Collecting random bits of genealogy news.
If you have no problems sharing your family information with the world (or rather making it easier to find/see, since the information is already available), Kimberly Powell over at Genealogy.About.com will research your family history online for free – she’s looking for people to do a case study on.
Can you imagine genealogy software branded with the name of a popular TV show? That’s what happens when you combine the hit BBC TV show, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ with Family Tree Maker. Genealogy Software News has information on a review of the software.
I’m not surprised considering the popularity, and it looks like it’s only for the UK market. It’s interesting. The reviewers that Genealogy Software News points to complained that it felt like it was trying to pull them into subscribing to Ancestry.com (or Ancestry.co.uk in their case). Hmmmm…didn’t see that coming….
I was always interested in the GENDEX Database project. Imagine all of the genealogy/family tree websites having a central index of names that you could search against, and then could easily locate the originating website. I’ve never been comfortable with how similar projects are handled by certain commercial websites – more like something was missing rather than comfortable, but anyways, the GENDEX Database was going to change all that. Around a year and a half ago (early/middle of 2004) the original GENDEX Databse, gendex.com went offline. Very recently, Darrin Lythgoes has revived the project (for those of you unaware of it, Lythgoes is behind “The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding“, which is, in my very humble opinion, the best of the online genealogy applications).
The time I normally devote to finding interesting stories to post, I’ve been using to answer a question that Dick Eastman posed recently – How Popular is Genealogy.
This is the “challenge”:
In summation, I will suggest that genealogy is indeed a very popular activity among Americans. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, people are actively looking for their family heritage. However, that number pales in comparison to some other personal interests that I have mentioned.
Do you believe there are more genealogists than that? Is genealogy one of the top five personal interests in America? I have one challenge for you: prove it!
Just so you know, that’s why things have been slow. I recommend you read the linked article above, and perhaps chime in with your own observations. As for me, I’m working out a unique response that will answer the burning question of what do I do with my free time, wait, no, that will give somewhat of a measure of how popular I think it is. I’ll even be using some numbers that I didn’t make up!
Resource Shelf has news of a rather unique mapping service/website – Libraries411.com. Libraries411.com allows you to search for and find nearly 20,000 libraries in the US and Canada using just a zip/postal code or the library name, and it gives you the option to use Yahoo or Google Maps.
Very handy if you’re traveling, or have never checked out the area libraries, as it shows them in relation to where you are.