Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Nearly 300 Years of Early Canadian Historical Documents to go Online

The following is a press release written by The Generations Network, Inc., the parent company of Ancestry.com:

PROVO, Utah, March 29 -- Ancestry.ca, the largest Canadian family history website, and Canadiana.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving access to early Canadian publications, today announced a partnership to digitize and bring online nearly 300 years of Canadiana.org's early historical records spanning from the 1600s to the 1900s.  The new collection includes more than 6,200 publication titles and 1.6 million pages of family histories, local histories, biographies, civil service records and other early historical documents.

Yahoo to Offer Unlimited Email Storage

I have often praised Google's Gmail, an excellent free e-mail service. One of the major advantages of Gmail is that it offers more than two gigabytes of online storage space. That allows anyone to keep tens of thousands of old messages at no charge. The search company also provides a great method of quickly finding a particular stored message that you want within seconds.

Now Gmail's primary competitor, Yahoo Mail, is one-upping Gmail. Yahoo has just announced that its free Yahoo Mail service will soon offer unlimited storage space. That's right: unlimited.

Family Roots Radio Interview

I am delighted to announce that I will be the guest on Kory Meyerink's genealogy program on Family Roots Radio today. This is an "Internet radio station" heard all around the word. All you need is a Windows or Macintosh OS X computer with speakers or headphones.

The live program starts at 4:00 PM Eastern U.S. time, 1:00 PM Pacific. If you do miss that time slot, you will be able to listen to the recorded version at your convenience starting soon after that. You can click on the thumbnail image to the right to see the announcement.

MacMozy

I have written before about Mozy, an online backup service for Windows XP. I use this service daily and love it. Now Mozy has a new client for Macintosh users.

Ancestry.com Adds the United States-Canadian Border Crossings Collection

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, owners of Ancestry.com:

PROVO, Utah, March 28 -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, today announced the addition of the first and only online collection of more than 4 million names of individuals who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border between 1895 and 1956.  These historical records are the latest addition to Ancestry.com's Immigration Records Collection, which also includes more than 100 million names from the largest online collection of U.S. passenger lists, spanning 1820 to 1960.

Improve Your Passwords

I had a recent conversation with a newsletter reader about passwords. The reader was asking about identity theft and the security of passwords. The person worried that a hacker could crack a password that consists of a family name or a pet's name or some similar word. I agree with her. Never use a single word or name to protect something you value.

Security experts will tell you to always use passwords that are non-words. Instead, all passwords should be lengthy and should also be a jumble of letters and numbers, such as:

iltstwan7daw

Allen County Public Library and WeRelate.org Announce Partnership

I wrote about WeRelate.org last year. It is a great online service that has the potential to provide a lot of genealogy information at no charge. You can read my article here . Now WeRelate.org has announced a partnership with the second-largest genealogy library in the country. Here is the announcement:

World's Largest Genealogy Database is in... Shanghai?

This announcement really amazes me. You see, I used to live in Shanghai in the early 1980s, when China was first being opened up to foreign businesses. This was only a few years after the end of the Cultural Revolution that caused great upheavals within the country. At that time, the Communist government actively discouraged the study of one's ancestry, labeling it a bourgeois activity.

The same Communist government is still governing China, but there have been some major changes. With government approval, the Shanghai Library has now announced that it expects to complete the world's largest genealogical database, containing about 50,000 Chinese family trees, by the end of this year.

PedigreeSoft.com

It only took four years but I finally found the answer! In the June 30, 2003 edition of this newsletter, I published the following query from a reader:

I am 81. My wife died recently and I have sold my house. I will spend my remaining days visiting family and friends.... So I will have no PC. I will rely on library facilities and friend's PCs. I will carry my GEDCOM database on CD. But most will not have a genealogy application on their PC. Many public facilities will not allow you to install applications because of the complications involved in making entries to their Windows Registry. For the same reason I cannot install the genealogy application on web storage such as Yahoo Briefcase. Is there a way around this, or perhaps a site which has a genealogy application available for all to use?

In fact, the gentleman was well ahead of his time.  In the past few months, two or three possible solutions have appeared. Indeed, his last sentence is the one that seems the most prophetic: "…or perhaps a site which has a genealogy application available for all to use?"

Still More Problems with Google Books

I have written before about Google Books. (See http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/10/full_text_genea.html.) This is a great online resource for genealogists. Thousands of old genealogy and local history books are available to you free of charge. You can download and save them on your hard drive, then re-use them time and again as you wish.

Some readers have found problems with the online books, however.

New Guide to The Historic Cemeteries of Oyster Bay

Oyster Bay (Long Island) Town Historian John Hammond has written another book. Supervisor John Venditto made the announcement that the town now has available a guide for genealogists entitled Historic Cemeteries of Oyster Bay. Mr. Hammond said, "My phone has been going crazy after an article by Bill Beyer in the Sunday, March 18 issue of Newsday." The book is only available by calling him at his office in town hall.

(+) Moving From a Desktop to a Laptop Computer

A newsletter reader wrote this week, asking a number of excellent questions. Here is an excerpt from that message:

Dear Mr. Eastman,

You were very helpful a year ago when I was looking at genealogy software to acquire. I have several new questions for you now that I am ready to buy a laptop to take with me when I do genealogical research.

1. Do you recommend any particular basic software, memory, accessory requirements for a laptop that is to be used primarily for genealogical research? I would like a laptop to which I could export slide shows for display and/or lecture purposes.
2. Will I need to buy another version of TMG [The Master Genealogist] software to download on the laptop or can I transfer the software I already own onto another machine? Is it possible to export slide-shows as long as the software programs are identical or from the same supplier?
3. What is the best way to transfer data back and forth from the new laptop into my PC, and vice versa? If that best way is by burning data into a CD-ROM, how time-consuming a process is that? I'd like a short process possible!

Thank you in advance,

Great questions! I thought I would share my thoughts with all Plus Edition readers as I suspect that others may have similar questions. Let's take the questions one at a time.

A New Computer Revolution is Rising Around Us

WARNING: This article contains personal opinions.

I recently attended the 10th Annual Computerized Family History & Genealogy Conference held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. This annual conference focuses heavily on the use of technology within genealogy. After listening to presentations and talking with presenters and attendees for several days, I walked away with one phrase echoing in my mind: "web-based."

AncestralManor.com Offers Six Weeks of Family History Teleconferences

The following press release was written by AncestralManor.com:

International authors and educators to present teleconference workshops on family history in March and April, 2007.

AncestralManor.com to host six-week teleconference series on family history. A six-week series of teleconference presentations on a wide variety of family history topics will be offered from March 18 – April 23, 2007 at 8 PM each evening by the AncestralManor.com of Waltham, MA. Over twenty-five notable historians, authors, educators and entrepreneurs will discuss everything from new methods for using traditional resources to emerging on-line resources and technological tools for family historians and practical case studies will abound throughout the series.

BCG Upcoming Events

The Board for Certification of Genealogists has created a new page of upcoming events at http://bcgcertification.org/calendar.html. You will be able use this webpage as a reference for learning where a certification seminar will be held or where the BCG booth with the portfolios that travel with the booth will be accessible.

Logan County's History goes on CD

Researching Logan County, Illinois history has just become easier.

Stringer's "History of Logan County," has long been the bible for historians far and near seeking information about the early years of the county. Now the book is available on searchable CD from the Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society.

Recent Changes at Footnote.com

Disclaimer: This article describes recent changes at Footnote, Inc., the sponsors of this newsletter. There is a possibility that I am displaying some bias in favor of the sponsor, although I honestly don't think that is the case. I'll simply mention the possibility and then let you judge for yourself.

Numerous changes have been made recently at Footnote.com site. This is the company that recently signed an agreement with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to place images of millions of historic documents online. The site is valuable for genealogists, historians, re-enactors, railroad enthusiasts, aviation historians, and many, many others. More than four and a half million documents are already online with many more being added every month.

Usability Research Help Wanted in Utah

Footnote.com is looking for volunteers to “test drive” the website on Thursday March 29th. The company is looking for eight volunteers who are 40 years or older and live within driving distance of Lindon, UT.

Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics Online

More than one million records of interest to genealogists have recently been placed online. The records include:

Nova Scotia Births 1864-1877
Nova Scotia Marriages 1864-1930
Nova Scotia Deaths 1864-1877 and 1908-1955

Best of all, these are not just simple transcriptions with associated transcription errors. Instead, when you find a name you can then view an image of the actual document in the original handwriting, all at no charge. If you want a higher quality image or a printed copy of the document, you must pay a fee.

So You Lost a $38 Billion File?

I have written often (http://tinyurl.com/2nuwwd) about the need to make frequent backup copies of your genealogy data, as well as other computerized information that is important to you. Old family photographs and documents also should be scanned for backup purposes. In fact, I have always pointed out that one backup copy is not enough; you need two or more copies, stored in different locations. It appears that a computer technician in Alaska has not been reading my articles. The information he lost tracked $38 billion in assets.

The computer technician needed to reformat a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, he accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account - one of Alaska residents' biggest perks. To make matters worse, he mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

The situation became grim when the department discovered its second backups on tapes were unreadable.