J.D. Biersdorfer, a consumer technology writer for The New York Times, has a new article out for The New York Times, Finding Your Roots With Help From Your Phone, discussing how iPhone and Android users can use the built-in/default iOS and Android apps on their phones to do genealogy research.
It’s a great little article, covering what a lot of us who have been doing genealogy for years, and own smartphones, know:
Spending time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestors is a “family” vacation. Sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family-tree-building software and community forums. But not everything is online.
As you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand — it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more.
She mentions Google’s Lens and Apple’s Translate – two apps that use the phone’s camera to decipher and translate text both in real-time and in photographs, as tools to decipher old newspapers and grave markers.
She also mentions Google’s PhotoScan app, which can allow you to capture multiple photos and then combine them to remove glare and enhance photos (in this case, photos of a tintype).
Source: (maybe behind a paywall):