Geocoding Family History

For those of you who have been faithfully following my blog (both of you), I am now also posting stuff to techconsumer.com and geofacts.org. Here is a recent post on geofacts that I am also posting here, just to see what the Google bot does to my pagerank when I self-plagiarize...

This week I started using a site called MyFamily2.0 beta after a recently family get together. The site is free, and describes itself as “a place where you can share photos and narrated photo stories with your family and friends.” I am quite impressed with it so far, particularly the “stories” section of the site. It allows users to add audio stories to their part of the site. This is done using a regular telephone to record the story (they provide you with a unique PIN number when you call). You can also tie photos to the recorded story. All that is missing is a geocoding feature to allow users to tie these stories to specific locations.

I see great potential with this site, so I used their feedback link to make this plug for geocoding:

One suggestion I would make that could really bring the photos, videos, and audio stories to the next level would be to “geocode” or “geotag” these memories. By this I mean allowing users who add media to browse to a specific map location using a Google map or something similar and link them to a physical location. You could tie all this wonderful media to specific locations, such as a cemetery site or a childhood home. Panoramio.com is doing this with photos, but I don’t know of anyone else who allows users to geotag audio and video media. It won’t be long until we all carry GPS-enabled mobile devices that can search by location. The sooner we can tie media files to physical locations, the more likely MyFamily.com will lead the way in “on-site” family history.