Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

The New, Updated MacBook Air

Late last year, I purchased a MacBook Air, the 2½-pound laptop computer from Apple. I love it. The machine quickly became my traveling companion; I take it on all trips, even on shorter trips of only a few hours. It is lightweight and thin, so it is easy to take most anywhere. That, plus a Sprint 4G/3G air card, provides wireless Internet connections most anyplace within range of a Sprint cell phone tower.

Today, Apple announced a new and improved MacBook Air.

Starting at $999 for the U.S. market and at £849 in the U.K., the new MacBook Air is an evolution, not a revolution. It is quite similar to the previous model, but with several nice additions:

Bahamian Genealogical and Heritage Conference and Workshop

The Bahamian American Cultural Society, Inc. presented its second Bahamian Genealogical and Heritage Conference and Workshop in New York City on Saturday, July 16, 2011. No, it was not held in the Bahamas. TheBahamasWeekly.com has a brief story about the events of the day and a number of pictures at http://goo.gl/6YPC2.

Marisa Tomei to be "Who Do You Think You Are?" Season 3 Guest

Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei will be appearing in season 3 of the U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are?  She announced during an interview that she'll be boarding a plane for somewhere unknown next week. Tomei presumes she'll be taken off to Italy, but given the nature of this series, she's not entirely confident with that guess.

Details may be found on hundreds of Hollywood gossip web sites. You might start at http://goo.gl/QXtws.

You can learn more about Marisa Tomei at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marisa_Tomei.

Some of Your Ancestors were Neanderthals

Unless perhaps all of your ancestors came from Africa.

Neanderthals are believed not to be humans but to have evolved separately from what we now refer to as homo sapiens. However, scientists have now identified a piece of Neanderthal DNA (called a haplotype) in the human X chromosome and believe this haplotype is present because of mating between our ancestors and Neanderthals.

Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy

The following announcement was written by the newly-formed Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy:

“A new organization has formed to advance professionalism in forensic genealogy,” according to Leslie Brinkley Lawson. The Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (CAFG) was chartered in Texas in May and launched its web presence this week, www.forensicgenealogists.org.

CAFG is a business league with a professional membership. Its objectives are:

Watch NEHGS on Television

Tonight's episode of "Chronicle" at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Boston's WCVB Channel 5, an ABC affiliate, will feature a half hour program on the New England Historic Genealogical Society and its work in genealogy.
 
For those living outside of the Boston viewing area, you can view the show starting some time tomorrow (July 20) on the WCVB website at www.thebostonchannel.com. There is no promise of what time the program will become available Wednesday, other than "some time" during the day.

How to Archive Your Tweets

Twitter may be a great way to keep up with what's happening, but it's not so good at keeping track of what's happened. That's because Twitter itself offers no way to keep an archive of your tweets. It's true that you can search your own postings (from your Twitter page). But those searches are limited to the last 3,200 tweets you have made. And if you want to store your tweets for posterity, there's no built-in way to do so.

Fortunately, there are some third-party tools and services that can archive Twitter for you.

Genealogist Madaleine J. Laird Appointed Copy Editor for Casefile Clues

The following announcement was written by Michael John Neill, publisher of Casefile Clues:

July 17, 2011 - Rio, Illinois: Madaleine J. Laird once served in the United States Air Force as an Arabic cryptologic linguist, but to paraphrase Forrest Gump, that's all she has to say about that. Her favorite civilian 9-to-5 jobs were at public and academic libraries, where she worked on the "front lines" at the circulation desk and in the trenches in technical services. She has written margin features for lower-division college textbooks, biographical profiles for a book on Irish American history, reviews of romance novels for a national magazine, and dozens of how-to articles on everything from household appliances to genealogical research.

FamilySearch Adds 12 Million New Records and Images This Week

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

The England and Mexico Collections Contain the Lion’s Share of the New Additions

19 July 2011

The recent collection updates at FamilySearch.org are too diverse to summarize—seigniorial and notarial records, bishop’s transcripts and parish registers, citizen lists, court case files—you get the picture. The largest collection updates this week are from England and Mexico—eight million records and images between the two countries’ collections. Another 4 million records and images were added for Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Sweden, USA, and Wales. Search the records online now at FamilySearch.org. See the list below for more details.

American Billboards Online

See Rock City. Smoke Camels. Chew Wrigley's Gum. Eat at Stuckey's.

Like them or not, billboards are part of the American landscape. They educate, entertain, and frustrate us, cluttering up the landscape and guiding us to fresh coffee and clean restrooms. Unavoidable as they are, they also provide a fascinating window on American popular culture. Now more than 27,000 images of billboards and other outdoor advertisements have been digitized and made available online by Duke University Libraries.

Work on Hold at Old County Home Cemetery in Essex, NY

The volunteer effort to reclaim the Old County Home and Infirmary cemetery here is nearing a first anniversary but has hit a snag. Vicki and Randy Dickerson spearheaded the effort, which has since uncovered and cleared 378 grave markers in a remote field south of Route 22 between Wadhams and Whallonsburgh, New York.

However, the work of restoring graves of indigent, transient, often elderly people who lived and then died at the County Home between 1874 and the late 1960s has now stopped. The land is now privately held and insurance issues have raised the question of liability protection.

Three Terabytes Added to My Personal Cloud

In the past fifteen years that I have been writing this newsletter, I think I have written the following statement at least a dozen times: "The price of disk storage keeps dropping." Today I am writing that statement one more time. I recently purchased a three-terabyte NAS hard drive and added it to my in-home network. I now have even more space for my backups and those of my family members. Best of all, the price was so low as to be undreamed of only a few years ago. You can do the same.

I elected to purchase a network-attached storage (NAS) drive, not the normal USB drive.

MyHeritage.com: A Startup That No One Would Touch

Business Insider rarely writes about genealogy. However, today's article in the online magazine describes the history of MyHeritage Founder/CEO Gilad Japhet and the online web site he founded. MyHeritage now has 57 million registered users, 18 million family trees, 800 million profiles, hundreds of millions of photos and adds almost a million new profiles each day.

Not bad for a start-up that nobody wanted! Yes, genealogy has become mainstream. The business world is now seeing how attractive genealogy really has become.

You can read this very interesting story at http://goo.gl/kIIfW.

Borders Books to Close

In still another indication of the turmoil in the book publishing business, Borders Books is shutting down.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection five months ago with hopes of shedding unprofitable stores, cutting debt and reemerging by September as a viable company. The company then closed more than 230 stores, but continued to lose millions every month.

This afternoon, Borders Books called it quits. In a late-afternoon announcement, Borders said it will close all remaining stores, close its Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters, and will also lay off all employees. The company will cease to exist.

Libraries Without Books

Drexel University's new Library Learning Terrace, which opened just last month, does not contain a single bound volume. Instead, it has rows of computers and plenty of seating offering access to the Philadelphia university's 170 million electronic items.

Scott Erdy, designer of the new library, says open, flexible space allows student and staff "knowledge transfer," a concept reinforced by Danuta Nitecki, dean of Drexel's libraries. "We don't just house books, we house learning," she says.

(+) Follow-up: How to Watch Videos from Other Countries

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Want to watch Who Do You Think You Are in another country? Perhaps you live in the U.S. and would like to see the U.K. version or vice-versa. Then again, perhaps you are in Canada or Australia or New Zealand or some other country and would like to view both the U.S. and U.K. versions. The online videos typically do not allow anyone outside of their home countries to view the programs online. In theory, only computer users in the U.K. can watch the U.K. version of Who Do You Think You Are? while only users in the U.S. can watch the U.S. version. With a bit of software installed in your computer, you can "fool" the video web servers into thinking you are located in their home country. Once set up and configured, you can watch those foreign videos from your own home.

Of course, this is not restricted only to Who Do You Think You Are? It should work for any television program that is digitized and made available over the Internet, including football games, auto races, news broadcasts, soap operas, and more.

Rarely-displayed Confederate Paintings now on Website

Rarely-displayed paintings of Charleston during the Civil War by a Confederate soldier, including one painting of the submarine H.L. Hunley, will become available this week on the Internet by The Museum of the Confederacy.

The museum in Richmond, Virginia, is providing all 31 paintings by Conrad Wise Chapman, an American artist who grew up in Italy and later served with the Confederate Army.

You can read more at http://goo.gl/fw3oF.

Remove Text Formatting When Copying-and-Pasting

Have you ever copied some text from a web page or a document and then wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? It can be a problem. Simple copying-and-pasting of formatted text often inserts extra “garbage characters” into the output. In fact, there is a simple solution. Simple, that is, if you know about it.

The problem arises when copying and pasting formatted text from one application to another. It doesn't always work as you'd expect. For instance, you might copy a few lines from a web page and then want to paste it to Facebook. Surprise! All sorts of "unwanted characters" may appear. The same might happen if you are copying text from a word processing document or from a PDF file and you wish to paste it into an email message.

Cold Case Annapolis Royal

This story is good enough for a television show. The Annapolis County Spectator reports on a “Cold Case at Fort Anne.” In 1994, a visitor to Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia noticed a bone protruding from clay near the water's edge. The visitor was an M.D., so he recognized a human bone when he saw one. This bone undoubtedly was human. When researchers started an excavation, they uncovered a complete skeleton.

Lillian Stewart, of Parks Canada, was there when the bones were found. She said it was exciting and yet disconcerting to see the skull. The bones reminded her that life was hard in the early days of the fort. Now, thanks to some great detective work worthy of a television drama, researchers know more about the man, including a strong possibility they know his name.

The Family History Show on YouTube

Nick Barratt and Laura Berry of Your Family History magazine (www.your-familyhistory.com), a British publication, have created a series of videos that are now available on YouTube. These videos are available to viewers worldwide.

Dr. Nick Barratt is a professional genealogist well-known for is best known for his role as genealogical consultant for series 1 to 4 of the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are?. Barratt is also the CEO of Sticks Research Agency and personal heritage site Nations Memory Bank. He also presents Live the Dream: As Seen on TV with Melissa Porter. He also is Editor-in-chief of Your Family History magazine