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The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
This week I improved the use of my AT&T cell phone dramatically. At home, my phone used to display one or two bars of signal strength on the built-in display if I was on the main floor of the house. Usage of the cell phone on the main floor was spotty: it worked most of the time, but I did miss occasional phone calls. When the calls did work, I sometimes experienced unexpected disconnects. I estimate that it worked 90% of the time. I expect a better percentage than that from a telephone service.
Moving upstairs to the second floor provided a major improvement in signal strength. The built-in signal strength indicator on the cell phone usually displayed three to five "bars" of signal strength, and the phone seemed to always work well. Unfortunately, most of the time I spend on the second floor is time I am asleep. I don't talk on the phone much from the upper floor.
When I moved to the basement, nothing worked. The signal strength display typically would show zero bars. I couldn't make or receive cell phone calls. Unfortunately, I spend a fair amount of time in the basement.
In the December 5th, 2010 edition of this newsletter, I wrote a Plus Edition article entitled, "(+) Who Was D.B. Cooper?" That article is still available at http://eogn.com/wp/?p=13327. I described a 39-year-old mystery that had baffled the FBI. Now that mystery may be solved.
On December 5th, 2010, I wrote:
Genealogists are experts at identifying deceased people. In fact, the same skills often work well at finding living people as well. Many genealogists find employment that involves locating missing heirs, finding criminals, or what is called "skip tracing:" finding people who skipped out of town with no known forwarding address. The ultimate challenge, however, would be to find D.B. Cooper. After all, the FBI has been looking for him for 39 years. Nobody even knows if he is dead or alive. Can you find him?
The many friends and acquaintances of Michael Leclerc will be interested to learn that he is moving on to new adventures. Michael became an employee of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston in 1995. In the following sixteen years, he has served in a variety of roles at the society. He has assisted thousands of visitors with their research, taught hundreds of classes, written thousands of articles, and traveled extensively. He has lectured at genealogy conferences all over the U.S. and even on cruise ships.
When I write he "traveled extensively," I can vouch for that. I once spent two weeks accompanying Michael on a trip to a genealogy conference in England and then we went on to India to visit a company that was developing the NEHGS web site. Traveling through India with Michael was a great experience that I will never forget!
Google has become the primary tool for all sorts of online searches. I use Google every day for genealogy and other searches. I perform searches for several ancestors, searches for any information about a small town where my ancestors lived, searches for any information about the small town where I grew up, any mentions of my newsletter, any mention of my cousins with the unusual surname, and a number of other topics. I perform these searches daily, always looking for any new information that appears online.
Of course, logging onto Google every day and manually performing such searches is tedious. Besides, I am forgetful. I don't always remember to perform the searches as often as I should.
Luckily, Google provides a solution for me and for millions of others who wish to perform repetitive searches of Google's billions of links, looking for new information.
FamilySearch is the largest source of genealogy data online. In a recent YouTube video, LockerGnome's Jake Ludington talks to Gordon Clarke of FamilySearch at OSCON about how developers can use the FamilySearch API to build mobile web applications that extend the usefulness of genealogy data and provide a rich experience for sharing data about ancestors.
On August 5 and 6, Staunton, Virginia area residents will have an opportunity to contribute to the pool of knowledge about the War Between the States when the Civil War 150 Legacy Project comes to the Staunton Public Library. The Library of Virginia, teaming with the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, is seeking to scan and eventually to make available online as many privately held war-related documents as possible.
Residents who have original documents such as letters, diaries, military passes, discharge papers, oaths of allegiance, hand-drawn maps, pension materials, photographs and claims for damages by Confederate or Federal armies are asked to share their materials with posterity. The project is interested in digitizing documents dating from 1859 to 1867. Members of the Augusta County Historical Society will be on hand to explain how to properly preserve family manuscripts and photographs.
Connie Reik is a Government Publications Coordinator and Research Librarian for History at Tisch Library at Tufts University. She also teaches how to perform research. She teaches these skills to college students and, more recently, to genealogists. Along the way, Connie has become an expert and instructor in the use of Zotero, a free citation manager and note taker.
Connie now gives talks and workshops on Zotero at genealogy conferences. I knew that her former students have been enthusiastic about Connie's seminars at previous conferences. As one student told me, "Where has this been all my life?" I found Connie at another genealogy conference and asked if she would share some of her expertise with newsletter readers. Although it is impossible to capture a one- or two-hour hands-on seminar in a short audio podcast, Connie did manage to provide an overview and was able to tell why Zotero is such a great tool for genealogists.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced more than $2 million in grants for Illinois. Illinois received 11 grants for projects statewide, from Chicago to Edwardsville.
The largest grant, for $325,000, will go to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign for the National Digital Newspaper Program. The money will be used to digitize 100,000 pages of Illinois newspapers dating from 1860 to 1922. The announcement does not mention if the digitized newspapers will be made available online or not.
You don't need expensive software to edit photos like a pro. All you need is a web browser and an Internet connection. The death of the hard drive is upon us. As more and more people and Internet companies turn to The Cloud (a non-local storage location for data) for their daily computing activities, massive storage systems in personal computers are becoming less and less necessary.
Not only are these applications cheap (usually free), they also work equally well on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers. Some of them will even work on iPad and Android tablets.
PC Advisor (a British publication) has a review of Family Tree Maker for Mac, written by Simon Jary. He compares the Macintosh program with several other genealogy programs for the Mac, then offers a comparison to the Windows version. He says generally positive things about the program, although he is obviously not happy with the fact that the Mac version is about a year behind in available features when compared to the Windows version.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
I wrote some time ago (at http://goo.gl/suyT2) about my efforts to digitize my personal library and then to throw away the physical books I have collected. Several people wrote to suggest that I not throw away the books. They suggested that I donate the books to a library or to some other person who could use them after I created digital copies. For most of these books, I don't think I can legally do that.
PROVO, Utah, July 27, 2011 -- Ancestry.com Inc. (ACOM), the world's largest online family history resource, today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011.
"Our strong second quarter financial performance demonstrates that our investments in content, product and marketing continue to drive subscriber growth, enhance the user experience, and increase our brand awareness," said Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com. "Going forward we plan to continue to make investments that can help drive our business and position us well for long-term growth."
I have written a couple of times recently about the arrest of the self-styled “America’s Presidential Historian,” Barry Landau. He and his reported accomplice, Jason Savedoff, are accused of stealing historic documents from the Maryland Historical Society with a value of more than $100,000. Police also found a Benjamin Franklin letter belonging to the New-York Historical Society in his apartment. Police have since found documents from the National Archives, Connecticut Historical Society, and Vassar College in a locker linked to Landau and Savedoff and there is evidence Landau sold stolen documents for $35,000 to a dealer.
In the above picture, Barry Landau (with the beard) is shown with former President Gerald Ford, Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Philip.
Now the Washington Post has published a lengthy article about "Who is Barry Landau?" It appears that he is not what he appeared to be. You can read more at http://goo.gl/Adgnw.
The following announcement was written by Eneclann:
Eneclann genealogists were delighted to be acknowledged by President Obama in the speech he made in College Green, Dublin.
‘Eneclann were delighted to be given VIP tickets to the reception in College Green, along with Megan Smolenyak, the American genealogist who first made the connection between the President’s family and Ireland,’ explains Fiona Fitzsimons, Director of Research at Eneclann. ‘We weren’t really expecting an acknowledgement, so to hear him thank the genealogists who had worked on his family history was fantastic.’
The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources said Wednesday that the Genealogical Research Services section of the Government and Heritage Library in Raleigh will no longer be open on Mondays. It will now be open Tuesday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The change will start Sept. 12.
A historic north-end Halifax park will officially be renamed Africville on Friday. The renaming is part of a deal reached between the city and the Africville Genealogy Society in 2010.
Future plans for Africville include a church museum, expected to open in the fall, and an interpretative centre.
A presidential historian charged with stealing millions of dollars in documents from the Maryland Historical Society has had his bail set at $500,000. Hearings for 63-year-old Barry Landau and his assistant, 24-year-old Jason Savedoff, both of New York City, were held Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court. Savedoff's bail was set at $750,000.
I know that many readers of this newsletter live in rural areas that do not have high-speed Internet connections available. All that will change within the next few years as the new IEEE 802.22 standard has been published.
Remember that we all had to switch from analog television to digital television about two years ago? The new IEEE 802.22 standard will use the frequencies vacated by the old television signals. The standard will provide networking in areas over a 62-mile radius at speeds of up to 22 megabits per second. That is as fast as or faster than most of today's fiber optic connections to private residences.
I am not the only one to be warning of the need for disaster planning. New Zealand Chief Archivist Greg Goulding's latest report on the state of government record keeping warns the country's public offices to "have plans to prepare for and manage the effects of natural disasters on their records and information."
Archives New Zealand is committed to assisting in the rescue and recovery of public records in Canterbury," Mr. Goulding said.
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