The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
The following is a Plus Edition-only article written and copyright by Richard W. Eastman.
"How long will a CD or DVD last?" As you might guess, the only correct answer is, "It all depends."
The one thing to remember about digital data is that there is no signal degradation in the output. In a digital environment, data is stored in "bits," often referred to as "ones and zeroes." Each bit either is there or it isn't. Analog data, however, is stored in an infinite number of signal strengths. This variable information is the problem; if not exactly perfect, the result is degraded audio or images. Analog data will degrade over time; digital data will not.
I just spent a delightful day in New Jersey. Judging from the conversations I had, a few hundred other genealogists also enjoyed the day. We all attended the one-day Mid-Atlantic Family History Conference 2009 in Cherry Hill.
I have written in the past about some of the disappointments I have had at national conferences with their high expenses and the tendency to cram in hundreds of presentations in a limited amount of time. I would offer the Mid-Atlantic Family History Conference as an example of "how to do it right." Luckily, there are hundreds of other local and regional genealogy conferences that operate on similar models, and most of them also "do it right."
The following announcement was written by the American Society of Genealogists:
At its meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 10 October 2009, the American Society of Genealogists voted to give their annual Donald Lines Jacobus Award to Forgotten Patriots, African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War: A Guide to Service, Sources, and Studies, edited by Eric Grundset, Director of the DAR Library in Washington, D.C., and published by the DAR in 2008.
Julie Miller is a professional genealogist and a well-known speaker and author. She has written a newspaper article that should be required reading for all beginning genealogists. Shucks, I know a bunch of us "old timers" can also benefit from this article!
Julie writes:
Identifying females is one of the hardest challenges genealogists face.
The Wyoming State Archives has released the Wyoming Blue Books on compact disc for the first time. The Blue Books are a comprehensive guide to the state's history from pre-territorial days to 2007. The hardcopy version of the updated Blue Books were made available last year.
State archivist Roger Joyce told the Wyoming Legislature's Select Committee on Legislative Facilities last week that the full set of books will eventually be posted on the Internet.
Several days ago I wrote about a data loss at Microsoft that affected all users of the T-Mobile Sidekick device, a combination cell phone, handheld computer, and camera. Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost.
The online service backs up contacts, photos, calendar appointments and other personal data stored on the mobile phones of Sidekick T Mobile customers. The data is stored on Microsoft's servers, not in the handheld device itself.
Los Angeles-based Geni, the Web 2.0 online genealogy and family tree web site, has rolled out a number of updates today, including a bundling of its virtual gifts with its "Pro" subscription.
Tom Joyner went before the South Carolina Parole and Pardon Board today to seek a posthumous pardon for his great-uncles, Thomas and Meeks Griffin, who were executed in 1915 for a crime they apparently didn’t commit.
I have always been fascinated by Matthew Brady's photographs from the U.S. Civil War. He and his associates took thousands of photographs and many of them have been preserved. They are available on Footnote.com and elsewhere on the Web. However, all were not as they seemed.
Time Magazine points out that "Generally regarded as the world's first commercially successful photojournalist, Matthew Brady was also one of the medium's most accomplished manipulators."
As an example, Time shows a photograph that Brady took of eight Civil War generals. The problem is that one of them wasn't there. Time then shows the original photograph that shows seven generals. The "doctored" version had General Francis P. Blair added, even though he wasn't present when the original photograph was taken. A rather plush looking drapery was also added. All this was done without Photoshop!
Noted professional genealogist Tony Burroughs was interviewed by CNN about tracing Micelle Obama's roots. CNN asked Tony about the concept of "the concept that records simply don't exist beyond the mid-1800s for so much of her family is so telling about the legacy of slavery we'll never shed."
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
There are dozens of ways to share digital pictures, GEDCOM files, word processing documents, and other files with friends, relatives and co-workers. However, almost all the file sharing services have some drawbacks:
In the face of growing competition from several free word processing and spreadsheet programs, Microsoft has announced that the next version of Microsoft Word and Excel will add a stripped-down version that will be available free of charge. However, it will not be available to everyone.
The present versions of Microsoft Office sell for $150 to $600, depending on which programs are included. Word and Excel are always included in all versions, but Outlook, Access, Publisher, and other Microsoft Office programs are generally not included in the cheaper versions.
The following announcement was written by Ohana Software:
Ordinance Tracker was first released as an integrated part of the program FamilyInsight. Because of its success, Ohana Software has now released Ordinance Tracker as a stand alone. The program is new in that it gives LDS genealogists the ability to print and track ordinances in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface. When you bring up your reserved ordinances, it actually looks like a bunch of ordinance cards stacked up by type. Three stacks, pink, blue, and yellow. When asked about this design, John Vilburn said "The simple design is meant to be intuitive. You pick up the ordinance card and put it into the ordinance request preview, then click print. There's not much to learn."
On October 19, we celebrate the northernmost land battle of the Civil War which was fought 145 years ago. However, most people won't be celebrating as they never heard of the battle. So where was the northernmost land battle of the war fought?
Many people might guess that it was in Pennsylvania. If so, they would be off by several hundred miles. In fact, the northernmost land battle of the U.S. Civil War was fought in Saint Albans, Vermont, about 15 miles from the Canadian border.
W. David Samuelsen told me of a neat trick that was news to me: you can find family surname timelines on Google. In fact, it only takes a second or two to find timelines of events involving your family name.
I've frequently written about data losses and often have singled out Windows security problems. Now a similar bug has been detected in the latest version of Macintosh's operating system.
The Macintosh bug concerns the use of the Guest account. If you switch from an Administrator account to a Guest account and then back again, there is a risk of wiping out the home directory data in the Administrator account. It doesn't happen every time, but does happen occasionally. Of course, happening even once can be disastrous, if you don't have backups. The problem exists only in Snow Leopard, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.
OneGreatFamily.com found that as the amount of data housed on the company's servers kept growing, the demands on the underlying infrastructure grew as well. As a OneGreatFamily.com spokesperson told me today, "We expect the tools we'll be implementing from Perfect Search to greatly increase our searching capability, to improve our ability to index and search hundreds of millions of names in our Oracle database, and to accelerate the process of getting results."
The following is the announcement written by Perfect Search Corporation:
If you can be in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, this Saturday, you might enjoy attending an all-day genealogy seminar. This seminar will include more than 20 classes and presentations on a whole range of subjects, from beginners’ to advanced topics. The all-day seminar also includes a photograph scanning opportunity for attendees, so bring your old family photos! The seminar also includes a "brick wall session," door prizes from Ancestry.com and Footnote.com, and an exhibit hall with local and regional organizations providing free information and literature.
I will be at the seminar as I have the honor of being one of the presenters. I will be joined by many other presenters: Thilo C. Agthe, Beth Bensman, Harry Benson, Gail Benson, Bernie Cedar, Deborah Large Fox, Martine Green, Michael Hait, David Haugaard, Robert House, Sandra M. Hewlett, Shamele Jordon, Catherine Medich, Trish Mirarchi, Floyd Riley, Stephen Schecter, and Alice Young. That's quite a list of speakers!
I was going to order this but I couldn't find a spare $950 in my checking account this morning. However, if your employer is in the genealogy business, you might find this report from ReportLinker to be a worthwhile purchase.
I may be biased, but as I read through the table of contents, I realized that everything in this report's "Recent Industry Activity" and "Product and Service Launches" has already been published in this newsletter and the price of reading the news on www.eogn.com is a lot less than $950! Maybe I should raise my rates...
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