The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
UPDATE: The dinner is now fully booked and a wait list has been started. (We have already had one cancellation, a few hours after it was made.)
I am sorry we cannot accommodate everyone. Maybe next time I can rent a banquet hall someplace.
- Dick Eastman
You are invited to attend the dinner for EOGN newsletter readers to be held Saturday evening, May 1, at 6:30 PM, immediately after the close of the NGS conference in Salt Lake City.
Unlike previous years, the dinner for this event has been planned in advance. It is a return visit to a restaurant that earned rave reviews when we visited a few years ago.
The following announcement was written by Dr. C. Patrick Burrowes:
Website shines new light on African-American ties to Liberia
Washington, DC - April 23, 2010 - The stories of 15,000+ African-Americans who emigrated to Liberia between 1820 and 1904 are now only a mouseclick away, thanks to a just launched website.
Liberianrepatriates.com should prove a boon to scholars and genealogists on both sides of the Atlantic, according to its founder, Prof. C. Patrick Burrowes of Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg.
Let’s fast-forward fifty years and look in our crystal ball. You know the one: the crystal ball that has 1024-by-768 pixels. It is a winter evening in 2060 A.D. at the Rencher Memorial Genealogy Center in Salt Lake City. Alan Mann III is working the evening shift, answering calls from people interested in their ancestry.
Sitting in his cubicle, Alan hears the VoIP phone ring. He swivels in his office chair and touches a button on the micro-headset in his ear. Through the room’s integrated sound system we can only hear one side of the conversation:
U.S. national ratings for April 23, 2010: With 6.3 million viewers, Friday night's "Who Do You Think You Are?" propelled NBC into the number one spot in the TV ratings for the evening.
NBC averaged 6.8 million viewers with a 4.6/8 household share, nearly two million ahead of the second-place finisher CBS with 5.1 million viewers and a 3.3/6. ABC took third at 3.9 million and a 2.6/5, while FOX's reruns drew 2.8 million and a 1.9/4.
A Springfield, Oregon man is selling ad space on his cremation urn to cover some of his medical bills and also his funeral. Aaron Jamison has been diagnosed with colon cancer, and depending on how his treatment goes, has anywhere from 3 to 9 months to live.
In an effort to not leave his family stuck with mounting medical bills and to also pay for his cremation, Aaron has come up with a unique advertising scheme. He is selling advertisement space on his urn to local businesses. In addition, Aaron has also setup a web site to accept donations from anyone who would like to contribute. His web site is at http://judasforgiven.blogspot.com
I have written often about online security issues. Here's one more:
Facebook has decided to retroactively move more information into the public, indexable part of profiles. The new profile parts made public are: a list of things users have become 'fans' of (now renamed to 'likes'), their education and work histories, and what they list under 'interests.' Apparently there is neither any opt-out nor even notice to users, despite the fact that some of this information was entered by users at a time when Facebook's privacy policy explicitly promised that it wouldn't be part of the public profile."
In fact, Facebook recently removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Many genealogists believe that every bit of information should be printed on paper for long-term storage because "there won't be any computers available years from now that will still read today's electronic data." In Salman Rushdie's case, that is definitely not true.
In the 1990s, Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, KBE, used a variety of Macintosh computers and software, all of which are no longer available. He wrote much of his material in Claris Works, a word processor that has long disappeared from the scene. He read and wrote email in an early version of the Eudora email application. A current version of Eudora is still available today but the modern versions cannot read the messages stored by the much earlier versions from the 1990s.
History took center stage during the dual celebration of the inscription of the St. Kitts Registry of Slaves into UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, and the launching of the Web site, 'Basseterre, Past and Present, tomorrow' (www.historicbasseterre.com), on Tuesday afternoon, April 20.
"If people did not know that St, Kitts had historical records, then we wanted to show them that we do in a way that was interesting," said National Archivist Victoria Borg-O'Flaherty, addressing the creation of the historical Web site.
The following was written by the Library of Congress:
Memories should last a lifetime and be passed on to future generations. Advice on how to safeguard precious digital and traditional photos, documents, recordings and more will be presented at Pass It On: Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress.
Library staff will discuss practical strategies for preserving personal collections from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, May 10, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed.
The following was written by Bill McGrath, Troy Irish Genealogy Society Project Coordinator:
Announcing New Database Vol. X - Marriage Index Rensselaer County, New York
APRIL 1933 - DECEMBER 1935
A. Volume X, of the Rensselaer County Marriage Index, with its 4,974 names, has now been added to the Troy Irish Genealogy (TIGS) website. This is the final volume in this wonderful series of records that TIGS started automating back in September, 2005. This project could not have been completed without the help of numerous volunteer transcribers from all across the United States.
I wrote about GedView for the iPhone in the July 19, 2009 newsletter. Now David Knight has released an updated version 2.10 that adds support for the Apple iPad.
GedView, is now the first GEDCOM-based genealogy application that allows for full-screen mode on the iPad using the iPad's native mode, not the 2x upscaling used by iPhone and iPod Touch programs when run on an iPad.
On NBC's celebrity genealogy series tonight actress Susan Sarandon traces the lost history of her grandmother Anita Evilyn Rigali. When she was young, Rigali was rumored to have been a showgirl or hostess in New York nightclubs in the 1920s and may have dated Frank Sinatra. It's a story that can't be confirmed, but Sarandon learns that her grandmother at least met Sinatra.
Megan Smolenyak attended the Ellis Island awards yesterday and wrote about her experience. She writes, "But what makes this event truly stand apart from the rest is that it's ultimately about the American Dream. No matter how famous or accomplished the recipients may be, they are always humbled by the honor, keenly aware of the sacrifices of those who have come before, and grateful for the opportunities that simply being an American affords them and their families."
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Thanks to a comment by newsletter reader Bob Dennison, I now own a handheld scanner that is 10 inches long by one inch square. (I'm blaming it all on you, Bob!) The scanner is about the size of a magician's magic wand, and that is the name I have given it: the Magic Wand. It scans in color or black-and-white, at 600 dots-per-inch or at 300 dots-per-inch. My new Magic Wand makes a faithful reproduction of most any page in any book or any piece of paper, as shown in the images below and also a bit later in this article. It weighs 7.5 ounces, roughly half a pound. Anything that small and that light weight can easily be carried anywhere. Best of all is the price: $99.99. Well... $99.99 plus a bit more.
(To see a full scan made by this pocket-sized scanner from a typical genealogy book, click on the image to the right.)
Unlike my previous portable scanner, this one scans bound books as well as flat pieces of paper or anything on a flat surface. I can scan any page in a book or any flat piece of paper by placing the scanner at the top of the page, pressing a button (I don't have to hold the button down), then slowly dragging the scanner across the face of the page. Check the video at the end of this article to see how it works.
A settlement between 41 members of the Havasupai Indian tribe and Arizona State University highlights the risk researchers take when they fail to secure what is known as “informed consent,” fully informing research participants how their DNA may be used, legal experts and civil rights advocates said.
The following announcement was written by Arcalife.com:
April, 2010
Arcalife.com announces full integration with FamilySearch.org. This integration further deepens the features and capabilities between the two sites.
arcalife.com was established as an online community where members can preserve their family history, scrapbook their memories, and securely share rich life content all in one place. arcalife has developed a wide range of tailored tools and services to allow members to capture their ‘past’ and ‘present’ life content for ‘future’ generations.
Elizabeth Shown Mills and others talk about our widely appreciated Home Study Course. The experts agree the Home Study Course prepares a solid foundation for all researchers.
Sandy Sheahan’s genealogy records, stored on computer equipment stolen during a burglary, are still missing.
While Sheahan has been able to get some of the information back from files that weren’t taken, her home, along with seven others in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area, were burglarized over the last two months. The people who broke into Sheahan’s home took her only photos of her dying husband’s last Christmas, of the last Yuletide holiday the family would have together, and 15 years worth of genealogy research going back to the Revolutionary War.
Immigration in the United States has not changed all that much over the years, says a University of Tennessee associate professor who studies primarily Latino immigrants as co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice.
"On one hand, we are a nation of immigrants; on the other hand, where immigrants come from changes," Stephanie Bohon stated. "There's a lot of mythology about our immigrant ancestors," according to Bohon.
Metes and Bounds by Sandy Knoll Software, LLC is available for Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, iPod Touch, and now is available in a special iPad version that takes advantage of the larger screen. Metes and Bounds is an application that can be quite useful for some genealogists as it allows you to take a property deed or other such land description that you may come across in your genealogy research, and turn it into an actual plat drawing.
Metes and Bounds supports many units of measurement, including: feet, meters, and varas. It calculates the area, perimeter and closing error of the plot.
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