This post might sound like a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment, like urg­ing you to eat enough fruits and veg­eta­bles, but devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing data back­ups is a key tech­ni­cal con­sid­er­a­tion. Geneal­o­gists store and share so much research on com­put­ers, mak­ing data loss a seri­ous risk.

I have added Odiogo.com audio to my blog.  This auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­vides a machine-read ver­sion of the blog, which can be sub­scribed to on iTunes or as any RSS feed. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing anoth­er option for any­one, this can be help­ful for those with impaired vision.

It has been quite a week for geneal­o­­gy-relat­ed news sto­ries. 6 August 2010 Ances­try Acquires Pro­G­e­neal­o­gists, Inc. — Mar­ket­Watch — Ancestry.com Press Release Ances­try, the world’s largest geneal­o­gy firm, has acquired Pro­G­e­neal­o­gists, a con­sor­tium of pro­fes­sion­al genealog­i­cal researchers. The two firms worked togeth­er on the recent tele­vi­sion series “Who Do You Think You Are?” This… Con­tin­ue read­ing Mon­day Geneal­o­gy News Roundup

There are few things as sacred to any nation than the mem­o­ry of its mil­i­tary dead. For the US, one of the most sacred places is Arling­ton Ceme­tery, which almost exclu­sive­ly con­tains the memo­ri­als of our mil­i­tary and high-rank­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers. This site has been des­e­crat­ed, that it, it has been shorn of its sacred… Con­tin­ue read­ing At Arling­ton: A Des­e­cra­tion

Ever­note, the note-tak­ing and “ele­phant-mem­o­ry” web­site has added a fea­ture they call The Trunk. Behind the Trunk link at the Ever­note web­site is a a list of tools and ven­dors that work with Ever­note. Ever­note sports desk­top appli­ca­tions for the Mac and for PCs. Addi­tion­al­ly, when you install the Mac or PC ver­sion, you auto­mat­i­cal­ly… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ever­note: There’s a Trunk for That

You know the peo­ple I’m talk­ing about. You meet them all the time. They say, “Oh, I’m not inter­est­ed in geneal­o­gy. What could you POSSIBLY find inter­est­ing in that?”

This site, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly the “His­to­ry of the Gra­ham Fam­i­ly” (1899) by David Gra­ham, which is tran­scribed here, is being archived at the Library of Con­gress. About the Library of Con­gress Web Archiv­ing pro­gram, the LOC writes: “The Library’s tra­di­tion­al func­tions of acquir­ing, cat­a­loging, pre­serv­ing and serv­ing col­lec­tion mate­ri­als of his­tor­i­cal impor­tance to the… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Library of Con­gress Web Archive

I hope every­one had a hap­py 4th of July, and that they spent some of the day hon­or­ing those who came before and made our free­doms pos­si­ble. I am think­ing espe­cial­ly of a set of mil­i­tary broth­ers tonight: