Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Free Content for Your Genealogy Newsletter, Newspaper Column, or Web Site

If you write a genealogy newsletter or other genealogy-related publication, you already know how difficult it is to constantly find new information to write about. I thought I would take this opportunity to remind you that you may use information from this newsletter in your publication.

I do copyright this newsletter, but then I grant rights to others to republish the articles with some minor restrictions:

Read This Newsletter and Other Blogs in E-mail

One of the things that I love about the Internet is that there are so many options available. You can pick and choose how to do things your way.

One of the things I hate about the Internet is that there are so many options available. You have to make decisions, and you aren't always sure that you made the correct decision.

There is one service that always wins in this love/hate relationship I have with the Internet: RSSFWD.

New Experiment: "Popular Pages Today"

I am experimenting with a new "widget." In the menus to the right, you will see a new section labeled "Popular Pages Today." It shows which pages (articles) in this newsletter have been read the most in the past few hours.

I am not yet sure if this new section is a good idea or a bad one. Your comments are invited.

New License Plate

I thought some newsletter readers might be amused by my new license plate. It seems appropriate.

Click on the thumbnail to see a bigger image.

On the Road Again

It's travel time again. I am headed to the Phoenix, Arizona, suburbs to visit a few newsletter readers in their homes or offices. I'll be traveling with a group of software developers from Footnote.com as they perform “usability testing” of some new software they are developing. Thanks to this newsletter's readers, the next release from Footnote.com will already be well tested before it is released.

You can read more about the planned in-home and in-office visits at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/02/attention-mesa.html. As I wrote in that article:

This Web Site Has Moved! (and Certificate Errors Have Also Been Fixed)

The eogn.com web site has been plagued with certificate errors in recent weeks. Any attempt to read the Plus Edition online or to subscribe to the Plus Edition or to renew an existing subscription was met with an “SSL certificate error” message.  The root cause was an expired SSL certificate. I obtained a new certificate but could not get it to work. The hosting service wasn't much help; they never got it to work either.

I fired that hosting service.

Attention Mesa, Tempe and Scottsdale Newsletter Readers

If you live in Mesa, Tempe, or Scottsdale, Arizona, and if you would like to help define the future "look and feel" of one of today's fastest-growing genealogy and history web sites, you will want to read the following announcement from Footnote.com, followed by my own comments:

The Footnote team and special guest Dick Eastman will be in Arizona on March 18-20, gathering feedback on Footnote. The team will visit people in the Mesa, Tempe, and Scottsdale areas.

We are looking for volunteers who are willing to let Dick Eastman and six Footnote employees into their home for an hour or so to ask some questions and observe how they use the site. Visits like these provide great feedback for us as we try to improve the site experience for our members.

If you live in one of these areas and are interested in being a volunteer (whether you use the site every day or have never used it before), please contact Elizabeth at elittle@footnote.com.

Comments by Dick Eastman:

George G. Morgan's Weekly Column Returns and is on EOGN!

Every once in a while I have the great delight of announcing something that is special to me. Today is one of those days. George G. Morgan is a talented genealogy columnist who has published “Along Those Lines” almost every week for years. Almost two months ago, George wrote, “It is with very heartfelt regrets that I have to announce that the 'Along Those Lines ...' column will end with this installment.” You can read his full announcement at http://ahaseminars.livejournal.com/21155.html. George and I have had a few conversations since he wrote those words, and I am delighted to announce that his column is now returning to the online world. Even better, from my point of view, is that his column will now be published as part of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter – Plus Edition!

On the Road Again

If you read this newsletter regularly, you already know that I travel a lot. Indeed, this message is being written in a hotel room in Las Vegas. I am checking out this morning. In the next ten days, I will travel through three states and attend two different genealogy conferences.

As is normal with each trip I take, I would like to warn you to not be surprised if some of the daily editions of this newsletter and even the weekly Plus Edition get delayed a bit. I am traveling with both a Mac laptop and a Linux laptop and a variety of wireless networking equipment. However, good ol' Murphy of "Murphy's Law" fame is never far away.

I should be home in a week and a half.

This Newsletter is Twelve Years Old!

Boy, the time does fly! Twelve years has slipped by in almost the blink of an eye. It seems like only yesterday that I sent the first e-mail newsletter to about 100 people, mostly members of CompuServe's Genealogy Forums. None of them knew in advance that the newsletter would arrive; I simply mailed it to people who I thought might be interested. In 1996 nobody objected to receiving unsolicited bulk mail; the phrase "spam mail" had not yet been invented. I shudder to think if I did the same thing in today's Internet environment.

In that first newsletter on January 15, 1996, I wrote: