Future of Media #81: Get Out Your Crystal Ball

Of the media and developments listed, I think the fact that Wal-Mart is buying Vudu will probably have a great influence on the field in the next few years. The technology is changing so fast these days that it's a real guessing game, but anything that Wal-Mart gets involved in seems to make a big effect on the consumers.

I'm not a early adopter of technology. I once had a new VCR in a box for weeks before setting it up. I admit, if I find something that I like and it's easy to use, I stay with it. I don't jump on the bandwagon at the first appearance of a gadget. I generally wait a bit to let the developers work some of the kinks out of it first.

In the last 1980's I got a video player that produced the best picture quality of anything available. It was called the laser disc player. What the "new" format known as CD was to music, the LD (laser disc) was for movies, etc. At the time I was at WTLS in west Texas and one of he county libraries I worked with was the Midland County Public Library. The film librarian there was Anne Trout and she had a big collection of LD's. One of the titles she sent me to try was a Sear's catalog. It was interesting to watch. In-between the various catalog pages of clothes were style shows of the outfits. There was a machine that would play the threes sizes available: CD, 8 inch music videos and the 12 inch movies. I thought about getting one but at $1000.00 it was a little beyond my budget. The movies/documentaries were recorded on only one side and were 1/4 inch thick. I still have some of mine and yes, the player works just fine.

Future of Media #80: Movies

The website Hulu was a bust for me. Neither my staff computer or a branch laptop could run any of the programs, movies or trailers because it need an Adobe Flash Player 10 update which I don't have and can't install. Hopefully Network Services will be able to update when they have the time. UPDATE: The Adobe Player was updated and I was able to watch part of a couple of movies and trailer. THANK YOU NETWORK SERVICES. I watched part of Star Trek VII: Generations and Ghostbusters. Over all I liked it but the one thing I wasn't fond of was that while watching the movies and trailers they would stop or slow down every few seconds to load more of the movie or trailer. One thirty second trailer took over three minutes to load.

I watched trailers on IMDB, Hulu and Youtube. They all did the same slow load but at Youtube it would replay at regular speed. I had mixed success on Apple Trailers, I was able to watch Diary of a Wimpy Kid but not anything else. The other trailers would stall at 2 items remaining. I might visit the sites to see what is going but I would probably go to Google and search by title and see what the search found and then choose a site.

As of now, I'm not really interested in joining a fee-based service. I have a friend who is home bound and her really like the Nexflix service.

Future of Media #79: Television

I searched both Hulu and tv.com for West Wing and Highlander. West Wing wasn't listed at all on Hulu, whereas Highlander had all six seasons avalable to watch. Tv.com listed both but only had episode guides and forums.

My cell phone doesn't have the ability to view programs or movies. I've never watched a program on a cell phone and I don't think I would want to, the screen's too small.

I'm not really interested in watching a streaming program. The ones I looked at were too slow and didn't hold my interest.

Genealogy #70 Genealogy 2.0

It's been fun to play with the MyHeritage site. I started a tree to see how it would look and I find it more interesting than the classic pedigree charts. I didn't do the Look-alike meter because I don't have a picture of my parents to download but that's OK. The only difference between me and my mom's baby pictures are the clothes we were wearing. I did a celebrity collage and got some interesting results. Do I really look like Bette Davis (a 49% match) or Katherine Heigl (a 55% match)? The highest match at 67% was with Ophelie Winter. The collage is at the bottom of the blog.



The site, Footnote, is for the hard core genealogist in my opinion. I can see how it would be helpful and very useful. The ability to share photos, documents and other info via the Internet is one of the great things about how the Internet can help genealogists.

Genealogy #69: Database Researching

I did a search on members of my dad's family on Ancestry.com. I hadn't found much on LDS Family History Library which I thought was a little strange because I've found so much there in the past. On Ancestry.com I found census records from 1890 through 1930 that had various people and dates. I also found WWI military records and death records. It's not my first choice but it gave me some good information.

Genealogy #68: Detective Work

I've been having mixed results with my "detective work". I couldn't get any of the Tejano Voicies oral history stories to play. I enjoyed reading Betty Skelton Frankman's interview from the NASA Oral History Project. She was an aviatrix and participated in the same NASA tests and training as the Mercury astronauts. She flew in aerobatic shows and appeared in shows with the Navy's Blue Angels.



I had mixed results searching the Find-a-Grave site. I first tried cemeteries that I knew had family members. But the cemeteries were so big that they didn't list the people who are buried there. So I decided to try something else. Before I came to HCPL I was at WTLS (West Texas Library System) headquatered in Lubbock. WTLS is the library system that services 29 counties in west Texas. The county next to Lubbock is Crosby and its countyseat is Crosbyton.


The Crosbyton Cemetery was established in 1909 and the oldest grave is for Henretta Richardson. According to her gravestone she was born on Feb. 24, 1914 and died just 4 days later on the 28th of February 1914.

Genealogy #67: Genealogy Genesis

My family has been involved in genealogy work for decades. My mom's father hired a professional genealogist to work on his line back in the 1940's. My dad had several briefcases full of forms and charts for the various lines he was working on. After he retired he volunteered at a Family History Center and used the computer that connected to Salt Lake City to continue his search. He printed out every family chart he could find. I've done a little. We interviewed a couple of elderly sisters (one was 97 and the other 99 years old) and recorded their information. It was interesting to hear them talk. If one didn't remember a name or date the other one did.

As for advise, connect family members, there's a good chance that someone in the family may already be doing genealogy and would love to share. Be patience, it can go in spurts and just when you think the line's gone dry, something may happen and it starts flowing again. Keep good records and organize them. The more info you can get the better, especially if it included photos and stories. This helps the person to "come alive" and isn't just a name and some dates on a page.