Sunday, October 05, 2008

This, That, and Much More!

Having blogged very little in the past week, there's a lot of catching up to do!

Genea-Blogs:
Scanfest was done in two sections last Sunday. A group of us met via Windows Live Messenger and chatted there, while others met with Thomas using Skype for a conference call. There were a few who went back and forth between the two media. I think we all enjoyed ourselves, but those who were using Skype soon determined that they could not scan and Skype at the same time successfully. Denise did a good summary, "Skyping at Scanfest," at her blog, Family Matters. The next Scanfest will be held Sunday, October 26th from 11 AM to 2 PM, PDT. Go here for more information.

Terry at Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi did a great round up of introducing genea-bloggers from around the blogosphere, in three parts of "Getting to Know You"! You can read about 42 genealogy-loving and blogging personalities from around the globe here, here, and here. In Part I, you can also click on the title link to hear Terry himself sing "Getting to Know You" in his gentlemanly southern voice, which I always enjoy listening to whenever a group of us does a conference call via Skype. Our good friend Craig of Geneablogie was laid up in the hospital during the time that these posts were put together, but today he published "Getting to Know Me--Getting to Know GeneaBlogie." My own article can be found here.

You've heard of Craig's List, but have you heard about Angie's List? It's a site where you can find professionals to help you with your service and repair needs, as well as health care providers. Well, Thomas of Destination: Austin Family got his 15 minutes of fame last July when he was interviewed by Angie's List, along with three professional genealogists, for Angie's List podcast. Additionally, he appeared in Angie's List e-zine, which is e-mailed to all of their members. Kudos to Thomas for some well-deserved recognition!

poster courtesy of footnoteMaven

The Family Curator has posted the Treasure Hunters Round-up of those participants who are planning to go through their genealogy treasure boxes to organize, scan, and archive their "goodies." They hope to find a surprise or two! Stay tuned for later this month, when they'll share their results.

Colleen at Orations of OMcHodoy has the Genea-Blogger Yearbook up: a hilarious peek at what we'd look like if we attended high school in various decades! While I didn't participate directly, Thomas used me as a model here. I think 1962 was my best look; don't you?

Becky at kinnexxions wrote A Salute to the Old-Timers! in response to Tim's Everyone's Turning 2 This Year at Genealogy Reviews Online. Yep, this blog turned two years old in January, and I guess I'm now officially an old-timer!

poster courtesy of footnoteMaven

The 57th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted by Jasia at Creative Gene. The theme is "I Read It in the News." Holy cow! There are 47 submissions of articles describing how the participants found relatives or ancestors in newspapers. The COG continues to grow, adding newbies every time. It's a great way to learn more about genealogy, research, and writing, and to discover new blogs to read.

Genealogy News:
My apologies to Family Tree DNA, who has been sending me updates about their Houston, Texas lab in relation to Hurricane Ike. I've been too busy to post these on the blog, but fortunately, they sent them out to many bloggers, including Elizabeth of Little Bytes of Life. She has posted them here, here, and here. If you had a DNA test done through this company and are concerned that this facility was in harm's way, please be assured by these postings that everything has been kept safe.

There were also two updates from FamilySearch last week that I did not get to, but Renee of Renee's Genealogy Blog has them here and here. There have been 29 million names added to Record Search pilot this past week alone!

A new website, GenSoftReviews, has recently opened as a place where users can post reviews about their favorite genealogy software. Of course, I gave high marks to RootsMagic!

Public Records Free Directory blog has a new tool you can post on your iGoogle home page to help you get to their Directory pages right away.

The Kindo family tree networking website and MyHeritage genealogy site have joined hands. Read about it on the MyHeritage blog here.

3 comments:

Terry Thornton said...

MIRIAM, Thanks for the links and for mentioning the Getting to Know Me roundup at Hill Country. It was fun getting to know so many new bloggers and fun seeing what some of the older hands would identify as their best, breeziest, and most beautiful work.

So you enjoyed the singing? LOL! You are too kind.

Thanks also for mentioning Craig Manson --- I've updated the Roundup to include ACT 4, Scene 43 so that GeneaBlogie is included in GETTING TO KNOW ME.

Terry Thornton
Fulton, Mississippi
HILL COUNTRY OF MONROE COUNTY MISSISSIPPI

Abba-Dad said...

Hi Miriam,

I also use RootsMagic mostly because I am just starting out and it was the only tool I could find that could merge GEDCOM files or display them side by side and let you decide what you want to merge. It was recommended to me by someone who has been doing this for some time and I just took his advice.

Why do you prefer RM over anything else? I am sure I am missing out on a lot of great functionality and would love to hear from an expert.

BTW, I can't wait for RM4 to come out.

Thanks,
Amir

Miriam Robbins said...

Thanks for dropping by and your comments, Terry.

Amir, I like RootsMagic because it has a clean interface and is so easy to use. I like being able to make various reports, and it had both the family view and the pedigree view years before other software did (now it has the descendants view as well). One of the things I appreciate most is that there is not a new version pumped out every year "just because."