“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” — George Santayana
If you have been following the news, you have probably heard a lot of buzz about that famous nucleic acid, DNA. Rest assured, Azavea hasn’t jumped onto the genetically modified bandwagon*- we’re just helping people put together the pieces of their family history. We partnered with WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive to integrate a family tree editor and mapping application into their new website, theroot.com. The Root is a daily online magazine that provides commentary on today’s news from a variety of Black perspectives. The family tree editor and mapping application are meant to complement the site’s interactive genealogical section to trace one’s ancestry through AfricanDNA.com, a DNA testing site co-founded by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is also The Root’s Editor-In-Chief.
A sample, editable family tree on WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive’s ‘The Root’ website.
Using common genealogy metaphors, we developed a powerful editor for building and maintaining family trees. Built with Flex and the yFiles graphing framework, this editor enables dynamic editing and visualization of an individual’s family tree. Leveraging our geographic background and indulging in our strong interest in Open Source software, we integrated geocoding from Google, OpenLayers, and PostGIS to display family members on a map, anywhere in the world.
This project was an exciting whirlwind of development, lasting only 6 weeks, including design, debugging, and load testing. A couple fun hours were had by all when we unleashed all of our staff on the application, in an attempt to find bugs. What was most enjoyable was listening to the cackles of laughter after attempts at SQL injection.
We are continuing to work on this project, and future releases to the mapping tool will include a GEDCOM exporter, support for really complicated family relationships, tight integration between the family tree and map views, and with DNA test results from AfricanDNA.com. So stay tuned!
*No comment on the quality of the genetically modified developers we hired recently.
