Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Apple Announces the new iPhone 5

Today Apple introduced the newest version of its popular iPhone smartphone. There are lots of differences in the new model and probably about a million web sites will carry articles today and tomorrow explaining all the differences in minute details. I'll refer you to those other articles for the nitty-gritty info. You might start at ZDnet's article at http://goo.gl/WEUL3. However, I will mention a few changes will affect genealogy uses of this new smartphone.

Daadi to Help South Asians Trace their Family Trees

Who's the Daadi (a play on the word Dadi, used by South Asians to describe their paternal grandmother) is described as a "social ancestry site" and will use pictures, names, significant dates and places to create family trees using information contrinuted by users.

South Asians (primarily those from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) typically do not have public records of births, marriages, and deaths available. Census records are not recorded in Pakistan or Bangladesh. India does take a census every ten years but then destroys the records (!) prior to taking the next census a decade later. In any case, census records have never been made available to the public. Family tree information often is handed down verbally from generation to generation, a haphazard process at best. A new web site hopes to change all that.

Gravestone of Houlton, Maine’s, Founder Stolen

Why would anyone steal a tombstone? After all, what can you do with it? You can't re-use it on another grave. It makes a terrible paperweight for your desk and I doubt if it attracts many customers to the bar you own and operate. Yet, someone stole a 70-pound grave marker from Joseph Houlton's grave sometime between Sept. 4 and Sept. 6. Houlton founded the town of Houlton, Maine (on the New Brunswick border) in 1807. Police are seeking the public’s help to locate the grave marker of the town’s founder.

The stone is 4 feet tall, 2 feet wide and 3 inches thick. It is made of white marble. Replacement of the stone is estimated to be in the range of $1,000.

brightsolid Announced as a Finalist at the UK IT Industry Awards

brightsolid has been nominated for a major industry award for its part in a joint project with British Library for the digitisation of over 40 million news stories from old newspapers. The following announcement was written by brightsolid, the parent company of FindMyPast and several other genealogy-related companies:

brightsolid online technology is delighted to announce that it has been shortlisted for an award at the UK IT Industry Awards 2012.

brightsolid online technology have been shortlisted in the category of 'Big Data Project of the Year' as a result of their partnership with the British Library and the digitisation of over 40 million news stories over ten years. The awards focus on the contribution of individuals, projects, organisations and technologies that have excelled in the use, development and deployment of IT in the past 12 months.

Missouri DUVCW Releases Online Images of the Missouri Veterans Home (St. James) Inmate Register

The Missouri Department Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War has released a great new resource for anyone researching Civil War Union veterans. You can find a lot of genealogical information included in almost every soldier's file. The following announcement was written by the Missouri Department Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1861-1865:

The Missouri Department Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (DUVCW) is pleased to announce that the digitization and indexing of Volume 1 of the Missouri Veterans Home (St. James) Inmate Register is complete and ready for viewing on the Missouri State Archives website.

Hey! I Lost (Some of) My Backups

This is just a note to let you know it can happen to anyone:

I have written many times about the need for genealogists to frequently back up their data. Making frequent backups prepares you for data disasters, such as crashed hard drives, broken water pipes, human errors, hurricanes, fires, or most anything else that can destroy a computer and the data it contains. Data losses can even happen to anyone and this week I experienced a minor problem. Luckily, I didn't lose any data.

New Digital Family History Books Available at FamilySearch.org

Writing in the FamilySearch blog, Nathan W. Murphy reports that nearly 1,200 digital family history books were uploaded to Family History Books during the month of July (which apparently is the last month for which statistics are available). These books are now accessible to everyone for free at Family History Books.

In addition to 700+ family genealogies, several printed English parish registers, dozens of Texas and Missouri local histories, issues of the periodical Pilgrim Notes and Queries, Michigan military records, marriage abstracts from several Kentucky counties, 5 volumes of the Adjutant General of Illinois records from the Civil War, and Latin for Local History: An Introduction, as well as many other titles were all digitized in July.

Online Encyclopedia of Maine

This new web site might help you learn about the places and the living conditions of your ancestors in the State of Maine. Actually, the Online Encyclopedia of Maine does not have a lot of information about people but it certainly will help you learn about the conditions in which they lived and much of the history that shaped their lives. The Online Encyclopedia of Maine already has more than 1,750 articles, 4,000 photographs and 100 videos and more are expected.  The web site was started by a former state archivist and deputy secretary of state.

Who Will Control Your "Digital Estate" After You Are Gone?

You probably enjoy posting information on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites. You may have posted your genealogy online or even have created your own web site. You possibly have posted photos on Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, Photobucket, or other photo sharing web sites. Here's a question for you to consider: what happens to your information on those sites after your death?

Will your information disappear from the online world shortly after you also disappear? Or will your last pictures and text remain online forever, leaving a haunting message behind? You might not want to leave a Facebook page online forever that says, "Having a great time here in Cancun. I wish I could stay here forever!"

Ancestry.com Reportedly is in Final Talks with Three Buyout Firms

Reuters News Service is reporting that three private equity firms, including Hellman & Friedman LLC, are still pursuing a potential buyout of Ancestry.com Inc. The company reportedly seeks an offer that tops $1.5 billion.

Permira Advisers LLP and TPG Capital LP are also involved in the auction for Ancestry.com. One of the people familiar with matter said there was an expectation the company would make a decision by the end of September.

You can read the article on Reuters at http://goo.gl/G2xdj.

(+) Build a Wiki the Easy Way

The following article was written by and is copyright by Dick Eastman.

You or your local genealogy society might find great satisfaction - not to mention accomplishing a lot with minimal resources - by creating a wiki. This is a great way to let people collaborate on a project. That project might be the creation of listings of old tax records, transcriptions from census records, or perhaps a written history of a town or county. Perhaps you want to create “the Old Mill Wiki” giving the history of a historical landmark in your town. 

Another great use of wikis is when you and a few cousins create a wiki to help facilitate group research on a particular family or surname. This could be “the Kawasaki Family Wiki” providing all the known information about that family's ancestors.

College Football - Then and Now

It is the beginning of the football season in North America. Never mind that the rest of the world has their own version of football that we call soccer. The North American version has been around for years, although with some major differences.

You can see what grandpa looked like when he played football early in the twentieth century at http://mashable.com/2012/09/08/old-college-football-pics/#87003Atmosphere-then.

Spectral Imaging at the Library of St. Catherine's Monastery Reveals Ancient Texts

Father Justin, the librarian of St. Catherine's Monastery, and Michael B. Toth, the Sinai Palimpsest Project Program Manager, will speak at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration on November 19, 2012 about a fascinating project they are managing: resurrecting texts from documents that are 1,000 to 2,000 years old. The talk will be broadcast on the World Wide Web so you can listen to it from your home or office without traveling to Washington, D.C.

Father Justin and Michael B. Toth will discuss how advanced spectral imaging is revealing ancient texts in the remote library of a Greek Orthodox monastery in Egypt's Sinai desert. The monastery has a very important collection of manuscripts, the earliest dating from the fourth century. Because writing materials were sometimes scarce, the library contains many palimpsests -- manuscripts where the original text was erased, and the valuable parchment used a second time. The faint original texts can often be recovered through the use of spectral imaging.

Announcing CensusGenie.com

Genealogists have multiple web sites available that contain indexes and images of U.S. census records. However, a new web site hopes to extend the capabilities by adding high-tech tools to find those difficult-to-locate records. This site only searches the U.S. census records, nothing else.

The following is an extract from an email message I received from Joe Dolinak:

We've got a website started, http://censusgenie.com, which you or some of your followers may find useful. The website will house many tech-inspired tools for the researcher to use in their searches. Some of these tools will allow the user to be more specific in their searches, some tools will allow the user-interaction to be more enjoyable, and some tools will show results in a new perspective.

Digital History Could be Lost Forever due to Changing Devices, Claims One "Expert"

Disclaimer: I have to say that I totally disagree with an article published yesterday in the Adelaide Now web site in Australia. Unfortunately, mis-information bounces all over the Internet and some people will actually believe this stuff. I feel that someone needs to write a rebuttal. The article in question was written by Claire Connelly of the News Limited Network and is published at http://goo.gl/8QmQ1. The article quotes Canadian information security consultant Robert Slade.

Mr. Slade is making public claims that historians will be facing a black hole when it comes to studying the 20th and 21st centuries because much of our digital history is stored on technology that no longer have devices to read them. He says the information stored on everything from floppy disks to CDs, mobile phones to cameras is at risk of being lost forever.

I will insist there are some serious flaws with Mr. Slade's theories. He conveniently overlooks processes that have been in place for years. Data has always been copied and updated by all well-managed data centers since the days of 80-column punch cards.

Amazon Launches New Kindle Fire Tablets

I have written a number of times about Amazon's popular Kindle Fire ebook readers and tablet computers. (See http://goo.gl/6BIRP for my past articles.) Today, Amazon introduced their latest models and these look like winners. One model will sell for only $159 while an 8.9-inch model costs $299, and the top-of-the-line model with 4G LTE cellular wireless connections to the Internet sells for $499.

What impressed me most, however, is not the new gadgets. Instead, I was interested to hear Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos say that the hardware is no longer the most important thing. He says the hardware details don't matter and that the service is the important thing. In effect, the new Kindle devices are simply the delivery mechanism for Amazon's many video, music and shopping services. I suspect he is right. It's not what the gadgets can do, it's what the gadgets can deliver.

Progeny Software Introduces Trellis Charts - the Chart with Everyone on It

Progeny Software is a well-known name in the genealogy charting business (you see my past articles about Progeny Software if you start at http://goo.gl/rZ5Mk). The new chart is called a Trellis Chart and is a great method of showing everyone in the family tree in one chart. This is not a free-standing product. Instead, it is a new option being added to Progeny Software's already-popular Charting Companion programs for Windows.

Unlike traditional box charts, the Trellis can show all the people in your tree, even those who are not in the direct bloodline. Your ancestors and descendants are listed by rows within their generation. Members of a family are grouped by columns.

However, as they say on those late-night infomercials, "But wait! There's more." I cannot describe the full Trellis chart in words so I will invite you to look at the examples and read the text at http://progenygenealogy.com/products/family-tree-charts/trellis.aspx.

Gee! Those names look familiar!

(+) How to Run Mac OS X Inside Windows

The following article was written by and is copyright by Dick Eastman.

I earlier described how a Macintosh can run Windows and Linux programs. Are you aware that the same technology works in the opposite direction? Windows users can run Macintosh OS X operating system on a normal PC.

Running OS X on your Windows desktop will take a bit of work, but it's rather easy to do and the final product is awesome. It allows you to also use Mac programs that are not available on Windows.

Winnebago County, Illinois, Puts Genealogy Records Online

The Winnebago County Clerk's Office has created a new website to help give people access to them.  It allows people to view the information and get copies of birth, marriage and death certificates without having to leave their own home.  "For some, viewing the information is a great way to re-live memories of loved ones, and for others it's a convenient way to collect important family-related documents," Margie Mullins says.

Copies of certificates cost $12 each.

Illinois State Archives Unveils New Electronic Database

The following announcement was written by the Illinois State Archives:

Illinois Secretary of State and State Archivist Jesse White (D) has announced that a new online database describing the documents and records maintained at the Illinois State Archives is now available.

The database, called Archon, is a searchable finding aid for use in locating important historical information.