The following article was found at Tampa Bay Online.
New app takes sting out of cemetery searches
By SHARON TATE MOODY | Special correspondent
Published: June 17, 2012A traditional summertime rite for genealogists means fighting weeds, mosquitoes, snakes and an array of other undesirables.
I’m talking about tramping through cemeteries, of course.
Immediately behind the critter issue is the frustration of finding the right cemetery only to discover there is no sexton or other office to assist a researcher in finding the desired graves.
One good thing about today’s technology is that sooner or later someone is going to develop a mobile app for what ails us. In this case, it’s the BillionGraves Project.
Using a mobile app — this one is free —volunteers can walk through any cemetery and click GPS-tagged photographs of every tombstone there. The next steps include uploading the images to the website and transcribing them so others can search by names.
BillionGraves has partnered with FamilySearch, the LDS Church website, which most genealogists use regularly. In the near future when someone conducts a name search on FamilySearch.org, they will get a hit from BillionGraves if a tombstone with that name has been photographed and entered into that system.
I treasure the memories of all the old country cemeteries I’ve explored — never sure I’d find an actual tombstone and feeling exhilarated when I did. Then there were the trips where I wondered why I couldn’t find a tombstone a distant cousin told me he found “25 steps from the left rear corner of the main old church building.” As BillionGraves says on its website: “No more counting trees, memorizing certain fence posts, or documenting the number of paces to find your loved one.”