Genealogy & General Subjects Blog



Monday, April 14, 2008

Genealogy Gadgets

The Gadgets section of the website has been experiencing some problems. I've changed the hosting locations of all my genealogy gadgets so that they are now hosted by Google. As soon as the Google Content Directory is updated, you should be able to find them there.

I will also make the necessary changes so that anyone subscribing to the old gadgets will be automatically transferred to the new gadgets.

In the meantime, all the "Add to Google" buttons under the gadgets should subscribe you to the new gadgets.

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Saturday, September 22, 2007

Funerary Art - the new thing!

Some of you may be familiar with the late nineteenth century wave of funerary art. It was a way of commemorating the dead. Often pictures might be taken of recently deceased family members (especially children) and/or locks of hair clipped to be placed in lockets (or occasionally made into beads!).

In a mystery series written by Sarah Stewart Taylor, her detective Sweeney St. George is a professor of funerary art. The series is an entertaining way to learn a little bit about funerary art. Here's another fun place to learn about funeral customs: the Museum of Funeral Customs in Springfield, IL.

However, a new form of funerary art has just emerged as a possibility. Now, human remains can be formed into gemstones! That's right, burial and cremation are NOT your only options. You could become a ring or necklace instead! Really, you could.

There is a newly developed process that takes human (or animal) ashes and through intense pressure, forms those carbon molecules into a diamond. This is exactly how real diamonds were formed within the earth: burned animal or plant matter was compressed until diamonds formed. A company called LifeGem has the whole process explained on their website.

It gives an entirely new meaning to the words family heirloom, huh? Just hope that no one ever has to pawn you, I guess.

Seriously though, this doesn't necessarily represent a new trend; just a new way of commemorating the dead, particularly in our age of cremation.

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Letters Searches

I have an account with StatCounter.com that tracks the number of visitors I have. It also will track the searches that lead people to my site (on a random tangent, isn't it irritating when people use the word "sight" instead of "site"?). It is interesting to see what brings people to this site. Obvious searches are the most popular: surnames, names of historic events, places, etc.

The searches I enjoy the most though are the ones that are complete sentences or nearly so. And the ones that are looking to copy a letter for specific occasions. Here are a few examples:
  • i'm sorry i wasn't there for you when your mother died letter
  • a letter of commendation for police officers participated in a funeral service
  • regret letter when you cannot attend your sisters wedding
Just for the record, I don't have any of these on my site. But it does point out that there does seem to be a need for a site that will list these kinds of sample personal letters for people to copy. In the age of the form letter, we seem to be unable to write these kinds of things on our own. Actually, it is a little sad that we can't offer regret or commendation in writing without assistance, don't you think? It certainly makes it clear how far away we are from the letter writing of the last century.

I went to GoogleTrends to see what kinds of searches are happening for letters. I got a little sidetracked, and looked to see which was more popular: searches for the correctly spelled "genealogy" or the incorrectly spelled "geneology". It's the correct version, for the record, but not by as strong a lead as you'd like to believe, and it seems to be declining. What does this increase in misspelling ratios indicate? An increase in new genealogists who have yet to learn how to spell the word? An increase in bad spellers in general? Perhaps this too is an indicator of the decline in writing -- greater reliance on spellcheck?

As you might expect, for cities, Salt Lake City leads the pack on genealogy searches, both correctly and incorrectly spelled. New Zealanders seem to be front of the pack for countries with the U.S. in second place. This reflects only English language searches of course. If you look up the French/German (genealogie) and Spanish (genealogia), they are significantly less popular than the correct English spelling. Of course, you have to reflect that this is Google, and so other countries might be using a different search engine more frequently thus skewing the country results.

In a comparison of "family history" vs. "genealogy", genealogy bests family history, as you might expect. Interestingly though, Aussies seem to have about equal interest in both, the U.K is mostly interested in family history, whereas the Kiwis, Canadians, and Americans are all about genealogy. Hmmm....

Sadly, I don't seem to be able to access the searches that contain the words "letter". The best I can do is go to GoogleSuggest and start a search with letter. Up pops a box suggesting "letter of resignation", "letters", "letter writing", "letter of recommendation", "letter of credit", "letter of reference", "letterman", "letterhead", "letters from iwo jima", etc. It also tells you how many results you will get with the search. It is an interesting way to explore the human psyche regarding searches though.

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Sunday, July 29, 2007

Genealogy Gadgets

I've debuted several genealogy gadgets/widgets here today, to be placed in genealogy blogs, personalized Google homepage, etc. They offer search functionality for a variety of genealogy, family history, and history-related sites, including FamilySearch, the Bureau of Land Management Patent Database, and the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress.

They are similar to the ad-related ones that you often see (i.e. for Ancestry.com), but I have no monetary interest in this. I just wanted one location from which I could search a variety of websites, rather than surfing to each individually. Most of them link to free sites (no subscription necessary) and are ones I visit often (see my links page). Each gadget does open a new window with the search results, but I think it will still save time.

You can learn more about how to embed gadgets in your page here. Hopefully, my gadgets will soon be linked to the directory. In the meantime, you can install them on your page by using the following code:

Family Search:
<script src=\"http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/gadgets/ldsgadget.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=325&title=FamilySearch&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js\"></script>

American Memory:
<script src=\"http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/gadgets/locgadget.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=135&title=American+Memory+Search&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js\"></script>

Interment.net:
<script src=\"http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/gadgets/intergadget.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=175&title=Interment.net+Search&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js\"></script>

Bureau of Land Management:
<script src=\"http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/gadgets/blmgadget.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=250&title=Bureau+of+Land+Management+Patent+Search&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js\"></script>

Making of America:
<script src=\"http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/gadgets/moagadget.xml&synd=open&w=320&h=115&title=Making+of+America+Search&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js\"></script>

If you have a personalized Google page, you can add the gadgets by URL or by clicking on the "Add to Google" button below each on my web page.

Please let me know what you think of them!

Thanks!

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Want Free Genealogy Records? Volunteer to Help Create Them!

The LDS Church is the behemoth of genealogy records. They have microfilmed an enormous number of records and keep them all in storage under a mountain. No, really, under a mountain.

Whether or not you agree with the religious reasons for storing the records, the fact remains that the LDS Church has done all family historians a great service by saving the records and making them so available to researchers all over the world. Virtually all of the collection on microfilm or microfiche can be requested by a genealogist and will be sent for the costs of mailing to a local Family History Center.

The church has begun the process of transcribing some of those records to be made available for free online, and needs help. Think you can volunteer? I bet you could. It can be done at home, by applying, downloading their software and then transcribing a batch.

Two people transcribe every record and if there are differences between the two, a third person has to reconcile the differences. So don't worry if you don't have any experience!

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The Problem with Web 2.0

Okay, so I have to say that I like a lot of the new options provided by Web 2.0 applications which give you the opportunity to work with other people to navigate the web and share information. Wikis are great fun (I love Wikipedia), and I think that blogging has a place as well. Here's my dilemma though. Mostly, I disagree with people about popular culture. For example, I just visited Digg.com. Among their top stories with 174 Diggs was this one about Hayden Panettiere in a See Through Dress. I find this distressing. Am I alone?

Maybe part of the problem is that Web 2.0 is mostly catering to a younger crowd than me (oh dear, I'm aging myself). Are there stats about this? Well, I know that MySpace is dominated by a younger crowd.

Still, I'm a snob about other things as well. The popular books that are on the New York Times bestseller list? Most don't appeal. So maybe the problem is with me! Feel free to consider me a snob about these sorts of things.

How does this relate back to genealogy? Well, I did a quick look at the bookmarks under the tag "genealogy" on del.icio.us. I am really just concerned about the trend toward social networking for family history and genealogy. In my experience, published information about family trees, etc. is best taken with a grain of salt... and sometimes a lot more than a grain or with another kind of substance altogether. As an example, especially of this latter, see this article from TechDirt about fake family trees.

In general, I just worry that people aren't sharing their sources, and aren't doing the kind of quality work that can really be relied upon. This is also why I hated group projects as a student.

And, yes, I know about glass houses. There is certainly stuff on this web site that I have my doubts about. And nearly all of it came from secondary published genealogies or the sort of social networking that I am now railing against. If I could go back to my high school self and give her a stern talking to about this, I would. In the meantime, I am simply doing my best to correct these things whenever possible.

And I know that sometimes this isn't possible. For example, in my Asa Hamlin's Father story, I show how I looked for primary sources to verify Lura Hamlin's parentage, but all I have been able to find so far is in a secondary source... a local history. Still, this information seems more reliable than many other secondary sources I've seen.

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Sunday, April 8, 2007

Using Blogger with Rootsweb's Freepages

As mentioned on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, I am now using the program Blogger to create and update pages with ongoing content, like the Asa page or the Genealogy & General Subjects blog.

Blogger is a free, online program to create web logs (called "blogs" for short). The company was recently purchased by Google. Blogs can be used as informal journals of opinion, or they can be more technical and formalized.

Entire websites can be built using a blog format, which enables you to easily incorporate links, images, videos, sound clips, and text in one place. This makes blogs an excellent tool for easily documenting a family's history with photos, images of censuses (or other primary documents), links to related sites, and videos of tombstones or other relevant locations.

Blogger comes with some built-in templates that allow easy formatting (and which may be modified for more advanced users). You type in content as though you were sending an email, and it automatically creates the coding for you. It will also, like most blogging programs, automatically archive previous posts for you as well. One of the features that makes blogging different from standard web publishers, however, is the ability for other readers to post comments about what they have read.

The other core feature of many blogs, including those produced by Blogger is that you can sydicate the page and offer a subscription to readers. This allows readers to peruse your new content with a web feed without having to visit your site as regularly. For example, readers of my Asa page can check to see if there are new updates, videos, or pictures directly from their home page or desktop or mobile phone or PDA. This is a convenience for many readers.

Most blogs are kept on dedicated servers, meaning that if you have a blog and a Rootsweb's Freepages account, you probably just have links between the two. The difference between this and what I am about to explain is that Blogger will publish your blog to your Freepages account. If you have other content that is not in blog format (as I did), this enables you to keep it all in one location.

Okay, enough explanation of the concept. Here is how you can create your blog on
Freepages:

1. Go to
Blogger and sign up for a free account.
2. Next, create your blog. Under the "create a blog" section, you will choose the "Advanced Blog Setup" link.

3. Blog details:
  • Title - whatever you like
  • Listed or unlisted - in a directory like your phone number... public or not?
4. Server details:
  • FTP server - always users.freepages.rootsweb.com
  • Protocol - always FTP
  • FTP path - depends what folder you want to use on Freepages. If your website is at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ you are using the genealogy_html folder. If your website is at http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/ you are using the family_html folder
Whatever folder you use, it MUST already exist on your server (i.e. if you are going to use a subfolder, you should create it before you do this step). You separate folders using the slash: /

In the example below, I opted to create a "genblog" folder inside of my genealogy folder for my Pretend Blog, so for this step I wrote in genealogy_html/genblog/. This path directs Blogger to install the files in this folder. You could just use the genealogy folder instead, however, in which case you would write in genealogy_html/.

NOTE: To direct Blogger to the appropriate path on Rootsweb, you must use the following formats:
genealogy_html (to the genealogy folder)
history_html
family_html (etc.)
The key thing to note about these formats is the underscore between the folder name and html.
  • Blog filename - you can name it pretty much whatever you want. This will be the end of your URL (website address) for the blog when you finish. In my example below, I named the file pretend.html, so my URL would be http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/genblog/pretend.html
  • Blog URL - this is the URL where your blog will be, but without the filename you gave above. In my example, the URL I wrote in is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/genblog/
  • FTP Username - the username assigned to you by Rootsweb
  • FTP Password - the password assigned to you by Rootsweb (don't forget that it is case sensitive, so caps must be in caps!)
  • Word verification - type in what you see (a security feature)
  • Hit continue!


5. Choose the template you like and hit continue.
6. You are DONE! Now you can create posts and tell the blog to "publish" and it should put everything on your Rootsweb site exactly where you told it to.

I hope this was helpful to you. If you used this page to create a website, please use the "comments" section below to tell me about it and give me the URL.

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