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 Ancestry.com:
New Collection to Help Families Discover Connections to American Freedom Fighters Is Available FREE From June 30 - July 4
PROVO, UTAH, Jun 30, 2011 -- In honor of Independence Day, Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, today launched the Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, a collection of more than one million applications from men with a direct link to either a supporter or participant in the fight for United States independence during the 18th century. Like its well-known sister organization, The Daughters of the American Revolution, also available through Ancestry.com, the Sons of the American Revolution applications contain precious handwritten historical information that can take a family back through two centuries of history in a single document. The applications contain references to Revolutionary War pension files, documented family and local histories, family Bible records, deeds, court documents, census records and typically include a short summary of the ancestor's service.
During the early 1900s, the thought of a “horseless carriage” rumbling down the path - or better yet - a “flying machine” moving through the air, seemed unbelievable. Our ancestors often did not believe such devices were possible. However, the traditional horse and buggy quickly became history with the emergence of auto carriages like the 1905 Franklin and aircraft such as the 1909 Bleriot Type XI. These new modes of transportation were often raced in public demonstrations to prove to the public that such contraptions were not only possible, but practical.
If you can travel to Stow, Massachusetts in August, you can watch recreations of the races your ancestors may have watched:
I wrote before about Mocavo and called it "a genealogy search engine." Now the company has added new functionality and my earlier description is no longer accurate. To be sure, Mocavo still functions well as a genealogy search engine but now I think I need to describe Mocavo as "a genealogy search and matching service."
Synium Software GmbH is announcing a 50% discount until July 7, 2011 on MobileFamilyTree Pro for the iPhone and iPad. MobileFamilyTree Pro is billed as "is the first full-fledged mobile genealogy application on the market." That is, unlike the other genealogy programs for the iPhone and iPad, MobileFamilyTree Pro is a complete free-standing program that does not require a Windows or Macintosh computer.
While MobileFamilyTree version 2 was a "companion" product" for use with MacFamilyTree (a Macintosh genealogy program), the new PRO version brings much of the functionality and much, if not all, of the data in the Mac version to the iPhone and iPad. It does not simply display information from another program; MobileFamilyTree Pro is the only genealogy program you need. Of course, having your genealogy information with you in your iPhone or iPad is a great convenience.
This sounds like a great tool! The following announcement was written by Steve Morse and Joel Weintraub:
In less than 10 months the 1940 US Population Schedules will become public. It will not be name indexed, so it will be necessary to do an address search in order to find families. Address searching involves knowing the ED (enumeration district) in which the address is located. The National Archives (NARA) earlier this year indicated they had plans to make available in 2011 the 1940 ED maps of cities and counties, and ED descriptions, but their recent move to consider having a 3rd party host all the images may have appreciably set back this timetable.
I have written a lot about cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs, Zoho Docs, and various online genealogy programs. It is interesting to note that the biggest software firm of all entered the cloud-based arena today: Microsoft has introduced the Office 365 Cloud Suite.
I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I was riding airplanes today and tonight am in a hotel room in Houston. However, initial reaction from other writers has been mixed. Sholto Macpherson of Box-Free IT compared the new Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Suite with Google Docs. He finds the two services are very different from each other but writes, "in terms of functionality, Google Apps is well ahead of Microsoft Office Web Apps."
I am also uploading state vital records guides. Finished are the New England states, New York, and New Jersey. Others will follow in the future. They are at: http://goo.gl/CuQOU
If you ever have a requirement to create HTML code for use in web pages, you might be interested in a new HTML editor called BlueGriffon. You use HTML editors to create web pages. The pages might be for a personal web site, your genealogy society's web site, or for most any other purpose.
BlueGriffon is a WYSIWYG editor. That is, "what you see is what you get." Unlike many other HTML editors, BlueGriffon is as easy to use as a word processor. You create each page on your own Windows, Macintosh, or Linux computer, and BlueGriffon automatically creates the underlying HTML code. You can then copy that code to a web site you control, be it a personal web page, a society web site, or most any other page on the Internet. Best of all is the price tag: free.
The following announcement was written by James A. McKane of the Canadian Headstones Photo Project:
The mission of this project is to capture digital images and the complete transcription of headstones of our ancestors. As decades pass, it is becoming harder - if not impossible - to read the inscriptions these stones originally contained. By archiving the images and transcriptions, these important records are saved.
As such, last year our concern became the longevity of the project and website. There are many websites which archive cemetery photographs and other valuable genealogical information; however, virtually all of them are under the control and ownership of one person. This leads to the strong possibility that all the records and hard work by many volunteers will disappear into cyberspace upon the owner's death or serious illness.
Last fall, to combat this concern, we incorporated CanadianHeadstones.com as a Non-profit Canadian Corporation. As with any corporation, CanadianHeadstones.com can now live forever under the direction of its Board of Directors which is currently four people.
The following was written by Thomas Jay Kemp, NewsBank’s Director of Genealogy Products:
Discover Unique, long-forgotten Information about Your Ancestors.
GenealogyBank recently added over 32 million records and now has more than 855 million records online. 70 million of these records are obituaries published in newspapers and documents from the late 1600s to today. Along with birth announcements and marriage notices, obituaries are an important genealogy resource found in newspapers that can help you with your family history research. Obituaries do far more than tell you about the deceased—they provide a springboard to push you off into other searches, perhaps to unexpected places.
Once you’ve found them, however, what’s the best way to glean all the information you possibly can from an obituary?
A project to help people across Tyne and Wear in northeastern England unearth their family history has been given a £45,000 (roughly $71,000 in U.S. funds) lottery grant. The What’s Your Story? Discovering Family History project is based at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle and run by Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. The Heritage Lottery Fund cash will enable people to research and share families' histories.
Specially trained family historians and volunteers will work with local people and offer help with searches within Tyne & Wear Archives, which is located at Discovery Museum.
Geni is a collaborative online service that is solving many of the problems of genealogy by inviting the world to build the definitive online family tree. Using the basic free service at Geni.com, users add and invite their relatives to join their family tree, which Geni compares to other trees. Matching trees are then merged into the single world family tree, which currently contains nearly 50 million living users and their ancestors. Pay services include enhanced research tools as well as keepsake products created from family tree data.
At the recent Southern California Genealogy Jamboree held in Burbank, I had a chance to talk with Grant Brunner, Community Outreach Manager at Geni.com. You can listen to our conversation by clicking on PLAY in the link below.
(The picture above and to the right is of Grant Brunner and myself.)
How accurate is the Social Security Death Index? Apparently not accurate at all, according to Thomas Hargrove of the Scripps Howard News Service. He writes, "The Social Security Administration each month falsely reports that nearly 1,200 living Americans have died. These clerical errors, found in a federal database ominously titled the "Death Master File," might be darkly humorous - evoking Mark Twain's famous quip that death reports can be greatly exaggerated - were not the consequences so severe."
The Indiana Farmer captured rural Hoosier life between 1851 and 1917. The newspaper recorded the evolution and growth of the Hoosier state during that time. These publications provide a rich history of the Hoosier farmstead that was not addressed in other agricultural magazines of that time period.
During and immediately following the end of the Civil War, the newspaper emerged as the agricultural magazine for Hoosiers returning to the farm. Published in Indianapolis until 1873, it was the "magazine of rural life." The newspaper was known for providing tips to Hoosier on their daily life.
Several genealogy cruises take place every year. Cruising genealogists get to enjoy “how to” courses, software presentations, demonstrations of the latest genealogy techniques, good food, gorgeous scenery, and adventurous shore excursions. What could be better?
Occasionally we hear claims that interest in genealogy is declining. These claims are based on the fact that attendance at some genealogy conferences is less than that of a few years ago. Yet everywhere else we look, we see proof of the opposite. Who Do You Think You Are? Live! held in England a few months ago attracted 15,000 attendees. The corresponding Who Do You Think You Are? television series about genealogy is popular in several countries around the world with millions of viewers. Other popular television shows include The Generations Project (on cable), Faces of America (on PBS), and others.
Thousands of genealogy web sites attest to the current level of interest. The number of genealogy programs available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and handheld computers is increasing faster than ever before, and the latest growth is in cloud-based genealogy programs. Several of the software producers are reporting record sales. Finally, genealogy “theme cruises” attract more and more people every year.
I’d say that genealogy is alive and more popular than ever!
I have written many times about the advantages of cloud storage and cloud computing. Having your data available to you at any time on any computer, at home, at the office, on a laptop in a hotel room, from a "smartphone," or from a borrowed computer in a library or a friend's house can be a big convenience. However, many people are not comfortable with the idea of storing their files on someone else's online service. We can talk about security all day long but lots of computer owners simply are not comfortable with storing their files on some computer system they don't control. HomePipe may be the answer.
Instead of storing your files in some online storage space owned by strangers, HomePipe allows you to access files on your own disk drive(s) remotely. The definition of "a disk drive" can be most anything: an external USB drive, a flash drive, or simply a reserved section of the hard drive that is presently built into your computer. You can access your data from someplace else as long as your computer at home is left powered on and connected to the Internet. Your information remains on your own hard drive(s) that you own and control and those files are never copied to anyone else's online service. There is no need to "upload" any files to any Internet-based service.
Ten new celebrity guests for the BBC version of the television programme Who Do You Think You Are? have been announced. (NOTE: This is the BBC version of the programme, not the U.S. version nor the versions broadcast in other countries.) Some of these celebrities had been announced earlier, but now the complete list has been published in the Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine web site at http://goo.gl/0w7Mc. The celebrities are:
This week I added a new software tool to my genealogy toolbox: ABBYY TextGrabber. Actually, this program uses a process that I have been using for several years: take a picture of documents and then later convert the image to text by use of OCR (optical character recognition). The one difference is that ABBYY TextGrabber provides the software to "package" everything together in one easy-to-use program. If you already own an Apple iPhone, you might want to add this low-cost program to your toolbox as well.
ABBYY TextGrabber allows you to take a picture of any text, such as genealogy information found in a book, and it then converts that text to computer-readable format by using OCR (optical character recognition). The decoded text can then be sent by email or copied by iTunes to a Windows or Macintosh or Chromebook computer where you vcan easily copy-and-paste the information into any genealogy program, word processor, or most any other program.
Using ABBYY TextGrabber can save you a LOT of manual data entry on a keyboard!
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