Thanks to our own Paul Bech, the Global Cemeteries intro page has some beginning instructions for taking photos, combining them with GPS data and creating sortable data tables to include on each cemetery's free space page, which is the basic premise of what we're trying to do, so you can go and review that information anytime.
Yesterday, Chris asked me about the value of integrating functionality into a mobile app that would allow Cemeterists to take and add cemetery/tombstone photos to profiles, straight from the app. My answer was that it would be of great value and would help to draw lots of new users to WikiTree.
I offered a few suggestions about how to integrate the features of some other apps into our own, but then found that those integrations weren't really feasible, so I turned to a few free and open-source programs that led to some new and even better ideas for taking photos with a GPS-enable cell phone.
I use an iPhone 5, and I think that's the route WikiTree will be taking initially, but by swapping a few things around, you should be able to do these some of these same things with an Android phone or, with a little additional work, even a point and shoot digital camera.
I'm going to explain a few of these gizmos the best I can and then leave it to Chris and his crack team of WikiTree programmers and developers to look into whether there might be a way to weave some of the functionality of these programs into a mobile app, or if it would be easier just to use them as standalone enhancements.
The first step is easy...get out there and take a bunch of cemetery photos. Go ahead, take a bunch if you like! When you get back home, upload all the photos from your trip into a folder on your PC. Next, we need a free, open source program called gPicSync.
https://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/
Yep, that right, the "g" stands for our friends at Google. I know some of you try to avoid Google like the plague, but hey, it's free, it doesn't hog a lot of resources and it just plain works! Before you do anything with gPicSync, though, you'll need to make a decision. You can always change your mind later if you want, but the decision is whether to use an online mapping program (Google Maps) or an installable mapping program (Google Earth) to present your data and imagery. I should mention here that you're not required to have a Google account to download or use any of these programs, but it sure doesn't hurt!
My personal preference is Google Earth (GE), but you can generate a substantially less attractive and exciting presentation of your information by using Google Maps. If you've never used GE before, it takes a little time to get used to the ins and outs of using it, but trust me, it would be a good investment of your time to familiarize yourself with it.
I use it for work all the time, and after a while, I started thinking that it would be a great tool for genealogy (in a number of ways). Unfortunately, I soon found that others smarter than me had realized it's potential long before I did and were already capitalizing on it.
You may know of Lisa Louise Cooke, a genealogy blogger and podcaster who, among other things, tapped into GE some time ago and now sells a series of instructional DVDs on her website, showing people how to use it for various aspects of genealogical research. She's doing quite well for herself these days, I'd gather! :)
On a side note, I start a Facebook group a while ago for genealogists that know how to (or want to know how to) use GE to enhance their research. Lisa is actually one of our group's administrators, and doesn't mind helping people out with questions at all. Of course, you're all welcome to join if you like, here's a link the group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/gegenealogists/
So anyway, back to work...if you've decided to give it a go, you'll need to download and install GE here:
http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html
Now this is where it gets interesting! Once GE is up and running, you'll want to open the gPicSync program and tell it to open your folder of photos. It also asks for a gps file, but since you took your photos with an iPhone, that information (called "metadata) is already built-in to each photo you took. After tweaking a few settings, lo and behold, you'll have yourself another file that will get shuttled straight over to GE and show you all of your photos, at the exact places you took them, on a beautifully rendered, interactive aerial photograph.
That should keep you busy for a little while, but when you're done oohing and ahhing over that, don't forget to save the file with the photos as a Google Earth .KML file. Theoretically, if we can find a way to save both the photos and the KML files somewhere on WikiTree's servers, all of our members will be able to fly right over to the gravesite of any of their ancestors that have been recorded by our Cemeterists, then take an aerial tour around the place that most of them called home right before they passed on! In addition, they won't even have to download and install Google Earth to do it! It can all be done from a embedded plug-in that Google offers to free, non-commercial sites like WikiTree. I guarantee this would be a major "WOW" factor for both new and existing users, but there is still one more slick little trick we're going to talk about.
Our last upload is another small, free, open source program called KMLCSV which, as its name implies, converts your KML file to a comma-delimited .CSV file that can be opened, edited and added to in a variety of spreadsheet-based programs like MS Excel, Quattro Pro and OpenOffice. So, once your CSV file is open, you'll see column after column and row after row of the metadata we were talking about earlier (dates, times and GPS coordinates), ready to be pulled into one of those nifty sortable tables that Paul is using. All our Cemeterists will have to do at that point is add names, age at death, birth and death dates and notes.
OK, so there you have it...a proposed, possible scenario for a future mobile app and a Cemeteries Project that would easily bring hordes of new users to WIkiTree and leave other online "Grave Sites" like "Ghost Towns"...as long as we can find a way to keep them from copying the idea! Please feel free to share any thoughts, comments or suggestions you might have that will help make WikiTree the preferred "resting place" for our ancestors' last remaining sources of data.
Happy photographing!
