A plausible ancestor generator an experiment with heuristics, screen scraping and geolocs

This paper demonstrates methods for creating a server application with the task of generating a plausible family tree based on the user. The application does not try to be factual, merely plausible. In creating this app a number of server based techniques are employed to solve the various problems. 1 - Heuristics were defined to simulate plausible birth and death dates, and also the parent´s age at the birth of the each generation. 2 - Screen scraping techniques were employed to harvest names from name databases which did not offer an api. 3 - Google places api was used to select a plausible birthplace for each ancestors. 4 - Wikibots were used to retrieve a plausible occupation plausible for each ancestor. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a variety of servers-based methods can be employed within a single application to provide a complex result which appears intelligent, has a certain level of semantic credibility, is fun, engaging for the user and appears entirely plausible.