Saturday, July 08, 2006

Genealogy Web sites expand research tools

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,
© July 3, 2006

At the same time, a new genealogy search tool from MyHeritage Ltd., a free service based in Israel, is allowing consumers to search across hundreds of genealogy databases at once. These databases include such information as lists of passengers kept by ships transporting immigrants, war casualty records and photo archives. . . .

Eventually, for an extra fee, consumers will likely be able to run a worldwide genealogy search covering all members of their family tree and receive updates when there are new search results for entries in their network, says Gilad Japhet, the company’s founder. . . .

plummeting digital storage costs are enabling companies to put more sources directly online. Ancestry.com’s massive batch of census records is housed in a 3,400-square-foot data center in Utah that contains 3,400 servers. Such an investment was possible only because such digital storage costs have been continuing to fall, said Tim Sullivan, Ancestry.com’s chief executive. . . .

Cameras that take higher-resolution pictures and that can automatically correct for blemishes such as watermarks mean that FamilySearch.org can do “in minutes what used to take hours and days,” said the organization’s chief marketing officer Steve Anderson. New technologies that can recognize the type of document being scanned and highlight various fields for indexing are helping, too. . . .

The preservation efforts are part of a massive global effort to digitize a variety of content for safekeeping and easy searching, such as Google Inc.’s effort to scan libraries of books. Online genealogy companies say that last year’s devastating hurricane season, which destroyed several archives in the South, also has increased demand for partnership programs in which they digitize local archives in exchange for being able to offer the sources to the public through their sites. . .

. . . 24 percent of Internet users researched their family history or genealogy online.

just some snippets read the whole article here http://www.hamptonroads.com/

Thursday, July 06, 2006

about surnames

One way to check the origin/distribution of a surname is to do a search at
WorldConnect:

http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi

Enter the surname and check the "Omit Blanks" box for birthplace, then peruse
the results. Or enter the surname and the county of interest as birthplace.

says Diana Gale Matthiesen on the DANISH-SURNAMES Mailing List

Learn Helpful Information and Interesting Facts about Your Surname & More on ancestry dot com

What country did most people with your surname come from?
What does your name mean?
Learn answers to these questions and many more.
Learn tips to help with your research.
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/default.aspx

Sunday, July 02, 2006

help with genealogy on line


As well as watching Le Tour de France and Formula 1 in USA on TV

I made a new web page today :-
Ancestry and Rootsweb with Hugh Watkins
this will be the start of a major new site - a virtual book on line about Family History online

and next I have some new pictures for
SNAPS TWO