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UPDATE 11-August-2011: My 150 invitations have now been exhausted. However, other newsletter readers have kindly offered to share their extra invitations. Read the comments section below this article for details.
If you have extra invitations that you are willing to share, please post a comment below giving the link to your invitations.
Thank you!
In order to use Google's wildly popular Google+ social networking service, you must first receive an invitation from someone who is already a member. I am a member and about a month ago I offered to send an invitation to any newsletter reader who wanted one.
About 18 hours later, I had to rescind the offer as I used all 500 invitations that Google allowed. However, I now have more invitations and also have an easier method for you to receive an invitation. Unfortunately, this time I only have 150 invitations. First come, first served.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
The reasons for starting and publishing a blog vary widely. In fact, I suspect there are as many reasons as there are bloggers. Some bloggers publish online newsletters for their local societies. Others write about their favorite software product(s). Still others document their own genealogy research efforts. Still others document the ancestry of famous people or post obituaries of local residents. Perhaps a few decide to write daily news or events within the genealogy community. Whatever the reasons, more than 1,700 genealogy blogs are now online, according to the Genealogy Blog Finder at http://blogfinder.genealogue.com/ and I suspect that isn't all of them. Instead, that's only the genealogy blogs found to date. Undoubtedly, there are more.
Of course, genealogy is only one of the reasons for writing a blog. The suggestions I will offer apply equally to almost any blog topic: genealogy, history, your rock band, the local Cub Scout troop, politics, a high school reunion, and any other topics you can think of.
Consider the changes in retirement between you and your grandparents. When the national retirement age of 65 was established for the Social Security Act in 1935 (over 75 years ago!), the average American lifespan was 61.7 years. The age of 65 was chosen at that time because it was beyond the average life expectancy for Americans. While there certainly were exceptions, most Americans of 1935 aged 65 or more were in poor physical condition and were unable to earn a living. In fact, the average 65-year-old American of those days was... DEAD!
Again, I am talking about averages. We all know of exceptions, but financial planning by the actuaries at the Social Security Administration is based on averages.
NOTE: Actuaries are the individuals who determine the rate of accidents, sickness, death and other events, according to probabilities that are based on statistical records. Actuaries then use trend information to predict future averages.
Today, we still think of retirement age as 65, but the average lifespan of Americans is now 78 years — 16 years more than it was when Social Security started. The impact is enormous.
Newsletter reader Jim Benedict wrote to call attention to an article in the IEEE Spectrum that will interest many genealogists. Preserving the Present: Will Your Grandchildren Know What You Look Like as a Child? by Robert Charette describes the preservation of digital files and the potential for a "digital dark age."
As stated in the article, "The problem is that by the time we decide to preserve a digital record, the devices needed to read the file formats are often no longer readily available."
I'd love to own one of these! Actually, it is more likely to be found in libraries. The book2net Spirit is a high resolution book scanner that is designed to replace photocopiers. By eliminating the need for paper, toner, and maintenance, libraries can reduce costs. The Spirit can easily be attached to a cost recovery system or coin-op to generate revenue.
One of the worst droughts in Texas history is helping archaeologists unearth a small piece of American history, a graveyard for freed slaves. Cemeteries were marked and moved before the Richland Chambers Reservoir in Navarro County, Texas, was filled in the 1980s, but this small cemetery without tombstones went unnoticed. Apparently the cemetery was not moved and was flooded when the when the reservoir was created in the 1980s. Now the drought has lowered water levels and the cemetery is now uncovered.
The cemetery is believed to contain remains of freed slaves from the Civil War era or a few years later.
The New England Historic Genealogical Society has posted a help wanted ad on its web site, seeking a new Director of Education. The job description states, "The ideal candidate will have demonstrable expertise in genealogy and family history." It also mentions "starting immediately."
Travel is required. While not stated, I would assume the position is for a person based in Boston.
The following was written by the Oakland County Genealogical Society:
Oakland Society has indexed early Orion township records
The Oakland County Genealogical Society (OCGS) has indexed the 1884, 1890, and 1894 tax assessment rolls for Orion Brandon Township, Oakland County, Michigan. Volunteers created an index of the names in the records, and the index is available on the Society's website at http://www.ocgsmi.org. The index and images are also available at the Oakland County Historical Resources website at http://www.OaklandCountyHistory.org.
The release of the index marks the second release in the Society's 1890 Census Substitute Project, which focuses on locating, digitizing, and indexing Oakland County records created between 1884 and 1894. The 1884 and 1894 State of Michigan Census for Oakland County and the Federal Census for 1890 for Michigan no longer exist, so replacement data is very useful to genealogical researchers.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
This week's news about someone leaving a flash drive in a London pub is sad for a number of reasons. (The article is available at http://goo.gl/OkfdJ.) It is sad that the personal banking account details of so many people were on the drive where anyone who found it could recover the information. Even worse, I suspect this is but one of thousands of cases of lost flash drives or misplaced information on drives or on web servers. There are no statistics available, but I suspect that lots of information is lost or stolen every day, and most of these losses are never reported.
There is good news in this latest case: the flash drive was found by a good samaritan who gave it to police.
What saddens me most of all is that the entire issue is so easily avoided: encrypt the information. Simply put, encrypting programs scramble data within the file or files that you specify; at the same time, you also specify the magic words or characters that must be used to unscramble those files. Encryption is easy to do, requires only a few seconds, and (in many cases) is free of charge.
After mentioning the word “encryption” at the end of the article about flash drives left in a London pub, one newsletter reader posted a question: “Can you advise me what the best encryption method (free if possible!) is to protect USB drives and the like, please?” This article is my response to that question.
A newsletter reader asked a question today: "Can you give me a source for getting more information about DNA testing for genealogical purposes?"
I was going to write something until I found an excellent introduction to the subject on the International Society of Genetic Genealogy's web site. If you are new to the topic of DNA, you might want to read Genetic Genealogy Q&A for Beginners at http://www.isogg.org/ggfaq.htm
GEDitCOM II is a genealogy application for Macintosh OS X that allows easy editing of genealogy files as well as many additional capabilities. If you have had compatibility problems using GEDCOM files to transfer data between different genealogy programs, GEDitCOM II may solve the problem. The program also allows the user to export part or all of a GEDCOM file. Perhaps you received a large GEDCOM file from a distant cousin that contains information about thousands of people and yet you only need one "branch" of that family tree. GEDitCOM II will "prune the tree" for you. The same program will also merge two or more GEDCOM files together.
For an explanation of GEDCOM files, see my earlier article, GEDCOM Explained, at http://goo.gl/0kEMJ
GEDitCOM II also provides many other features, including:
I have written often about the need for data security, both online and on your computer at home. Indeed, readers of this newsletter have also posted many comments about the safety of storing information on the cloud versus at home and in other places. These are all important issues but let's not overlook the biggest cause of data theft: human stupidity.
I suspect we can find hundreds of examples but the latest one in this morning's news is about a contractor who had stored data from two different housing companies on an unencrypted USB flash drive. The drive contained sensitive information about tens of thousands of tenants' accounts, including 800 records containing bank account details. He then accidentally left the flash drive in a London pub. Oooops!
Luckily, the USB stick was recovered and handed to police.
One of genealogy's unsung heroes passed away unexpectedly on Saturday, July 30, 2011. Keith Zimmer's name may not be a household word amongst genealogists, but thousands of people researching St. Louis ancestry have used his work.
Keith Zimmer worked at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, where he indexed obituaries and death notices in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Argus. He also created an index for local military personnel who were killed in action, missing in action or who were prisoners of war in World War I or II. The indexes are available on the library's website, slpl.org.
The oldest surviving map of the British Isles has been digitally captured and turned into a Google Maps-style online resource. The 14th century Gough map is internationally-renowned as one of the earliest maps to show Britain in a geographically-recognizable form. Yet to date, questions remain of how the map was made, who made it, when and why.
This website presents an interactive, searchable edition of the Gough Map, together with contextual material, a blog, and information about the project and the Language of Maps colloquium
The following announcement was written by Family Tree DNA:
HOUSTON TX — AUGUST 5, 2011 - Family Tree DNA is pleased to announce the launch of a new feature: Y-DNA "Third Party" uploads.
This will allow for the upload of 33 and 46-marker Y-DNA test results from Ancestry, GeneTree and Sorenson's SMGF. This comes as a natural development since the necessary tools were created to import the customer database it recently acquired from DNAHeritage after that company ceased its operations.
The Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants continues to create more indexes to records and places those indexes online. I wrote about one such effort, "Franklin County, Massachusetts, Probate Index, 1812 to 1925 and Vital Records State Guides," at http://goo.gl/IyWEN. Now the Society has added the next probate index: Berkshire County.
The latest addition joins Franklin County that went online last month. These indexes are both available free of charge.
The National Archives in London has recently a number of microfilmed records online. Using the online versions is very similar to using the same microfilms in person at The National Archives or at any library that has a copy: you "crank" through the microfilms one image at a time.
The microfilms have not yet been indexed, so the only method of finding information on them is to manually search each image. In other words, using the microfilms online is the same as using them in a microfilm reader except that you don't have to go to a library or archive to use the films and the readers. You can stay at home and perform the same searches.
In the May 02, 2011, newsletter, I briefly described the Genealogy Twitter Reader, a free product from GenealogyInTime Magazine that allows you to read the latest tweets in real time from hundreds of genealogy users. Now the company has announced a new version 2.0 of the program.
The new version features many enhancements over the previous version, including:
I suspect this may be the wave of the future. We may see this in more and more cities and towns worldwide. I also know some hotels in London that will be disappointed as they have been gouging customers for wifi access for a long time and I have the receipts to prove it.
Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett told investors that the company is in “quite advanced negotiations” with London councils over the plans and said he was optimistic the rollout would begin “in the not too distant future”.
“The proposition would be that we would provide free Wifi access for all,” he said.
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