In my experience, really great software is so consistent that when you're trying to do something you've never done before, you can guess at how it's done and at least half of the time, it just works. For the most part, Ruby on Rails is like that. There are best practices baked into the framework for processes I never even realized you could have best practices for, like the … [Read more...] about Rails: acts_as_list Incantations
Conversations about Transcription
Gavin Robinson has been exchanging emails with the UK National Archives this week. He's trying to convince the archivists to revise their usage restrictions to allow quotation and reuse of user-contributed content. Gavin recognizes that the NA is doing a difficult dance with their user community: [S]ome people who have valuable knowledge would be put off from contributing if … [Read more...] about Conversations about Transcription
FamilySearch Indexer Review
I've downloaded and played around with FamilySearch Indexer, and I must report that it's really impressive. Initially I was dismayed by the idea of collaborative transcription on a thick (desktop!) client, but my trial run showed me why it's necessary for their problem domain. Simply put, FSI is designed for forms, not freeform manuscripts like letters. The problem … [Read more...] about FamilySearch Indexer Review
Progress Report: Zoom
Zoom is done! It took me about a week of intense development, which translates to perhaps 8-10 hours of full-time work. Most of that was spent trying to figure out why prototype.js's Ajax.Request wasn't executing RJS commands sent back to it. For the past year, I've been concentrating on automating the process of converting two directories of 180ish hastily-taken images into … [Read more...] about Progress Report: Zoom
FamilySearch Indexing
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter enthuses over the news that FamilySearch.com, the website of the Utah Genealogy Society of which Dan Lawyer is PM is putting public archives online. This service is provided through FamilySearch Indexing, which is a sort of clearinghouse for records transcribed by human volunteers. FamilySearchIndexer is not quite true image-based … [Read more...] about FamilySearch Indexing