The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
A start-up company called Inflection wants to build a 21st-century version of the phonebook. The company is best known in genealogy circles under the name of one of its web sites: Archives.com. That web site helps people build their family trees, a topic that is getting a lot more attention lately with genealogy series on PBS and NBC.
Inflection now has a second site, PeopleSmart.com, which mines public records as well as social networking profiles in order to build an online directory of people. An online phonebook that compiles information from across the Web, including cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses and social networking profiles, is bound to raise privacy red flags.
At the request of a deceased soldier's next of kin, one grave was investigated and the remains were discovered to not be the deceased soldier in question. The investigation found discrepancies that concerned two sets of remains, the Army said.
Amongst the dumbest things I have heard recently is when a company asks for your mother's maiden name to be used "for security purposes." That is "so 1960s." Haven't they learned how stupid that is? If any company asks for that information, RUN AWAY. Do not do business with them!
Any company that is dumb enough to believe that using your mother's maiden name is a secure piece of information is a company that doesn't know much about security. Do you REALLY want to trust them with other, private information?
The family that owns the 257-year-old cemetery abutting the Beau Ridge development in Holmdel, New Jersey has filed a formal complaint with police against the association and its board of directors, accusing them of approving the "desecration" of the family graveyard. Almost 60 tombstones have been removed, with some 10 others stacked in a pile. Calls to the association unveiled a plan to "clean up and refurbish the grave site."
"No one in the Hendricks or Hendrickson family authorized the board of directors of the Beau Ridge Homeowners Association to do anything to the Hendrickson Cemetery," said Dr. Andrew Hendricks, a descendant of Dutch immigrants who settled in Monmouth County 300 years ago.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
While discovering the names and life details of our ancestors can be challenging, we can easily determine how many ancestors we have, right? We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. To determine the number of ancestors you have, all you have to do is grab a calculator and determine how many generations you wish to go back. That should easy. Or is it?
For instance, here is a simple chart showing the number of ancestors you have, assuming an average of one generation every twenty-five years:
The following announcement was written by FamilyLink:
FamilyLink Prepares to Unleash the Worlds Largest Historical Map Collection Historic Map Works chooses to partner with top family social network, FamilyLink.
PROVO, Utah-- FamilyLink (www.familylink.com), the #1 family social network with more than 70 million users and 3.6 billion genealogy names, will soon provide access to the world’s leading historical map collection through its recent partnership with Historic Map Works. In addition to having the largest newspaper, tombstone, and one of the largest family history collections, FamilyLink will add more than 1.3 million maps and 1 million names to its growing collections.
What happens to all your genealogy data when your hard drive crashes? (Note that I wrote "WHEN your hard drive crashes," not IF it crashes. All hard drives will crash sooner or later.)
All genealogy data needs to be backed up frequently. A new online
backup service will do just that: make frequent backups and store those
backups off-site for safety purposes. Best of all, the service is
available FREE of charge. Please note that it works with many Windows
genealogy programs, although not all of them.
If your local genealogy society doesn't like the way a cemetery is being preserved, there is a simple solution: buy it!
The Hecla Cemetery in Osceola Township near Laurium, Michigan hasn’t been used since 1935, but members of the Houghton-Keweenaw County Genealogical Society are working to make it into a sort of outdoor museum of copper mining-era history.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
13 September 2010
Visitors to FamilySearch.org now have access to over 5 million new records of free indexed names and images. These 48 recently published collections feature names from 19 different countries, including the first sets of records from Nicaragua and Sri Lanka.
See the chart below for the complete list of all the newly added or improved collections. All of these records can be found at http://Beta.FamilySearch.org.
Ocean Falls was the ultimate company town. On the coast, halfway between Vancouver and Prince Rupert, it was created to support a lumber mill and a paper mill. When the pulp mill closed six decades later, most of the people moved away. It became a ghost town.
"Ocean Falls is a fascinating case study of a company town -- a community dependent on one firm for all or most of the necessary services or functions of town life," says Claire Gilbert, the archivist in charge of the Ocean Falls project.
Ancestry.com is extending its relationship with NBC for a second season of the TV series “Who Do You Think You Are?” that features celebrities discovering their family history. The company has signed a new contract with NBC that calls for it to sponsor the program and to provide marketing and research.
CEO Tim Sullivan said the company was looking to do something similar this next season as it did in the last in which its website was shown as a celebrity was researching her or his family history.
I have written several times about the privacy dangers of Facebook and other social networking sites. Now, police in Nashua, New Hampshire caught a burglary ring that monitored Facebook looking for comments from local people saying, "I am leaving for a few days..." or similar statements.
"Be careful of what you post on these social networking sites," said Capt. Ron Dickerson. "We know for a fact that some of these players, some of these criminals, were looking on these sites and identifying their targets through these social networking sites."
A bulldozer, contracted to Vinland Energy of London, Kentucky, plowed through a family cemetery last week near Fourmile, in southeastern Kentucky. The bulldozer shoved graves, both marked and unmarked, over a hill.
"We have never went through anything like this. We're shocked," said Dorothy Lingar, as she recalled walking through the family cemetery as a child. "That's our history, our flesh and blood, and we are upset. These were good people and they don't deserve to be treated this way."
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
A funny-sounding new word is being found more and more on the Internet: wiki. It is not a creature from Star Wars, and it is not a strange animal from Australia. In fact, wiki is a bit of software that gets its name from the Hawaiian or Polynesian word for "quickly." The shuttle buses at the Honolulu airport are called "wiki wiki," meaning to go quickly and easily. Now the word is creeping into genealogy vocabularies.
In the words of wiki inventor Ward Cunningham:
A wiki is the simplest online database that could possibly work.
Imagine that you visit someone else's web site and discover that you can change anything on that site at any time. You can edit the page you're reading to comment on it, add to it, or correct the content. On a long page that has evolved over time, you can summarize portions and tighten it up. You can add a link to a relevant resource to help visitors who want to know more. You can even create new pages and link them to existing pages on the site. You can do all this, even though it is not your web site. This is the idea behind a wiki.
Want to learn the language of your ancestors? I'd like to learn one language well enough so that I could at least read the vital records that are available on microfilm. I'm not as concerned with conversations, I'd like to simply read the information I seek.
Normally people attend classes to learn new languages. What they do not realize is that there are a number of online resources that can be used to learn foreign languages. Now you can find no less than five free online sites claim to help you learn the language you wish.
Genealogists lost a good friend this week. Jacques Tucker died September 7, 2010 in Kansas City, MO. Jacques was online in genealogy circles in "the early days." I met him online on CompuServe's Genealogy Forum in 1988 and have since had the pleasure of meeting him and Barb many times in person.
Jacques served in the U.S. Marines, enlisting as a private and eventually retiring as a Captain. He then founded a successful business with his lifelong partner Barb. He was an excellent genealogist who believed in documenting every fact properly.
The following was written by the family of Jacques Tucker:
Jacques Eaton Tucker died September 7, 2010 in Kansas City, MO. His body has been cremated and inurned at Mount Moriah Cemetery. A celebration of his life will occur at Charlie Hoopers in Brookside on Wednesday, September 15 at 7pm. Jacques was born April 23, 1930 in Newark, NJ, of Murray Eaton Tucker of Denison, TX, and Germaine Marguerite Daubisse of Aubisse, Payzac, Dordogne, France, who were married in New York in 1919. Jacques was raised in West Orange, NJ, graduating from West Orange High School in 1948, thereby becoming a ’48 Tucker. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as a private in 1948, serving at Quantico, VA. He also served in Camp Lejeune, NC; the Korean War; Washington, DC; Albany, GA; Okinawa, Japan; Tallahassee, FL, and finally, with fortuity, Kansas City, MO, retiring as a Captain after twenty years’ service. Jacques graduated from FSU with a B.S. in Business, and was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma.
When was the last time you heard of “Inferential Genealogy?” That's just one of the classes being offered.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
Free Classes Provide Worldwide Access to Family History Expertise
SALT LAKE CITY–As students all over the country head back to school, family historians also have the opportunity to learn –but they can do it from home at their convenience.
I'll be jumping on a plane tomorrow and will be gone for seven days. This time, it's not a genealogy trip. It's a vacation. I'll be in Fort Lauderdale for most of the week, then will take a quick trip to the Bahamas.
I will be traveling with the usual assortment of laptop and handheld computers, wireless 3G modems, and other paraphernalia, so I will probably post a number of articles to the newsletter's web site during the week. However, it might be fewer articles than normal. Let's call it a "working vacation."
In a quest to provide free online searchable indexes to all of the U.S. Censuses, FamilySearch indexing volunteers have recently started work on FamilySearch’s eighth U.S. Census index to add to its growing, free online collection—the 1930 U.S. Census. The 1930 U.S. Census is by far the most used of the U.S. Censuses, and the addition of a free, enhanced, fully searchable name index online will be highly treasured by genealogists. In addition, the new index will include other searchable data fields. FamilySearch has previously published the U.S. Censuses from 1850 to 1880 and from 1900 to 1920 online.
The following announcement was written by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation:
Immigration Museum first opened September 10, 1990
New York, NY (September 9, 2010) – This week marks the 20th anniversary of the historic restoration of Ellis Island and the opening of its Immigration Museum on September 10, 1990, which was funded by the American people through The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. This world class museum has quickly become one of the most popular tourist destinations in New York City, welcoming over 35 million visitors to date.
Recent Comments