Ancestry shows a new Face (Book App)

You might all know about this already. My memory is so... how shall I put it... so... so-so. If a Facebook application from Ancestry is old news to you, forgive me. But as near as I can recall, there has been no official announcement. It's been out there for weeks and I've sat on the story, waiting for either official announcement or public comment from someone that stumbled across it. This week, officials at Ancestry gave employees permission to tell friends and relatives.

I don't want to get in trouble so as of this moment each of you is a "personal friend of mine." (Extra friendship points to anyone that knows which SNL host used that phrase.)

Ancestry's foray into the Facebook space is "Family Facts." Experienced Facebook users will search for "Family Facts" in the box on the upper-left. But then there are Facebook users like me, who had this show up on "my wall" soon after joining.

i never thought I'd come to the day that i would write on the facebook wall of one of my parents. this is history right here

Users like me can click on this link to get to Family Facts application home:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6183067965

The Family Facts application home looks like this:

The Family Facts application looks like this:

Experienced Ancestry users will recognize Family Facts as a free feature of the Ancestry website available at the bottom of the main Learning Center page. Family Facts present various information about your surname, most of which has been culled from Ancestry's genealogy databases. See the list of available facts in the image above on the left.

Users can choose one of the available facts to display on their profile:

If you were hoping to display part of your Ancestry Member Tree, your research interests or a tool that helped you connect to relatives or fellow researchers, then you will be disappointed in this application. But if you'd like a little graphical something to add a little pizzazz to your profile while displaying some interesting tidbit about your surname, then you may find Ancestry's Family Facts to your liking.

More information about Family Facts is available in an Ancestry Magazine March 2006 article and in a 24/7 Family History Circle September 2006 article by George Morgan.

Our Name In History

In November of 2006 Ancestry announced print-on-demand surname books called Our Name In History that makes use of Family Facts as well as other information. The website OurNameInHistory.com explains more about these books.

A year later on-demand publisher BookSurge announced it had partnered with Ancestry to offer the quarter-million titles in the Our Name In History series on Amazon.com. The list of available titles shows the books have received mixed reviews.

Some bad reviews seem to assume the books are repeats of the fraudulent Halberts books which contained 1 page falsely presenting a coat of arms as belonging to the surname, 5 pages of generic history and 100 pages of phone book listings.  For example, a man named McGonigle wrote a bad review of the Jones book. (Maybe his mother was a Jones.) He called it a total fake, "about as valuable as opening the telephone book and making a list of all the Jones people in it." A full 33 of 35 people found the review helpful, even though I don't believe the man had even seen the book.

I thought the more honest reviews were more helpful. Negative reviewers noted that some of the content was not surname specific, the book was smaller than anticipated and the surname information was generic. I take this to mean they hoped to find genealogical information, at least some of which was specific to their line. I believe these statements will help set proper expectations for prospective buyers.

One positive reviewer stated, "According to my Grandmother, the book is great. She is almost finished with it and she got it yesterday." Another gave it 5 stars, calling it a "fine book." (However, both reviewers added they would have liked more specifics.) I think the books are lovely and could make great Christmas gifts. I intended to do so until Ancestry Press came along and gave me the ability to publish my own, family-specific books.

Message Board Links

In February this year Ancestry added links to Family Facts from the joint Ancestry/RootsWeb message boards. The large number of "false positives" have caused a great number of complaints about the feature. Apparently, the feature works by comparing all words in the post against a word list. While Ancestry has made improvements, the feature still has problems and is still disliked by most users.

Surprisingly, the surname links are not provided for the surnames specified for the message. For example, in a message on the Sider message board, the author specifies 3 surnames: Sider, Riley and Cadwell. Links are not provided in the surname list nor is the list used to disambiguate given and family names in the message body. This is just one example of how, in my opinion, Ancestry is missing a big opportunity to provide genealogical specific features in its message boards that would distinguish them from the generic messaging systems available from Yahoo, Google and others.

But that's a subject for another time.

Possibly Fraudulent Genealogy Websites

Mike Ward, PR Director for Ancestry.com and parent, the Generations Network, warned the public today of websites targeted to the genealogical community with alleged fraudulent intentions. Said Ward, "from what we can tell, these sites are nothing more than a series of web pages with links to other services. These sites, in our opinion, are clearly fraudulent."

According to Ward, "it appears the site colors, fonts, and pictures on at least one site are designed to mislead people into believing the site is related to Ancestry.com."

Judge for yourself. Below you can see the SearchYourGenealogy.com and Ancestry.co.uk websites side-by-side.

SearchYourGenealogy.com Home Page
Notice colors, flags, trees with free family tree offer, photos and more.

Ancestry.co.uk Home Page
with pop-up showing flag links to other Ancestry websites.

The names of the other two websites mentioned, Ancestry-search.com and Australian-Ancestry.com could possibly cause confusion among consumers.

The full text of the announcement can be read on the Ancestry Blog.

FamilySearch Not Affiliated With Texas Polygamists

FamilySearch parent, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church), released a statement today praising U.S. media outlets for properly distinguishing between the "13-million-member international Church" and the small polygamous sect raided by Texas officials late last week. The statement noted that international news outlets haven't done as well, not always understanding that the two churches are separate and at odds with one another.

Confusion is understandable, given that the polygamists' call themselves the "Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" or Fundamentalist Mormons. The Church notes in a November 2006 press release that the Associated Press Stylebook specifies that the term Mormon should be applied exclusively to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The term Mormon is so closely linked with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mormon missionaries, Mormon temples and members of the Church, that it causes confusion and offense when the term is applied to other religious groups such as the Texas sect.

With the statement today, the Church released two video clips reiterating that it has no affiliation whatever with polygamy or polygamous groups, having abandoned the practice in 1890, more than a hundred years ago.

If you can't play the video below, try this link.

 

Expanded access to NARA records

The title read something like "Another Agreement Restricts Free Access to Public Records." I was shocked and disappointed to see such a commentary on the proposed Generations Network (TGN)/NARA agreement. The proposal does nothing of the sort. The proposal expands free access to public records.

• The contract does not limit access to public records. Access to the original records remains unchanged. Other than your travel costs, you can still freely access these records.
• The digitized copies of these records become freely accessible at all NARA reading rooms. This expands, not contracts, free access to these public records.
• The contract is non-exclusive, so should the taxpayer, the government, FamilySearch or a private benefactor decide to allocate money to digitize the records, it can be done as though this agreement didn't exist. This agreement maintains free access to these records; it prevents exclusivity.
• In all likelihood, these records will be added to the Ancestry collections available at thousands of public institutions. If this happens, it further expands free access to these public records.
• The contract makes the digitized copies of these records freely available to everyone after five years at no cost to the taxpayer, despite the expenses TGN incurs in digitizing the records.

According to the National Archives, at current rates it will take over 2,000 years to digitize all of NARA's holdings. (The New York Times) We need this agreement and the similar agreements with other vendors. This proposed agreement is a definite win for the public. TGN and the other vendors are hoping that during the five years the digitization costs can be recouped. If they can, it will be a win for the vendor as well. I'm hoping it will be a win for these commercial firms or five years from now they will pull out.

Public comments on the proposal must be received by 9-April-2008. If you support the proposal, please visit www.archives.gov/comment/tgn-preamble.html. If you oppose the agreement, please proceed to the end of the Internet ;-).

The Future of PAF

As my previous posts have sparked some online discussions that may have propagated misinformation regarding the future of PAF, I feel like I need to share the exact wording of the statement from Gordon Clarke, FamilySearch Third Party Product Manager, given at the FamilySearch Developers Conference and the BYU Computerized Genealogy Conference.

At these two conferences Clarke read a statement that he characterized as official and explained he would read it word-for-word so he would not get it wrong. Afterwards Clarke e-mailed the text of the statement to third-party developers, stating that "FamilySearch has updated it[s] 2008 Messaging to include 'The Future of PAF'."

I've inserted some commentary, which is not indented.

The Future of PAF

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is a free genealogy software program offered by FamilySearch. PAF has amassed millions of users since its introduction in 1997. Over the years, many other genealogy software programs have been introduced by commercial companies. Most of these programs offer additional features while often supporting the GedCom and PAF file formats.

The last major release of the program was PAF v5.2 in 2001. Since then, FamilySearch has been developing a web-based genealogy system that will allow the general public to create, search, manage, and share their family histories completely online. This online system will also replace TempleReady, a software program used exclusively by Latter-day Saints to prepare records for temple ordinances. The first phase of the new system (referred to as New.FamilySearch) is being rolled out to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Once the system is complete, it will be available for free to the general public and in multiple languages.

For more information about New FamilySearch (NFS), see the several posts I have made about it. Note that "system complete" is defined by this statement to be the point in time when New FamilySearch is released to the general public. NFS will be a much advanced system compared to the version that has previously rolled out to members of the Church.

Today, users of NFS will definitely need to continue using PAF or one of its competitors. NFS isn't set up to handle the living people in your file. It doesn't allow multimedia content. It doesn't allow export. It doesn't allow private content or temporary-working data. The system for inputting and saving sources needs to be overhauled and in my opinion there's a risk that any work you do with sources now may have to be redone in the future.

PAF does not currently support two way data transfers to the new online system. However, data in PAF can be exported to the new online system by creating a GedCom file of the PAF data and then importing the file into new online system. In the future two way data transfers between PAF and the new online system will be accomplished via a third-party add-on utility.

Two points here. First, many have pointed out that one should not and can not currently export one's entire PAF database and import it into the current release of New FamilySearch. Doing so can create "Individuals of Unusual Size," which bog down the performance of the current system. Engineers are currently addressing this problem, so this restriction is temporary.

Second, third-party developers are working to allow two way data transfers between PAF and NFS. Ohana Software, the PAF Insight people are upgrading PAF Insight (and renaming it to Family Insight) to allow this. Ancestral Quest is also being upgraded with this capability. The two companies are collaborating on extensions to the PAF file format to make this seamless.

While Ohana's offering presupposes you will continue to use PAF 5, Ancestral Quest's product looks and feels just like you are using PAF 5 (they were the original developers of PAF for the Church), so PAF users won't need to change the way they do things.

PAF users can continue using PAF until the new online system is available to them. Once the new system is available, PAF users will have several options available to them:

Remember that "system complete" refers to a much more mature version of NFS than the current release. FamilySearch spokespeople give assurances that PAF will be supported for a very long time. You can continue to use it, and the Church will assist you with its support department for the foreseeable future.

1. Upload their current GedCom file one time and thereafter work exclusively from the new online system.

While upload of entire GEDCOM files is currently not allowed, we're speaking of a future time when this restriction no longer exists.

2. Continue using PAF and exporting any new data via a GedCom file to new online system. This option will require any data that is added to the new online system by others, to be manually entered back into your PAF if you want to have that information on your computer.

Many of you have expressed a desire to continue to use PAF for the remainder of your sojourn on this earth. This option is for you, particularly if you've been burned so many times importing GEDCOMs of other people's garbage that you'd just as soon type new information in by hand. There's a lot to be said for this level of control over your PAF file.

3. Purchase a third-party add-on utility for PAF that enables data transfers between PAF and the new online system, or

If you've grown comfortable with PAF Insight, this option is for you. Continue to use PAF and PAF Insight as you do now. A future upgrade of PAF Insight will work with the NFS instead of the IGI.

4. Purchase a third-party full-featured software program that supports automatic data synchronization with the new online system.

Bugs in PAF are not being fixed. You should really consider one of the third-party software programs. I've already mentioned Ancestral Quest allows you to continue using your PAF files and the PAF way of doing things. Once this point in time comes, I'm sure you'll be able to try out free versions of these programs at Family History Centers. Did I hear that Legacy will include NFS support in its free, entry-level offering? Don't short-change yourself by not learning about the time-saving features that have been added to PAF's competitors.

There are benefits for users who wish to use both the new online system and one of the full-featured software programs. These programs will allow users to:

1. Work offline and then enable genealogical data to be automatically updated and reconciled with the online system.

2. Maintain a working copy of your genealogy file on your own computer hard drive, and

3. Use additional or advanced features that will not be offered in the online system.

The decision is much easier for those who are just beginning their family history and those who do not have an electronic file of their family history—they will simply be able to build their family histories completely online. No other software will be needed.

You don't have to rush into a decision. It will take many, many months before NFS is released to the general public. During that time, many, many bugs will be worked out of these third-party offerings. The NFS support in these programs will be demonstrated at conferences, user groups and family history fairs.

Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Developers Conference Presentations

Presentations from last month's FamilySearch Developers Conference have been posted online. Be forewarned; these are mostly of a highly technical nature. I'll explain non-technically some of it in future columns.

MyFamily.com Reverses Forced Migration Policy

The MyFamily.com team at the Generations Network (TGN) today announced a reversal of their decision to force users to migrate from the tried and true MyFamily.com 1.0 websites to a new version, dubbed MyFamily.com 2.0. Previous migration announcements worried long-time users who felt the new offering lacked necessary features, or was too hard to learn.

In a letter sent to users today, MyFamily.com said, "As of today, we will continue support for MyFamily.com 1.0 and have no plans to require migration of 1.0 sites to 2.0." Full text of the announcement can be found on the Official MyFamily 2.0 Blog.

TGN hired Michael Graff in September 2005 to head their MyFamily.com business unit. Graff was a 14-year veteran at Microsoft and lived in the greater-Seattle area. In early 2006 TGN announced the establishment of a Bellevue office to "enhanc[e] the existing MyFamily.com product," said at the time to have more than 3 million users. Most of 2006 seems to have been focused on SnapGenie, a technology acquired by TGN. SnapGenie.com was announced broadly in September 2006.

The first 2.0 beta rolled live in early December 2006. The features were photos with descriptions, stories, notes and invitations. The next big release came at the end of January 2007 adding comments, voice notes, story sharing and photo sharing. In March they added news calendar, member list, avatars and albums. (See timeline.) And MyFamily.com announced the migration plan that would ultimately move everyone off 1.0.

MyFamily.com announced the release of an enhanced 2.0 beta in October 2007. This table compares 1.0 and 2.0 feature sets.

A January 2008 post on the MyFamily blog indicated the migration from 1.0 to 2.0 was taking longer than expected and the transition period would extend into 2008. Then the blog fell silent.

Michael Graff's LinkedIn profile indicates that he left MyFamily.com in March 2008. No announcement was made of his departure, but in his keynote address at the BYU conference, TGN president Tim Sullivan indicated MyFamily.com membership had fallen to 1.8 million. On 25-March-2008 a post on the MyFamily blog titled "Getting back on track" started off by saying "Obviously it's been a while since we've had a fresh post here on the blog."

Now, less than 2 weeks later comes the announcement that mandatory migration will no longer be required. This is more than 2 years after spending on 2.0 began.

While I'm not privy to all the thinking behind MyFamily 2.0, I know that 1.0 is built on really old technology that none of the techies in the company want to touch, fearing it is so brittle it will easily break. I believe the decade old code had to be rewritten, but I believe TGN approached it the wrong way.

I'm a big believer in the philosophy behind Baby Steps, the fictitious book from the movie What About Bob. Paul Allen quotes several industry luminaries in his latest blog entry that illustrate my belief that fast incremental advancements and small incremental changes are better than large changes that take a long time.

TGN and MyFamily.com users would have been better served with incremental rewrites of the 1.0 code. Make the gradual rewrite transparent to users. You don't have to replace the entire website. You can introduce improvements and new features incrementally.

When I started work at TGN, a similar process appears to have been in process with the Ancestry.com site. Parts of the site were implemented in the same old technology as the MyFamily.com 1.0 site (internally called Warp). Parts of the site had apparently been rewritten in Microsoft ASP technology and plans were already underway to eventually move to ASP .NET.

Over several years the parts of Ancestry.com on Warp have been upgraded to the latest technology transparently to users. This has made it possible to improve the Ancestry.com website while the MyFamily.com 1.0 website has sat largely static.

The jump from MyFamily.com 1.0 to 2.0 is too gigantic, leading many 1.0 users unlikely to make the leap. Meanwhile, the inability to make changes to the 1.0 code-base has left MyFamily.com unable to compete effectively against other social networking websites.

As I say, I don't know the plans behind MyFamily.com. But in my opinion, they should start the incremental rewrite and upgrade of the 1.0 site. When they get it far enough, they may still be able to salvage much of their investment in 2.0 by applying it to the incrementally rewritten 1.0 site.

Baby steps. Baby steps.

PAF, NFS and the Princess Bride

[With apologies to Rob R.]

Princess Peanut Buttercup had a dream of writing a new story, uniting all the families in the kingdom.

"Inconceivable," responded Vicinity.

"As you wish," responded Gentley. You see, Gentley believed in Princess Peanut Buttercup's dream of the New Family Story.

 

..........."Wait a minute," the little boy said. "This isn't a genealogy story, is it? Old, dead people are boring."

"Who's telling this story?" complained Grandpa Columbo. "I told you this was an exciting, action story with giants and duals. Now, may I go on?"............

 

"As you wish" was all Gentley ever said to the princess. And while he was starry-eyed in love with her, Gentley genuinely believed in Princess Peanut Buttercup's dream of the New Family Story. He set out to visit all the families of the kingdom. He roamed far and wide, across the Sea of Shrieking Eels and over the Cliffs of Insanity. One day he was confronted by an opera singer.

"Hello. My name is Iggy Mon Toyota. You knew my father. Prepare to write." He drew his pencil and the two began furiously writing.

"You're amazing," Mon Toyota said, "But there's something I have to tell you. I'm not left-handed."

"I'm not left handed either!" responded Gentley. "For crying out loud! Why are we using our left hands?!" They switched to their right hands and quickly finished the story of Mon Toyota's father. Gentley knew he had found a friend and companion to help write the New Family Story.

 

Five long years passed. Buttercup and Gentley stood on the crest of a hill, overlooking the kingdom.

"Let the roll-out of New Family Story begin," announced Princess Peanut Buttercup, giving Gentley a strong hit on the back. Slipping, Gentley began rolling down the tall, steep hill.

"As you wish," hollered Gentley, his voice disappearing into the ravine.

"Oh, my Gentley!" Buttercup shouted. Then she joined Gentley in the New Family Story roll-out.

 

"Combining the stories of all the families of the kingdom!? Inconceivable!" Vicinity announced confidently.

"You're only saying that," Gentley responded, "because no one has ever done it before."

"You'll never succeed," continued Vicinity. "You'll perish in the fire swamp."

"Nonsense. We had too many plot points and had to eliminate the fire swamp."

"No fire swamp?! Inconceivable! What about I.O.U.S.'s?" asked Vicinity.

"Individuals of Unusual Size? I don't think they really exist." Gentley had no sooner spoken when Physique the Giant blocked their path.

"I AM HERE! SOON YOU WILL NOT BE HERE! I TAKE NO PWISONOSE!"

 

News of the suspension of the roll-out soon reached the far corners of the kingdom. Something would have to be done about the I.O.U.S.'s before rolling out to the Wasatch Front.

"With Personal Account Facility we could defeat the I.O.U.S.'s!" announced Mon Toyota.

"What? The predecessor to New Family Story?" replied Gentley. "Maybe if you had a wheelbarrow, that would be something. But isn't Personal Account Facility dead?"

"It just so happens that Personal Account Facility is only MOSTLY dead," said Miracle Max Clarke. "There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do... Go through his pockets and look for GEDCOMs."

 

Soon Personal Account Facility was alive again and kicking. Physique and the other I.O.U.S.'s were resting well and dreaming of large women. New Family Story was rolling out to the rest of the kingdom.

"Gentley, we did it!" Buttercup yelled as she threw her arms around her beloved Gentley.

"As you wished," Gentley replied, returning her embrace and sealing it with a kiss.

 

THE END

 

........... "Grandpa," the little boy said, "maybe you could come over again tomorrow night and tell me our family story."

"As you wish," answered the Grandpa.

April Fools Followup

I've heard that some of you were never able to see your search results in yesterday's 1890 Census Recovered article, perhaps deciding that that was an April Fools joke and giving up. If that happened to you, try clicking this link to go online and retry your search on my website. If the Search button still doesn't work, try the Search link next to it.

Reaction to the article was mixed. AnonymousFHC wrote,

You got me. It took me a couple of reading before I caught on and then I rolled on the floor with delight.

Bruce M., a college composition teacher, thought the article was "not very original or creative." (Weird! That's exactly what my college composition teachers said about my writing!)

Robert Baca, president of the New Mexico Genealogical Society (and a secondary school teacher who obviously appreciates good writing) thought he could use the article creatively.

I sent this to the New Mexico Genealogical Society Board. I can't wait to see their reaction. [I may] soon ... be ex-president of NMGS.

Award winning blogger, Randy Weaver, had rashly promised his wife he'd stop blogging when the 1890 Census was discovered intact. Oops. Sorry about that, Randy.

Now I have a little matter to confess. Everything before the heading "Complete Recovery" was true. Click on the first reference to see the National Archives Prologue article by Kellee Blake that I used as my source. The other references in my article bear the same number as those in Blake's article.

Perhaps the remainder of the article was... political positioning and not representative of my actual beliefs. I'm sorry. The 1890 Census population schedules have perished.

But I.N.S.A.N.E. and I have found the 1890 Census punch cards, which I'll post next April Fool's day!!! ;-)

1890 Census Recovered!

April 1, 2008, Provo, UT — The Ancestry Insider is pleased to announce on this special day the recovery of the Eleventh Census of the United States (1890).

The 1890 Census was previously thought to have perished by fire(1). In March 1896 the census had its first brush with fire, which destroyed many of the non-population schedules. The population schedules were reported to be in "fairly good condition." (7)

Damaged records from the 1921 fire.
Photo courtesy NARA.

On 10-January-1921, fire took another punch at the 1890 census. This time the fire destroyed 25% of the schedules and damaged another 38%, leaving about 37% undamaged. (12) The records were moved from the basement of the Commerce Building to a storage warehouse.

After 1922 history becomes sketchy regarding the disposition of the census. In 1932 it surfaced in an inventory of items proposed for destruction, which Congress authorized in February 1933. No definitive record exists concerning its destruction. While a small scribbled note purports the destruction of the 1890 census in 1934 (25), at least one report states the census was still extant at the beginning of 1935.

It was shown in 1942 that the census had at least partially survived when some Illinois schedules were discovered during a Census Bureau move. (26) Further portions were discovered in 1953 (M407).

Complete Recovery

Exactly 20 years ago, on 1-April-1988, the National Archives Ruined Census Schedule Transfer Imaging Company (NARCISTIC) was founded with the express goal of tracking down the remaining portions of the 1890 Census. The company had just about given up all hopes of accomplishing its goal when it discovered a little known branch of the Department of the Interior. Curators at the Institutional National Secret Archives for the Non-Existent obtained special permission for NARCISTIC researchers to search its extensive Spanish-American war collection. About this time last year NARCISTIC researchers discovered mislabeled boxes containing the 1890 Census population schedules, but INSANE External Secrecy Policy prevented announcement of the momentous discovery.

For the last year INSANE personnel have digitized and indexed these priceless records. The Ancestry Insider's familiarity with E.S.P. led to his discovery of the project. While E.S.P. prevents direct disclosure by INSANE staff members, it does not prevent the Insider from accessing INSANE websites, allowing the general public to search the complete 1890 Census for the first time!

Search the 1890 Census

To search the 1890 census, enter a name below and click Search.

    Search

(1890 U.S. Federal Census Courtesy INSANE. All Rights Reserved. Copyright April 1, 2008.)

Cyndi's List Highlights Free Stuff

Cyndi Howell announced this week the creation of a new category in Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet, "Free Stuff." The new category can be found at www.cyndislist.com/freestuff.htm. Links in the category are divided into these groups:

General Resource Sites

Charts & Forms to Print or Download

Databases

Getting Started

Software

Translation Tools

Trial Subscriptions

 

There are just under 120 links in the general resource and charts groups. Many of these are census transcription forms. About 70 links are given to free databases. There are 17 links in the remaining groups.

Of the free databases, the introductory material explains,

Many databases online are free to search. Some are completely free. Some will return limited results and require that you subscribe for a fee in order to view the complete results or record. Some will supply you with free results, but you will have to pay to order the original source records. Some will require that you register your name and e-mail address in order to view the results. It would be cumbersome for me to list all of the free databases in this section, especially since they are already listed elsewhere on Cyndi's List under the appropriate category headings. [Here] you will find a brief highlight of some of the more popular free databases to get you started online.

You can show your support for Cyndi's List by using these links. Even though the links lead to free resources, using some of them provides financial support to Howell, who works daily maintaining this wonderful resource which she provides free to the genealogical community.

You Will Hate Ancestry's New Search, Not!

Did you learn WordPerfect and then make the grueling switch to Word? Are you a "classic" Family Tree Maker (FTM) user drowned by the undertow of the new FTM user interface? Were you one of the Ancestry users irked back in July 2006 when Ancestry split its Search form into four tabs?

If you fall into the latter category, hold on to your hats 'cause Ancestry's at it again. Although judging from his blog article, Ancestry's Search Product Manager, Kendall Hulet, has learned his lessons.

Back in 2006, subscribers woke up one day to find the old search interface gone and the new one thrust upon them. This time select subscribers asked to try out the new search interface have the ability to switch back and forth between the old and new interfaces.

And this time the change is rolling out gradually, user feedback is being solicited and the UI (user interface) is being tweaked weekly according to the feedback.

In some ways the new search interface is a return to the beloved old one that went away back in 2006. The separation into four tabs has gone away; once again one search searches all databases. The 2006 changes moved the advanced search from the main search form onto a page of its own. Advanced search has now migrated back into the main search form.

However, if you hate change, you will hate this. In many, many ways the new search interface bears little resemblance to its pre-2006 ancestor. The Search team seems to have had the same epiphany that I experienced Christmas shopping online. The excellent techniques used by online resellers to refine and narrow your gift searches can also be employed to finding ancestors.

Ancestry has also made it much easier to evaluate search results by including Hover-Previews, photograph thumbnails and newspaper image snippets.

My initial experiences with the new Search?

Being the suspicious type, any search that resulted in zero results was suspect. I spent a lot of time switching back to the old interface and re-trying failed searches, each time finding that the old search couldn't find any results either.

I wouldn't be long in the old interface before I longed for features of the new. I always found myself switching back to the new search UI.

Ancestry still gives lots of ridiculous results. I wish Ancestry would allow use of date and geographic filters in record searches as they do in the new card catalog. That would go a long way in clearing out the flotsam.

Searching databases with OCR indexes still stinks and search is still matching on initials. This makes it impossible to find newspaper articles about people with given names starting with A or I. But the image snippets make it possible to avoid most of these rat holes. Too bad they don't have them for family and local history books also.

Al-in-all, I think Ancestry has a winner on its hands. To see for yourself, click here to see screen shots and a detailed description of the new Search UI.

Two Ancestry Presidents Contrasted

The two keynote speeches at this year's BYU Computerized Family History Conference gave attendees the unique opportunity of seeing two of Ancestry.com's CEOs side by side. Paul Allen was Ancestry's first CEO and Tim Sullivan is the current CEO of Ancestry's parent company, the Generations Network (TGN).

Paul Allen

Paul Allen began by pointing out the fallacy that genealogy is second only to pornography in Internet usage. "We’re lucky if genealogy is in the top 50," said Allen. "We haven’t even scratched the surface of getting more people involved."

Allen presented an interesting retrospective on his history, the establishment of Ancestry.com, and what he has done since, including current projects, WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com. (For a similar recitation, watch Allen's Entrepreneur Lecture last fall at BYU.) Until just recently Ancestry and FamilySearch were the only organizations investing in this market. World Vital Records recently hit 1 billion names online and have another billion in the pipeline. "I'm happy to be back," said Allen.

"FamilySearch Indexing is the most positive disruption in the genealogy industry," said Allen. While he went on to explain that disruption was something that provided increased value at decreased cost, no doubt Allen is well versed in Harvard Business School's Clayton M. Christensen and his ideas around disruptive technologies.

Allen mentioned four problems that need to be addressed to allow genealogy to be more widely adopted. Genealogy is too expensive. It takes too much time to do. It needs to be easier. And it’s not fun enough for young people.

"Social networking is the biggest key to extending the reach of genealogy beyond those currently doing it," Allen said. "Let's share really cool stories and pictures." We can get millions more interested in family history.

Tim Sullivan

Very few people attended Tim Sullivan's key note, but those that did were treated to an unprecedented look inside the Generations Network (TGN), according to session host, Kory Meyerink.

"How do commercial players advance genealogy?" asked Sullivan rhetorically. "Very simply; by spending lots of money." Sullivan said TGN invests over $100 million a year providing services and growing the number of people involved in genealogy.

Commercial players help get original records digitized and online according to Sullivan. At current rates, it will take over 2,000 years to digitize all of NARA's holdings. (The New York Times) Records throughout the world are perishing. In the past 10 years TGN has spent, not counting indirect costs, almost $70 million acquiring, imaging and indexing content and continues to spend over $10 million annually.

Sullivan said that TGN will spend over $40 million in 2008 around the world trying to get more people involved in genealogy. More people not only means more revenues for commercial companies, it means more collaboration, more user-uploaded content and more indexing volunteers.

Anticipating the question, Sullivan pledged to keep RootsWeb free despite inclusion of ancestry.com in RootsWeb's domain name.

Asked about full availability of Ancestry in Family History Centers (FHCs), Sullivan noted availability in the regional FHCs and acknowledged ongoing discussions. "I hope we can get it available again."

"We think what FamilySearch has done is fantastic," Sullivan said in response to a question about his company's recent volunteer indexing announcement. He didn't add any details beyond those in the short announcement.

Computerized Family History and Genealogy Conference

[While I'm not a fan of train-of-thought writing, you may never hear about my attendance at this conference if I don't take a shallow dip into it.]

I’m here at the conference. I’ve got laptop power but no Internet. I’ve got syllabus, but no CD. Maybe that was an extra cost item. They’ve announced they have 700 attendees. I’m seeing lots of familiar faces, but as usual I can’t remember who they are. Well, Alan Mann I know. Alan is Manager of Information Services at the Family History Library.

They tell me I can exchange by printed syllabus for a CD! Paul Allen is the keynote speaker this morning and Tim Sullivan is this evening. I'll try and post on their presentations later.

Well, it’s lunch time. Renee Zamora was good enough to watch my laptop for me while I ran out and grabbed a bite to eat. (Thank you, Renee.) She, along with the other smart people, had brought a lunch. With the Morris Center gone (along with most of Deseret Towers—I used to live in V-422) the line at the creamery was humongous.

The New FamilySearch track was held in the basement auditorium of the Bean Museum, which probably seats less than 220. I suppose they put the NFS track there because they feared no one would bother to cross the parking lot for any track of lesser interest. But last fall they filled the 500 seat conference center auditorium for some NFS classes. Many were turned away from Jim Greene’s class this morning. The room had no wireless Internet for attendees nor wired access for presenters.

Gordon Clarke acknowledged my post on PAF's mostly dead status and asked that I quote him as saying, "I kind of see new life as being breathed into PAF. I don’t think PAF is dying, I think it is getting a second life." Clarke, consider yourself quoted. I'll explain more in a later article. I think the headline will be, "FamilySearch's Gordon Clarke announces the resurrection." (Teasing genes run deep in my family.)

P.S. If you subscribe to my column via FeedReader, you may not have received the two articles I posted Wednesday. If not, you may wish to read

• PAF is only mostly-dead and
• Richard Turley steps down as head of FamilySearch.

RootsWeb moved onto Ancestry.com

Tim Sullivan, CEO of the Generations Network today posted the following notice on the RootsWeb blog:

As you know, The Generations Network has hosted and funded the RootsWeb online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb as the world’s oldest and largest free genealogy website. TGN remains committed to this mission and believes that RootsWeb is an absolutely invaluable and complementary resource to Ancestry.com, our flagship commercial family history site. We believe in both services and want to see both communities prosper and grow.

As part of this goal, we have decided to “transplant” RootsWeb onto the Ancestry.com domain beginning next week. This move will not change the RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within RootsWeb. RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be different is that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from www.rootsweb.com to www.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Again, the RootsWeb experience is not changing.

The decision to host RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is being made for one primary reason: we believe that the users of each of our two main websites can be better served if they have access to the best services available on both. Simply stated, we want to introduce more Ancestry.com users to RootsWeb and vice versa.

Today, despite the fact that Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com are the two most frequently visited family history sites on the Web, only 25 percent of visitors to Ancestry.com visited RootsWeb in January 2008, while only 20 percent of visitors to RootsWeb visited Ancestry.com (according to Comscore Media Metrix). We think we will serve our users best by doing a better job of letting them know what is available on both Ancestry.com and RootsWeb. Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is the first step towards making this happen, but we will absolutely look for more and better ways down the road to advance this goal.

Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com will also make it easier for us to make changes and improvements to the RootsWeb experience in the future.

All old RootsWeb URLs will continue to work, whether they are bookmarks or favorites, links to or from a hosted page or URLs manually typed in your Internet browser. We will have a redirect in place so that all old URLs will automatically end up on the appropriate new RootsWeb URL. You will never need to update your old favorites or links unless you want to. We have worked to make the transition as seamless as possible for our users, and this change should have a minimal impact on your experience with the site.

RootsWeb will remain a free online experience dedicated to providing you with a place where our community can find their roots together. If you have questions regarding this change please email them to feedback@rootsweb.com.

Thanks,

Tim Sullivan
CEO
The Generations Network, Inc.

Richard Turley steps down as head of FamilySearch

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church) announced today the appointment of Richard E. Turley, Jr. as assistant Church Historian and Recorder. Turley has been serving as managing director of the Church's Family and Church History Department and the president of the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU). The Church's family history organizations are collectively known as FamilySearch.

Turley is a noted historian and author who has tackled controversial subjects such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre and Mark Hoffman's fraudulent Church history documents.

Turley will serve as assistant to Church Historian Marlin K. Jensen. The positions of church historian and assistant are ecclesiastical positions while managing directors are staff positions. Staff positions are subordinate to ecclesiastical positions. Through much of history, the church historian has also been a member of one of the Church's ruling ecclesiastical councils. Jensen continues this trend, serving in the Church's First Quorum of the Seventy.

No word was made about Turley's replacement.

PAF is only mostly-dead

Gordon Clarke read an official statement at the FamilySearch Developers Conference today announcing future migration paths available to users of the venerable PAF genealogy software. Once New FamilySearch (NFS) is fully available, PAF users will have several migration options available. Users can perform a one-time transfer of their data to NFS, which like PAF, will be free. Or users can purchase a commercial genealogy program, many of which are currently developing support for NFS. Also at the conference, it was announced that a group of developers has created an extension to the PAF database file format allowing continued use of PAF files with the new capabilities of NFS. Commercial programs equipped with this extension will be able to support existing PAF files while simultaneously providing the advantages and new features of NFS.

The announcement is essentially an end-of-life announcement for PAF and puts to rest rumors that PAF was dead already as well as rumors that FamilySearch would make one more release of PAF with New FamilySearch support.

The first annual FamilySearch Developers Conference continues today through 5:30pm at Brigham Young University (BYU). Tomorrow BYU hosts the Family History Technology Workshop followed by the Computerized Family History and Genealogy Conference on Friday and Saturday.

And now, the story can NOT be told...

You're tired of me whining about the pitfalls of employee blogging, I know. If it gets too thick for you, just skip this article.

I won't break my employment agreement. It prevents disclosure of company trade-secrets and proprietary information. But is it a gray area when publicly available information comes to me through proprietary means? For example, several months ago Ancestry started selling DNA test kits to the general public though the website indicated DNA-Ancestry was still in beta. I was one of the lucky employees invited to participate in the test for free.

Several participants outside the company wrote about their experience. I had a very positive experience and wished to write about it also. Ancestry had yet to announce their entry into the DNA space, so it was hot news.

I felt I could write about the experience, regardless of my employment status, had I gone to the website while at home on my own computer, on my own time and on my own dime. That would place me on equal footing with outside participants.

But my participation was entirely connected to my employment. I felt like I had to get a release before I could benefit Ancestry with my glowing review. Our PR director had no previous employee blogging policy to work from. He ultimately decided to treat me as any other outside writer. And he reminded me of my obligations to the company. Ironically, in that situation his decision left me at a disadvantage compared to outside writers.

I never have purchased a DNA Ancestry Test Kit. And I've never been comp'ed a reviewer's copy. So to this day, that glowing review has never been published. My revenge is thinking that some days my blog outperforms Ancestry's. He, he, he.

Where are the results of indexing projects?

Insider,

I have a question that perhaps you can answer, and forgive me if you already have somewhere, or if the information is on the FamilySearch website and I have missed it.

My question is whether the results of already completed indexing projects are now in some way accessible through the IGI or the general FamilySearch search form. They do not seem to be. As this is a database question, and not one relating to software, it would not seem to be a feature of New FamilySearch, unless part of that is access to an expanded database(s).

Thanks, Mike

Dear Mike,

You ask a good question. Until the design of New FamilySearch is extended to include Record Search, the results of previous indexing projects is available temporarily at labs.familysearch.org. Click on Records Search and then on Register to use Record Search. If setting up accounts is still a manual process (see this post) then it may take a business day or two before your account becomes active.

Some indexed databases have associated images (like the censuses you helped index) and some do not (like the Social Security Death Index). The currently available indexed databases are:

• Census and Lists
• 1850 United States Census (Mortality Schedule) *
• 1850 United States Census *
• 1850 United States Census (Slave Schedule) *
• 1880 United States Census
• 1895 Argentina Census
• 1900 United States Census
• Court and Legal Records
• Freedman Bank Records 1865-1874
• England, Cheshire, Register of Electors 1842-1900
• Migration
• New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island) 1892-1924
• Vital Records
• Freedmen's Bureau Virginia Marriages ca. 1815-1866
• Cheshire, Church of England Christening Records 1538-1907 *
• Cheshire, Church of England Marriage Records 1538-1907 *
• Cheshire, Church of England Burial Records 1538-1907 *
• Georgia Deaths 1914-1927
• Ontario Deaths 1869-1947
• Ohio Deaths 1908-1953
• Utah Death Certificates 1904-1956
• Texas Death Index 1964-1998
• U.S. Social Security Death Index *

Other records have been photographed (digitized) and the images placed online. These collections have been divided into small groups of images that can be browsed to find desired records (speaking in the genealogical sense, not the database sense).

• Census and Lists
• 1850 United States Census (Mortality Schedule) *
• 1850 United States Census *
• 1850 United States Census (Slave Schedule) *
• 1900 United States Census
• 1905 Wisconsin State Census
• 1930 Mexico Census
• Court and Legal Records
• Maryland, Cecil County Probate Estate Files 1851-1940
• Land and Property
• Vermont Land Records, Early to 1900
• Military
• United States, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942
• Vital Records
• Germany, Brandenburg and Posen, Civil Transcripts of Parish Registers, 1800-1874 *
• England, Diocese of Durham Bishops' Transcripts ca. 1700-1900
• Czech Republic, Litomerice Regional Archive Church Books 1552-1905 *
• France, Coutances Catholic Diocese 1802-1907 *
• Illinois, Diocese of Belleville, Catholic Parish Records 1729-1956 *
• Virginia, Fluvanna County Colbert Funeral Home Records 1929-1976

* Databases with a star have been updated in the last 30 days.

Collections (databases) may not be complete. Click on the name of the collection. The description page indicates incomplete ("early access") collections. For example, currently 98% of the 1900 United States Census index is available. All that is lacking are the Armed Forces and the Indian Territory indexes.

So, Mike, dive in and enjoy the fruits of your labors. You indexed my ancestors and I indexed yours. We are both richer for our efforts.

Sincerely,

The Ancestry Insider

I Felt Two Hands

This is another in the Ancestry Insider's series called Serendipity in Genealogy.

Hildo Rosillo Flores of Piura, Peru started his family history with just a four-generation pedigree chart. He started in the usual way, interviewing his parents and relatives.

"To find the death dates of my maternal great-grandparents, I traveled to the town of Zorritos, in northern Peru, where they had been buried," says Flores.

This Pisco, Peru Cemetery illustrates a
mixture of older, below-ground burials
and the above-ground vaults  used for
new interments. Image © Alex Seeley.

The cemetery, on the outskirts of town, primarily contained vaulted compartments. After an initial search, Flores was not able to locate his great-grandparents vault, so he went into town to confer with a cousin. She assured him they were interred in that cemetery, so he returned determined to find their final resting place.

"I returned to the cemetery and began a methodical search, walking down every vault aisle and reading every inscription." Still, nothing. He knelt and prayed, then repeated his thorough search pattern. For a third time, he was unable to find them and now it was getting late. He would have to leave without finding them. He turned toward the front gate, ready to leave the cemetery when something wondrous happened.

"Just as I took my first step, I felt two hands take hold of my head from behind and turn it towards a certain spot. My eyes rested on a small, dirty headstone that was level with the ground. I looked behind me to see who had grabbed my head, but no one was there. I walked to the headstone, lay on the ground, and cleaned off the inscription."

Isidro Garcia Rosillo, died August 1, 1934.
Francisca Espinoza Berrú, died January 31, 1954.

To his amazement, it was the very marker Flores was searching for!

Adapted from "Who Turned My Head?" Hildo Rosillo Flores, Ensign, October-2007, p. 72.

New FamilySearch Delayed

The possible rollout delay for New FamilySearch (NFS) that I reported last time has materialized into a major shutdown of the rollout.

On February 21st, Judy Thomasson of the Melbourne, Australia district reported receiving this e-mail:

The new FamilySearch has been implemented in several temple districts. At this point, there are a few issues that need to be resolved before adding more temple districts onto the system. As a result, the implementation date for your temple district has been postponed. You will be notified as soon as a new implementation date is determined.

We apologize for this delay and encourage you to continue your preparations to use the new FamilySearch when it becomes available. (Source)

While no reason has been announced, one rumor has it that the problem lies not with the website portion of NFS but with the software that runs inside each temple. However, there have been no reports of temples already active with NFS needing to take precautionary actions or supplemental procedure.

Others speculate that the 700 server NFS system in Ashburn, Virginia has already hit its limits and needs to be expanded before additional users are added. Several users have complained that performance of the website has gradually declined until using the system has become painful.

It is entirely possible that various anomalies seen in several districts earlier this month can be attributed to the rollout freeze. Consultants in Colorado found they can get on NFS, despite not receiving any announcement. The rollout of the Washington, D.C. temple was announced to the staff, but not members of the district. The Hague, Amsterdam received the rollout DVD media, but nothing else.

Coincident with the freeze, the expected release of NFS version 0.92 did not happen on 15-February. Perhaps the release was always planned for the end of the month. Or perhaps the two delays are connected.

Regardless of the reason for the delay, it is expected to last for at least four weeks. Stay tuned.

NFS Rollout News for Presidents' Day

I wish I had some cute tie-in between the New FamilySearch (NFS) rollout news and Presidents' Day, but I don't. In fact, it isn't even Presidents' Day. Not even Presidents' Day weekend. So if my headline built you up too much, my apologies. On with the news...

I've been keeping the tables in my article, Temple Districts Using New FamilySearch updated. You can usually check there anytime for what is currently known about the release schedule. But after 2 weeks, as you can see I've finally updated my rollout map.

• Since my last map update NFS has been deployed in 8 temple districts! Both Arizona temples, the Oakland temple (which leaves just 2 California temples), Boston and Detroit temples, the 2 Hawaii temples and Asunción Paraguay.
• I've added lots of European temples to the table of districts in transition: Frankfurt, Freiberg, Helsinki, London, Stockholm and Swiss. Stateside I've added Chicago. I don't know the official announcement dates for most of these. Do you? How long were they told the transition would take? Are they still being told 4 months?
• I've added a release date for Dallas, and approximate dates for the Australia temples.

I've not heard any more about Washington, D.C. and Denver. Has anyone in those districts been informed that they are being transitioned?

The Great November Announcement

Do you remember the Great Announcement of 8-November-2007? Nearly 2 dozen temple districts were announced nearly simultaneously. (See this post followed by this one.) Since that time, FamilySearch has been working their way through these districts.

At this point, only a few remain. Las Vegas and Redlands California are scheduled for next Tuesday, the Australian temples for March and Dallas for 11-March-2008.

That leaves Bismarck. Has anyone heard when Bismarck will be going live?

Other districts I think will be going live soon are Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, Houston and maybe Newport Beach.

Other FamilySearch News

• NFS 0.92 is scheduled to go live this month. The beta was released 25-January and has already ended. This is a regularly scheduled quarterly update. These will continue until, well, until the work is declared finished. The head engineer over NFS has said that by two years from now the program will have a completely different look than it has today.  (Source)
• Rollout to all temple districts is expected by the end of 2008. The Wasatch Front will be last.
• Someone has said that an issue has arisen that will delay the stated rollout. If the rumor is true, poor Las Vegas won't get New FamilySearch next week as planned. (Source)
• One of the most looked for features in NFS 0.92 is on the Summary view. When a data field has a drop-down menu arrow you can select the data that you believe is most correct without adding a redundant opinion.
• Other improvements in NFS 0.92 clearly separate deleting and disputing information, easily allow navigation through more than 10 combined records, indication of disputed data on the Combined Records view, clarified format display of possible duplicates, a warning on the Contribute GEDCOM page about duplication of data and improved name part identification when adding or editing names. (See beta notes.)
• FamilySearch Labs would like to get feedback from the general public on their new Family Tree design. Previously, only those with New FamilySearch accounts could use and provide feedback on Family Tree. See Dan Lawyer's post for more information.
• The latest test of the FamilySearch Wiki is up. It can be accessed at https://wiki.familysearch.org. This version uses MediaWiki which was developed for Wikipedia.
• As more and more Family History Consultants along the Wasatch Front are able to get New FamilySearch accounts, FamilySearch has provided the ability to print ordinance cards. Take your FOR to the Salt Lake Family History Library.

Google Views Ancestry & FamilySearch Streets

Google announced today that Salt Lake City along with 8 other areas has been added to Google Map's Street View, which displays street level photographs of supported cities. While Salt Lake City is mentioned in particular, coverage extends up and down the Wasatch front, including offices of both Ancestry and FamilySearch. The blue area in the map below shows where Street View is supported.

Blue shows Street View coverage along the Wasatch Front

The offices of both Ancestry and FamilySearch are included in Street Views. Here is a view of The Generations Network (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com. You can see the sign out front with the company name. Zoom in to get a better view... Wait a minute. When I zoom in, the "Generations Network" logo is replaced with "Google." What does that mean? You can click the arrows going North to see the seedy side of Ancestry.

Google's name over the top of TGN logo

Click this link to see the offices of FamilySearch and parent, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I believe FamilySearch has some offices in the Joseph Smith Memorial building (the white building on the left with the small dome—a beehive—on the left) and some offices in the Church Office Building (the tower on the right). In between you can see the Salt Lake Temple. Try moving completely around this block. See if you can find the Family History Library. It is directly West of your starting point.

Privacy concerns follow Google Street View where ever it shows up. One TGN employee found photos of his wife and child in front of their house. When Google launched Street View last year an editorial in the Salt Lake City Deseret News said,

George Orwell got a lot of things right about the future in his novel "1984." The thing he missed, however, is that wholesale intrusions today come from [the Internet], not his fictional government-imposed "big brother."

Should you come across a photo that you believe invades your privacy or is otherwise inappropriate, click the "Street View Help" link above the image and in the resulting popup window, click the "Report inappropriate image" link at the bottom.

The Google Car

Car with camera,
© All rights reserved

Perhaps you saw Google's specially equipped vehicles driving around taking these pictures. An alert iPhone owner snapped the shot to the right as the car approached Salt Lake back in September 2007. Click on the thumbnail to the right, as well as this gallery of Google Cars and this link.

Here are some more views from our neighborhood for you to explore:

• A southern view of TGN.
• Slightly different closeup of the TGN sign.
• The "seedy field" behind TGN.
• This view shows the Salt Lake Temple on the left and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB) on the right. A statue of Brigham Young stands between them.
• Try moving a little South; the view looks like this.
• Or go East in front of the JSMB to see the chandeliers through the windows.
• The JSMB used to be the Hotel Utah, so it has a grand exterior.
• The Family History Library. Let me know if you are one of the people or know one of the people standing out front.
• An interesting juxtaposition of horse-drawn carriage and limousine in front of the Church Office Building. See how close you can get to the limousine.
• Mt. Timpanogos from the Squaw Peak road. You can almost spit on our offices at TGN from this spot.
• Further down the road you can see Mt. "Timp" on the right and Utah Lake on the left.
• Bridal Veil Falls, up Provo Canyon, is much prettier than this photograph can show.
• Entrance to Robert Redford's Sundance Resort. Drive past the couple on the road and take a look at the lady's hiking shoes. Continue up the road and look off to the left to see the buildings and parking lot of the resort with Mt. Timpanogos towering above. Google missed the gorgeous fall colors along this road by just a couple weeks.
• Here are some hikers googling at the odd, camera-bearing vehicle. At least they have sensible shoes.
• In the early '60s our station wagon bearly made it pulling our trailer to Timp Lodge for a family reunion. Grandpa wore a wig and played the fiddle. I hoped I was adopted.
• At the trail head to Stewart Falls, the Google driver stops to google a young hiker paying her forest service use fee. She's not really going to hike to the falls in those sandals, is she?
• A multi-car accident in Phoenix.
• Move past this fender bender to see behind the car.
• Here is where one of my ancestors lived in 1850. (BTW, if you know who I am, please keep it to yourself. There are those who have and are determining my identity through the various clues dropped over time. Send me an email to my non-Ancestry Insider email address explaining how you determined my identity and I'm happy to confirm your deduction. Asking an employee of Ancestry or FamilySearch is cheating, since I've been open with these two organizations. Once you've determined my identity, please do not disclose it to others!)

Paula Stuart-Warren explored the genealogical uses of Google Street View in a recent article on Ancestry's 24/7 Family History Circle.

Myra Vanderpool Gormley

This is one in a series of encyclopedia articles describing people, products and companies in the genealogy industry. When you hear a noted genealogist's name, do you find yourself thinking, "I know I know that name," but you can't quite get the ol' noggin to access the data? I'm right there with you! For that reason, these articles are.

Myra served as the editor of the RootsWeb Review from its inception in 1998 until her retirement at the beginning of 2007. See a biography here.

Myra began doing genealogy as an eleven year old, when she went to the local library and did research that disproved a family legend about Jesse James. But it wasn’t until she was in her thirties that she began consistently researching. After experiencing a measure of success doing her own genealogy, Myra proposed writing a column on genealogy to the local newspaper editor. It took several years for Myra to convince him that genealogy had a wide appeal, but from the moment her column, “Shaking the Family Tree,” launched in July of 1983, it experienced tremendous success. Soon the column was picked up by the Los Angeles Times syndicate and passed to other newspapers and readers around the nation. Myra continued writing the column for nineteen years.

Some of Myra’s other accomplishments as a genealogist include spending nine years writing a column and answering genealogy questions for Prodigy, an early Internet Service Provider, publishing numerous magazine articles and three books on family history, and helping to found the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors. (Source)

Her website is here, which includes her email address.

From the archives of Genealogical Computing, vol. 22, no. 2, Oct/Nov/Dec 2002.

Buick Heritage Sweepstakes

To commemorate African American History Month and in conjunction with the release of African American Lives 2, Buick and Ancestry.com have teamed up to offer you the Buick Heritage Sweepstakes.

Ten lucky winners will receive a complete Ancestry DNA Test Kit. One thousand lucky winners will receive a Family History Kit consisting of Family Tree Maker Essentials software, a DVD of African American Lives and a hardcover copy of In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past.

To enter, go to the African American Lives 2 (AAL2) website. While there, the 7 minute promo for tonight's premier is a must watch. It looks like Dr. Gates has done his usual superb job. After watching the preview, click on the Buick logo at the bottom of the page.

Or, if you see the ad to the right anywhere on the Internet, click on it.

When you get to the Buick Heritage Sweepstakes website, take a moment to view one or more of the videos. They are all quite short and you have the time. The contest doesn't end until the end of March.

NFS Rollout News for Super Tuesday

The 24 US states holding presidential primaries may not be the only thing making today super. If Mesa, Oakland and Snowflake successfully go live with New FamilySearch (NFS) today, 21 temples will be using the new program.

I've made the following updates to the map, above, and to the tables at Temple Districts Using New FamilySearch.

• Four temples have gone live since the last map update: Los Angeles, Colonia Juárez, Guadalajara and Columbus Ohio.
• Denver is shown half red/half yellow. Consultants are able to register despite the lack of an e-mail announcement.
• The Washington, D.C. temple staff have been informed that the announcement for their district has been made, although no one in the district has received the e-mail as yet. I wonder if the e-mails were delayed so they would not be a distraction from Gordon B. Hinckley's funeral services last Saturday.
• I've added red dots for the Utah temples. I'm guessing that the outliers in Utah will get New FamilySearch before the heavy-volume Wasatch Front temples.
• I've added a red dot over the top of the Rexburg temple which will be operational after dedicatory services starting Saturday.
• I've added lots of international temples to the tables: Adelaide, Asuncion, Brisbane, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Madrid and Preston.
• I've added a target date of 26-Feb-2008 for Las Vegas and Redlands, CA.

Unbelievable Name Count Claims

What are we to understand by genealogy vendors name count claims? When WorldVitalRecords.com claims "872,278,874 Names in 5,389 Databases," aren't we led to believe these are counts of people names? But WorldVitalRecords.com claims 337,484 names in Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World, 1895. This is a gazetteer! Yeah, yeah; many places are named after people. But the database information notes there are only 125,000 place names on 2,895 pages. The claim of 337,484 names amounts to, on average, 2.7 names per place and 117 names per page!

Ancestry.com claims 2,112 in Lippincott’s Gazetteer of the World, 1913. A little experimentation shows the book has grown to 2115 pages, which means Ancestry claims about 1 name per page.

I picked a page from the 1913 edition at random to examine. Page 1000 is about half-way through the book. (Click on the adjacent image to see it yourself.) I pulled it up and started looking for names. I ignored people-place names such as Baltimore, St. Louis and Clay County. The only name I found was Albus Dumbledore. Oops, Albertus Magnus. A sample of one is hardly scientific, but I find the claim of 117 names per page in a gazetteer quite incredulous.

I don't think WorldVitalRecords.com is all alone. I know Ancestry has some isolated problems as well. I call upon genealogy vendors to provide transparency with published name counts. Consumers have a right to know when counts are exact and when they are estimates. Vendors should disclose basic definitions and methodologies. Only transparency will provide consumers the information necessary to make intelligent purchase decisions with their limited funds in an increasingly competitive market.

Why make it hard to volunteer for FamilySearch Indexing?

Why does FamilySearch make it so hard to find the FamilySearch Indexing site? Yes, yes, I know that FamilySearchIndexing.org ought to be easy enough to remember. Yet still, many patrons at my Family History Center raise a hand, confused that the FamilySearch Indexing website no longer has the links they want. I walk over and find they are on FamilySearch.org.

Do you realize there are no links to FamilySearchIndexing.org on FamilySearch.org, New.FamilySearch.org or LDS.org? At least no obvious ones. You'd think if FamilySearch wants everyone to index, they'd make it a little easier to get there.

The signup page has bigger problems. It is, literally I think, easier to do actual indexing than it is to successfully navigate the sign-up-to-volunteer page. First off, the Enter key seems to execute the "Sign On" link near the top left of the page rather than the "Continue" button at the bottom right. If you haven't signed up before (which most users haven't!), you think you have successfully submitted the form and are now being asked to sign on with your new user name and password. Wrong! Up goes the hand.

"Brother Incisor, can you help me?"

Then, almost everyone chooses a user name that has already been used, but they are not told until they fill out the entire form and submit it. They go back and try one or more times to find an available user name. By the time they do, the password they chose has been cleared, so they have to enter it again—twice...

...Only to find that they've chosen an invalid password. No one sees the password restrictions, even though they are right there in plain sight. FamilySearch needs to make the password instructions more visually prominent.

It would be pretty trivial to check the validity of the password as soon as the user moved to the next field. Don't wait until they submit the form. While you're at it, FamilySearch, it would only be a little more difficult to add some AJAX script to check the user name as well.

How about it, FamilySearch?