The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
The following announcement was written by David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States:
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Mike Wash as NARA's Open Government Executive/Chief Information Officer (CIO) effective March 27, 2011.
In Charter for Change and Charting the Course, I spoke of creating a visionary IT organization - one in which traditional technology planning and policy functions are brought together with the business of social media, open government, and digitization programs to anticipate staff and customer needs. Such an IT organization is key to our ability to lead the federal government in adapting archival theory for practice in the digital, web, and social media environments as well as advancing Open Government values of transparency, citizen engagement, and collaboration.
I have owned a Mi-Fi card for several years and love it. This is a small device that connects to cell towers and provides wireless data connections for laptop computers and other devices when traveling. The Mi-Fi card connection speed is about the same as that of a DSL broadband connection. Unlike wi-fi wireless, it has a range of about five miles. As long as I am within range of a cell phone tower, I have always had a high-speed Internet connection. The Mi-Fi device is about the size of four or five credit cards stacked on top of each other.
I have carried the Mi-Fi card all over country, usually by carrying it in my pocket. It has turned out to be surprisingly reliable, even providing high-speed Internet connections while traveling in rural Vermont and in Wyoming. However, last night I discovered that the Mi-Fi device isn't as rugged as I would like: it didn't even survive a single trip with my laundry through the washer and dryer!
Facebook is well-known as a service that exposes a lot of your private information. Just ask Richard Barton Jr. of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
It seems that Barton recently got married and, like many newlyweds, he posted pictures of the wedding on Facebook. However, he seems to have forgotten that his first wife, the one he had not yet divorced, could see the pictures along with everyone else.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
9 Million Browsable Images from 9 Countries Added This Week
New Records for Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico, U.S., and Venezuela
The bounty just keeps coming from FamilySearch’s digital pipeline. Mexico collections earned the top spot this week, with nearly 5 million new browsable images added. The Mexico records date from 1545 to 1984. In addition to Mexico, FamilySearch continued this week to strengthen its free online international collections by expanding 7 more of its collections. Millions more records or images were added for Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Italy, and Venezuela. The U.S. collections were also expanded, with new data for California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Union Provost Marshal’s File, and Virginia. See the table below for more details. You can search all of the record collections now for free at FamilySearch.org.
I recently wrote (at http://goo.gl/2GCK8) about the release of Internet Explorer version 9. Now a number of newsletter readers have written to tell that Mozilla has officially announced the final, official, release of Firefox version 4.0. Past versions of Firefox have been considered by most users to be safer, faster, and more bug-free than Internet Explorer.
It's too early to tell if the latest version 4 remains that much better than Internet Explorer version 9, but early indications look promising. Even better, unlike Internet Explorer version 9, Firefox 4 works well on Windows XP systems as well as on Macintosh, Linux, and other operating systems. It will also be available on Android and Maemo devices soon.
Now Traces of the Past has been discontinued, according to an announcement from producing company Truscape Solutions. Quoting from the company's web site at http://www.tracesofthepast.com/:
I have an interest in this question because I publish both a free and a for-pay newsletter on the web. I always wonder if my prices are too high or too low. However, larger publications often charge much, much more.
Starting March 28, the New York Times will charge anyone who wishes to read more than 20 articles a month on the newspaper's web site. If you want unlimited grazing rights for Times content online, you now have to fork over $195 a year; that’s for the basic website and access on BlackBerry, iPhones or other smartphones. The cost rises to $260 if you want website and iPad access, and $455 for every form of digital access. In other words, read as many articles as you like on any digital device that can access the web. The complete list of devices is a bit more complex than what I mentioned briefly; full details are available at http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subscriptions-and-purchases.html#purchasesq01
Newsletter reader Harold Miller wrote to tell of a new online resource that will interest genealogists with New York City ancestors as well as many historians. In 1811, John Randel created a proposed street grid of Manhattan. Now the New York Times has published his map and other historic information in an online web page that makes it easy to compare the map to modern-day Manhattan.
Harold also wrote, "It took me a while to figure out to click the slide on the left side to change the overlapping views."
The Registrar General for Scotland has announced that the 1911 census will be released on Tuesday 5 April 2011. This census details information collected from more than 4.7 million Scots.
The census images will be available for a fee on the Scotland's People web site. The following announcement was written by Scotland's People:
Writing in the Portland Press Herald, Juliana L'Heureux describes a quandary faced by the Maine Franco-American Genealogical Society. For the past 10 years the nonprofit Genealogical Society has been located in a large room in Auburn's Great Falls School, the former Edward Little High School, on High Street. A recent decision by the City Council to demolish part of the school is forcing the Society (MFGS) to find a new home, hopefully in the Lewiston-Auburn area. The new home needs to have room for the society's library of more than 2,500 books.
Wikipedia has great, although abbreviated, comparisons of nearly all the current genealogy software. The list of software is impressive. I thought I knew about all the programs available today but must admit I have not previously heard of HuMo-gen.
The reports are split in two: one for client-based (Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and Linux) programs and a separate report for web-based programs that are installed on a web server. All programs are listed by name, prices, and also have the most recent release dates. You might note that a few of these programs haven't been updated in years but most of them do have recent release dates. The oldest one listed is Personal Ancestral File, which has not been updated for nearly nine years.
27 March, 2011 is Census Day in the U.K. when all residents need to answer a few questions about themselves and the people that share their household on that day. To complete the census form, either fill it out on paper and mail it back or visit The 2011 National Census online at http://www.census.gov.uk/
To mark Census Day, Ancestry.co.uk is letting you access all the web site's UK census record indexes, from England, Wales and Scotland, completely FREE, for 24 hours. To do so, you must sign up for the company's 14-day free trial.
The next episode of Who Do You Think You Are? broadcast in the U.S. will feature actor Steve Buscemi. Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Dorothy, who worked as a hostess at Howard Johnson's, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker and Korean War veteran. Buscemi's grandfather was a Sicilian from the town of Menfi in the south of Sicily, and his mother was Irish American. I suspect the TV show will dig a bit deeper into Buscemi's ancestry.
Steve Buscemi has often portrayed criminals in his movies. This Friday, Who Do You Think You Are? searches Buscemi's family tree looking for possible rogues, rebels, and questionable characters in his genealogy. He travels through Philadelphia, New York, and the battlefields of Virginia, as he puts the focus on the secrets of his great-great-grandfather.
The episode will broadcast on NBC on Friday, March 25, at 8 PM Eastern time, 7 PM Central. Check your local listings for stations and times in your area.
The following has nothing to do with genealogy but I consider it to be a neat gadget and thought that others might be interested.
There are dozens of methods of copying files from one computer to another, such as from your desktop to a laptop PC, or from your computer to your cousin's computer, or from your home computer to your office computer or vice versa. You could copy files to a floppy disk (if anyone still uses those) or to a CD disk or to a flash drive, then take that to the other system and copy the files to it. This is sometimes called "sneaker net" as you transport files by walking from one system to another. It is low-tech, but it works well.
Other methods involve plugging in cables to transfer files or copying files across a network or even copying files across the Internet. Many commercial services are available to help you copy files from one system to another. Copying files across a network or the Internet is perhaps the better method, but it typically involves some complexity with creating accounts, user names, and passwords. I know many people who simply email files to themselves or to someone else and then save the attached file on the second computer. That works well if you don't have too many big files. However, today I found a neat gadget that greatly simplifies the process of copying files.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Genealogy web sites contain information about millions of deceased individuals. Yet sometimes you cannot find anything about the person you seek. Even with unusual names, you might not be able to find anything about a particular man or woman. Indeed, perhaps the information isn't yet published online; but, another common scenario is that the information IS online but the search engines haven't found that information and haven't indexed it. How is that possible? Perhaps a bit of knowledge of how search engines work will explain the "missing information" and help you create an alternative plan to find what you want.
I want to thank the members of the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society for their wonderful hospitality on Saturday. I had a great time and can report that the society is a high-energy group! The Virginia Beach Genealogical Society (VBGS) invited me to give four presentations on Saturday, but they did not warn me that this group asks lots of questions! They were good questions, too. Society members and other guests seemed to be really "plugged in" to the talks on technology in genealogy that I presented. I love making presentations to an interested audience!
In the picture to the right, program chair Kathleen Davis places a Virginia Beach Genealogical Society membership pin on my shirt. You can click on the image to see a larger picture.
The Virginia Beach Genealogical Society offers a "What's Up in Genealogy" seminar annually at a state-of-the-art facility at the Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The main presentation room is an impressive "theater" with a large projection screen. The audience sat in theater-style seats installed on a sloping floor. Everyone in the audience had an excellent view. The room also had excellent acoustics, something that all presenters appreciate.
I arrived home this afternoon from a trip to the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society, will spend a few days at home to do laundry, and then will head to Phoenix, Arizona, for a meeting next Saturday of the Family History Society of Arizona (FHSA). I will be making several presentations at the Society's annual meeting in Tempe.
If you are in the greater Phoenix area and would like to spend next Saturday with a group of genealogists, please join us starting at 8:30 AM at the Arizona Community Church at 9325 S. Rural Road, Tempe. The FHSA Annual Meeting will follow my presentations. You can read more about Saturday's event on the society's web site at http://www.fhsa.org/. A PDF version of the registration flyer is available at http://www.fhsa.org/pdfs/2011seminarflyerRevised.pdf
I have written before about the handheld VuPoint Magic Wand Portable Scanner. When I have demonstrated it in person, it always generates a lot of interest, including during a talk I gave this afternoon at the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society. Imagine my surprose when I returned to my hotel room a couple of hours later and found these are now available on eBay at a much lower price: $54.99 with free shipping.
Keep in mind that these are refurbished units, so technically they are not brand new. However, each one includes a 14-day return policy with no questions asked plus a 90-day warranty. I'd consider that to be low risk.
The following was written by the Irish Family History Foundation:
The Advanced Search facility is now available on All Ireland Searches on the main search page of www.rootsireland.ie.
Please note that counties Limerick and Sligo do not participate in the Advanced Search facility and will be excluded from the results of an Advanced Search on the All Ireland site.
The Advanced Search facility is also available for each county centres' data with the exception of Co. Limerick and Co. Sligo.
Note that Standard search will continue to work across all counties.
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