Hello again from a soggy, sunless Spokane…..but daffodils are up! Glad to share some serendipity today with you all………………  Donna

This is a most intriguing announcement from Microsoft:

Microsoft introduced a new app on Thursday that anyone with a dog should play with because it’s a lot of fun.

It’s called Fetch!, and it’s available for iPhones and on the web. It uses artificial intelligence techniques to classify images of real-world dogs into breeds. On the web, users can upload a photo of a dog, or you can take a picture of your pet using your phone’s camera.

If you upload a picture of, say, a Rhodesian ridgeback, Microsoft should be able to confirm the dog’s breed.

It’s the latest in a line of fun, silly apps released by Microsoft Garage, an “outlet for experimental projects” that are designed to show off creative and unexpected ways to apply Microsoft’s expertise in artificial intelligence. In the past year, Microsoft has released apps that detect and measures mustaches in photos or guesses your age, for example.

Like Microsoft’s other AI apps, Fetch! should become more accurate as users upload more photos and data. More technical information is available here.

Fetch! is already fairly accurate. Here it identified the breed of a dog belonging to one of BI’s reporters.

Wouldn’t it be fun to upload a photo of the dog in an ancestral photo to see what kind of dog they had? Probably a “Heinz 57” more often than not, but I think I’ll try this out!

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I have recently become aware of a genealogical deficiency of mine…. Not uploading stories, photos and documentation for my ancestors. So I recently created a tree on MyHeritage and titled it “Oswald Descendants 1911.”  John Peter Oswald and Mary Ethel Leverich were married in 1911, had five children and now a score of grandchildren. I set up this private website as a forum where any and all members of this family could post about their newest additions and learn more about their cousins.  But I do plan to post more about John Peter and Mary Ethel.

Now to the point of this blurb. I asked my sis-in-law to write up the story of her mom, Esther Mary,  (and my children’s great-grandmother) for this MyHeritage tree. She replied, “Mother did that herself…… didn’t I send it to you?” I replied in the negative and she rooted around, found it and sent it to me. Esther finished her autobiography just four years before she died. And I never knew about it! Sharon only THOUGHT she’d shared it with me!

Apply this to your own situation. How many family biographies for your family are out there and you have never asked about them???????

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