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This is about as close to magic as I can imagine. Picture in your mind original census pages that have faded so badly that the enumerators' handwriting is no longer visible. I am not talking about ink that has faded a bit. In this case, the ink is gone, not even visible on the page. All you can see is the page as it was printed and given to the enumerators (census takers) with the pre-printed text and boxes. These pages look as if they were never filled out, and yet you know they were.
Now, add in a mix of digital photography and different lights. Shake well with some computer enhancements. The result? Readable images!
NOTE: This article has nothing to do with genealogy, other than perhaps providing a cheap method for you to call your distant relatives. However, I have written before about Skype and thought I would offer one more article describing its uses.
Skype is the free service that allows you to talk from computer to computer, anywhere in the world. While the basic service is free, low-cost options also are available to place calls to and from normal telephone systems at ridiculously low prices. You can see my earlier articles about Skype at: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003715150024579880844%3Aulyzue1ivzu&ie=UTF-8&q=Skype&sa=Search.
Even better, you do not need to use a computer, nor do you need to use headphones. At home, I typically use a cordless phone to make and receive Skype calls all over the world. I recently planned my trips to New Zealand and to England, paying two or three cents per minute for Skype calls to make reservations at hotels and rental car companies in those countries. I wrote about using Skype without a computer and without a headset at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/08/use-skype-witho.html.
Today Skype released its newest offering: Skype for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. If you have one of those devices, you can save significant money on long-distance calls by downloading the free Skype application.
A fascinating new online service, called Ancestral Atlas, has appeared within the past few weeks. It is an online community environment that allows people to create and share ancestry-based maps. It is great for displaying locations of births, marriages, and burials of your ancestors as well as the locations of other important places in their lives. For instance, you can use Ancestral Atlas to display the location of family farms or the locations of a battle in which your ancestor was a participant.
I was very impressed with the service the first time I saw it. Others apparently agree with me. Many genealogists are using the service but so are historical groups, tourist agencies, and many more.
Henry Newman has written an interesting article for the Enterprise Storage Forum web site that describes the decline in data lifetime:
"In some ways, the Egyptians with their simpler approach were far better off than we are at recording and saving information. Just look at the well preserved [Egyptian] obelisk as you consider all the formats you probably have lying around that can no longer be accessed, from 5.25-inch floppy disks to 8-track tapes and old home movies. What would it take to preserve those for 3,500 years?
The newest technology these days in computers is called “cloud computing.” Indeed, we already see several examples of this in today's genealogy software and I am certain we will see even more within the next two or three years.
Cloud computing refers to Internet-based software and databases. The Internet itself is “the cloud.” In almost all drawings of Internet applications, the Internet is shown as a “cloud” into which various computers are connected. The cloud is used as a graphic to represent all sorts of servers, routers, and high-speed connections that are invisible to the user. In short, the user does not need to know where the equipment is located nor what kind of equipment is used. All the user needs to know is how to connect to “the cloud” and access the resources available. “Cloud computing” is simply the next evolution of remote computing.
Writing in LOST Magazine, Alexander Stille says that we are running out of time at the National Archives. Information stored in mechanical and electronic format is in danger of being lost forever.
The National Archives' Department of Special Media Preservation is a kind of museum of obsolete technology where Archives technicians try to tease information out of modern media that have long vanished from circulation. But the laboratory is more than a curious rag-and-bone shop of technologies past; in many ways, it offers a cautionary vision of the future. The problem of technological obsolescence — of fading words and images locked in odd-looking, out-of-date gizmos — is an even bigger problem for the computer age than for the new media produced in the first half of the 20th century.
On February 06, 2009, I posted an article entitled, "Why You Need a Second (and Better) E-mail Address." I was pleasantly surprised by the number of comments posted at the end of the article at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/02/why-you-need-a-second-and-better-email-address-by-dick-eastman.html. Obviously, I struck a chord. Lots of people seem to have concerns about the future of their e-mail accounts – and with good reason. With the advent of fiber optic services and the added costs of implementing them, even some of the large Internet service providers are redefining their customer territories. Some major shifts in geographic coverage across the country could be around the corner, and we can only guess how prepared anyone's incoming and outgoing providers will be for transferring customers. How prepared a customer is for such a change is the subject of the article mentioned above and now, this one, too.
In the first article, I described several scenarios for making sure that your e-mail will still be available to you in the future. I deliberately left out my favorite option, however, with the belief that it would be too complicated for most non-technical readers. However, the number of comments posted by people who have already used this more complicated option leads me to a different view. Therefore, I decided to write this article to describe what might be the best option of all. I will admit that this solution requires a bit of technical expertise, however.
You can read an interesting "thread" of messages in the EOGN Forum right now concerning the use of digital cameras for genealogy purposes. I was especially interested in A. R. Wilson's detailed description on how to obtain high quality pictures and also with JGR's and John R.'s comments about how they take photographs of documents and then process them with a free OCR program, converting them to text.
The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:
MyHeritage Makes Family History Research Easier With Launch Of Family Tree Builder 3
New software makes it easier to automatically find long lost relatives, publish content to MyHeritage.com, and print your family tree on one page
Tel Aviv, Israel – January 2, 2009 – MyHeritage, one of the world’s most popular family Web sites, today announced the launch of Family Tree Builder 3, a powerful software program that MyHeritage members can download and use to build family trees, research family history and add content like photos and videos.
But these scribes aren’t people – they’re state-of-the-art scanning machines from non-profit Internet Archive, the library basement’s out-of-sight secret. The basement lab will play a vital role in digitizing the former Lincoln Museum collection for public access.
I have written several times about the need to make frequent backups of your data. That's true for all computer users but especially true for genealogists. We often spend hundreds of hours and a significant amount of money collecting data. It's a shame to lose all that when your hard drive crashes.
Reminder: all hard drives will crash sooner or later.
I'm delighted to report a great success story. Newsletter reader Eileen Souza sent the following message.
Dick, I can't thank you enough for your article on backing up to an online service, particularly www.mozyhome.com. This was the best $4.95 per month that I have ever spent.
I wrote a newsletter article last year about my experiences using magicJack, a device that allows you to make telephone calls over the Internet. I had a positive experience with it, but I also use Skype, a competitive service. I continue to use Skype most every day but stopped using magicJack since I don't need two such services. One will do.
My experience with magicJack was positive, but I have since heard many complaints about the service and the company that produces it. Now I have been told that the number of complaints has become so large that the Better Business Bureau has rated the company as "F," the Bureau's lowest rating.
Would you like to search only a specific list of web sites? Do you have your own web site and would like to add a search feature? With the new service from Google, you can create a search engine tailored to your needs
I suspect the most common use of the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) is to create search engines for your own web site. That search engine can search your own site or a list of other sites. For instance, if you publish a web site about Irish genealogy, you could publish an "Irish genealogy search engine" that searches a list of sites that you specify.
NOTE: This article has nothing to do with genealogy, other than perhaps providing a cheap method for you to call your distant relatives. However, I have written before about Skype and thought I would offer one more article describing its uses.
I love Skype! Instead of placing calls over standard telephone lines, this VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone service works by placing the calls over almost any broadband Internet connection.
The best part of all is the price of calls: calling anyone else who uses Skype is always free of charge, even if that person is located in another part of the world. Unlimited calls to standard telephones anywhere in North America cost $3.00 a month. (Skype's competitors typically charge $15 to $30 a month for the same thing.) Overseas calls are also cheap: I can call telephones in England or New Zealand or even China for two cents a minute. Calls to Mexico are two or three cents a minute, depending upon the Mexican area code being called. Calls to other countries typically cost two to perhaps five cents per minute. Calls to some third-world countries or to tiny islands in the South Pacific can cost more. The rates are always a fraction of what traditional telephone companies charge. The complete list of call rates may be found at http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates.
One of the units of measure of a digital photograph is the number of megapixels. This measurement is the number of dots (pixels) used to store the image. More dots make a picture clearer. Therefore, generally speaking, an 8-megapixel camera will take better pictures than will a 6-megapixel camera. A 10-megapixel camera should take better pictures than either of those with lower megapixel capabilities. (I am ignoring lens quality and other factors.)
For the past ten years or so, we have seen the number of pixels constantly increase in consumer-grade cameras. Long ago, two-megapixel cameras were common, then four and then five and then six and so on. Nowadays, 10- and 12-megapixel cameras are available for $100 to $150 or so. Now Kodak has announced a major step forward: a 50-megapixel sensor for use in digital cameras.
Tens of thousands of genealogy and local history books have been printed over the years. Wouldn't you like to walk into a local bookstore and purchase the book(s) of your choice within minutes? That may not be as crazy as it sounds.
Blackwell bookshops in the U.K. are testing new, super-fast in-store printers, called Espresso Book Machines. Similar machines are already used in the World Bank in Washington and at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The best part about these printers is speed: the standard unit can produce a 200-page book, printed and bound, in just 7 minutes. The higher-priced “double-printer” cuts that time down to just 3 minutes.
Blackwell is only installing a few printers at first. If successful, the company hopes to add the printing on-demand facilities to 60 retail outlets. If it works for Blackwell, you can expect to see other stores install similar systems.
On February 19, I published an article describing a $1,075 device that converts microfilm to digital images. It should be the perfect device for your local society or museum to computerize their microfilms.
I ended the article by writing, "Has any newsletter reader tried the ST Genie or a similar low-cost device? If so, could you let me know of any successes or failures you have had with it? I'd love to write a follow-on article based on your experiences."
Genealogists have always been taught to record our sources of information. We not only record the name of the book or other source of genealogy information, but we also record the location of the building (repository) where we found it. Typically we record the building's name, street address, city and state.
With today's technology, shouldn't we also be recording the geographic coordinates? With GPS receivers and the plethora of high-quality on-line maps, it is now easy to find the exact latitude and longitude of any address. Unlike street names, the longitude and latitude will never change.
A new web site offers online tutorials in paleography (the study of old handwriting) for historians, genealogists, and other researchers who have problems reading records written in Scotland in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. ScottishHandwriting.com provides online interactive tutorials and weekly posers to help you study the characteristics of Scottish handwriting. The emphasis of the web site is on practical help to improve the paleographic skills, rather than on the academic study of Scottish handwriting.
I wrote recently about Dick Cleaveland's recent virtual presentation: he spoke to a genealogy gathering that was many miles away. Dick was at home and used a computer to display PowerPoint slides, log onto web sites, and perform other tasks while the distant audience watched every move as displayed by a computer projector in their meeting room. Dick's voice also could clearly be heard as it was played on the speakers in the distant meeting room.
I have since received numerous e-mail messages from people reporting similar experiences. Apparently, virtual presentations are more common than I realized. Indeed, I have done the same thing myself in the business world although not to a genealogy gathering. Perhaps it is time for me (and perhaps you as well) to move into the twenty-first century's method of making presentations!
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