The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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the vendors like it or not!
All genealogists and most other computer users as well need to make backups of important files, family photographs, and much more. Ideally, there should be at least two backups of every important file: one near the computer in a convenient location and another copy stored "off-site" for protection against major disasters that could destroy the computer as well as the home and all backups stored within that home. Indeed, computer owners have dozens of online backup services to choose from, with many online services offering "introductory specials" of free storage for one to perhaps five gigabytes and then modest fees for even more storage space.
Microsoft has now "raised the bar" with an update to SkyDrive that offers up to 25 gigabytes of free storage to anyone.
Records of Britain’s Everyday Heroes Go Online for the First Time
Over half a million records covering 100 years of the militia - the forerunner of The British Territorial Army - published online
Records provide unique descriptions of what your ancestors actually looked like Everyday workers including butchers and bakers fighting for their country
The British militia was recruited from all over the world
About a week ago, I published an article of Can You Help Genealogists Solve a Mystery in Dover, New Hampshire? at http://goo.gl/ucjlv. In the article, I described a ring found on a beach in Kittery, Maine. The ring apparently belonged to Charles C. Dixon and Maranda A. Lewis were married May 12, 1881. Genealogists were looking for descendants of the couple to return the ring to the family. Descendants have now been found.
Is this any way to run a government "service?" The Georgia State Archives has been forced by severe budget cuts to close an additional day each week. Effective July 1, the archives will be open for public research from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays only.
The Georgia Archives web site at http://www.sos.georgia.gov/archives/ states, "The new hours are a result of reductions in the Georgia Archives’ fiscal year 2012 budget. We regret the inconvenience this may cause researchers, and we greatly appreciate your understanding."
Some of Canada's oldest films and photographs, recorded on deteriorating and highly combustible cellulose nitrate, now have a safe home. Library and Archives Canada unveiled its new $14.7-million preservation facility for nitrate film on the government's Shirleys Bay campus Tuesday.
The new building houses 5,575 reels of nitrate film dating back to 1912. Famous titles include Back to God's Country (1919), the oldest existing Canadian feature film, and Churchill's Island, the first Canadian film to win an Oscar (in 1941). There are also almost 600,000 nitrate photograph negatives.
I have written a couple of times recently about various problems at Arlington National Cemetery. See http://goo.gl/ij9sL and http://goo.gl/5pxrc for those articles. Now Army criminal investigators are investigating a new discovery: 69 boxes of burial records from Arlington National Cemetery found in a commercial storage facility. The boxes include grave cards used to record burials that appear to have been given to a contractor who was supposed to help create a database of burials.
A register of medieval court rolls, surveys and maps, has been released online for the first time. Information about 200 Nottinghamshire manors is accessible to the public thanks to the county council's archives team. The register, with documents dating back to the 13th century, was funded by The National Archives.
Manors were agricultural estates compromising a village whose inhabitants would work the land for the estate's lord. The manorial documents, which pre-date Parish records started in 1538, include such details as the hanging of a thief, men accused of sheep theft and a fight in 14th century Mansfield.
Time and again, I have reported on losses of historic documents, caused by fires, floods, earthquakes, burst water pipes, and even one building collapse a year or so ago. All of those sad events raise a question: "How can we salvage what is left?"
The quick answer is: "plan NOW for future disasters."
The Library of Congress Preservation Directorate has created a model Collections Emergency Response Contract that can be consulted by other institutions for their own collections emergency response contract development. The contract describes the services and associated requirements for stabilization and recovery of the institution’s collections when it is confronted with a disaster that affects or has affected its collections and the magnitude of the disaster outstrips the resources of the institution to respond effectively.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
Todd Knowles, a FamilySearch British reference consultant and Jewish genealogy specialist who works in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, was recently added to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain’s Roll of Honour at their annual meeting in London. Knowles was recognized for his distinguished service in the development and publication of resources relating to the Jews of the British Isles. His free online database (search the Knowles Collection) contains linked and sourced entries for more than 100,000 Jews from the British Isles and over 100,000 Jews from other parts of the world. The online collection provides invaluable information for those researching their Jewish ancestors.
I recently wrote about a Plus Edition article at http://eogn.com/wp/?p=16209 about my new Google Chromebook laptop computer. These new laptops do not run Windows or Macintosh. Instead, they use the new Chrome operating system, created by Google. I was impressed with the laptop although I do not recommend it for everyone. Instead, I suggest that it is a great computer for the person with limited or no technical skills. Apparently, Jason Perlow of ZDnet agrees.
Perlow wrote an article about his 70+-year-old in-laws' experience with a laptop running Chrome. The in-laws have very little experience with computers. They already had a Windows 7 laptop but Perlow gave them a Google Cr-48 (a predecessor to the new Chromebooks) to use side-by-side for a few weeks. Perlow now reports, "Well as it turns out, my mother-in-law, Sandy, has taken to it like a fish to water. She loves the thing. In fact, she likes it so much that she’s pretty much stopped using her Windows 7 notebook, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61..." However, Perlow also agrees with me that the price is too high.
I saw the pre-release version of this book a couple of weeks ago at the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree and can tell you it looks great! Describing it in words here is difficult. You might want to download the free sample of the book to obtain a better idea of its contents.
The following announcement was written by Gary Clark of PhotoTree.com™:
19th Century Paper Photographs, A Genealogist’s Guide to Cartes de visite and Cabinet Cards
New EPUB-formatted book available through the iBooks Application on the iPad.
I love DropBox and use it daily, usually several times a day. I have also written often about the need for online security; so, I was disappointed to read that DropBox had a major security problem yesterday. The company installed a software update and, nearly four hours later, discovered that anyone could log into any DropBox account without a password. As soon as the problem was discovered, the company reverted back to the previous software version and tested the process heavily. For those four hours, anyone who was aware of the glitch could have accessed your data stored on the DropBox servers without restriction. Details may be found at http://goo.gl/wdJuM.
While inexcusable, the problem isn't rare. Errors will happen anywhere. This problem happened at DropBox, but it could have happened most anyplace else.
The quick reaction will always be, "I won't give my data to anyone. I'll keep it safe and secure on my own hard drive." Of course, that is about as effective as an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. In fact, data stored on your own computer's hard drive is probably as much at risk or even more at risk than data stored on a remote online service.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch Adds Free Records for 10 Countries
U.S. collections added for Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin
22 Twenty-two collections for 10 countries were updated recently at FamilySearch.org. The Germany and Mexico church records were the two largest collections added. Collections were also added for Brazil, Canada, Guatemala, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. See the list below for more details. See the records online now at FamilySearch.org.
Here is still another reason to scan all your family photographs and documents and then store those digital files off-site, preferably at some distance from your home. Sandra Self lost family photographs and sensitive personal information on April 27. The Catoosa County, Georgia, tax commissioner and her husband, Dennis, lost everything they owned in the EF4 tornado that killed seven of their neighbors and leveled many of their homes.
On top of the physical devastation and loss, Self and others found that important papers and personal documents had been scattered near and far, sometimes hundreds of miles. At worst, that made tornado victims vulnerable to identity theft and left some with no personal records as they tried to piece their lives together.
The British Library and Google today announced a partnership to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the Library’s collections. Opening up access to one of the greatest collections of books in the world, this demonstrates the Library’s commitment, as stated in its 2020 Vision, to increase access to anyone who wants to do research. Once digitised, these unique items will be available for full text search, download and reading through Google Books, as well as being searchable through the Library’s website and stored in perpetuity within the Library’s digital archive.
Selected by the British Library and digitised by Google, both organisations will work in partnership over the coming years to deliver this content free through Google Books (http://books.google.co.uk) and the British Library’s website (www.bl.uk). Google will cover all digitisation costs.
Hard books are on their way to extinction, according to Kevin Kelly, writing in The Technium. He states:
"We are in a special moment that will not last beyond the end of this century: Paper books are plentiful. They are cheap and everywhere, from airports to drug stores to libraries to bookstores to the shelves of millions of homes. There has never been a better time to be a lover of paper books. But very rapidly the production of paper books will essentially cease, and the collections in homes will dwindle, and even local libraries will not be supported to house books -- particularly popular titles. Rare books will collect in a few rare book libraries, and for the most part common paper books archives will become uncommon. It seems hard to believe now, but within a few generations, seeing a actual paper book will be as rare for most people as seeing an actual lion."
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
The following article is for anyone who needs to send a large number of identical, or nearly identical, email messages. Perhaps you need to send 1,000 messages to attendees of your society's annual conference. Perhaps you write a blog and would like to offer email subscriptions to your articles. In either case, using a 50-year-old technology called email can greatly increase the number of readers you have.
COMMENT: If you have a blog, I would suggest that you absolutely need to publish your articles both online and in email. Many people will visit a blog daily or at least several times a week in order to read the news offered. However, as time goes by, many blog readers will forget to check frequently or will become distracted by other priorities in their lives. Little by little, they will check the blog less and less often. Eventually, they "drift away," even though they may still be interested in the articles offered in your blog. The simple solution is to send each person an email message every day or every few days containing all the new articles posted since the last such message.
GenDetective is a brand-new Windows software program that helps you organize your genealogy data. Other programs tell you what information you have. GenDetective will analyze your GEDCOM files and tell you what you don't have. It will created printed reports as well as reports on your smartphone, Kindle, Nook, laptop, or most any other computer than can display text. You can take your report with you on a research trip to a library, an archive, of any other repositories. You can read more about GenDetective in my recent articles at http://goo.gl/OzjiC and at http://goo.gl/WtC92.
I had a chance to talk with Sandra Rumble, one of the principles at GenDetective and I asked her about the product, especially how to use it.
"How to Cash In on Family." That's the theme of Jim Cramer's interview on CNBC's "Mad Money" program of Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. Cramer claims, "it's the world's largest online resource for family history research."
Tim Sullivan stated that Ancestry.com grows its subscriber base by 33% year-over-year. He also stated that the first quarter of 2011 was the company's best ever and was the result of several things that came together at the same time.
Jim Cramer also admitted that he is "extremely interested" in his own family tree. He's a genealogist? Tim Sullivan then displayed Cramer's ancestry, including his grandfather's World War II draft registration document and a 1930 U.S. census listing of Cramer's great-grandparents.
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