Tuesday, February 22, 2011

RootsTech Ketchup

Ancestry Insider KetchupDon’t tell me that wasn’t big fun! I still have a big stack of RootsTech stories I wanted to do. But the party’s over and I need to turn my attention to the St. George Family History Expo this weekend, 25-26 February 2011.

Time to ketchup…

FHCs get Ancestry FHL Edition

Family History Centers now have access to the Ancestry Family History Library Edition, which I believe has all the genealogy databases as the full Ancestry.com offering.

It has been widely miscommunicated that centers have access to the Ancestry Library Edition. I had reported the same thing, but when I got a chance to try it for myself, I found it to be the Family History Library Edition.

The Ancestry Library Edition is marketed and distributed by ProQuest. Because ProQuest charges separately for some content in the normal Ancestry.com subscription, Ancestry.com and ProQuest leave those databases out of the Library Edition. These include some newspapers, some obituaries, some books, PILI, BGMI, and PERSI. Ancestry.com also leaves out most tree-based databases.

I double-checked and all of these are available in family history centers with the Ancestry Family History Library Edition.

FamilySearch Consultant Website

FamilySearch has posted the slide presentations of the RootsTech family history consultant training on a newly redesigned consultant website. Check it out at consultant.familysearch.org . I assume this is where the Elder Scott Devotional will be posted.

FamilySearch Combining Websites

In 2010 FamilySearch combined its websites for records, library, wiki, and indexing. In 2011 they will add their digital books, forums, and family tree databases, according to Jim Erickson, FamilySearch spokesperson.

FamilySearch is also adding online microfilm ordering, as I’ve mentioned before.

Family Tech

Family Tech is a new set of articles for beginners, said Erickson. Several of the bloggers present have already contributed articles. See http://familytech.familysearch.org.

Content War

“The content war is over” said Josh Taylor of NEHGS. “Everyone is going to have everything.”

Acquisition Wars

The hiring war, on the other hand, is not. Lynn Monson, formerly lead technical architect at FamilySearch, is now at Ancestry.com according to a FamilySearch presenter.

Sally Sleuth, your Family Village guideDan Lawyer, formerly one of my favorite FamilySearch product managers, showed up in FamilyLink attire. I don’t mean to say he’s no longer one of my favorite people. (Dan, I’ll get around to that LinkedIn endorsement real soon now.)

FamilyLink also announced the integration of their We’re Related Facebook app with the forthcoming genealogy game, Family Village. In appearance like FarmVille or CityVille, Family Village allows game players to build a village by learning about their ancestors. Pictured to the right is Sally Sleuth, your Family Village guide.

Real-Time Collaboration, Inc. makers of SharingTime announced the acquisition of Ohana Software. Ohana Software was founded by John Vilburn, who created the wildly successful PAFInsight, a tool to update a PAF file with data scraped from FamilySearch’s IGI. Ohana followed the success of PAFInsight with Family Insight, which synchronizes data between PAF and the new FamilySearch Tree.

Ancestry iPhone App

Kendell's ancestor with the cool mustache “We get asked about doing a version for Android,” said Kendell Hulet. “It is not a question of if but when.” Hulet is a senior director of platform product management at Ancestry.com.

Ancestry.com is working on shaking leaf and auto-syncing your tree between Ancestry iPhone and online member trees.

To merge two member trees, download the trees to FTM, merge them, upload the merged tree, and delete the first two. (Audience members suggested this procedure might cause data loss.)

Don’t Reveal the Insider’s Secret Identity!

Doubtlessly you know that it is extremely bad to post pictures revealing the secret identity of the Ancestry Insider. That point became useful when it came time to point out some of the good articles written about RootsTech. I don’t want to skip any worth mentioning and I don’t want to offend anyone.

The solution? I’ve decided to highlight the articles of bloggers that protected my secret identity:

 Ancestry Insider Moderated Two Sessions

Did you know I moderated two RootsTech sessions? It was a definite ego deflator when Doug Blank of Gramps Genealogy Research Software (in a very technical article) gave my first session a dismal review.

The video of Amos Elliston, mentioned above, is from that same session.

In my other session, FamilySearch CTO, Tom Creighton, disclosed that FamilySearch is working on something that could replace GEDCOM. For more information see the report by Jordan Jones  of GenealogyMedia.com. The discussion also produced a list of issues that genealogical standards could address. In the FamilySearch Wiki, see “Genealogical Data Standards (RootsTech Session).”

Out of time…

See you at the St. George Family History Expo!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the link to Geni. :-)

    It was great meeting you in person. Very good recap post. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the mention! It was a pleasure meeting you in person. Great ketchup post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Insider -

    I heard someone say at RootsTech that the Ancestry Family History Library Edition is only in Family History Centers for a limited test over the next couple of months...it is NOT a permanent licensing deal. This person told me that both groups are open to a longer-term deal, but they still have not agreed to anything.

    Can you use your double "Insider" to get to the bottom of this one and let all your faithful readers know what is happening with this? We all would love to see Ancestry in the Family History Centers...

    ReplyDelete

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