Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

FindMyPast.com Introduces Loyalty Scheme and Revises Pricing

The following announcement was written by FindMyPast.com:

Customers of the service offered "Best Price Guarantee" when they renew their subscriptions: key subscription packages even better value for money

Findmypast.com, the UK family history website, today launches a new customer loyalty scheme and is also making a number of changes to its pricing. The loyalty scheme will reward the website's existing customers by providing a "Best Price Guarantee" when they renew their subscriptions to findmypast.com's Discovery and Explorer packages.

Personal Genomics and the End of Insurance

Not too long from now, your genes are likely to be at war with your health insurer. Within the next few years, it should become fairly easy and inexpensive to get a rough-and-ready readout of your own genetic code that you inherited from your ancestors, one that you can scan for information on which diseases you're most likely to contract, which drugs will help you the most, and ultimately, even how your children might turn out. In other words, a brave new world of genetic transparency is on its way, one that promises to empower individuals to an extent that's still difficult to grasp.

While this at first appears to be good news for individuals, one shudders when thinking about what happens when governmental agencies have access to the same information about you. Even worse, what about insurance companies?

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? - Irish Edition

Richard Riordan-Schalk of Virginia, a former chairman of the American Press Council, died three years ago. He left behind $1.9 million but never named an heir. Now his attorney has hired a genealogist to find his closest living relatives. Each living relative will receive part of the inheritance. Half of Riordan-Schalk's ancestry is German, and living relatives an that side of the family have all been found. The other half is Irish, and they are proving to be a bit elusive.

Copy an Entire Web Site on Your Macintosh

Almost two years ago, I wrote an article entitled, "Copy an Entire Web Site with HTTRACK." That article is still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2005/12/copy_an_entire_.html. It describes the operation of a Windows program that can download an entire web site for offline browsing or for backup purposes. It is a good method of backing up your web site.

Now a similar utility is available for Macintosh users. Best of all, it is a free program. The author does accept donations, however.

SiteSucker automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet. It does this by copying the site's Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your local hard drive. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press the Enter key, and SiteSucker can download an entire Web site.

Social Networking Features added to Familyrelatives.com

I have written several times about Family Relatives. You can see those articles at http://tinyurl.com/2cnfll. Now the web site is adding major new social networking features. The following announcement was written by the owners of Familyrelatives.com:

The team behind Familyrelatives.com have added a bundle of new innovations to the site, with the aim of encouraging family historians to work together.  These “social networking” features help users to communicate with other researchers to share findings, ask for assistance or discuss particular records.

They’re all available free of charge, whether you’re a subscriber to the site or not. “It has always been our aim to provide free features and content alongside the subscription” said spokesman Robert Woods. “For the very first time you can leave your mark on history and leave comments on official records for instance where they lived, their occupation, when and where they married, did they move and what were they like – this really begins to build a picture of the individuals you are researching for everyone to share”.

Volunteers Are Computerizing 1900 Census in Record Time

Today's Deseret Morning News has an interesting article by Steve Fidel that describes the efforts by FamilySearch to create a free index to the 1900 U.S. Census. Fidel writes:

Digitizing the 1880 U.S. Census into a format searchable on computer took 18 years, completed in 1998. Digitizing the 1900 census, a project now under way, is expected to take 18 months.

Significant advancements in computer equipment and volunteers who would rather process a "batch" of records on their laptop while traveling instead of watching an in-flight movie are credited with cutting the time it takes to make records available and searchable online.

Video Interview: 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy & Heraldry

If you are looking for a great get-away vacation, what better place than New Zealand? If such a trip is a possibility in your future, you might think about scheduling time in Auckland on January 16 through 19, 2009, to attend the 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy & Heraldry. While 2009 sounds like the distant future, now is the time to start planning such a vacation. You might like to attend a four-day genealogy conference during your trip.

The 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy & Heraldry is sponsored by the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations, or AFFHO. This is a major genealogy event to be held at Kings College in Otahuhu, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand.

I recently had a chance to talk with Jan Gow, one of the organizers of the Congress. Jan described the many events, the venue, and the even the accommodations for attendees (very low cost). She also talked about the delightful weather in New Zealand in January, which is early summer in that part of the world.

Google Books' New "My Library" Feature

Newsletter reader Mal Humes sent along some information about a new Google service that sounds great. Here is Mal's message:

Hi Dick,

I enjoy your blog.

I wanted to bring a new Google feature to your attention that as yet seems to be unnoticed, and it takes Google Books a giant step forward in its usefulness.

Basically you can now use Google Books to create a custom library, review books, and to tag them with categories and labels.

You can then use that book collection as a list to share with others, and the Library also offers a custom full text search engine for you and others to search specific collections of books you've added to your library. Think about the implications of that.

World Vital Records Obtains New Funding

World Vital Records of Provo, Utah has been mentioned often in this newsletter. The company partners with other firms to place millions of genealogical records online. According to an article in the Private Equity Hub, World Vital Records recently raised around $1.2 million in Series A from vSpring Capital, Provo Labs and TTP Capital Advisors (of Japan).

Loss of Backups

I’ve written many times about the need to keep good backups – not just one backup, but multiple copies of backups. I had an experience last week that proves the point.

I keep three sets of backups:

The Generations Network, Inc., Launches Swedish-Language Ancestry.se

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, Inc.:

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 11 -- The Generations Network, Inc., this week unveiled Ancestry.se -- a new family history Web site focused on Sweden. At launch, the Swedish-language site offers access to more than 37 million names of historical Swedish parish and emigration records, all of which are available for U.S. subscribers on Ancestry.com.

In 2007 alone, The Generations Network has introduced four international sites, bringing the tally of Ancestry sites to eight. The Ancestry suite of sites now includes Ancestry.com in the United States, Ancestry.co.uk in the United Kingdom, Ancestry.ca in Canada, Ancestry.com.au in Australia, Ancestry.de in Germany, Ancestry.it in Italy, Ancestry.fr in France and Ancestry.se in Sweden. As with other sister-sites, Ancestry.se offers Swedish-language tree building tools and lets users tap into the world-wide Ancestry community -- the largest global community of individuals searching for their family roots -- as well as an ever-expanding collection of local historical records.

Draft NARA Digitizing Plan

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is seeking public comment on its draft Plan for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016. This draft plan outlines the Agency's planned strategies to digitize and make more accessible the historic holdings from the National Archives of the United States.

You can read the plan at
http://www.archives.gov/comment/digitizing-plan.html.

The Newly Revised Rubincam Youth Award

The following is an announcement written by the U.S. National Genealogical Society:

The National Genealogical Society established the Rubincam Youth Award in 1986 to honor Milton Rubincam, CG, FASG, FNGS, for his many years of service to the National Genealogical Society and to the field of genealogy. These awards are offered annually to encourage and recognize our youth as the next generation of family historians.

Footnote.com: Archiving the World a Document at a Time

Today's Salt Lake Tribune has an interesting article about Footnote.com, the sponsors of this newsletter. The article states that Footnote.com is “a tiny company is out to digitize the world, one historical document and photograph after another.”

The article also states:

Famillion Adds GEDCOM File Imports

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an online service called Famillion. That article is still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/08/famillion-intro.html. Now the company has added a new feature: GEDCOM file imports.

Here is the announcement written by Famillion:

RAMAT-GAN, Israel, September 10 -- http://www.famillion.com/, the social network that aspires to connect the world through merging family trees, launched their new Gedcom importing service, making their on-line family tree building easier than ever.

Famillion is a social networking site that allows users to build a dynamic family tree and merge it with overlapping trees worldwide. It now introduces its new Gedcom importing feature, making tree building even easier, quicker and more efficient.

Descendant of Presidents, Thieves, and Tribal Chiefs

There is an old joke: “If you would like to have your family tree researched, run for public office.” Indeed, in the next year and a few months, we can expect to see the ancestry of every presidential and vice-presidential candidate researched extensively. In fact, the ancestry of Barack Obama is the subject of a new article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Political Editor Scott Fornek published a 5-page special report on Barack Obama's far-flung family tree. Among the ancestors Fornek highlighted, Obama's line includes a New England colonist who accused another of witchcraft and later stole from the governor's house. Another had two brothers killed by American Indians, who scalped one brother and kidnapped the other's daughter. Another ancestor was said to have been slain by pirates, and still another lost a son in the Civil War to pro-slavery bushwackers who torched the man's home and threw burning coals on his infant daughter. In addition, he is distantly related to Presidents Truman and Bush. All of that is on his mother's side. The story becomes even more interesting when looking at his ancestry on his father's side: four centuries ago, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a respected warrior and leader in eastern Africa.

A Video Interview with Stephen Morse of One-Step Genealogy

I have long admired the work of Steve Morse, the person who created the wonderful "One-Step Genealogy" site that simplifies and improves upon the search capabilities of many other web sites. I only met Steve for the first time a few months ago and found that he is as impressive in person as his web site is online.

I met him again a second time a few weeks ago at the FGS conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This time, a Roots Television camera crew was available and Steve kindly consented to a video interview.

Family Tree Maker 2008 Service Packs

A The recent release of Family Tree Maker 2008 has created a lot of discussion about the all-new program, especially what is or is not included within the new release. You can see much of that discussion in the 80+ comments at the end of my earlier article at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/08/family-tree-mak.html.

Now The Generations Network, producers of Family Tree Maker 2008, has sent an e-mail to all purchasers of the program mapping the company's plans to continually add new features and fix bugs:

Rules of Posting Genealogy Information Online

The past few weeks have been fascinating. We saw Ancestry.com deliver a search engine that focused primarily on genealogy resources. The service was designed to simplify the process of finding family history information that many people would not be able to find easily because it is often scattered among numerous websites across the Internet. However, the service quickly became controversial as genealogists discovered various features that some felt were inappropriate, including caching of web sites and the use of HTML frames that hid the origin of a page obtained from another web site. Ancestry pulled the service after only a few days.

I watched the various comments fly back and forth with somewhat mixed emotions. I agreed entirely with some of the messages posted and disagreed with others. More than a few surprised me. In numerous cases, I thought to myself, "That's the way everyone does it. Not to say that it is right or wrong, only that it is common practice."

WeRelate: a Video Interview

WeRelate is the world's largest genealogy wiki. It is a rather new service and one that is growing quickly in popularity. At the recent FGS conference in Fort Wayne, I had a chance to talk with Dallan Quass, President of the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy and chief software scientist at WeRelate.org.

WeRelate.org is available free of charge to all.