Keep the recording on your phone or computer. You also can upload it to the Record Their Stories website and order a professionally mixed version of the recording, complete with music and sound effects.

You can get the Record Their Stories iPhone app for 99 cents from the iTunes app store. Learn more at the Record Their Stories website.

Get more help preparing for oral history conversations (learn everything from what to ask to what you should bring) with expert articles on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.

The January 2012 Family Tree Magazine has Lisa Louise Cooke's roundup of favorite apps for family history researchers.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011 12:54:07 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

This new social networking tool has taken the genealogy world by storm, and we won’t let you be left out if we can help it. Our next webinar, Genealogist's Guide to Google+, will show you how to use Google+. Your registration for the live event even includes 30 days of one-on-one tech support from instructor Kerry Scott.

You’ll learn how to get started, set up your “circles,” and take advantage of the genealogical possibilities on Google+. Here’s a sampling of tips Kerry will share:

• Fill out your profile and upload a picture before you start adding friends. If you don't, people may mistake you for a spammer.

• Most genealogists will add you to their circles even if you're a complete stranger … but only if your profile indicates that you're into family history.

• You can have people in multiple circles. Is Aunt Millie into genealogy? Add her to your Family and Genealogy circles, so she sees the cute kid pictures and the big research breakthrough you had at the library last weekend.

• If you're posting something to a specific circle to keep it from being public, make sure you use the "lock this post" feature to prevent others from sharing it. Otherwise, one of your carefully selected circle members can share it with anyone.

The hour-long webinar takes place Tuesday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. Eastern (that’s 7 Central, 6 Mountain, 5 Pacific).

In addition to the month of tech support, attendees will get access to the webinar recording to view again as many times as they want,plus a PDF of the presentation slides.

Learn more and register for the Genealogist's Guide to Google+ webinar at ShopFamilyTree.com (for a limited time, our Early Bird registration special saves you 20 percent!).

Thursday, October 13, 2011 9:23:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• GenDetective software, a release from RumbleSoft Inc., analyzes your genealogical data and makes research recommendations based on missing or incomplete data. You can generate reports based on a location, time period, family line or individual, and print or view them on an iPad, iPhone, PDA, Droid smart phone or tablet (Xoom), Kindle, eBook reader, net book (mini), or laptop.
  

A feature I think looks especially useful: If you’re visiting somewhere for business, vacation or genealogy, you can create a research itinerary for that locale.

• Many genealogists have family information in their genealogy software and online, and don't want to update their trees in both places. If that's you, AncestorSync could be what you need.
  

This utility, from Orem, Utah-based Real-Time Collaboration, lets you synchronize your family tree, source documents, citations and notes across all your computers and your online tree (the developers have partnerships with online tree sites FamilySearch, Geni and ourFamilyology). You can download, upload, or synchronize your tree “without anyone or anything getting lost in the process,” according to the announcement.

AncestorSync supports program formats including Ancestral Quest, Legacy Family Tree, Personal Ancestral File and RootsMagic, and will soon support The Master Genealogist and MacFamilyTree. It’ll be available in June for a $15 annual fee, and is PC- and Mac-compatible

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 9:24:54 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

Canadian author and genealogist Dave Obee recently opined on his Facebook page, “I've been hearing about the pending death of the book for several years now. One of these days, the prediction might turn out to be true.”

Obee’s comment kicked off an interesting online conversation. For many genealogists, the surge in online books can sound like a threat to the paper tome. But, as with all things, the market drives business and innovation, and the convenience and flexibility of digital books is very appealing. Here are some Tech Tips to help you dive in and reap the benefits of this growing phenomenon:

Get Started
Allison Stacy, editor of Family Tree Magazine, made this great video for getting started with Google Books.

See How Other Genealogists Use Google Books
Miriam Robbins Midkiff, author of the popular genealogy blog AnceStories: The Story of My Ancestors was featured in this video produced by Google.

Search Within a Book
After conducting your initial search and selecting a particular book, you can search within that book by simply typing specific keywords in the search box found in the column on the left side of the book’s page. This box searches only the book currently being viewed and makes quick work of finding a desired surname on individual pages of a large volume. (Find this tip in my new book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox.)

Keep Up To Date
The Inside Google Books blog is a great way to keep up to date on the latest news at Google Books. Add the RSS feed to your iGoogle page or favorite reader by simply clicking the Feedburner button found in the column on the right.

Google eBooks
Have you noticed that the Google Books homepage looks different these days? That’s because they have introduced the Google eBookstore to the offering. Here’s a terrific little video that explains the benefits of online books in a fun and simple way:

Google eBooks
Don’t skip Google eBooks just because they offer books for sale. Try this handy tip to unearth free gems:

1. Go to Google Books.
2. Click blue Go to the Google eBookstore Now button
3. Type family history in the search box and click the Search All Google eBooks button.
4. Click the Free Only link in the light blue box at the top of the page.
5. You’ll get a results list full of free books, many hard to find self-published family histories.

Look Elsewhere
When it comes to digital family history books, Google Books isn’t the only game in town Check out the Family History Archive, then watch the video below to learn more about how to use this robust resource.

I've had such a great time sharing Tech Tips with you these last 2 months. Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll join me at the free Family Tree Magazine podcast and Genealogy Gems podcast for more lively conversation about genealogy!

—Lisa Louise Cooke

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 9:12:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

After firing up the washing machine, I sat down at my desk and wondered what I would do with all those JPEG jewels. Photographs capture once-in-a-lifetime moments and treasured family memories that we certainly don’t want to forget. But assembling them in a way that can be enjoyed for years to come is not as simple as it was in the old days when we sat down to our scrapbooks and prints.

Here are three tips for assembling your precious pics in a way that will delight you and those you share them with:

Go Interactive
Genealogy Blogger Mark Tucker recently emailed me a link to one of his posts on Zoom.it, a website that allows you to create interactive displays of your favorite photos. This is really slick for high-resolution shots that you want your audience to explore more in depth.

Here’s a Zoom.it of Hinchingbrooke House just north of London. If you’re a regular listener of my Genealogy Gems podcast, then you will not only know the significance of this house to the Cooke family, but also how incredible it is that I have any photographs of this part of our trip at all! (Hear the full story in episode 106.)

To learn more about how to use Zoom.it yourself and to see a great example of how it can be used with your own family history photos, check out Mark’s post Interactive Online Family History Photos.

Create a Photo Collage
When assembling a presentation of photos, sometimes less is more. By picking out the cream of the crop, you’ll ensure that your audience will stay enthralled.

But when it comes to creating a photograph collage with ShapeCollage.com, more is better After downloading all of my photos to my hard drive, I just went to ShapeCollage.com and downloaded the free software, navigated to the folder of photos on my hard drive and added them. By selecting Text and typing "WDYTYA” my photos assembled themselves in a creative way to tell the viewer what they were all about.

Video Slideshow
Video production software can also do a nice job of showing off your pics. Here’s my collection spanning the three days of Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2011. It’s the next best thing to being there!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 8:38:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

The other day I was flipping through TV channels when I stumbled upon the reality TV show “Gold Rush Alaska.” As I got lured into watching a couple of episodes (they were running a marathon that day), it all looked very familiar:

Huge excavators were pulling up great bucketfuls of material from the ground. The huge volume of earth would then tumble its way down sifting machines, eventually run across a wave table. The ultimate goal was to sift out the gold nuggets.

Then it hit me: That’s what we do with Google!

Yes, more than once after doing a simple search I have felt like a huge bucket full of earth had been dropped on me. I would stare at the hundreds of thousands of results and wonder, “How am I ever going to sift through all this to find my genealogy gems?” (This concept goes right back to the early days when I began the Genealogy Gems Podcast in 2007. My first gem was on Google, and I have frequently featured the search powerhouse on the show ever since.)

On the show, newbie miners were struggling to figure out which specialized tools they needed to sift immense quantities of dirt and rocks down to the type of material that carries the gold -- the fine black dirt. Then they had to use another set of unique tools to sift the fine black dirt in hopes of finding gold nuggets.

So what are the right tools for the job of sifting through the seemingly endless material on the Internet? And how do we get that unwanted material out of the way so we can get down to the good stuff where our genealogy gems may be hidden?

In the first installment of this Tech Tips Blog Series I shared with you one of my favorite “sifters” –- the dot dot dot (…) technique. But that is just one of a cache of search sifting tools -- known in the search world as operators -- available to family history researchers. Let me share a few more favorites from my new book The Genealogist's Google Toolbox (Genealogy Gems Publications)

Understand the underlying concept: Search is art, not a science!
While search operators behave scientifically and logically, we must construct our search queries artfully. Sometimes it’s what you add in, and sometimes it’s what you leave out, that determines the quality of your results.

Exact phrase sifter
When you want to find an exact phrase in a website, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, “U.S. federal census” will bring up websites with that exact phrase and eliminate all other variations.

Words apart search
While quotation marks can help you zero in, in some cases they may actually prevent the ideal results. (There’s that “art” thing again.)

We have to keep in mind that sometimes the words that we are looking for won’t appear next to each other even though they normally do. For example, you may be looking for a city directory, and normally you would expect to see the two words together as a phrase: city directory. But by using an asterisk to set them apart, you may find the perfect result that searching for them together may have missed.

city * directory

Results could include:

city phone directory

city telephone directory

city and county directory

Related Search
For this little gem, watch my video from the Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel.

I hope these gems bring you a family history strike! Good luck!

Monday, March 14, 2011 11:24:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

With all the anticipation of the first ever RootsTech conference, it’s hard to believe it’s already come and gone. Here are some highlights from this year’s conference that I hope inspire you to attend next year. (Block out February 2-4, 2012 on your calendar!)

Microfilm Distribution: As a member of the media, I had the rare opportunity to see how hundreds of thousands of microfilm rolls make their way around the world each year.  The Family History Library distribution center is the size of 19 football fields and stores 725,000 film copies, each copy averaging 100 feet in length.  Films are stored in huge automated shelving systems holding trays of film that are tracked and accessed by computer. Even though there is a goal to digitize all microfilms held by the FHL, there will always be a need for microfilm distribution because of copyright restrictions. 

Inside the microfilm distribution center at the Family History Library.

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner: One of the winners at this year’s conference was the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner. Many a happy genealogist clutched their new portable workhorse, and those that didn’t already have one were muttering quietly that they really needed one. Having acquired a Flip-Pal scanner myself not long ago, I can say that the buzz was warranted. Look for the Family Tree Magazine review of the Flip-Pal scanner in our May issue, on newsstands March 8.

The Media Center:  I felt a bit like Maxwell Smart in the Cone of Silence from "Get Smart," as I conducted interviews in the glass cubicles at the center of the exhibit hall. The cubicles weren't sound proof, but they provided a convenient place to record audio and video while still capturing the ambiance of the place.  One of my first interviews was with Patricia Van Skaik of the Cincinnati Public Library, who won the Most Distinguished Presenter award for her Saturday presentations. The media center was a stroke of genius on the part of the organizers. It gave podcasters and bloggers the room and tools we needed to get the word out.

Lisa interviewing Patricia Van Skaik in the media center.

Interviews: Curt Witcher, manager of the genealogy deptartment at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., also sat down with me for an in depth interview. He sees technology converging with genealogy, and his keynote address was quite a hit from sounds of between-session banter. Watch our conversation below:

You can see more from RootsTech at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. Click subscribe while there and you can receive email notification as they are posted.

Virtual Presentations Roundtable: I wrapped up the whirlwind three-day conference as a panelist in the Virtual Presentations Roundtable. Thomas MacEntee pulled together a panel of experienced webinar presenters, including editor of Family Tree Magazine Allison Stacy, Photo Detective Maureen Taylor, DearMYRTLE, Geoff Rasmussen and Marian Pierre-Louis.  Not only did we provide tips on how societies can hold their own virtual presentations, but the session itself was a virtual webinar.  And to top it off, the RootsTech folks streamed the session live on the RootsTech website!

RootsTech made a bold leap onto the conference scene, and from every indication, it’s here to stay.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 11:13:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

If "Who Do You Think You Are?" had aired 20 years ago, I probably would have missed half the episodes because I never did figure out how to set the clock and timer on my VCR!

Technology can sometimes be as frustrating as it is helpful. But one thing is for sure—technology will continue to change. For the next eight weeks I guest blog for new mommy Diane Haddad, bringing you Tech Tips that I hope will keep you from pulling out your hair in frustration and lead you to more ancestors.

The technology bug bit me about 10 years ago, much the same way the genealogy bug did years before—hard. An online search delivered up a database that held the answers to years of questions about my Prussian ancestors, and I was hooked. There’s nothing like having a need and seeing the direct application of technology to meet that need to give you “gumption,” as Grandma used to say, to pursue it further.

The Pursuit of Answers

In the end it’s not really technology we are pursuing, but rather answers to questions and problems that plague our family history research. In my keynote presentation at the recent Family History Expo in Mesa, AZ, I tried to drive home the concept that if you focus on your needs, and then look for and find answers in the technology arena, you will also find the motivation to learn how to use that technology. And as you learn what is technologically possible, you can pursue it when a need arises.

That’s sort of how I fell into podcasting. In 2006, I visited my local Family History Center and shared a discovery I made. The center’s director was so excited she took a photocopy of the pages in my hand and posted them on the office bulletin board. “What a genealogy gem that is!” she squealed. I stood there looking at the paper held in place with a pushpin and thought to myself: There’s got to be a better way to share something like this. It could help so many more people than just those who visit this center.

Fast forward to February 2007, when I received an iPod from my daughters for a birthday present. I immediately went snooping around the iTunes store to see if there was anything free I could download and quickly came across podcasts, which had only come in to being about a year and a half before—talk about new technology! I downloaded a couple of podcasts on a variety of topics and really enjoyed them. Then I remembered that paper stuck to the bulletin board. A quick search for “how to podcast” led me to a great little show, and a month later the Genealogy Gems Podcast was born. I’ve been posting genealogy gems ever since for listeners around the world in over 80 countries.

Not long after I began hosting the Family Tree Magazine Podcast. The budding new RSS technology filled a need and solved a problem. I wondered what else might be out there that could help the genealogist.

A prime example of technology power boosting the family historian’s research is the big daddy of them all—Google. Let’s wrap up this first installment of Tech Tips with a search tip from my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox (Lulu Press, 2011) that consistently delivers excellent results: the suspension point better known as “dot dot dot.” (...)

In search terms, a suspension point is used to indicate a range of numbers.

Problem: When did my ancestor die? I know it was sometime between 1790 and 1830.

Answer: The suspension point

Search Query: “Jehu Burkhart” 1790...1830

Here’s the results page:

The beauty of the suspension point (...) is that it tells the search engine to retrieve webpages that mention Jehu Burkhart (the quotation marks indicate we want the exact phrase) between the years of 1790 and 1830. And Google takes the added step of bolding the year mentioned on the webpage so that you can quickly assess from the results list if the page is the result you need. This tip has limitless genealogical search applications, and can thin that massive list of results you often get saddled with down to a manageable lot.

In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more tips with you as well as bringing you the latest from such conferences as "Who Do You Think You Are?" LIVE in London, and the brand new Roots Tech conference in Salt Lake City. It’s an exciting time for genealogists as technology and family history merge!

Thursday, February 03, 2011 2:28:34 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• Today at our own ShopFamilyTree.com, offer code SFT133 gets you 20 percent off your ShopFamilyTree.com order (some exclusions apply, including VIP membership, subscriptions, and products that ship directly from our retail partners). You also can choose a FREE digital download with your purchase. Choose from:
  

1. Beginner's Guide to Genealogy download
2. Discover Your Roots download
3. 101 Brick Wall Busters: Solutions to Overcome Your Genealogical Challenges download

• Subscription records site Footnote is offering 50 percent off an annual all-access membership today only, for a total of $39.95. Click here to get started. 

• Family Roots Publishing is discounting all products by 15 percent on Cyber Monday. See details on the Genealogy Blog.
  

• Genetic testing service 23andMe is offering a $99 DNA test sale (normally $499) that ends today. Details at 23andMe.com. 

• Through tomorrow, Nov. 30, the Utah Genealogical Association (UGA) is giving a free UGA membership to registrants for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (taking place Jan. 10-14). Learn more on Renee’s Genealogy Blog.
  

• On Cyber Monday, you’ll receive 15 percent off Elyse Doerflinger’s e-books Conquering The Paper Monster Once and For All and A Mini-Guide to Being a Part-Time Genealogist. Details at Elyse’s Genealogy Blog.
  

• Genealogist Michael John Neill is offering a 20 percent discount on the Casefile Clues weekly how-to newsletter today only. Details at the Casefile Clues blog. 

• You’ll find discounts on several items at JMK Genealogy Gifts Store. See details and coupon codes here.
  
  
• A late addition to our list: Now through the end of the year, you can book a virtual presentation by Thomas MacEntee of High-Definition Genealogy for your genealogical event at 33 percent off normal rates. Details at the High-Definition Genealogy blog.
  

Monday, November 29, 2010 9:20:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

GEDCOM (for GEnealogy Data COMmunication) is the language genealogy software programs use to communicate with each other—when you export family data from your genealogy software, you create either a file native to that program or a GEDCOM file that other genealogy programs and websites can read.

(Get help creating a GEDCOM from FamilyTreeMagazine.com's free GEDCOM Basics article.)

But the GEDCOM file format has some shortcomings—one being that it hasn’t been updated in 14 years.

“In the meantime, genealogists have incorporated tools with expanded capabilities reflecting changing technology," says Russ Worthington, a genealogy lecturer and software “power user.”

GEDCOM files you export from your genealogy software may leave out some of your research. “The current GEDCOM file exchange strips out much of my hard work, leaving only some of the data I've typed and attached to each well-documented ancestor,” says genealogy blogger DearMYRTLE. “We experience similar problems when uploading and downloading our genealogy data with popular genealogy websites."

More GEDCOM problems are pointed out in this DearMYRTLE blog post.

The BetterGEDCOM wiki allows genealogy software programmers, website developers and end users to collaborate on developing better data exchange standards. Organizers hope this will facilitate sharing between researchers who use a variety of technology platforms, genealogy products and services. 

"We also seek to account for language and cultural differences as we develop data standards for recording family history information." says Greg Lamberson, the technician who developed the wiki’s initial pages. "Input from BetterGEDCOM participants the world over is a vital component."

BetterGEDCOM plans to codify standards, giving genealogy software developers a framework to resolve problems, and will seek recognition by international standards organizations.

Click here to visit the BetterGEDCOM wiki; the “Where do I start?” section on the home page and the “What is BetterGEDCOM?” link on the left are good places to begin. Anyone can join the effort—just click Join at the top to register.

Confused by computer file formats? Consult our free computer file format glossary on FamilyTreeMagazine.com to learn what your mystery file is.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 9:35:46 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• The My Genealogy toolbar has dropdown menus of categorized links to genealogy websites. Download it from here or here. It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

• The Malhamdale Local History Group of Yorkshire, England, created a toolbar with links to the group’s site and other genealogy websites. It works with Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox (though Firefox users are directed to a help page).

• The Manchester and Lancashire (England) Family History Society launched a genealogy toolbar that provides links to more than 200 useful British genealogy sites. It’s regularly updated, and you can configure settings such as which web site categories to display.

• The Family Genie toolbar works with Firefox (it’s supposed to work in Internet Explorer, but CNET reviewers couldn’t get it to). It has first- and last-name search boxes and a single dropdown menu of search engines, as well as a menu of bookmarked genealogy sites.

• If you’re an Ancestry.com member, you can download the Ancestry.com toolbar for quick access to links on Ancestry.com. It also lets you easily save links and add photos and text from any web page to your Ancestry tree.

• Google is a handy genealogy tool for searching on ancestors’ names, getting language translations, locating addresses and more; and you can make more use of it than ever with help from resources such as our Googling Your Genealogy webinar and the book Google Your Family Tree by Daniel M. Lynch. The Google toolbar isn't just for genealogists, but you'll appreciate the shortcuts to the search engine’s features.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:35:46 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [10]