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Comment by dmckeon | Hacker News Reader

  > A bit like facebook for the dead :-/

How long until Google announces "Street View for Cemeteries"?

Start with whatever paper or digital records are available for each cemetery, then scan each area of the cemetery, with multi-spectral cameras mounted on gyro-stabilized (like a Segway) mobile platform.

Index by matching cemetery records to gravesite locations. Try to do OCR / ICR in real time to cross-check / ground-truth the imaging process. Publish images similar to Street View that allow pan/tilt/zoom and 'try to OCR'.

Include searches that can combinate text, OCR, and Soundex sets of names, and search for for 'anyone else with similar names nearby'.

View on HN

In a sense, Ancestry is doing something similar. We are all related at some point in the past (more recently if we are from the same country, less so for Americans with their high rate of immigration). My relative has succeeded in joining our family tree with that of people we had no idea existed, because one of their family members uses Ancestry.com. My relative can now see their family tree, including pics of gravestones, etc.

So, if you are into that kind of thing, it suddenly becomes interesting to know that you are related to this or that famous or semi-famous person. Such connections are increasingly likely (and vicariously ego-boosting) the more people join and the more research they individually put into documenting their family history.

Sounds like a great network effect that boosts the usefulness of the site as more people join.

Agreed. My family history spans 3 continents, so tracing the people gives a very personal connection to history. Who knows what could be revealed as the site grows?

However, I do warn my relative, who has spent much effort on this endeavor of hers, and shared it with Ancestry.com, while paying for the privilege to do so, that she should keep all the things she finds through Ancestry on paper and in other formats for herself, and not to rely on Ancestry to maintain that information for the time spans she is used to dealing with. Fortunately, as someone who gets frustrated when a particular lead into the life of some obscure distant family member turns cold because of missing documents, this isn't too hard.

Turns out there is a crowd-sourced alternative with a thriving community:

http://www.findagrave.com/ "Search 88 million grave records"

Thanks! I'll pass the information on.

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