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Did Synium Engage in Online Disinformation?

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You be the judge. Back on October 8th of last year someone submitted this comment on my post, “Reunion for Mac 9.0a Release Fixes Snow Leopard Incompatibility:

Comment send from office.synium.de domainAs you can read if you click on the picture above to see the full size version of the unapproved comment from my dashboard, the comment complains about Reunion’s interface and suggests that the person may switch to MacFamilyTree.

Something struck me as strange about this post, so I checked the IP address of the computer from which it was submitted. You can see it on the left side of the image.  By the way, the blurry area above that is the email address that was entered with the comment; I didn’t want to make that public. Anyway, I popped the IP address into the “Lookup” tab of the trusty Network Utility app that comes with our beloved Macs (which you can do too, to see for yourself). Here’s what came back:

Lookup has started…

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -x 88.79.125.27 any +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: +cmd
27.125.79.88.in-addr.arpa. 43199 IN PTR    office.synium.de.

The last line is the important one: the domain is office.synium.de; the Internet domain of the producer of the MacFamilyTree software. Apparently someone at Synium submitted the comment! That casts the comment in an entirely different light, doesn’t it?

This comment has been sitting in my queue, awaiting moderation since then. I’ve been torn about whether to make public the comment and my findings. Obviously I’ve decided to do just that—primarily for two reasons:

  1. It’s a reminder to think critically about opinions you encounter online.
  2. I’m sick of looking at it and not taking action one way or another (delete it or post about it).

So, you tell me: what do you make of the comment and the evidence?

Tree to Go Updated to 1.0.2

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Ancestry.com updated their iPhone and iPod touch app, Tree to Go yesterday. Thanks for the birthday present Ancestry!

The release notes say the update improves performance and adds the “ability to create a free Ancestry.com tree from within the app.” I can’t build a new tree, so I assume they’re actually referring to the ability to create a new free account on Ancestry.com.

I Built Something For You

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While I’ve been enjoying time with my family I’ve also been working on a project for you. I’m ready on this special day (my birthday) to extend to my MacGenealogist friends, this invitation:

Please use the evidence driven genealogy application I’m building. I call it Lineascope. It’s an Internet application for recording, analyzing, and presenting chains of genealogical information and the lineages they document. It’s at www.lineascope.com and all you need to start is a free Google user account.

I’m extending this invitation to you as a special preview before I announce it more widely around the middle of April. I’m doing it this way because I love you guys and I trust and want your feedback. Please use Lineascope for a piece of research you’re currently working on or ready to start then let me know what you like and what you want added or changed. Feel free to ask questions too! The following text is taken from the about page. It will tell you more about why you need Lineascope, what it is, and the crucial role you can play in its creation.

Why Lineascope?

Lineascope exists because no one had solved this set of problems:

  • How can I preserve entire lines of genealogy evidence?
  • How can genealogists minimize duplicate research?

Since the beginning of the use of computers in genealogy, they have been used to capture conclusions about events, characteristics, and relationships and the sources used to draw them. That’s well and good as far as it goes. Unfortunately, there is more to a solid conclusion than a list of sources. To build a solid case you need to analyze sources, information, evidence, and the quality of each in context.

To prevent rework when you locate new information, you want to be able to revisit all the evidence you used to reach the previous conclusion. It’s usually unnecessary to re-consider all the assertions leading up to the evidence. You simply need to make an assertion about the new source, information, and quality of each. Then it’s a matter of resolving any conflicting evidence then considering what the set of assertions tells you about what conclusion to draw. Having past sources, evidence, and information preserved with the proof statement for every event, characteristic, and familial relationship is a great time-saver. Even bigger is the time saving opportunity for other researchers with whom you share your work.

There’s an incredible amount of poorly researched “facts” freely available on the Internet and it’s growing exponentially. Imagine finding a death date for an ancestor you’ve been looking for in someone else’s online tree. Without Lineascope, you’d look at the sources cited then do all the research and reach your own conclusion. Now imagine that the genealogist used Lineascope. You could have access to this event sheet. Take a look! It lists the citations and quality of all the sources, the information obtained from each source and its quality, the evidence the researcher asserted from the information and the quality of that evidence, and a proof statement addressing any conflicts and describing the rationale for the concluded birth date. Would you have to repeat the research? No, you’d be able to look at what was done and decide whether you agree or not. That’s my vision for your research, collaboration, and for Lineacope.

What is Lineascope?

Lineascope is an Internet application for recording, analyzing, and presenting chains of genealogical information and the lineages they document.

Lineascope is also a work in progress. It’s far from done, but it works and solves real genealogy problems. I’m releasing it this way so that you can benefit from using it as it’s developed instead of having to wait a year or two for the finished product. And, since you’ll have input on its development, the end result will be an amazing solution to your genealogy research needs!

You see, one of my principles in creating this tool is to build it with constant feedback from you. As a result, I’m working in short iterations, building functions, getting feedback, then adapting what’s built and future plans accordingly. So changes will be small and frequent.

The roadmap below will give you an idea where I think it’s going in the near term.

Roadmap

  • Create a getting started tutorial screencast
  • Make the table of events on the event sheet sort chronologically
  • Implement characteristics
  • Create a research sheet that lists uncompleted search tasks
  • Implement family groups

So, there you have it! Check it out and let me know what you think.

Parallels Desktop Build 9344

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There was an update yesterday to this PC virtualization software. It’s used by some MacGenealogists to run Windows genealogy software. There doesn’t appear to be anything in this build of particular interest to genealogists, but it looks like there are some worthwhile fixes, so go update your copy.

Here is the list of enhancements and fixes according to the producer:

Guest Operating Systems
  • Google Chrome OS support.

Performance

  • Improved performance of WDDM driver.
  • Improved performance of virtual machines with Mac OS X Server v10.6.3 and v10.6.2 guest operating systems installed.
  • Compatibility issues with Parallels Internet Security installed in virtual machines running on Nehalem-based iMac and Mac Pro were fixed.
  • In a clean installation of Windows XP, My Computer opens without delay.
  • Waking Mac OS from sleep doesn’t affect the Coherence performance.
  • Improved virtual hard disk caching mode.
  • Spotlight indexing enabled in Mac OS can no longer influence Boot Camp virtual machines booting speed.
  • Other performance improvements.

Integration

  • MacLook fixes and improvements.
  • Enhanced appearance of the menu in Crystal mode.
  • Correct handling of text copied from Mac OS and pasted to a non-Unicode application in the virtual machine.
  • Mac OS Desktop Aliases for Windows applications work properly.
  • USB Flash devices and CD/DVD network drives can be opened in virtual machines by double-clicking their icons.
  • Shared Windows applications are opened correctly when the virtual machine is suspended or paused.
  • Improved support for Windows Live Mail.
  • Improved handling of shared folders used by OneNote 2007, ProShow, and Marvin Sketch.

Graphics

  • Improved support for OpenGL in Linux virtual machines.
  • Improved graphical performance of RealFlow in Ubuntu virtual machines.
  • Artifacts like transparent 3D games windows in Ubuntu virtual machines were fixed.
  • Improved graphics in Perforce client.
  • Switching view modes while working in Autodesk Inventor does not cause graphical artifacts like black screen.
  • White areas of the screen no longer appear in the Tin Soldiers Julius Caesar game.
  • Problems with video in Internet Explorer 8 when Aero is enabled in Windows 7 were resolved.
  • Other graphics improvements.

Network

  • Enhanced compatibility with Cisco VPN.
  • FTP upload speed increased.

    • MacFamilyTree Updated to 5.6.8

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    The changes in this version are:

    • Completely new User Guide localized in English, French and German
    • Date Picker works correctly now in all localizations
    • Bug fixes for MobileFamilyTree 2 Sync
    • Several other bug fixes

    What do you think of the new User Guide?