Smartphone software prevents Icelanders accidentally having sex with relatives

[garbon]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2311092/Anti-incest-app-Smartphone-software-prevents-Iceland-residents-accidentally-having-sex-relatives.html

Meeting an eligible young gentleman in a bar and taking him home with you probably won't pose, er, genealogical problems in countries with large populations... but it might in Iceland, where there is a population of just 320,000 and everyone is, ultimately, descended form the same family tree.

The threat of accidental incest was all-too real for three Icelandic software designers who have created a smartphone app that aims to prevent exactly such sticky situations by informing people precisely how closely related they really are.

The online Iselandingabok database - which helps Icelanders to trace their family history - had already been set up by anti-virus software developer Friðrik Skúlason. But now three designers from  Sad Engineer Studios have developed it to include an incest alarm, activated by 'bumping' two phones together.

The three developers of the Book of Icelanders app (which is available on Android phones) are Arnar Freyr Aðalsteinsson, Hákon Þrastar Björnsson, and Alexeander Annas Helgason.

They told Digital Trends that the app's motto is: 'Bump in the app before you bump in the bed.'

They said: 'We added a birthday calendar to make sure you don't forget your relatives birthday. The app even reminds you on the date, to guarantee you won't forget it. The other big feature we introduced was the Bump. This feature enables users of the app to bump two phones together to instantly see how they are related.

'The "Incest Prevention" is a fun feature that the user can enable through the options menu which will notify him with both text and sound if the one he bumps with someone who is too related to him.'

One review of the app on Google's Play Store scored the software 4.5/5 and said: 'If I would have had this app last year I probably wouldn't have gone home with my cousin.'

[Eddie Teach]

 

I've met all my first cousins, and I have a big family.

[mongers]

Viking just uses Languish instead.   

[garbon]

I've met all my first cousins, and I have a big family.

You meeting young gentleman in a bar?

[katmai]

I guess that is why Legbiter went to Norway

[Eddie Teach]

You meeting young gentleman in a bar?

Not as a rule.

[merithyn]

This would have been very helpful when I was growing up. 

It wasn't unusual for me to meet a guy on the East side of Des Moines that I thought was pretty hot, strike up a conversation, and find out that he was a cousin. It got so bad that I refused to date anyone from my own side of town.

To explain, my grandmother had four sisters and a brother. All of the girls had 10+ children, and the boy had six. They also all lived and grew up on the East side. When they married, most of them stayed on the East side, had kids, and raised them there. So, while they wouldn't have been my first cousins, it was still too creepy to date my dad's first cousins' kids, and I didn't really know all of their last names, so it wasn't hard to bump into one without knowing that I was doing so.

Luckily, we always managed to ferret that bit of information out fairly quickly, so it never went past the flirting stage. 

[Ideologue]

My cousins aren't attractive.

[sbr]

I met my grandmother's sister's granddaughter (2nd cousin?) at my grandfather's funeral when I was 22.  She was a smokin hot, blonde Texan-ette and we got along REALLY well.  I like to think in other circumstances we may have bumped uglies, but it just didn't happen that day.  I have never seen her again.

[Razgovory]

All my cousins are much older then me and over a hundred miles away.

[Malthus]

My grandparents on my father's side came from Nova Scotia. Many of my relatives there live in a town (well, village) called Kinsman Corner. 

As the name says, pretty well everyone there is, well, kin. Problem is, so is everyone else in that part of Nova Scotia. 

[Maximus]

My grandparents on my father's side came from Nova Scotia. Many of my relatives there live in a town (well, village) called Kinsman Corner. 

As the name says, pretty well everyone there is, well, kin. Problem is, so is everyone else in that part of Nova Scotia.

Heh, I've been there. Lived about 10 miles from there for six months.

Funny thing is aside from the Halifax area that's the most cosmopolitan part of Nova Scotia. Even so, I knew people from the valley that had never been more than 20 miles or so from where they grew up.

[Malthus]

My grandparents on my father's side came from Nova Scotia. Many of my relatives there live in a town (well, village) called Kinsman Corner. 

As the name says, pretty well everyone there is, well, kin. Problem is, so is everyone else in that part of Nova Scotia.

Heh, I've been there. Lived about 10 miles from there for six months.

Funny thing is aside from the Halifax area that's the most cosmopolitan part of Nova Scotia. Even so, I knew people from the valley that had never been more than 20 miles or so from where they grew up.

I haven't been back there since I was a kid. I really should go, the people are very nice and so is the scenery, from what I remember.