The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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Finnish-American historical archives in Michigan are now being preserved for future generations, thanks to a $4,000 grant from the Keweenaw National Historical Park.
Archivist Kent Randell and a graduate student intern will spend most of their summer digitizing about 250 cassette tapes from the early 1970s. The recordings were part of an oral history project to preserve first hand accounts from immigrants and other notable residents of the Copper Country.
The second phase of genealogy website www.irishgenealogy.ie will be launched this week by the Archbishop of Dublin Dr John Neill and Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin.
According to an announcement posted at http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/news.html, the second phase involves the digitisation of church baptism, marriage and burial records from pre-1900 to be added for Dublin City, Carlow, Cork (City and West Cork) and Kerry. The launch will take place on Wednesday 16 June 2010 at 6.00pm in St Werburgh’s Church, Werburgh Street, Dublin 8.
With about five minutes left to go before her presentation at the recent Southern California Genealogical Jamboree, one of the presenters plugged her laptop computer into the borrowed overhead projector in a presentation room in the convention center. The room was already nearly full of people who had come to listen to her presentation. She turned on her laptop and... nothing happened.
It seems that Windows had crashed on her laptop. She re-booted and tried again and again. Windows eventually went through some sort of recovery process and then booted up successfully. Once Windows finished booting, a new discovery was made: the PowerPoint presentation for her talk was not to be found on the laptop. After a frantic search, she found that the entire presentation was gone. By this time, the room was standing-room-only with more than 100 genealogists politely waiting for her to begin. It was now three minutes past the scheduled start of her presentation.
Now for the worst part: there was no backup copy available that she could restore quickly, at least, not in time for this presentation.
Modern digital cameras are technical marvels. They take very high resolution photographs. For instance, my shirt-pocket-sized Canon PowerShot SD780 IS Digital Elph camera takes 12-megapixel images. When saved on the computer's hard drive, these typically produce images of 4,000 by 2,248 pixels. Those are huge!
Luckily, storage space is really cheap these days. Even two-terabyte hard drives are available for $100 or less. Storage space for these pictures isn't much of an issue but other uses can be a problem. Did you ever try to post one of those huge images on a web page? How about sending a dozen or more photographs to a relative by using email? Huge images don't work so well in the online world.
The 2010 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree ended on Sunday, June 13. There were more presentations, more activity in the exhibit hall, and more of most everything else. I snapped a few more pictures and added them to my "Jamboree Photo Album" at http://blog.eogn.com/photos/2010_jamboree where you can see them now.
I must say that I am impressed with the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree events. Every year the Jamboree gets bigger and even better. This year's attendance was more than 1,700 genealogists, not counting the exhibitors and presenters. If we add in those last two groups, I'd guess there were 1,850 or perhaps 1,900 genealogists in the building. Not bad for what is considered to be a regional event, all organized by a single genealogy society!
Louise Kingston is the winner of the Apple iPad given to a genealogist for using the www.GenQueries.com site. I just got off the phone with Louise and can report that she is very excited to win the iPad and the two years' subscription to this newsletter. Louise is a present Plus Edition subscriber so I extended her present subscription by an additional twenty-four months.
More than 2,400 genealogists entered the www.GenQueries.com contest before it ended at midnight last night. Three winners have already been selected:
The Grand Prize winner receives an Apple iPad with a retail value of $499 plus a two year subscription to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (a retail value of $39.90).
Two more Consolation Prize winners have also been selected. Each will receive a one-year subscription to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (a retail value of $19.95).
Email messages have been sent to all three winners. Check your email in-box!
On June 8, I reported "Adobe Acknowledges Critical Security Flaw in Acrobat and Flash." (See http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/06/adobe-acknowledges-critical-security-flaw-in-acrobat-and-flash.html for details.) Now Adobe claims to have fixed the security flaw that had the potential to allow hackers to take control of affected computer systems. The security update will be part of a soon-to-be-released update package that fixes a total of 32 documented vulnerabilities.
HOWEVER, the bug with Adobe and Reader remains unfixed for now. Adobe expects release an update at the end of June for its Reader and Acrobat programs which addresses a similar bug that makes it possible to booby-trap PDFs.
Today I attended a number of presentations at the Jamboree. It was great. I also snapped a bunch more pictures and have uploaded them to the same photo album I started yesterday. I also added a few more comments to the photos uploaded yesterday.
At midnight tonight (Eastern Daylight Savings Time), a lucky reader of this newsletter will win an Apple iPad.
More than 2,000 genealogists have already entered by posting a query or two on http://www.GenQueries.com, an online database of genealogy queries that I created. The contest will end in a few hours: Saturday at 12 midnight, Eastern Daylight Savings Time on June 12, 2010. The winners will be announced Sunday at the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree held in Burbank, California, and shortly thereafter will be listed online in this newsletter's web site and at http://www.GenQueries.com.
The Jamboree opened on Friday and the place is abuzz. I don't have an official report yet, but I am sure there are more than 1,500 genealogists here. I sat through several excellent presentations yesterday, talked with old friends, met some new friend, and generally enjoyed the event. Judging by the looks on everyone else's faces, they were enjoying the Jamboree also.
The weather was excellent: typical southern California sunshine with temperatures in the seventies.
I snapped whole bunch of photos and thought I would share them here. You can double-click on any image to see a larger picture.You can view the photos at http://blog.eogn.com/photos/2010_jamboree.
Family History Expos has extended their deadlines for submissions for lecture topics for their Sandy, Utah, Pleasanton, California, and Atlanta, Georgia Expos. The following was written by Family History Expos:
Learn the Tech to Trace Your Roots!
Family History Expos 2010 Call for Papers**
Sandy, Utah – August 27-28, 2010 Pleasanton, California - October 8-9, 2010 Atlanta, Georgia – November 12-13, 2010
Last week, retired marketing specialist Nora Probasco called her
brother with a half-serious, half-joking question: Was she adopted? The
issue came up after the 59-year-old genealogy hobbyist from Louisville,
Ky., received the results of a test she took through 23andMe, a firm
that allows people to learn more about their ancestry and some medical
conditions through DNA analysis.
"I was shocked," she said. "What it came down to, the way I know to read them, is that my mom is not my mom."
A 150-year-old photo was recently found in a North Carolina attic that shows two young black children. One was named John and the other is unidentified. Art historians believe it's an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated. The photograph was found with a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150.
Several art experts have examined the photograph and stated they believe it was created by the photography studio of Mathew Brady, a famous 19th-century photographer. The photo probably was not taken by Brady himself but by Timothy O'Sullivan, one of Brady's apprentices. O'Sullivan took a multitude of photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War.
The following was written by the Indiana Genealogical Society:
Fort Wayne, IN – The Indiana Genealogical Society (IGS) is looking for a new editor for Indiana Genealogist. This is a paid position. Below is of the description of the position.
Outright Distribution has sold the U.S. version of Wall to Wall's original format Who Do You Think You Are? to a number of Scandinavian countries.
Sweden's SVT, Denmark's DR, Norway's NRK, Iceland's 365 and Finland's MTV3 have all signed up for the U.S. finished version. The show originally aired on NBC in the U.S.
Here is an interesting story from the Vancouver Sun: The commoner who is to marry Sweden's crown princess next week has aristocratic roots, according to a new book.
Daniel Westling has been mocked for his provincial roots and country accent, and has undergone careful grooming by courtiers, language tutors and a public relations agency ahead of his marriage to Crown Princess Victoria on June 19. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf was reportedly initially hostile to the idea of his 32-year-old daughter marrying the commoner.
But, according to the genealogist Bjorn Engstrom, the 36-year-old former fitness instructor is descended from both Swedish and Finnish aristocracy.
The following announcement was written by Footnote.com. Notice that the entire Civil War collection on Footnote is available FREE to the public during the month of June. The only requirement is to register on Footnote for free to gain access to the records:
-Millions Of Original Documents Help Americans Gain A New Perspective On The War -
June 10, 2010 – Lindon, UT – Today Footnote.com announced that its U.S. Civil War Collection will be made free to the public through the month of June. Footnote.com has worked with the U.S. National Archives over the past three years to create the largest repository of Civil War documents on the web featuring over 30 million documents, photos and maps.
Whether your family, business or organization has been in the San Jacinto Valley 100 days, 100 months or 100 years, the Hemet-San Jacinto Genealogical Society (of California) wants to hear from you if you've got a story to tell.
Twenty years after the first volume of "San Jacinto Valley, Past and Present" was published, the group is compiling Volume II to coincide with this year's Hemet centennial. The indexed book contains entries on prominent and not-so-prominent residents of the Valley, as well as churches, businesses and other organizations.
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