Content vs configuraton

It's natural for the user to think of the former. Actually, running a business demands that. Too, if you spend time and money getting some process going, you would like to keep it running as long as feasible. A couple of years ago, we saw a transition that jumbled some lives as people woke up to the fact of their process being overlaid on something that was disappearing.

This year, we had a similar when ancestry announced that myfamily was going away. Many genealogical sites made use of myfamily as did people who wanted to stay in touch with their wide-spread family and friends. To where ought one go for a replacement? There are several alternatives, but, let's look at what is involved with getting the data out of myfamily.

At first, there was an offer of doing an export. Turns out that the export was not complete and offered cumbersome formats. At that early state, some had access to the database and offered to do extractions in an intelligent manner.

But, of late, the database was turned off disallowing access except for browser mode. Too, those who thought of scraping were told that such activities was a violation of policy. The proverbial catch-22?

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Earlier, we talked about a Magna Charta for computer users. One thing of importance would be some semblance of requirements.

Too, myfamily did allow users until Sept. But, anyone building a process will need to do some risk analysis and consider what to do to maintain the process when things shake up a bit. None of that is easy, but the effort ought to be more than some minimal amount.

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I was surprised to read comments about all of the people who had built their business methods upon the earlier environment that went away. But, then, it made sense to them at the time. Except, buried in all of the legal jargon of the policy agreement would have been something about terminations and other types of end conditions.

Remarks:   Modified: 08/02/2014

08/02/2014 --