Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Come learn about your Central and East European Ancestors!

 

https://feefhs.org/

The 2024 FEEFHS Annual Conference will be an in-person event held at the Plaza Hotel in Salt Lake City, August 6-9. Prior to the conference there will be a hands-on workshop day (as an optional add-on), followed by the conference with four days of instruction with three instruction tracks taught in parallel. 

Conference topics will encompass countries and regions of Central and Eastern Europe, including areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire/USSR and more. Other topics will include DNA, minority research, resources, and technology. A preliminary conference schedule is posted (just class titles or with class summaries). 

At the conference you will have the opportunity to talk with presenters between sessions and in one-on-one consultations. In the evenings you can do research at the world famous FamilySearch Library—right next door to the conference hotel. The library has access to many resources that are not available online or at other libraries. 

I have attended and presented at this conference several times and will be presenting three classes this year. Their website is a valuable resource for Eastern European genealogy research and the those presenting at the conference are experts in their area. You can find out more by clicking Here with links to the registration. 

Hope to see you there!

Friday, March 15, 2024

MyHeritage opens OldNews.com website

 

https://www.oldnews.com/en

Here is the introductory video to the OldNews.com website. 

https://youtu.be/U_z9EEF9t8c?si=scwYwnWgmxM8Esat

Quoting from the MyHeritage Blog post about the new website:

We’re delighted to announce the release of OldNews.com, an innovative website for historical newspapers, by MyHeritage. OldNews.com enables genealogists, researchers, and history enthusiasts to search, save, and share articles about people and events throughout history. At launch, OldNews.com includes a huge repository of hundreds of millions of historical newspaper pages from around the world, with millions more added monthly. The website features easy navigation and consists of a diverse range of high-quality publications, from major international newspapers to small-town journals and gazettes.

At launch, OldNews.com more than doubles the amount of historical newspaper content that was previously available on MyHeritage. The website includes all the historical newspapers from MyHeritage, plus new, unique content.

 More as we get a chance to use the new website.

Friday, March 8, 2024

MyHeritage Tree Collaboration with FamilyTree DNA

 

MyHeritage Tree Collaboration with FamilyTree DNA

At RootsTech 2024, Aaron Godfrey, MyHeritage Vice President of Marketing, announced the following as quoted by Robeta Estes in her blog post on DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy, as follows:
I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

You can read the details on the linked blog post. At the RootsTech conference I also talked to both MyHeritage and to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, Product Owner at FamilyTree DNA and she confirmed that the connection at an unspecified time in the future. I am sure there will be more about this at the appropriate time. I suggest you watch Aaron Godfrey's presentation at RootsTech to hear the announcement for yourself. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Introducing he FamilySearch Profile Quality Score


RootsTech 2024 was the forum for announcing a valuablefeature that helps with the FamilySearch.org Family Tree accuracy. FamilySearch announced the Profile Quality Score which is featured in the FamilySearch.org/Labs website. When this feature is activated by turning it on, it appears on Profile Page of entries in the Family Tree and when clicked on, it gives a break down of the accuracy and reliability of an entry. Here is an example from my own part of the Family Tree. 


The sidebar can be expanded to view additional evaluations. 


You do not see anything unless this app is turned on using the FamilySearch.org/Labs page. I couldn't see any pattern to when the information appeared on an individual. 

Monday, March 4, 2024

Impressive New Updates and Releases from MyHeritage

 

https://youtu.be/kLi65EnnKxk?si=a-jmyQKWC0LyV1hY

There is a long list of impressive new releases and updates from MyHeritage.com. Here is Aaron Godfrey on the main stage at RootsTech.org to give you a short insight into the latest news. 

Here is a hopefully complete list of the updates and releases mentioned with links to the blog posts about the new products. 

Historical Records Added in February 2024

Introducing OldNews.com, A New Website for Exploring Historical Newspapers

Introducing All-New Profile Pages with Hints

New: AI Record Finder™Chat History

AI Biographer™

MyHeritage Documentary Part 1: The Early Years - A Dream Takes Root This is the first of a six-part series made for the 20th anniversary of the founding of MyHeritage.com. The series will continue with links to the remaining videos. 

Please take a few minutes to watch Aaron's information packed video above. 

Full-Text and AI comes to FamilySearch

 

https://www.familysearch.org/Labs/

RootsTech 2024 was filled with technology with an emphasis on artificial intelligence or AI. One long anticipated announcement by FamilySearch was the beginning Full-Text. 


https://www.familysearch.org/search/full-text

Full-Text is just what the name implies, the FamilySearch program can now search the full or complete text of historical documents. This opens up the ability to find more exact information. Previously and what is still the case with indexed records, the indexes only find records that matched the somewhat arbitrary index fields. With Full-Text searches, you can search for any possible word that may be in the document or record. Presently, there are only two large FamilySearch databases that are available to search; U.S. Land and Probate Records, a record dating from 1630 to 1975 and Mexico Notary Records, a set of records that is primarily dated before 1900 but with some records up to 1947. More additions are planned. 

The records that will become available are those that that have been prepared by sophisticated handwriting recognition software and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. So the process is that the original documents are processed by the handwriting recognition and converted into text files and then the Full-Text search program can search every word in the documents for your "Keywords." The keywords can be any text string such as names, dates, and places. The challenge is choosing keywords for search that may be in the documents or records you are searching. 

To test the system, I searched using the name of my great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner who was born in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, California in 1852 and died in Gilbert, Maricopa, Arizona in 1935. I immediately found the following deed that I had never seen before and was not attached as a FamilySearch Memory. 


I would not know to even look for this document much less have found it in unindexed records previously. 

These are full text searches and so you have to work with your search terms or keywords to get any specific results. 

These new FamilySearch developments give me a lot to write about and additional topics for videos. 

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Upload DNA Data to MyHeritage and enjoy FREE access to all DNA features forever

 Yes, forever. 

https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/02/this-week-only-upload-your-dna-data-and-get-free-access-to-all-dna-features/

Here is the announcement I received from MyHeritage:

For each NEW DNA file uploaded this week (i.e. one that hasn’t been uploaded to MyHeritage in the past), the uploader will receive free access to all advanced DNA features, saving them the usual $29 unlock fee per file. This rare offer is valid for the next few days only, until March 4, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. 

 

There are many great reasons to upload DNA data to MyHeritage. You’ll get new DNA matches from all over the world, ethnicity reports covering 2,114 geographic regions, and access to the most comprehensive set of tools for analyzing your relationships to your DNA matches. MyHeritage is the only DNA company that has committed never to sell or license users’ data to third parties, and we provide full privacy controls so only you can see your data.

 

Make sure to share the news with your friends and followers so they don’t miss out on this change to get free access to all MyHeritage DNA features! Feel free to use the graphic below, and read more about it on our blog.

Read this carefully. This offer applies to DNA results, the raw data, from another company that hasn't been uploaded to MyHeritage.com before.  You can read more about the offer on the blog post linked above.