Sunday, December 31, 2006

Necessary Computer Tools

The Family Matters blog (Tech Support for the Family Historian) aka "Moultrie Creek" has a nice list of computer software that are useful for the computer genealogist - see http://www.moultriecreek.net/family/2006/12/research_toolbo.html.

The recommended tools include the Firefox browser, Rojo newsreader, Yahoo, Flickr and Diigo accounts, Skype phone service, a screen capture program, a PDF reader/writer, a blog web site and a Lulu account. Go to the site to see his explanation of each and follow the links - it's a nice list.

I use Microsoft IE7 as my browser, Bloglines as my newsreader, Yahoo for several things, Flickr and others for pictures, "Print Screen" for screen captures to MSWord, CutePDF to create PDF files, and this blog. I don't use Diigo, Skype or Lulu - yet! At least I knew what they were!

It strikes me that, compared to say the year 2000, that everything we do is much more complex than it used to be. Using tools like these make the tasks easy to perform - it's just that we didn't do some of these things years ago! Are human minds evolving to be able to grasp these advanced concepts and complex tools, or are we just using a larger fraction of our gray matter? Methinks the latter (or maybe that's why I'm forgetting more as the years go by?).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I agree with you that things have gotten more complex. I think it's just that we now have so many options. Look at telephones for example . . . Where once there was THE PHONE COMPANY, we now have multiple companies offering phone service with all kinds of features - and then there's cellular and Internet phones to add to the mix. Each system is relatively easy to use, but the tough part is wading through all the choices to pick the one(s) best for you.

Not all of us enjoy the effort needed to research options and we all suffer from some degree of "this is the way I've always done it", but when you consider all the things we are now doing that we couldn't have imagined even 10 years ago . . .

I'm thrilled that technology has brought us the blog platform as an additional form of sharing information and ideas. The genealogy community has always been a sharing community, but blogs have added personality to the words. I like that!

Family Matters

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