The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
Once completed, the Connected History Project search engine will index digitized books, newspapers, manuscripts, genealogical records, maps and images that date from 1500 to 1900. It will give academics or members of the public a single site that lets them search all the collections.
"There are a number of electronic resources that have been created by universities and by commercial providers," said Professor Robert Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield which is heading the project. "They are all available, and all separate and some require subscriptions."
I will be in Houston this weekend, attending and presenting at a genealogy seminar hosted by the Clayton Library Friends. I will speak mostly about technology in the new decade, What's Hot and What's Not!
The all-day seminar will be held on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at St. Luke's United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall, 3471 Westheimer in Houston. Registration is at 9:30 and the Seminar will be held from 10:00 to 3:00. Questions will be from 3:00-3:30.
Democrats and Republicans are joining forces in an attempt to create a national ID card in an effort to solve several problems. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) have proposed creation of a national identification card at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. This may help future genealogists track their twenty-first century ancestors but it won't help today's genealogists.
In fact, the requirement for national identification was supposedly solved with the creation of the Real ID program in 2005. That legislation required state motor vehicle bureaus to obtain and internally scan and store personal information similar to Social Security cards and birth certificates in order to create a national database. There is only one problem with Real ID program: almost all of the states ignored it. So, like good politicians everywhere, today's senators are planning to fix the "problem" by passing still more legislation.
The national ID card theoretically would solve all sorts of problems, ranging from illegal immigration to preventing terrorists from obtaining fraudulent IDs to identifying sex offenders to stamping out welfare fraud. Every politician, liberal and conservative alike, apparently sees the national ID card as the perfect solution for every problem.
This is big news for several reasons. Ancestry.com has now sold its genealogy book publishing businesses, apparently in an effort to focus on its Web-based businesses and its production of Family Tree Maker software. The titles being sold include The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, Ancestry's Red Book, and 1-2-3 Family Tree. The sale means that Turner Publishing instantly becomes a major genealogy book publisher.
The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:
Turner Publishing Acquires Leading Family History Web Site's Publishing Arm
PROVO, Utah and NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 23 -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, announced a new publishing agreement today with Turner Publishing. In the agreement, Turner will take over most existing inventory and related publishing contracts for Ancestry Publishing, a division of Ancestry.com.
Kindle software is now available for Mac. The software is free to download. It provides easy access to Amazon’s more than 450,000 digital books. If you already have a Kindle device, you can now synchronize your account between it and your Mac. Or, instead of using a Kindle to read books digitally, you can use your Mac and avoid purchasing a Kindle completely. However, unlike a true Kindle, Kindle for Mac will not read Kindle newspapers, magazines, or blogs. I consider that to be a major shortcoming as I use my Kindle more for newspapers than for books.
I installed Kindle for Mac on my MacBook laptop and plan to use it as a portable ebook reader.
The following article was originally published in this newsletter on August 18, 2004. The underlying technology remains the same since then but all the software products and all the links listed in the 2004 article are now out of date. The following is an updated version of the original article.
You may have noticed that this newsletter and several other genealogy Web sites are now available via RSS news feeds. So are thousands of other Web news sites covering a wide variety of topics. This article will hopefully explain what RSS feeds are and what they can offer you.
The following was written by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR):
The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution has an immediate full-time opening for a Genealogist in the Registrar’s Office. Primary responsibilities focus on examining and evaluating lineage-based information provided on DAR membership applications or supplemental applications, and corresponding with prospective members or Chapter Registrar if further documentation is needed.
The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:
PROVO, Utah, March 22 -- Ancestry.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM), the world's largest online family history resource, today announced the promotion of Eric Shoup to Senior Vice President of Product. Eric leads product management and design for the Ancestry.com global platform among other managerial responsibilities. In this new position, Eric will report to Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer, Ancestry.com, Inc.
"Eric has been instrumental in enhancing the tools we provide our growing subscriber base, including new search, collaboration and sharing capabilities," said Sullivan. "We are confident that under his leadership and creative direction, we can execute on our growth strategy and further enhance our position as the most comprehensive resource for family history research globally."
I have written a number of times about ebook readers: electronic "tablets" that display books, newspapers, and magazines electronically. These are lightweight devices, typically less than one pound, that can store hundreds of books and other publications. I believe the ebook readers will revolutionize book publishing and sales, including genealogy books. I have an Amazon Kindle and love it. I also have ordered the competitive Apple iPad and look forward to using it as well.
Amazon has now announced Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers which includes Kindle for iPad. I haven't seen it yet but early reviews describe it as a polished e-reader application that makes the Kindle itself look rather old-fashioned.
An agreement was reached last month involving a black community near Halifax, Nova Scotia that was destroyed by planned urban development years ago. The agreement negotiated between HRM and the Africville Genealogy Society includes an official apology from Mayor Peter Kelly, $3 million towards the re-construction of the Seaview African United Baptist Church, and the construction of an interpretive centre. Now residents and former residents of Africville are protesting the agreement.
Spokeswoman Denise Allen says the group has instructed its lawyer to file an injunction against the reparations deal negotiated between HRM and the Africville Genealogy Society.
Jarrett D. Terrill has written an article that is both thought-provoking and probably controversial as well. It describes family genealogy from the viewpoint of someone who is gay. He writes, "Genealogy can be very exciting but it can also drudge up some insecurity with people if their particular family structure is one of a more 'modern' nature."
The following announcement was written by the office of Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Member of Parliament (Miramichi):
On behalf of the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Member of Parliament (Miramichi) today announced funding for the 27th annual Miramichi Irish Festival.
One of the largest genealogy events of the year will begin on April 26 in a city well known to genealogists: Salt Lake City, Utah. The last few days of April and the first day of May will see a unique week featuring four conferences focused on genealogical research and technology.
The primary event will be the 2010 National Genealogical Society's Annual Conference in the States being held at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. This four-day event is held in a different city each year. The annual National Genealogical Society (NGS) conference typically attracts 1,500 to 2,000 genealogy enthusiasts, and I suspect this year's conference will be even bigger than the events of recent years.
As I wrote in another article, several genealogy conferences are
being held in or near Salt Lake City from April 26 to May 1. Two of
them, included the biggest of the four, will be held at the Salt Palace
Convention Center which, in turn, is within walking distance to the
Family History Library, Temple Square, and a number of other area
attractions.
As you might expect, some nearby hotels are already fully booked.
However, this city hosted an Olympics only a few years ago. As a
result, Salt Lake City has a lot of modern, attractive hotels with
prices ranging from economy to super luxurious. Not all of them are
fully booked.
I suspect there are some red-faced programmers at BitDefender. The company released an update to its popular BitDefender antivirus software for Windows. The 32-bit version seemed to operate properly but the 64-bit version of BitDefender falsely claimed that many files were infected with viruses, including Windows files from Microsoft and even BitDefender files included as part of the BitDefender antivirus software!
Some BitDefender users are now unable to boot their PCs.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
19 March 2010
New this week: the first indexing projects for Portugal and the Isle of Man. Also of note is a new sign-in process for FamilySearch Indexing. Beginning this week, indexers will need to create a free FamilySearch Account, which will provide the convenience of using just one user name and password for all FamilySearch Web sites.
Check NBC at 8 PM Eastern time, 7 PM Central, for Lisa Kudrow's experiences finding her roots in Belarus.
The former Friends actress is an executive producer of Who Do You Think You Are? Tonight's episode is sort of a self-portrait with the executive producer taking a film crew to Belarus to find her own roots.
Kudrow said: "I just got back from Belarus. I was tracing my family tree and I found out some members of my family were killed in the Holocaust, which was such a terrible shock."
She claimed that the experience changed the way she sees people, adding that it was "pretty affecting" to visit the site where all the Jews of the village were killed.
The sale of the Friends Reunited website to the newspaper group, DC Thomson, based in Dundee, has been approved by the Competition Commission.
This was not one of ITV's better investments. ITV paid £120 million for Friends Reunited in December 2005 and is now selling it for £25 million. The online site had 15 million users in December 2005 but that number apparently has dropped significantly in the past four years.
Radical Cartography has published dozens of stunning charts and maps that illustrate much of the data in the 1870 U.S. census. You can view small versions of the maps and charts on your screen or download much larger images as ZIP files and then view them offline at your leisure.
The 1870 census was the first statistical census of the United States. Earlier efforts focused mostly on the names and the total number of inhabitants. The 1870 census asked many more questions and those answers were tabulated to provide an interesting statistical picture of a fast-growing country that was full of immigrants.
Sure, we all know how to back up files that are on our hard drives, right? There are multiple methods of accomplishing that. How about backing up your data on Facebook? or Google Docs? or Zoho Docs? or how about backing up your blog on Blogger.com or Wordpress? How about all your pictures on Flickr or Photobucket? What would happen of a system glitch erased all your information on those services? Could you recover?
Perhaps most important of all, how about all your stored email messages on Gmail or Hotmail? Many of use use those online services as "filing cabinets" for our email messages and may have thousands of messages stored on one of those online services. If Hotmail or Google suddenly loses your stored messages, what will you do?
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