iPhone OS 4.0 Details

Earlier today, Apple discussed its highly-anticipated iPhone OS 4, the next major software upgrade to hit the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad lines. It will ship this summer for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and later in the fall for the iPad. Pay attention: It’s only going to be available for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 2nd generation (late 2008), iPod touch 3rd generation (late 2009 – 32GB/64GB) and eventually the iPad. Yes, the original iPhone is not showing up in that availability list. Apple is touting 100 new features for users and 1500 new APIs for developers in creating their apps.

Was it everything that everybody wanted? No and these kinds of things never will be.

Was it everything that I expected and wanted? Mostly.

There are four major new features that most of us will come into contact with. You could throw in iAd, a new mobile advertising platform for the iPhone OS line as well as gaming additions and enterprise additions, but I’m going to ignore those for now. The major additions, as far as I’m concerned are:
1) Multitasking – this is going to be beneficial to those of us wanting to run VOIP or instant messaging apps while we are doing other things. To me, it’s actually not a big deal, but I think the platform as a whole was in need of it. Yes, you could be messing around in a genealogy application, and assuming everything is coded properly, you could get on Voice-Over-IP or IM and call up a relative or check something out without losing your place.
2) Folders – this is a bigger thing to me – organizing your apps into folders. It allows you to go past the current limit of 180 apps, which is a huge deal, since it’s actually easy to rack up that many apps. For me, it’ll be nice to have my genealogy and genealogy-related iPhone apps all in one folder. Yes, there’s not much difference between going into a folder and say flipping to another screenful of apps, but I was started to run out of slots for more apps.
3) Mail – a unified inbox and the ability to switch between inboxes, organize messages by threads, and open attachments in third-party apps.
4) iBooks – It will be yet another way to read books on an iPhone or iPod touch, and this is just bringing the iPad’s bookstore down to the level of those devices. This joins the Kindle in things that are cool to have, but may not necessarily be practical in real-world usage, depending on your tolerance for reading on mobile devices.
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Samsung Galaxy S, 32GB microSDHC, Android Development

Samsung has decided to make a Google Android-based phone it’s high-end mobile device/phone. It’s a victory for Android fans and adds another really powerful mobile phone into the mix of those looking to get into smartphones.

It offers a 1GHz processor, 3D graphics (mapping, etc.), Assisted GPS, a 5MP camera capable of HD video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, and 8GB or 16GB versions with support for a 32GB memory card (see below). It’s focused on a 4-inch 800×480 Super AMOLED touchscreen display. It’ll be available sometime later this year.
Link: Samsung Unpacked

Speaking of Android, AdMob, a mobile advertising network, took a survey concerning development on various mobile platforms. While the survey was limited in number (just over 100 responses), it was interesting since these are actual developers. Some notes of interest:
- 31% of developers are developing for more than one mobile platform
- More than 70% of iPhone developers who responded said they would develop for Android over the next six months, while around half of the Android developers were planning on developing for the iPhone.
- Nearly half are new to mobile platforms.
Link: Metrics.Admob.com

It’s interesting since over the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion in development for platforms that are not Windows Mobile or Palm-based. Whether it’s going to carry over into genealogy software development, I don’t know. If you look at the iPhone-related genealogy applications, the highest-profile apps are from existing third party developers for Apple’s Mac OS X who already have genealogy applications available for the desktop/laptop. Even Ancestry.com’s Tree to Go is from a company already involved with genealogy software (Family Tree Maker, among other things). Still, the iPhone opened up the door and we have developers new to the genealogy scene, and the same can be said of the Android platform. Even if we don’t see a lot of new genealogy-specific software, we’ll still see plenty of software that any genealogist can use – navigation, photo storage and management, etc.

Finally, If you have $199 to spare, a phone or other mobile devices that supports microSDHC (possibly including the above Samsung Galaxy S), and a need to carry around a lot of photos, video, music, and data, your ship has arrived. SanDisk announced a 32GB microSDHC card today. Right now it’s available in the United States (and probably Canada) as well as Europe. By the end of next month, it should be available worldwide. Link: SanDisk

Genealogy Applications for Google Android

Although I’m primarily an iPhone user with the occasional Windows Mobile device, I have to admit I’ve been keeping an eye on Google’s Android platform. The thing that gets me is the hardware – performance, expandability, and display resolution. Now that PDAs and smartphones/mobile phones have merged, for all intents and purposes, things are changing – there is more of an interest in mobile computing and mobile genealogy especially. There have been a couple of TV shows on in the US recently – Faces of America on PBS which just wrapped up, and the new “Who Do You Think You Are” currently running on NBC, which are helping this as well. The hardware is moving along while coming down in price. In fact, some of the Android devices are getting into resolutions of 800x which was not possible not too long ago – you were looking at a low-end netbook with that kind of resolution. Then there is the iPad, but more on that later in a later post.

Anyways, there are currently two genealogy-related applications for Google’s Android platform that have been developed over the past 4-5 months (or at least released). Both are basically family tree/GEDCOM viewers/browsers, and both are being actively developed. They may not be as polished as their iPhone or Windows Mobile counterparts, but I think they are probably coming along a lot faster given that both developers appear to be new to the mobile genealogy software scene. Both allow for importing GEDCOM files.

The first is AGeneDB, and it’s still considered to be at an “Alpha” development stage. It’s free at this time, and future plans include adding families, individuals, and events to the GEDCOM file/genealogy database. I don’t have that much information on it, unfortunately.

The second is Family Bee, which is $10, and is much more polished at this point. It has a variety of ways to import GEDCOM files – through web browsing, email attachments, and hooking up to a computer via USB. The GEDCOM files are stored on an SD card, and it’s been reliably tested out to 12 MB of data (which is over 30,000 names).

I don’t like to recommend software or platforms I really haven’t tested, but if I had to choose, it would probably be Family Bee, although it wouldn’t hurt to try AGeneDB either since it’s free. Family Bee has (to me at least) more features and is garnering more favorable reviews on the various Android app websites. I don’t have an Android device at this time to test these out, but will be acquiring one soon.

2010 is shaping up to be a very good year for mobile genealogy software. In the coming days, I’ve got a lot of updates to the site I’ll be rolling out – some really useful stuff for mobile users. More on that as they are rolled out.

FamViewer 2.2

FamViewer version 2.2 was released on Apple’s iTunes App Store yesterday. Version 2.2 is a major update, including performance improvements and a New Note feature.

FamViewer is an iPhone/iPod Touch genealogy application that lets you view GEDCOM files. The GEDCOM files can be imported either from a computer or a website. The app allows you to generate a variety of views, from a family view/family group sheet display three generations to a family tree view with eight generations. There is a searchable surname index as well.

FamViewer allows you to add notes to entries on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can email new notes to yourself as a text file or as part of a GEDCOM file.

All views support portrait or landscape orientations. FamViewer is not tied to a particular genealogy application – either Mac or PC. There are noknown limits to GEDCOM file sizes.

Changes:
* New Notes feature allows users to add a note to each individual in the database and then email all of the New
Notes to themselves. New Notes can be emailed as a simple text message or all the New Notes can be included in a GEDCOM file.
* Display of adopted children has been improved. If a person in the database has multiple sets of parents you can switch between display of these multiple sets of parents in a way similar to the way multiple spouses are displayed.
* Repository information is now displayed in the Sources view.
* Multiple names are displayed for individuals on the Person view. Each name included in the database for an individual is displayed on its own line in the Person view.
* Parsing of names has improved so all prefix, suffix, and nicknames will be displayed correctly.
* Parsing and display of Address information has been improved.
* If an imported file fails to import due to a ‘bad file format’ error the start of the offending file is displayed in the error dialog to help diagnose the error.
* Numerous GEDCOM parser improvements and performance improvements have been made.
* Display of some Notes and Sources has been improved.

Direct link to FamViewer at iTunes:

Shrubs 2.1

Last night, a new version of Shrubs 2.0 was made available through the Apple iTunes AppStore (AppStore Link: ).

Shrubs is a stand-alone genealogy application for the iPhone and iPod touch. You can import a GEDCOM 5.5 data file up to 4MB in size. It requires iPhone/iPod software version 2.2.1 and network connectivity for importing a GEDCOM file.

Important: If you are upgrading from Shrubs version 1.x, you will need to re-import your GEDCOM file.

Changes:
* Fixed issue affecting individuals with multiple NAME tags in the GEDCOM file
* Fixed duplicate entries issue in individual and union index
* Fixed GEDCOM event parsing issue
* Improved GEDCOM text encoding support (mainly UTF-8)
* Old UI is now available through a toggle in the Settings app (screen rotation will not be available if active)

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