to want precisely these qualities than artificial displays of feminine neediness. There isn't much that's more pathetic than guys who need to put women down in order to convince themselves of their masculine valor. Who needs these guys?
6. Stop being afraid to have needs and vulnerabilities.
Being strong doesn't mean that you're Supergirl, or even Lois Lane. You have needs. You have vulnerabilities. You even have episodes of hopelessness. You have moments when you want a strong shoulder to lean on. But so does your guy. Having someone compassionate to turn to during times of breakdown is worth more than Superman's red cape. Your guy knows this as well as you do. That's why he's with you.
7. Stop running after guys who don't want you.
There's no point in pursuing a reluctant man. You'll only get a cramp in your side. And then your heart starts to hurt. You'll lose your confidence. You'll begin to doubt your desirability. You'll get your hair done so often that half of it falls out. Your friends start plotting an intervention. Before they get to it, it's time to stage your own. If you need to fly to Moscow to stop chasing that guy, do so. You absolutely deserve a man who meets you halfway.
8. Stop looking for a guy without issues.
Everyone has issues. And guys with some complicated ones are often more interesting than those whose main issue is choosing the right pair of loafers in the morning. Do you require your- self to be completely free of issues-completely devoid of doubts, anxieties, insecurities, uncertainties, and ambivalences? No? So I thought. Why, then, would you expect your guy to be like a newborn babe with no history or human hesitation?
9. Stop manipulating the guy you love.
Focus on building a complex character. Make some money. Get going with your career. Learn Italian. Take up cross-country skiing. Bake five thousand cookies. Hand them out to everyone from your boss to the cute FedEx delivery guy. If you need a project, treat your life like a work of art. Try to make a masterpiece out of it. But don't do this to the guy you're dating. Once he realizes that you've turned your relationship into a papier-mâché project, he'll resent you. A lot.
10. Stop regretting every false step you ever took.
It's hard to get things right in love. People get hurt. You get hurt. You end up hurting your guy. No matter how much you try to protect yourself from such mishaps, they happen. They happen if you're actually loving rather than just playing house with someone you kind of like. Missing your step, and even missing your way, is part of love's reality. It forces you to reassess the path you're on. It asks you to make some modifications. This is its way of shaping your soul.
11. Stop thinking of loss as a pure loss.
Keep in mind that we rarely lose valuable things without getting something in return. The payback may be slow in coming. And some- times it's hard to even recognize it as such. But if you wait long enough, even the worst loss is likely to bring a com- pensation. If nothing else, it purifies your character so that when the next hot guy comes along, you'll have enough charisma to magnetize him. He'll be so smitten that he'll fly you to Tahiti on a vacation for two. You'll pay for the hotel room, of course. You're not a charity case. Not you.
Was that twelve of them? No? Only eleven? Well, this one deserves double-billing: Stop trying so hard. There you go. These are your twelve anti-rules. They won't guarantee your everlasting happiness. They won't even guarantee a ring on your finger. And, alas, they definitely won't guarantee that Tom Welling will super-speed to your side when the going gets tough. But they'll guarantee that you will have lived. Boldly. Bravely. Audaciously. Like a true lover.
The above is an excerpt from The Case For Falling in Love, by Mari Ruti, Ph.D., published by Sourcebooks Casablanca. Republished with permission.
Image via Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock.com


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Justin Trudeau pushed aside Friday global mockery of his decisions years ago to dress in blackface, saying he's focused on apologizing to Canadians.
But images of the three times he chose to put on black- or brownface for costume events continued to flash around the world, reaching even the White House.
U.S. President Donald Trump's reaction summed up how the incidents have surprised people accustomed to seeing Trudeau as a champion of inclusivity and diversity, raising questions about whether that brand is forever tarnished.
"I was hoping I wouldn't be asked that question. … Justin. I'm surprised and I was more surprised when I saw the number of times and I've always had a good relationship with Justin. I just don't know what to tell you. I was surprised by it, actually," Trump said.
Trudeau apologized profusely for the third day in a row for the incidents — one from his teens, one from his time as a whitewater rafting guide in his 20s, and one when he was a teacher at a Vancouver private school. He said they were mistakes, and he did not understand at the time how racist it is to wear black- or brownface.
Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, a Liberal, said she's worried that the apology will fall on deaf ears around the world.
"People in other countries don't have the benefit or the access or the interest in, quite frankly, the day-to-day machinations of Canadian politics so they don't know him as well as we do," she said.
"So they kind of had him on this pedestal, which was unrealistic and ridiculous, and now he's fallen off that pedestal and so there's almost even more of an oversimplification on the international stage: He was perfect and now he's the devil."
Since the first photo emerged Wednesday night, Trudeau has been calling members of his cabinet, candidates and community leaders to try to make amends. In turn, all day Thursday, many of them were speaking out publicly, if a tad cautiously, in support of their leader.
READ MORE: Trudeau seeks meeting with Singh to apologize for blackface, brownface photos
On Friday, the day after Trudeau was the butt of late-night TV jokes in the U.S. and shocked headlines around the world, Chrystia Freeland took a turn.
As Trudeau's foreign affairs minister, she has had the ears of many influential leaders and their aides around the globe.
Freeland said she was troubled and disappointed by the images, calling racism and intolerance unacceptable. But she said she accepts his apology and commitment to do better.
"The prime minister continues to have my full and unwavering support," she said in the statement posted to Twitter.
The incidents made the front pages of news websites around the globe.
Trudeau attracted scorn as well from prominent civil-rights advocates in the U.S., a country that has grappled with its own cases of prominent politicians having been found to have, or admitting to have, worn blackface.
The Canadian Press


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Patrick Radden Keefe
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • From the author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book ReviewJean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress–with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past–Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.Look for Patrick Radden Keefe's latest bestseller, Empire of Pain


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Parshat Vayishlach
A Learning Experience
"I dwelled with Lavan." (32:5)
Why is it that the secular world seems to have so much gleaming success while the religious world seems to shlep along like an old beggar in a worn-out coat?
Rashi points out that the numerical equivalent of the word 'dwelled' is 613, the same number as the Torah's mitzvot, and Yaakov was hinting to his brother Eisav, that despite his close contact with Lavan for the previous 20 years, he had not learned from Lavan's wicked ways.
Usually this Rashi is understood to be a praise of Yaakov, that he never became corrupted be Lavan's evil. But maybe it can be understood differently.
Yaakov was also saying to Eisav, "You don't have to worry about me; I'm not such a tzaddik. True, I kept the 613 mitzvot, but in spite of the fact that I lived with Lavan for 22 years, I failed to take a lesson from the enthusiasm with which he pursued everything bad. Had I learned that from him – oy va voy for you my brother Eisav!"
Maybe if we did the mitzvot with as much zeal and enthusiasm as the secular world pursues the pleasures of this world, then we'd be as successful as them.
- Sources: Rabbi Meir Shapiro and the Chidushei HaRim in Mayana shel Torah


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Climate change: Cooper signs major energy law
Published 11:56 pm Wednesday, October 13, 2021
By Gary D. Robertson
Associated Press
RALEIGH — Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina signed a milestone energy bill into law Wednesday that aims to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the state's power plants by 2030, celebrating the legislative accomplishment with Republican lawmakers.
In a ceremony with legislators from both parties, Cooper enacted a consensus measure that now tasks the state Utilities Commission with coming up by the end of 2022 with the arrangements to meet the carbon dioxide reduction goals sought by the governor.
At least 16 states previously have passed legislation establishing greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The only other Southeast state to have done so before Wednesday was Virginia.
"This is a new beginning," Cooper said at the Executive Mansion ceremony. "Putting real and enforceable carbon reduction targets into the law, North Carolina is working to reduce the effect of climate change on marginalized populations, while putting our state at the forefront of the clean energy economy and the jobs that it brings."
The directive aims to reduce energy producers' carbon dioxide output 70% from 2005 levels by 2030, and achieve zero-net CO2 emissions by 2050. To get there, coal-fired power plants operated by Duke Energy, the state's dominant utility, are expected to be retired early, replaced by an evolving mix of alternate fuels for electricity. Duke and other advocacy groups will have input, too.
The new law also allows Duke Energy to seek multiyear rate increases and performance-based earnings incentives from the state Utilities Commission — a significant win for the Charlotte-based company. Representatives of Duke and other business groups supporting the new law attended the ceremony.
Senate leader Phil Berger, a Republican, described the law as a pro-economic growth measure, saying the business slowdown during the Colonial Pipeline disruption in the spring signaled the "consequences of an extended energy supply crunch."
"So it was critically important that the leaders of our state come together to agree on legislation for our energy future, and we did that," Berger said. "The framework we put in place ensures continued reliability of energy here in North Carolina."
The operator of the nation's largest fuel pipeline, Colonial confirmed it paid $4.4 million to a gang of hackers shortly after a May 7 ransomware attack that had temporarily taken the pipeline system offline.
Despite strong bipartisan support for the final measure and Cooper's involvement in negotiations, many environmental groups and advocates for the poor declined to endorse the measure. They said it provided too many loopholes for delaying percentage-reduction emissions goals. They also said it gave Duke an outsized role in forming the plan and lacked monetary assistance for low-income customers to address expected higher bills.
"This plan is not designed to support those hurt first and worst by the ongoing climate crisis," the North Carolina Council of Churches said in a recent statement, adding the bill "will only benefit those who are already thriving, not those who are barely surviving."
Bill supporters said there are ratemaking guardrails inside the measure and several other current programs to help customers with efficient electricity use. And the commission must achieve the "least cost path" and ensure energy reliability in reaching the targeted percentages. Cooper said renewable energy sources also would continue to decline in price.
The governor and others opposed the original measure that passed the House in July, which was much more prescriptive in telling Duke Energy which specific plants to retire early and at times what replacement fuel should be used, like natural gas. It also would have failed to reach the 70% CO2 reduction goal for 2030 that Cooper wanted. This led to extensive talks between state senators and Cooper for an agreement that was announced almost two weeks ago.
"We're putting into law the roadmap for a sustainable future for our children and our grandchildren," Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue of Wake County said. "The efforts to see this plan across the finish line cannot be understated."


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It's pretty much guaranteed that you'll spot a dolphin jumping from the beach, at least at some point during your vacation in Myrtle Beach. This stretch of South Carolina's coast is home to alligators, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, and dozens of beautiful birds.
There are few cooler things for little kids than seeing animals up close. And not only is the Grand Strand home to plenty of it's own wildlife but there are dozens of amazing animal attractions in Myrtle Beach. As a Myrtle Beach native, I've sought out the best of the best, from riding horses along the beach to the must-visit zoos and aquariums.
1) Ripley's Aquarium
Photo: Ripley's Aquarium
Ripley's Aquarium is home to sharks, a clever octopus, a rescued sea turtle named Gabby, and some seriously funky sea horses. The star of the show is a moving sidewalk that takes you on a slow journey through a tunnel of sharks and a vibrant reef. Schools of fish swim by and eels slither out of their hiding places. It's a fantastic experience because you can take as long as you'd like by hopping off the moving belt.
This attraction in Myrtle Beach is also known for their hands-on experiences. Kids can hold a horseshoe crab, or touch stingrays (these rays are highly trained professionals). You can also take advantage of their educational programs with animal care specialists where kids can learn about animal behavior, habitats, and more.
What you need to know
Phone: (800) 734-8888
Address: 1110 Celebrity Cir, Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
2) The Lowcountry Zoo at Brookgreen Gardens
Photo: The Lowcountry Zoo
Brookgreen Gardens, just south of Myrtle Beach in Murrells Inlet, is a gorgeous botanical and sculpture garden that's also home to the Lowcountry Zoo. In it you'll find frisky otters, romping and swimming. You'll be challenged to find the foxes as they hide, just as foxes do in the wild. And you'll meet an eagle with an interesting story of survival. This attraction in Myrtle Beach is like no other and definitely worth your time.
The zoo is included with the price of admission at Brookgreen Gardens. Be sure to check out one of the many educational programs offered each month. For an extra fee, you can take a pontoon boat ride on the river that runs through the gardens and see alligators, coastal birds, and other native animals in their natural habitats.
Just across from the zoo is the Storybook Forest. It's a beautiful play area filled with miniature houses, a pirate ship, and a castle for your little one to get some energy out and engage their imagination!
What you need to know
Phone: (843) 235-6000
Address: 1931 Brookgreen Garden Dr, Murrells Inlet, SC 29576
3) Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show
Photo: Pirate's Voyage
Pirate's Voyage is one of a few great dinner shows in Myrtle Beach. As the name implies, it depicts a swashbuckling battle for lost treasure appealing to the pirate lovers in your family. The theater itself is an experience with the pirate-theme commanding your attention from the moment you enter the building.
The acts in the show feature diving, silks, aerial stunts, tumbling, and dancing, but the highlight is the sea lion. Kids will be thrilled and adults amazed. During the show, dinner is served with more food than you can eat. Don't worry, you can take the leftovers home!
Advanced ticket purchase is recommended during the vacation season as this is a top attraction in Myrtle Beach. You'll also want to arrive early to enjoy pre-show entertainment!
What you need to know
Phone: (843) 497-9700
Address: 8901 N Kings Hwy, Myrtle Beach, SC 29572
4) L.W. Paul Living History Farm
Photo: L.W. Paul Living History Farm
It's a hands-on look at the Grand Strand's rich farming heritage. You'll experience a day on a farm out of the early 1900's. There are demonstrations of blacksmithing, plowing, curing meat, and caring for livestock.
L.W. Paul Living History Farm is a great off-beach excursion. Located in western Conway, SC, the farm is an extension of the Horry County Museum.
What you need to know
Phone: (843) 365-3596
Address: 2279 Harris Short Cut Rd, Conway, SC 29526
5) Inlet Point Plantation
Photo: Inlet Point Plantation
Horse lovers, listen up. This one is for you!
How romantic does it sound to explore a South Carolina plantation and then head to the beach on horseback? Imagine hearing the waves roll in while you trot along the sand. It's peaceful and serene. Off you go, galloping through the water, the wind rushing through your hair.
North Myrtle Beach is host to the Inlet Point Plantation where you can book a horseback riding tour based on your skill level, desired scenery, and amount of time you'd like to spend. Tours start at one hour and include special occasion rides just for two. The sunset beach ride is an attraction in Myrtle Beach that feels like something out of a romance novel.
What you need to know
Phone: (843) 249-2989
Address: 5800 Little River Neck Rd, North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582
6) Dolphin Watching Tours
Photo: Little River Fishing Fleet
Dolphins are a common sight from the sands of the Grand Strand, but they're not always easy to spot. There's a good amount of squinting and waiting. Beach-goers often ask each other, "Did you see a dolphin?" The answer is usually "I think I saw a fin. There are no sharks here right? Right?"
Finding a dolphin in Myrtle Beach isn't hard, but it can take some time. If you're dying to catch a glimpse of these graceful creatures up close, head out onto the sea.
Myrtle Beach Watersports, with various locations in the Grand Strand, offers dolphin cruises in the Atlantic. Aboard either the Sea Screamer or Sea Thunder, you'll get a tour of South Carolina's beautiful Intracoastal Waterway and out onto the big blue Atlantic Ocean. There you'll lots see lots of dolphins up close!
If you want to actually get in the water with dolphins, Myrtle Beach Watersports fires up the jet skis and sends you out on a guided tour. They have a dolphin sighting guarantee, which means if your excursion happens to be dolphin-free, you'll get to return for another try.
What you need to know
Phone: (843) 903-3456
Address: 101 Fantasy Harbour Blvd, Myrtle Beach, SC 29579
Photo: Caribbean Resort and Villas


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Colorado's Health Insurance Market (2016)
Health insurance is a method of paying for health care services that spreads the risk and costs across a group of covered persons. In exchange for premiums and other cost-sharing mechanisms, such as deductibles and co-payments, health insurance companies pay for the costs of covered services. Health insurance carriers set premiums, deductibles, and co-payments at a level that covers the estimated health care costs incurred by all members of the group. This issue brief provides an overview of the private health insurance market in Colorado and federal and state health insurance regulations.