The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
Several newsletter readers have asked questions about the new Amazon Cloud Drive that I wrote about yesterday. Amazon has created a video that explains the service a bit more. The video talks mostly about storing your music collection online, but, near the end of the video, it also mentions that the same service can be used to store all your digital files, including music, photos, videos, documents, and more.
Want to buy an iPhone or an iPad for your deceased ancestor? Apparently, many Chinese do just that. Well, the devices are made of paper but look the same.
The Qingming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day, is a time for paying respect to the ancestors in China. Some shops in Guangzhou (Canton) selling sacrificial offerings have put paper-made versions of Apple products on their shelves. A package of two paper iPads and four iPhones sells for 6 yuan (roughly 90 cents U.S.). A MacBook also costs 6 yuan. The paper iPads and iPhones come complete with a (paper) USB cable so the dead can sync their data with their paper computers.
Archivists and curators have long required the use of white cotton gloves for handling very old paper or old books, when the paper is brittle and threatens to crumble. In fact, on recent episodes of the popular television series Who Do You Think You Are? the guests and even some of the experts shown in the program were criticized for not wearing cotton gloves when handling old documents. However, experts now say that the use of white gloves not only provides a false sense of security but even can induce more damage than handling the same documents with bare hands! On the other, um, hand, simple frequent washing and drying of the hands may be the better solution.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
Keep updating your wish list as FamilySearch continues to expand its online historical records. New collection additions this week represent seven European countries. Millions of records were added for the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. Oh, and did we forget to mention that over a million new records were added for California, Maryland, Montana, Ohio, Texas, and Washington State? See the table below for more details. You can search all of the record collections now for free at familysearch.org.
If you are enjoying the steady stream of free records added weekly, please consider "giving back" by contributing a little time online as a FamilySearch volunteer. You can start and stop volunteering at any time. Find out more at indexing.familysearch.org.
Cloud storage services are popping up faster than popcorn. I have written several times about online services where you can store backup copies of any digital files you wish. You can save copies of your genealogy information, family photographs, word processing documents, last year's income tax records, scanned images of your current bills for this year's tax records, or even MP3 files of your favorite music. You can safely and securely store whatever you wish in the cloud. The files will be available to you at any time on your desktop computer, your laptop computer, and, in many cases, even on your handheld "smartphone" while traveling.
For instance, this past weekend I was in a hotel room in Chandler, Arizona, when a newsletter reader asked about an article I wrote and published more than a year ago. I did not have a copy of the article with me in the hotel room. However, I was able to retrieve the article within a minute or two and then send a copy to the person who asked about it. I have copies of nearly every article I ever wrote stored in Amazon Cloud Drive, so retrieval is easy wherever I have an Internet connection. In fact, I could have done the same while walking in a city park by using my iPhone cell phone, which is really a handheld computer.
USA Today has an article by Marc Saltzman describing how Ancestry.com users can create, maintain and share a multi-generation family tree – including the ability to organize photos and scans of important records (such as immigration papers), and add written stories, journal entries and other info.
Paul Larsen is the author and publisher of "Crash Course in Family History," an excellent tutorial for genealogy newcomers and long-time experts alike. I had a chance to talk with Paul at the recent RootsTech conference and to listen as he described the contents and uses of the latest version of his book. The RootsTech folks kindly recorded a video of our conversation, which I edited, and now you can watch on your computer.
The following announcement was written by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:
The National Archives is accepting proposals for a research fellowship beginning in July 2011. Applications will be accepted by email until midnight EDT May 31, 2011 at legislative.archives@nara.gov. The minimum tenure in residency at the National Archives is one month.
Scope: Research proposals will be considered on any topic that uses the historical records of Congress housed in the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives. (http://www.archives.gov/legislative/) The records of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives support a wide range of topics including immigration policy, committee histories, environmental policy, Congressional investigations, and many issues expressed in eighteenth and nineteenth century petitions to Congress. The Fellow will be supported by the Center for Legislative Archives staff, and will have the opportunity to consult with the House and Senate history offices.
One web site should interest any genealogist or historian. WhatWasThere.com has a simple purpose: provide a platform where anyone can easily upload a photograph with two straightforward tags to provide context: Location and Year. If enough people upload enough photographs in enough places, together we will weave together a photographic history of the world.
What Was There encourages everyone to upload old photographs of any place in the world. Visitors to the website can view these photographs by browsing to different locations on a map. You can see what different sections of your native city or any other place in the world used to look like. With each photograph there are details that you can view to obtain further information. Amongst other things, these details include the year the photo was taken. Sections of the photographs can be magnified to get a better look at those old photos.
I'm a fan of DropBox, a program that copies files between computers and keeps them in sync. If a change is made to one file, the new version is automatically copied to the other computers. It is a great way to back up, sync, and access files from anywhere.
DropBox has a major competitor, called SugarSync. I have looked at SugarSync in the past but didn't see anything in it that was so compelling as to make me switch from a program I already like. However, today SugarSync released an upgrade for iPhone, IPod Touch, and iPad devices with several new features that makes the program more enticing than ever. I might even switch.
The new features of SugarSync on iOS (Apple) handhelds include:
The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist.co.uk:
We have now added the first county of the 1911 census into our Diamond Premium subscription. The transcripts provide more detail than any previous census and contain over 193,000 records – includes new high resolution colour images.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
"ISBN" stands for "International Standard Book Number." An ISBN number is an ISO standard and normally is found in all books published in the United States since 1970 and on many books published in other countries as well. Technically, an ISBN number is not a requirement for any book: you may publish books without such a number. However, experience has shown that an ISBN number is required if you want the book to be listed in the many indexing and cataloging systems available. Also, an ISBN number is required for all books that are to be sold by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Border Books, and most any other major bookseller. These book sellers use ISBN numbers to track inventory and to order books by the ISBN numbers.
Only the smallest self-published and self-marketed books can survive without ISBN numbers.
I want to thank the members of the Family History Society of Arizona (FHSA) for their hospitality on Saturday. I had an opportunity to make three presentations to this group and I enjoyed it. I think most of the audience members did as well.
The Family History Society of Arizona offers similar seminars with guest speakers every year, typically in March. This year's event was held in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix. If you live in or near the greater Phoenix area, you might enjoy these seminars. It is too early right now to talk of next year's event but you might want to check the FHSA web site at http://www.fhsa.org/ about six or eight months from now to see what is planned for 2012. You might want to bookmark that site right now.
A record of records was set. More than 1.7 million records were indexed and 700,000 records were arbitrated in the FamilySearch Indexing program last Monday, March 21, the highest number ever in a single day.
This and other impressive genealogical statistics were announced at the second ever FamilySearch bloginar, "Indexing the World’s Historic Records: The Global Phenomenon Continues” on Thursday, March 24. More than 1.7 million records were indexed and 700,000 records were arbitrated in the FamilySearch Indexing program last Monday, March 21.
Historians and statisticians are questioning the statistics of Confederate War dead. Official military records compiled in 1866 counted 40,275 North Carolina soldiers who died in uniform. Reportedly, North Carolina had more men die in uniform than any other Confederate state, although not as many as New York in the Union. Now new investigations seem to show the 1866 claims, made when records were spotty, are highly inaccurate.
This might be a bit controversial: the Newport Beach, California, Public Library is considering closing one of its four branches and outfitting a planned community center with everything that the closed library offered, except the books.
At a meeting about the Balboa Peninsula's Marina Park development, city officials unveiled plans to close the Balboa Branch Library -- which houses 35,000 items, including books, DVDs and other materials -- and to dedicate a portion of the Marina Park Community Center to an "electronic library."
By eliminating books and librarians at the building, they said, they hope to adapt to modern times and save money while providing residents with services they'll actually use.
The LiveScience web site has an interesting article about the problems archivists face in the digital age and one possible solution. "With the proliferation of digital records, the task of the archivist has grown more complex. This problem is especially acute for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government agency responsible for managing and preserving the nation's historical records. At the end of President George W. Bush's administration in 2000, NARA received roughly thirty-five times the amount of data as previously received from the administration of President Clinton, which itself was many times that of the previous administration. With the federal government increasingly using social media, cloud computing, and other technologies to contribute to open government, this trend is not likely to decline. By 2014, NARA is expecting to accumulate more than 35 petabytes (quadrillions of bytes) of data in the form of electronic records. "
Thumb drives, often called flash drives or jump drives or other names, are great inventions. I try to carry one in my pocket at all times. These are great for portable and backup storage. Are you at a relative's house and want to have copies of the family photos he or she has on the computer? Copy the photos to your thumb drive. Meet someone at a genealogy conference who has a text file with information you have been seeking? Copy it to your thumb drive.
However, what do you do when you don't have a thumb drive with you? The answer is easy when you have Internet access: copy it to your FREE thumb drive in the cloud. You probably already have one.
On March 21, I posted an article about Ancestry.co.uk's offer of free access to online U.K. census records. Apparently, the article created questions. I have now checked with the folks at Ancestry.co.uk and, indeed, you can search and view the record indexes for free this Sunday (Census Day), without signing up for the 14 day free trial.
The following announcement was written by Tpstry.com and GenealogyFreelancers.com:
Family history research projects on GenealogyFreelancers.com get a boost by using Tpstry.com to gather information.
Grand Rapids, MI and Nashville, TN - March 24, 2011
GenealogyFreelancers.com, which connects people seeking family history research with professional genealogists, and Tpstry.com, a website taking a unique approach to gathering family memories, announced today their partnership to make researching family history easier.
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