The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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The following announcement was written by Carleton University:
Ottawa – Calling all Canadian genealogy buffs: Carleton University researchers want you!
A team of Carleton researchers is seeking family historians to complete an online survey detailing how and why they conduct their genealogical research. This is the first national survey of its kind and aims to capture the effects of digitization and the impact of the Internet on family history research. Over 2,100 surveys have already been completed but the researchers are making one last push before the Nov. 30 deadline.
A multibillion-dollar industry, the practice of genealogy is growing exponentially and the Canadian Genealogy Survey investigates who is doing the digging.
Here's a Christmas gift suggestion for the person who has (nearly) everything. A UK company called Creative Coffins allows customers to create their own personalized coffins. The coffins are made from 60% recycled paper combined with wood pulp.
The Lewis County Historical Museum web site at http://www.lewiscountymuseum.org/ claims the museum is "open to the public" from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM Tuesday through Friday. However, visitors to the museum on Wednesday report that the doors are locked. The museum reportedly has been shut down while Chehalis police look into the museum's bank accounts. Those bank accounts reportedly have been frozen.
The museum's $460,000 endowment account has disappeared, according to newly-elected museum board president John Panesko. Panesko was elected on Tuesday evening after all the past officers of the board submitted their resignations.
How low can these prices go? More than a year ago, I purchased a VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner for $99.99 and wrote about it at that time in this newsletter. I have used it often since then to scan documents, pages from books, and an occasional picture. I am on a campaign to digitize all my paper documents and the Magic Wand Portable Scanner has been a big part of that. Not only do I scan genealogy documents, but also bills, my auto registration, insurance documents, eyeglasses prescriptions, and most anything else I can think of. I find it easy to store these documents in DropBox in the cloud and then retrieve them as needed from an iPhone or Android phone or from any computer at any time, anywhere.
The price on these units keeps dropping and dropping and now online discount retailer Daily Steals is selling it for $39.99. That price even includes a 4 gigabyte microSD memory card for image storage. When I originally purchased my VuPoint scanner, I had to purchase the memory card separately.
Last week was one of the best weeks I ever had. I took a one-week Caribbean cruise, accompanied by nearly 200 genealogists. The Holland-America ship, the m.v. Westerdam, became a genealogy hotbed.
The genealogists assembled in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, November 13. We embarked on the cruise ship without much difficulty. Late in the afternoon, we sailed out of the Port Everglades cruise terminal and headed for Half Moon Cay, a small island in the Bahamas owned by the Holland America line.
Richard Milligan, 91, of Albany, Oregon died Sunday afternoon in a single-vehicle automobile crash. Milligan was president of the Linn Genealogical Society for two decades, said current president Betty Thorn.
“He was the driving force behind the society for about 20 years,” she said. “He’s known by genealogical researchers countrywide. He was very good at helping people before there were computers.”
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Bill LeFurgy has written an interesting report about ever-changing data formats and the effect on historical studies. The case he described concerns a survey of citizen reactions to the Kennedy assassination that was conducted from November 26 through December 3, 1963, by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The survey results were recorded on paper punch cards, which were used to input data into the mainframe computer used to tabulate study data. Summary results were then published.
When another national catastrophe struck on September 11, 2001, NORC researchers wanted to replicate the 1963 study by asking the same kinds of questions to assess public reaction. The aim was to compare how the nation responded to two very different tragedies. There was but one problem: how to read the punched cards from the 1963 study?
David Brunton, a Supervisory Information Technology Specialist in the Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives, writes:
I have heard the National Digital Newspaper Program jokingly described as “putting breaking news online, within 200 years.” In some ways, it’s a fitting tag line: the most current newspaper pages released on Chronicling America are nearly ninety years past.
He then goes on to describe to describe a joint venture between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress to digitize historic American newspapers. You can read his brief article in the Library of Congress blog at http://goo.gl/i0eKY while the Chronicling America project is available at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/. You will find thousands of old newspapers available online at that address.
The following announcement was written by Archives.com:
DNA Tests Available Through Archives.com for the First Time Providing Access to the World’s Largest Genetic Genealogy Database
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 22, 2011 -- Archives.com, a website devoted to making family history simple and affordable, announces another exciting way users can explore their family heritage. Archives has partnered with Family Tree DNA, the world leader in genetic genealogy, to enable users to purchase DNA tests through its website for the first time. These are being offered at up to 30 percent off the regular price for a limited time. Archives recognizes that DNA testing plays a critical role in family history research, and is glad to offer a simple, convenient way for users to get started with genetic genealogy.
I have written a number of times about the safety of using credit cards online versus in person. There is a persistent myth that claims using credit cards online is high risk. In fact, history has proven the opposite to be true: using a credit card online is safer than using the same card in person at a restaurant, store, gas station, or other face-to-face transaction.
New proof appeared in the news today: more than two dozen current and former waiters and their associates from some of New York City’s top steakhouses have been arrested in an alleged identity theft ring, accused of stealing credit card numbers from wealthy customers. The thefts all occurred during in-person credit card payments. None of them involved online payments.
This is a rather esoteric database, but it may interest a few people. What Middletown Read is a database that tracks the borrowing records of the Muncie (Indiana) Public Library between 1891 and 1902. You see how many times a particular book was checked out, what dates, and by whom. Not only the patrons' names are recorded, but also their age, race, gender, occupation (and whether that made them blue or white collar, skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled), and their names and how they signed them.
This will interest most anyone with ancestors in Muncie, Indiana during those years. It may also be of some interest to librarians or to anyone studying changes in the borrowing patterns of library patrons.
The following announcement was written by the National Genealogical Society:
National Genealogical Society Releases Full 2012 Family History Conference Program Online Cincinnati, Ohio, 9–12 May 2012 The Ohio River: Gateway to the Western Frontier
(Arlington, VA) -- The National Genealogical Society has released the full 2012 Family History Conference Program. It is available online and is fully searchable at http://members.ngsgenealogy.org/Conferences/2012Program.cfm. The theme of the thirty-fourth NGS Family History Conference is The Ohio River: Gateway to the Western Frontier and it will be held 9–12 May 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio. NGS varies the theme and geographic location of its conference annually and brings together thousands of genealogists and family historians to learn the latest in genealogical research. The online searchable program allows prospective conference attendees to review the full scope of more than forty lecture topics offered daily during the four-day conference in Cincinnati. An exhibit area with over one hundred exhibitors will be open and free to the public Wednesday through Saturday and will include the latest in genealogical software, online research providers, and DNA testing sources.
A major business announcement was made today: MyHeritage will acquire FamilyLink.com, Inc., the parent company of genealogy web sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. This should strengthen MyHeritage's presence in the North American marketplace.
The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:
MyHeritage Acquires FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com
Significant move into US and addition of historical content mark major evolution for world's most popular online family network
PROVO, Utah & LONDON, UK & TEL AVIV, Israel-- MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, announced today the acquisition of FamilyLink.com, Inc., maker of the family history content sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. This is MyHeritage's seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. The purchase marks a significant move into the US market commercially and operationally, and will boost MyHeritage’s offering to families with the addition of a vast database of more than 3 billion historical records. With offices and staff in Europe, Australia and Israel, MyHeritage will now be adding its first US-based office in Utah, the home of FamilyLink.com and often cited as the family history capital of the world.
More and more genealogy software is becoming available in the cloud. The latest announcement is from the Irish genealogy site, findmypast.ie. Instead of entering your genealogy information into a traditional program installed on your computer's hard drive, you may enter the same information into a program that runs on findmypast.ie's web servers.
Cloud-based genealogy programs offer several advantages over traditional genealogy programs, as well as a few disadvantages. The primary advantages are ease of access from anywhere, ease of sharing with family members, increased security, and increased data protection as everything is backed up frequently by professionals managing the data center. Of course, another advantage is the price. In this case, the program is FREE.
Thanks to DNA, descendants of Africans who were taken into slavery in America during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade will be reuniting with their ancestors in one of the biggest ever home coming events to be held next year. The Centre for African American Genealogical Research, Inc. (CAAGRI) is spearheading the home coming event aimed at reuniting as many African families in the Diaspora with biological families in Ghana.
In the August 07, 2011 newsletter, I published a Plus Edition article entitled, (+) Protect Your Secrets with Encryption. I described methods of keeping your secrets just that: secret. That article is still available to Plus Edition subscribers at http://eogn.com/wp/?p=17136
Today, I was pleased to see an article in SlashDot that agrees and further states that full disk encryption is almost impossible for law enforcement officials to crack (decrypt). I assume if law enforcement officials cannot break into your computer, neither can anyone else.
Heredis is a Macintosh genealogy program written in France. It is very popular in French-speaking countries and also has enjoyed some success in other countries as well. The producing company, BSD Concept, has now announced that a new version will be available soon. The new version will be available in French, English, and a number of other languages.
The new version of Heredis for Mac will be fully compatible with OS X Lion. The previous version, Heredis Mac X.2, is no longer available. You can read more (in English) at http://www.myheredis.com/index.html
If you subscribe to the Plus Edition of this newsletter and did not receive the latest version sent on Wednesday, November 16, you can read it at any time at http://www.eogn.com/wp/thisweek.htm
I am told that a number of people did not receive Wednesday's mailing. It was sent from an Internet cafe in Aruba so I have no idea how reliable the delivery rate was. However, there is no reason why you should ever miss a Plus Edition newsletter as the latest editions are always available online, regardless of sending location and regardless of any problems with spam filters in the receiving mail server.
As most genealogists already know, there is no such thing as a family coat of arms in most countries. Coats of Arms are granted to individuals, not to families, and may only be displayed by the individual. However, it is interesting to note that one more person named Jones now has a coat of arms.
Sir Tom Jones, the veteran singer, has chosen a coat of arms featuring a Welsh dragon and a leek.
This is just a quick note to say that I am back in the U.S. and am online once again. I just finished a GREAT genealogy cruise, hosted by the folks at Wholly Genes Software. At the moment, I am at the Fort Lauderdale airport. I won't be home until after midnight tonight.
After fighting with extremely slow to non-existent Internet access on the cruise ship, it was a pleasure this morning to sign on at 4G speeds by using the Sprint wireless air card as we entered the harbor at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. Sometimes we forget what a great luxury that high-speed Internet access can be!
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