Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

An Interview with Bob Velke

I recently had an opportunity to chat with Bob Velke. He is the President of Wholly Genes Software, the company that produces The Master Genealogist software. The company also operates Archive CD Books USA, a major supplier of genealogy and history books on CD-ROM disks. Luckily for us, a RootsTelevision crew made a video of our conversation and has now placed it online.

Anti-Spam Weapon Helps Preserve Books

Have you ever encountered a CAPTCHA? The test consists of typing in a few random letters in an image and is designed to fight spammers. In fact, if you have ever posted a comment on this newsletter's web site, you have used a CAPTCHA.

Now those CAPTCHAs are being used to transcribe old books that are out of copyright. The system is helping to decipher about one million words every day for Carnegie Mellon University's book archiving project. The system is helping to decipher about one million words every day.

Pocket Genealogist 3.11

Northern Hills Software has announced the release of a new version of the Pocket Genealogist, a popular genealogy program for Windows Mobile handheld computers, including Smartphones (cell phones with built in handheld computers). You can read my earlier review of the program at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/07/pocket_genealog.html and at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/07/pocket-genealog.html.

Pocket Genealogist version 3.11 has added support for Family Tree Maker 2008, along with several other enhancements and bug fixes:

Large Portion Of U.S. Census 1790-1920 Online At WorldVitalRecords.com

World Vital Records, Inc. has announced the inclusion of a large portion of the U.S. census 1790-1920 in its collection. This collection includes more than 800,000 browseable images and 32 million names from various counties from all the United States, except Alaska. It also includes the 1930 census for Puerto Rico.

Draft NARA Digitizing Plan Available For Public Comment

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 planned strategies to digitize and make more accessible the historic holdings from the National Archives of the United States.

Rod Neep, Founder of the Archive CD Books Project, Retires

International digitizing project continues through other partner companies

The following announcement was written by the Archive CD Books Project partners:

The International Archive CD Books Project -- 1 October 2007 -- Effective immediately, Rod Neep, the founder of the Archive CD Books project, is retiring and closing the doors of "Archive CD Books, Ltd.," the British partner company in the international digitization project. The remaining partner companies in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States carry on with the project, however, and will continue to add to the project's large inventory of digital reproductions of old and rare books that are of interest to family historians.