Saturday, April 20, 2013

New app prevents incest in Iceland

New application for computerised genealogy: New app prevents incest in Iceland | World | News | The London Free Press:

A new cellphone app touts itself as a way for Iceland's singles to avoid sleeping with relatives — as the isolated country's small population of 320,000 means most people are related. The acquaintances just have to bump their phones together and it tells them instantly if they're family, News of Iceland reports. Three Icelandic engineers designed the app with the help of the Book of Icelanders that contains data from 720,000 people born in Iceland. News of Iceland says, "Everyone has heard of (or experienced) it when someone goes all in with someone and then later runs into that person at a family gathering some other time. This new app might just prevent such awkward moments."

Monday, April 08, 2013

With all the eulogies on Margaret Thatcher, remember this

The Right got it so wrong on Nelson Mandela – Telegraph Blogs: It’s easy with the passage of time to forget how the Conservative Right in Britain got it so badly wrong on South Africa, and today how long it has been since the British Left got it so right.

Friday, April 05, 2013

Where does the time go?

I've sometimes downloaded time tracking software to see how much time I spend on various projects, but most if it is so complex that you spend more time on the tracking than on the project. But here is one that looks simple enough even for me Where does the time go?:

Back in November, I decided I wanted to track the time I spent on various genealogy projects. One reason for this was to be able to better plan my monthly to-do lists (I have a tendency to overbook myself). I knew I wanted a web-based system (preferably one that was free). There are several available, but Toggl appealed to me as soon as I saw it, so I decided to give it a test run. I’ve been using Toggl for three months now and I don’t know how I lived without it. (Note that this is toggl – no e.) Everything about Toggl is so easy and intuitive. To get started, you can either sign up by entering your email address and a password or simply log in with your Google account. It doesn’t get any easier than that!