 |
 |
Member Login | My Account | Guest Registry |
 |
 |
| Getting Started | Learning Center | Reference | Publications | Articles & Columns |
| Learn > Articles & Columns > Daily News > Current Article | |
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
| IN THIS ISSUE: |
| More on the Presidential Family Forest Genealogy Programs For The Blind Customer Satisfaction Survey of Irish Heritage Centres Civil War Soldiers System - Mid-Year Report Genealogy Grant Winners Announced "Broderbund is Back" Campaign News Rover Genealogy Via The Internet (A Book Review) Next Week’s Newsletter The Risks Of Miniature Electronic Devices Upcoming Events Homepages Not Highlighted |
| September 7, 1998 |
- More On Presidential Family Forest Several people sent e-mails asking for additional information about the free Presidential Family Forest CD-ROM disk that I described last week. Here are the answers to the most commonly asked questions: The unlock prices for the three additional databases are: Founders & Patriots $18.00 Delaware $12.00 Pittsburgh $12.00 However, you can unlock all three for $29.00. The Delaware database has more than 47,000 names while the Pittsburgh database has more than 22,000 names. I mentioned that there is a toll-free number to order the CD-ROM: 1-800-565-0018. However, that number only works for people in North America. Anyone calling from overseas can call the order line at: 001 902 542-0568. Unfortunately that is not a toll-free number. The CD-ROM is free, but you must pay a handling charge of $7.95 (U.S. funds). Add another dollar onto that for shipment outside of North America.
- Genealogy Programs For The Blind I get to see lots of genealogy programs and think that I understand the important features of all of them. However, Brian Mumme in New Zealand asked a question this week that I cannot answer. I decided to relay his question here in hopes that some newsletter readers can help. I omitted a few sentences from Brian’s message in the interest of brevity:
I’m stumped. Can you help? Do you or anyone you know have experience with genealogy software for the blind? We are looking for both good and bad experiences. Information about which programs to avoid is probably as valuable as information on which ones to choose. Please do not send the information to me; send it directly to Brian Mumme at:
- Customer Satisfaction Survey of Irish Heritage Centres The following is a press release from TIARA (The Irish Ancestral Research Association): The Heritage Council, a government-appointed body in the Republic of Ireland, has been reviewing the system of genealogical resources in Ireland. A final report will be presented to the Minister of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht & the Islands in November. TIARA is conducting a survey to provide input to that report from the genealogical community outside of Ireland. If you have utilized resources in Ireland, please visit http://world.std.com/~ahern/survey4.html and give us your views so that we may all have a voice in this matter.
- Civil War Soldiers System - Mid-Year Report The following report was presented by Curt B. Witcher, F.U.G.A., National Data Input Coordinator, and was delivered to the Federation of Genealogical Societies Board of Directors, Cincinnati, Ohio, on 18 August 1998. The report was also published in Ancestry.com’s daily newsletter: The Federation and the genealogical community are beginning to realize some of the positive public relations benefits of having successfully engaged in this multi-year, national volunteer endeavor. As the CWSS is nearing the conclusion of the volunteer input stage of the names index, articles are appearing in various local papers and on some national wire services about this exciting project. A recent example was carried on the AP wire regarding Terry Moyer and his truly outstanding corps of 440 Utah volunteers. The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is at: http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss.
- Genealogy Grant Winners Announced Broderbund Software, Inc. has announced the recent awarding of more than $20,000 in grants to genealogy groups nationwide. Broderbund Software is known in the genealogy community as the developer of Family Tree Maker, the best selling genealogy program. The announcement gives details about Broderbund’s second annual Genealogy Group Grants Program. Quoting from Broderbund’s announcement: The program was created to help genealogy groups that wanted to complete important projects but lacked sufficient funds. The Broderbund Genealogy Group Grants, ranging from $500 to $2,500 each, were awarded to 10 organizations whose projects made significant contributions to their genealogical communities. A panel including representatives from the National Genealogical Society, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, and Broderbund Software, selected this year's recipients.
- "Broderbund is Back" Campaign The Learning Company has completed its acquisition of Broderbund Software. I wrote in the June 27, 1998 edition of this newsletter that the two companies had agreed to the purchase. The final documents apparently were signed this week and the acquisition is now final. I was a bit surprised to read The Learning Company’s announcement of their plans. Here is an excerpt: CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 1 -- The Learning Company, Inc. (NYSE: TLC) today announced its "Broderbund is Back" campaign designed to return Broderbund, one of the legendary consumer software companies, back to a position at the forefront of the industry. The campaign, which began Monday night upon completion of the TLC/Broderbund merger, will focus on reducing costs, expanding distribution and leveraging development synergies to cost- effectively extend product lines. The entire news release is quite long. You can read the full text at: http://www.softkey.com/news/news98/980901.htm
I must admit that I have never been much of a fan of the Usenet newsgroups. There are 30,000 newsgroups, each one devoted to a different topic (although you often see overlap amongst the newsgroups). There are more than 30 genealogy newsgroups. Hundreds and hundreds of messages are posted every day to the genealogy-related newsgroups, so reading all of them can be quite a chore. Using a normal newsgroup reader, such as the ones bundled in with Netscape or Internet Explorer, is a tedious task at best. You can scan through the titles trying to find items of interest to you, but some of the messages do not have meaningful titles. Often a reference to a family name or a location is buried in the text of a message with a title that may not describe the contents. To make matters worse, even though there are 30-plus genealogy newsgroups, the messages within each newsgroup are not organized by topic. Some newsreaders cannot even sort the messages or connect follow-up messages to a "parent message." With thousands of messages being posted each day and little organization within the newsgroups, reading each message is not practical for a human being. Another problem of newsgroups is the amount of "spam" messages or "bombing runs." The newsgroups have long been plagued with unrelated advertising messages. These messages often refer to some get rich quick scam or else they promote triple-X rated websites. I have been told that the number of unrelated advertising messages has been reduced in the past year or so, but they still appear in large numbers. I stopped reading all Usenet newsgroups some time ago. Several enterprising software developers have created advanced newsgroup readers to help overcome some of these problems. In the past I have tried Free Agent and News Agent, but I stopped using them within a few weeks. These programs didn’t appeal to me. However, this past week I tried a different newsgroup reader that just may become a permanent program on my hard drive. I looked at News Rover because an Australian reader of this newsletter, Kate Press, suggested I might want to write about it. I downloaded News Rover, and the first thing I noticed is that the instructions had quite a bit of information about how to use the program to search for genealogy information. Obviously, this program was written to satisfy the needs of a genealogist. News Rover is a Windows program designed to extract information from Usenet newsgroups. It automates the process of searching for messages, downloading them, decoding file attachments, and reconstructing files that are split across multiple messages. If you wish, News Rover can even do all this while you are sleeping or at work. In short, News Rover is an offline reader for Usenet newsgroups. CompuServe members will probably understand this concept if I describe it as "TAPCIS for newsgroups" or "OzCIS for newsgroups." News Rover reads each and every message in the newsgroups that you want. It reads the full text of every message, looking for the words or phrases that you specify. If it finds something that matches your specifications, the message is saved on your hard disk. If a message does not meet your criteria, it is discarded. Your computer is very patient; it can read each and every message even if you do not want to do so. The best part is that the program allows you to specify Include and Exclude expressions that control which messages are saved. These expressions can be elaborate and can include AND, OR, NOT and NEAR operators and parentheses. By using an Exclude expression, you can exclude many spam messages. You can exclude messages that have words or phrases such as "XXX-rated" or "hot sex". I also exclude anything that says "too good to be true" or "make money at home." In addition, you can exclude messages that are cross-posted to more than a specified number of newsgroups. Some of the newsgroups are filled with digitized pictures although I don’t see too many of these in the genealogy newsgroups. News Rover will automatically download and decode new picture files (.JPG, .GIF, .MPG, etc.) from the newsgroups you specify. You can later click on a button to see a screen with thumbnail images of these pictures. By clicking on any image, you can then view it in its full size. News Rover not only will read messages, but it will also post your replies back to the newsgroup. You can write new messages while offline, and the messages will be sent to the newsgroups the next time you log back on. In addition, the program can forward messages to any e-mail address. The following is an extract from the instructions that are included with News Rover: Using News Rover for Genealogical Research However, it is a tedious and time-consuming task to search through thousands of messages posted to genealogy newsgroups to find ones relevant to your interests. News Rover is the ideal tool for scanning the genealogy newsgroups and fetching only messages of interest to you. Because News Rover allows you to specify complex message selection expressions with AND, OR, NEAR and NOT operators, you can pick up messages that meet very exacting criteria. For example, if you are looking for information about the Haines family that settled in Maine, you could specify the search expression:
I found the Boolean searches easy to configure. First I told it to look for "eastman OR penobscot OR corinth". (Corinth is a tiny town in Penobscot County, Maine where some of my ancestors lived for many years.) That worked well although I did find that a number of people at the Eastman Kodak Company are posting messages in the genealogy newsgroups! I found lots of "hits" on Eastman, but almost all of them were because the person who wrote the message had an e-mail address from Eastman Kodak. I changed the filter to exclude any messages with the word "Kodak" in them. That solved the problem -- no more false hits on the employees of the Eastman Kodak Corporation. Of course, if one of those Kodak employees ever writes a message about Corinth, Maine I will not see the message. I probably will design a better Exclude filter one of these days to correct that. News Rover is not limited just to the genealogy newsgroups. I also am searching the Mazda Miata MX-5 newsgroup, several ham radio newsgroups and several aviation-related newsgroups daily. Again, I am only looking at the messages that meet the criteria I specify. On the Miata MX-5 newsgroup I specified that I want to see all messages. On the other newsgroups I have filters that are somewhat different from the genealogy filters I described earlier. News Rover seems rather easy to use, but I must say that it will not win any awards for its flashy interface or for any innovative presentation of material. Its on-screen appearance can best be described as very plain, perhaps even stark. All the critical functions are there, but not always in quite the place that I expected them to be. The message editor in News Rover is also a bit primitive. It has all the necessary basics but does not have a spelling check function. I have been using the program for five days now and have not seen one advertising "spam" message of any kind. I am sure that a few will sneak in eventually, but eliminating the vast majority of these annoyances is a huge help. You can download News Rover and try it out for a while at no charge. However, the trial version is severely crippled. It searches 200 messages and then stops. You can restart it and search 200 more, but that’s very inconvenient. When you register the program online, your credit card is charged $29.95 and then an e-mail is sent to you that contains a "key" to unlock the program. Once unlocked, the program can search tens of thousands of messages without stopping. News Rover requires Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT. There is no version for Macintosh or for Windows 3.1. It requires at least 8 megabytes of memory on Windows 95 or Windows 98. 16 megabytes is required for Windows NT. I cannot imagine anyone trying to use these operating systems with less memory than that anyway. News Rover requires 2 megabytes of disk space for the program itself; however, the downloaded messages and files may require much additional space. It also requires a connection to an Internet provider with a news server. News Rover will not work on America Online as AOL does not use a standard Usenet newsgroup server. Instead, AOL uses its own proprietary software to read newsgroups that is not compatible with News Rover or other automated offline readers. I used News Rover on CompuServe’s network, and all I had to do was insert the address of the news server: news.compuserve.com. I like News Rover so much that I registered my copy. For more information or to download the trial version of News Rover, go to: http://www.NewsRover.com/
- Genealogy Via The Internet (A Book Review) "Genealogy Via The Internet" is subtitled "Computerized Genealogy." The back cover proclaims, "Trace Your Family Roots Quickly And Easily Using The World Wide Web!" That’s a lofty claim and one that is difficult to live up to. Author Ralph Roberts attempts to pack a lot of information into this 192-page paperback. While the title has the words "via the Internet," the book itself covers quite a bit more. The subtitle of "Computerized Genealogy" is probably more accurate. Chapter Two is "The Basics of Genealogy" and lives up to that title. It rarely mentions computers. Chapter Three is "Computerized Genealogy." It discusses genealogy software with very few references to the Internet. Chapters Four through Eight do focus on various online topics, including sections on modems, online services, the World Wide Web, Telnet, FTP, Archie, Gophers and electronic mail. Chapter Nine is called "Getting and Exchanging Data Not Online." Chapters Ten and Eleven return to online topics: "Making Friends Online" and "Genealogy Resources On The Web." Chapter Twelve is called "Publishing Your Family History." The publishing in this case is on paper, not online. That particular chapter is a thinly veiled advertisement for the publishing firm owned by Mr. Roberts. Some of the titles within that chapter include "Who We Are," "What We Publish" and "Sample Prices." This book is introductory. It assumes that the reader has no knowledge of the material being presented. The book covers a large number of topics in its 192-pages. As a result, the author is unable to go into great detail on any topic. It is sort of a "high-speed run" through the topics available. I was amused by the description of how to buy a computer and which one to buy. The book is aimed at new computer owners as well as those who have yet to purchase their first system. On page 67 the author describes how he found his perfect computer by purchasing it from a discount retailer’s Web page. However, he does not tell how the person who has yet to purchase his or her first computer how one accesses a Web page. If you are reading this newsletter, you are probably already computer literate and a bit familiar with online computing. If so, this book may be too elementary for you. However, if you are looking for an introductory book to give to someone who is not familiar with either computers or genealogy, this could be an excellent choice. At the modest price of $12.95 U.S. funds ($17.95 Canadian) plus shipping, this book gives a good overview of what is involved in getting started in genealogy in the computer age. For more information look at http://abooks.com/genealogy.
I always seem to be traveling and also writing disclaimers that "next week’s newsletter may be delayed or skipped entirely." Well, here I go again. I am off to Montreal later this week. As usual, I am carrying the little Toshiba Libretto palmtop computer. CompuServe has local numbers in Montreal, so I should be able to send the newsletter. However, I have been foiled before by the "computer gods" and there is always a chance that I may encounter new problems this week. Do not be surprised if next week’s edition is late or missing.
- The Risks Of Miniature Electronic Devices In the November 29, 1997 edition of this newsletter I wrote about the REX shirt pocket computer. I love this credit-card sized device and I have been using it daily. Last November I wrote:
The best part of all this is the fact that my shirt pocket is not bulging out like a computer nerd’s pocket protector (although I may still be considered a computer nerd!). All of the above information is contained on a tiny card that is the same length and width as a credit card and only a bit thicker. And I can quickly and easily retrieve any information on that card. Even better, I can insert the card into my laptop or palmtop computer and update the information within seconds. I now have bad news to report. The REX shirt pocket computer has died. Unfortunately, the death was caused by my carelessness. The little beast just doesn’t work after going through both the clothes washer and dryer. It was in the pocket of one of my shirts. After being thoroughly washed and dried, the REX shirt pocket computer is erratic. Gee, I never had that problem with electronic devices twenty years ago!
The Upcoming Events section of the newsletter is published once per month. Each event will be listed very briefly: title, date(s), location, and sponsoring organization, all followed by either an e-mail address or a Web page that you can use to find more information. Since detailed information is available via e-mail or the Web, I will not list the details in this newsletter. If you do contact any of these organizations, please tell them where you heard about the event. Here are the listings, arranged by date:
If you would like to see your event listed, send an e-mail to: meetings@rootscomputing.com. You must include either a Web page that gives details or an e-mail address for the organization or for someone within the organization who is willing to supply the meeting details upon request. Please limit your listings to events where you expect 100 or more people to attend.
The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web homepages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services: A live family reunion will be broadcast on the Internet. The descendants of Franz Peter Haag, a German immigrant who emigrated to Brazil in 1846, will gather on Sunday, September 6. The event is being broadcast via WebCam and RealAudio from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM local time. That is 12:00 noon to 1:00 AM Greenwich time or 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard (U.S.) time. Most of the broadcast will be in Portuguese. The URL is: http://www.sap.plug-in.com.br/haag Nottinghamshire Family History Society: http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~jeffop. To submit your homepage to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.
If you would like to submit news, information or press releases for possible inclusion in future newsletters, send them to roots@compuserve.com. The author does reserve the right to accept or reject any articles submitted.
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.
COPYRIGHTS: While the contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman and by Ancestry Publishing and by others so designated, you are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non-commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute thenewsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute:
Thank you for your cooperation.
Subscription information: To subscribe to this free newsletter, send an e-mail message to the following address: The message title is unimportant. The first line of text in the message must have the words SUBSCRIBE ROOTSCOMPUTING followed by your first and last names. For instance, if your name is Jane Doe, you would write a message of: subscribe rootscomputing Jane Doe That is the entire message; nothing else should be in the message text. To cancel an existing subscription, send an e-mail to: The message title is unimportant. The text of the message must be exactly: signoff rootscomputing Please note that the address of listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com is an "e-mail robot" and messages sent to that address are only read by a computer. If you send any more text in the message, it will be ignored. If you want to see the current issue as well as back issues of the newsletter, look on the World Wide Web at: Please feel free to copy this subscription information and pass it on to anyone else who you think might be interested in obtaining a free subscription.
|
Terms and Conditions | Privacy Statement |
Further, in ceremonies at Ford's Theater (Washington, DC) on Friday, July 17, 1998, the Federation and the Genealogical Society of Utah were officially recognized for their efforts in making the CWSS a success. FGS President David Rencher, Terry Moyer, and Bill Ward were able to attend and to accept the thanks and recognition on behalf of the two organizations.
As I sit here writing this article I have a complete list of all my documented ancestors in my shirt pocket. I also have a list of several "to do" tasks for my next visit to the local LDS Family History Center; this is a list of records that I wish to order on microfilm. I also have my Day-Timer book in the same shirt pocket. It contains my complete telephone and address book, a personal calendar of appointments and an ever-growing "to do" list. I also have an alarm clock in the same shirt pocket that alerts me in time for every item in my list of appointments.