Month: February 2011

Now that Ancestry.com Inc. is a pub­lic com­pa­ny (ACOM: Google Finance), they are required to divulge more infor­ma­tion about their per­for­mance than they did as a pri­vate ven­ture. For them, the news is good. Ear­li­er this week, they announced their year 2010 fig­ures, which includ­ed notably sub­scriber growth of 31% year-over-year and a 34% increase… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ances­try Increas­es Sub­scriber Base by 31%

Fam­il­y­Search made the fol­low­ing announce­ment on Mon­day: Salt Lake City—This month, mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als of African descent are cel­e­brat­ing Black His­to­ry Month by explor­ing their fam­i­ly his­to­ry roots. In the U.S., Fam­il­y­Search vol­un­teers have been busy help­ing dig­i­tize his­toric doc­u­ments and cre­ate free, search­able index­es to them online. Through­out Africa, from Accra to Zim­bab­we, where… Con­tin­ue read­ing Black His­to­ry Month at Fam­il­y­Search

The com­put­er is one of our most impor­tant genealog­i­cal tools. Many of us remem­ber when this was not the case. I have my fair share of mimeo­graphed fam­i­ly group sheets filled out in fad­ing pen­cil wait­ing in a stack to be scanned. But today, with your research find­ings stored in a dig­i­tal data­base and your research con­sist­ing of… Con­tin­ue read­ing Keep­ing Your Com­put­er Up-to-Date

Update: 9 March 2011 I am not Pam Sla­ton, and do not even know her. A lot of folks are post­ing here think­ing they are con­tact­ing Pam, but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, they are not. I wish I could pass infor­ma­tion on to her, but I am not in touch with her. — This was news to me:… Con­tin­ue read­ing Pam Sla­ton: “Search­ing for …”

Google Docs was once an appli­ca­tion that was “like Microsoft Word” or “like Pow­er­Point”, and could read and write files from those pro­grams as well as Excel. But main­ly, you under­stood that you were edit­ing your file and stor­ing it, in Google’s pro­pri­etary for­mat. Then, in Jan­u­ary 2010, Google announced that they would allow users… Con­tin­ue read­ing Google Docs Goes Native

Google Ear­li­er this week, Apple announced a new sub­scrip­tion pay­ment mod­el for the iPad. Google respond­ed yes­ter­day with a much more flex­i­ble sub­scrip­tion mod­el using Google Check­out (a Pay­Pal com­peti­tor), and pro­vid­ing 10% in rev­enue for Google (in com­par­i­son with Apple’s 30%). Google does not require that the in-app pur­chase price be at least as… Con­tin­ue read­ing More Tech­nol­o­gy News for Geneal­o­gists

Apple announced today that they will be sup­port­ing sub­scrip­tions on the App­Store. A lot of us have been think­ing that would make for a good day, as it nev­er made sense for own­ers of the iPad to only be able to buy some­thing like a mag­a­zine for the iPad one issue at a time (often… Con­tin­ue read­ing Sub­scrip­tions on the Apple App Store

The Way­back Machine, a project of The Inter­net Archive, (cur­rent ver­sion: http://web.archive.org/; new beta ver­sion at http://waybackmachine.org/) is an attempt to archive the com­plete con­tent of the Inter­net. Brew­ster Kahle, the co-founder of the Inter­net Archive spoke about the project at the Sat­ur­day keynote address at Root­sTech 2011. The key pur­pose of the Inter­net Archive is… Con­tin­ue read­ing Using the Way­back Machine for Geneal­o­gy

On Sat­ur­day at the Root­sTech con­fer­ence in Salt Lake City, there was an open dis­cus­sion ses­sion on genealog­i­cal data stan­dards. There has been a heat­ed dis­cus­sion, lit­er­al­ly going on for years, about a new data mod­el that could replace GEDCOM. A new GEDCOM stan­dard would address GED­COM’s gaps — for exam­ple, being able to store… Con­tin­ue read­ing Root­sTech 2011: Towards a New Genealog­i­cal Data Mod­el

Brew­ster Kahle, founder of the Inter­net Archive, gave an incred­i­ble keynote address this morn­ing. His non-prof­it has been dig­i­tiz­ing and pro­vid­ing on the Inter­net all kinds of media. As he said, “We are in the busi­ness of giv­ing infor­ma­tion away.” He briefly men­tioned “born dig­i­tal” data, but focused his dis­cus­sion on the data we all… Con­tin­ue read­ing Root­sTech 2011: Day 3