The Deep Internet - Learn how to make use of Database Searches

Genealogy Research in the Deep Internet

Join me in Omaha on July 18 when I show you how to find hidden treasures online in the "Deep Internet." Did you know that at least 80 per cent of genealogy information online cannot be found using a standard search engine such as Google? Are you missing out on 80 per cent of information you can find out about your family online?

If you've been frustrated with the results of your searches on Ancestry, find out how you can improve the way you search by using some adjustments to the way you think about search strategies!

This presentation is Free and open to the public. But you need to preregister here:

http://omahalibrary.evanced.info/signup/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=41274&lib

July 18, 2015

2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

W. Dale Clark Library

215 S. 15th St

Omaha, Nebraska

Ancestry and Family Tree Maker - Why I Am Bass Akwards

Once again, the rumors have surfaced that Ancestry.com is up for sale. As happens with such rumors and announcements, the genealogy community is all aflutter, scared silly that everything they have added to their family tree on Ancestry is about to disappear.

Maybe I have more confidence in online sites than others. From participation in many online genealogy forums, I've arrived at the conclusion that I use my software and Ancestry web site differently than most.

Ancestry.com at the conference of the
National Genealogical Society
St. Charles, MO 2015

I've gathered that people using Family Tree Maker (FTM) software enter all of their data within the software and perhaps sync it with their tree(s) on Ancestry. I do just the opposite. I enter all of my discoveries directly on the Ancestry site. Every few weeks (or months, if I get behind), I download the GEDCOM from Ancestry into my FTM software. I consider the FTM GEDCOM download as a backup of my research.

Am I lazy? Do I like living life (and my research) on the edge? I don't know. All I know is that this is what works for me.

I'm pretty much a digital kind of gal. And I know that may subject me to some dangers. I have my scanned images of documents and my personal digital photo archive all on my laptop with a backup to the cloud via Dropbox and my Amazon photo cloud. Have I thrown away or discarded any of my original documents, photographs, scrapbooks, slides or negatives? Not on your life! It's just easier for me to manage all of the data in a digital archive.

I think that we all like what we are used to. That is why I prefer OneNote to Evernote (although I use both). I prefer Family Tree Maker to Roots Magic and Legacy. Why? Because it's what I'm used to. In my working life, I always used the analogy: the only person who likes change is a wet baby! The same is true with genealogy and our software.

The advantage of being able to download a GEDCOM from Ancestry is that I can import it into whatever software application I'm using. Each of the major software packages provides different options for reports, printouts, books, etc. Having been 100% digital for several years, I'm just beginning to recreate hard copies of my research using the various software applications. Each one allows me to have different options, printouts, etc.

Am I concerned about an impending sale of Ancestry? Not so much. Do I fear that all of my research will be lost? No. Why? Because I have my GEDCOMS, my scans, my notes, my boxes and boxes of documents and photographs. And everything is backed up - on my laptop, Dropbox, Amazon, as well as on external hard drives.

For now, Ancestry remains my online tree of choice. The online family trees on Ancestry are excluded from my routine searches. I think we all know how unreliable so many of them can be. But I know they are there if I need a few hints. FamilySearch provides me with additional resources, but there is NO WAY I'm going to get into a discussion of sources or "who's right and who's wrong" in entering data or citing sources. The best I can do is to make my research available for future researchers, with source citations. I'm not going to get this all done in my lifetime, but I can leave some bread crumbs for those who choose to follow my research in the future.

Seriously, who really knows if Ancestry will be around in 100 years? I sure don't. FamilySearch-LDS - definitely a good chance of survival. Who know if the Internet will even look the same in 100 years? All I know is that I will continue to do my data entry on Ancestry, with my back-ups to FTM.

At this point in my life and research, my objective is to produce as much as possible into "hard copy" that can be printed/published and donated to local societies and libraries for those family members and historians who come after me.

What I learned at the NSGS state conference

The Nebraska State Genealogical Society (NSGS) had yet another exceptional speaker at last weekend's annual conference with Beth Foulk. Beth is a volunteer instructor at the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri.

Beth is my kind of conference speaker with her enthusiasm, passion and knowledge. All of her sessions were great and my favorite focused on using timelines to help with your genealogy research. I've used the timeline feature on Ancestry.com on several of my direct ancestors. Not just listing events that are associated with a document, I would add the births and deaths of family members, so I could put together a bigger story of my ancestor's life.

Beth showed many examples of timelines she has created in Microsoft Excel. I love Excel for data management and her samples gave me a lot of new ideas on organizing timelines outside of Ancestry and my genealogy software. I can hardly wait to get started on these!

I especially liked how she had a column to reference the sources for data items. I envision having a separate tab in Excel with complete source citations that is linked from the data field in the main timeline. She also demonstrated how a person could color code specific events, such as property transactions, as a visual method of identifying what information needs to be gathered. I also plan to use a timeline in Excel to track the migration patterns of family members through each year's census.

One of the other gems that Beth discussed was the Hathi Trust digital book site. http://m.hathitrust.org/ This site provides a search of digital books available online, or an entry showing where to find the book in a library. This will become another item in my toolbox for finding books, alongside Google books and World Cat.

I always leave genealogy conferences with a wealth of new ideas, excited about trying new things. This year's conference was no exception.

Posted with Blogsy

Turn Your Tablet Into a Lean, Mean Genealogy Machine

Last Sunday, I was very pleased to give a presentation and facilitate a discussion on tablet computing for genealogy. This was for the Technology Interest Group of the Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society (LLCGS). We had a wonderful turnout with a lot of great comments and questions.

While it's not quite the same as being there in person, here are the slides that I shared with the group. I guess I'm going to have to change a few of the transition slides in the examples of photo editing software for online viewing. But for now, here it is. I've also posted a PDF file of some recommended apps for the iPad and iPhone to aid in genealogy research. I hope you'll pick up a few tips. Click here for the PDF file.

Turn Your Tablet Into a Lean Mean Genealogy Machine from Susan Petersen

New Playground in Town: Technology for Genealogy

There's a new Facebook group in town for genealogists - Technology for Genealogy. Three weeks ago I realized that there really wasn't a common online playground for genealogists to get together to ask questions, share tech news and visit about how we use technology for genealogy.

Just in case I might have missed it, I messaged my pal, Thomas MacEntee, to see if he knew of any such group. After all, if Thomas doesn't know about it, no one does! Thomas' reply was basically "great idea, go for it!"

In a few minutes, the Facebook group was hatched. I invited a few friends, posted a message on my Facebook wall and Twitter. Before I could finish configuring the group settings, the online genealogists were flocking to this new gathering place. People were really jumping on the bandwagon and there were nearly 100 members during the first hour.

Three weeks later, we are quickly approaching 400 members, much due to mentions by Thomas MacEntee, James Tanner and Lynn Palermo of the Armchair Genealogist.

While the chatter has calmed down a bit after the first week, there is still plenty of information sharing going on regarding the technology tools that we use for genealogy. If you have a question about a product or need to learn the "how to" of software, apps or other technology, this is the group for you.

Lincoln, Nebraska "Genea-Tech" group


Along the same lines, I've started a Genealogy Interest Group through my local society, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society. We had our organizational meeting last Sunday with 10 members and three guests present. We brainstormed the various technology topics we wanted to pursue in depth, then  narrowed down the topics to four major themes. Our next session in September will be a comparison of some of the major genealogy software programs. My hearty thanks goes out to Drew Smith (one of the Genealogy Guys) who graciously shared his PowerPoint slides from a presentation he did for his society this month. It's a great starting point for us without having to re-invent the wheel.

It's very clear that technology is a hot topic for genealogists - we just can't get enough! And it's an ever changing field with new devices, apps, software and web sites emerging on a daily basis, a person really needs to keep up with it.

Open Discussion Weekend - What's Your Guilty Pleasure?

Technically, it's still the weekend since today is the legal holiday for Christmas. I had been contemplating this topic for a few days, then I read Leah Kleylein's post, Let's Start Again, on her Random Notes blog.

Those of us in the genealogy blogging community spend much of our time writing about our own research, sharing our discoveries, reviewing new products and engage in stimulating discussion about our hobby/profession. But if you're like Leah or me, you may have taken a "walk on the dark side" - spending minutes, hours or days with other activities (or addictions) besides genealogy.

Sometimes, I just have to take a break from hanging out with the dead relatives. And those guilty pleasures have been drawing me away from genealogy the last four or five weeks. Well, let's face it, it all started with the arrival of my Kindle Fire, which I've already blogged about in my reviews of the product.

Apps and Games

The device has barely left my side since it arrived, but have I been using it primarly as an e-reader? Not quite. Rather than reading two or three books a week as I did on my old Kindle, I've only read about three books in the last month. What have I been doing instead? Checking out the Android Apps for the Kindle, downloading them, discarding many, keeping quite a few. Angry Birds was much too slow for me, but my time on Treasures of Montezuma borders on addiction.

Then there are the apps for magazine subscriptions - I've definitely been enjoying the tablet versions of Time,  Vanity Fair, Consumer Reports and the Smithsonian. I've also been receiving my issues of Family Tree Magazine in digital format (Adobe pdf), which is easy enough to read on the Kindle.

Let's Rock and Roll!

I've also spent quite a lot of time over the past month converting my hundreds of music CDs to mp3 format - to archive on an external drive as well as backed up in the Amazon cloud. And that also means that I've spent quite a bit of time this past month downloading dozens of free Christmas tunes from Amazon. And filling in some of my Sixties music collection with some Greatest Hits collections from my era. And some Rat Pack tunes, and a few modern country as well. It's nice to pull up my cloud collection either on the Kindle or computer and be able to listen to the songs that have provided the soundtrack for my life. In other words, I just finished uploading the entire Beatles catalog to the cloud. Next up is a collection of about 100 Paul McCartney CDs to convert and upload.

Roku Madness

As though playing with the Kindle wasn't enough, about a week and a half ago I bought a Roku video streamer box. Wowee - I though that the DVR had revolutionized the way I consume TV and movies, but since getting the Roku, "regular" TV has not even been on. I already had subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon Prime for live video streaming. I will admit, trying to watch a movie on the Kindle Fire isn't that exciting. A coworker mentioned he had a Roku, so I looked into them and selected one that best met my "needs". Clearly, a Kindle Fire and a Roku were not "needs" of my pioneer ancestors!

In addition to Amazon and Netflix, the Roku offers more than 400 video channels, many of which are free. One of the free channels I like is the BYU channel which includes The Generations Project genealogy show. Hmm ... it seems like I'm trying to justify my guilty pleasures by associating their use to a genealogy application. I've also become addicted to the "24" TV series starring Kiefer Sutherland. I'd never watched it when it aired, so I'm starting with Season One. It's always intrigued me that a non-violent person such as myself happens to love crime shows.

Reality?

I also find myself frittering away my time with Gene Simmons Family Jewels, Celebrity Apprentice, Amazing Race and Survivor. And the alphabet crime shows such as NCIS and CSI.

So there you have it. I've come clean about my "dark side" away from genealogy. Do you have the courage to admit to your guilty pleasures? If so, please post in the comments section below.

Kindle Fire - Not Just for Books

I've been exploring my Kindle Firefor a week now and continue to be amazed, amused and entertained by what it has to offer. I was already an enthusiastic user of the Kindle Keyboardand its amazing capacity for electronic and audio books. As much as I love books, movies and music, I've been looking to the future with a desire to downsize my massive collections of books, DVDs and CDs. The Kindle Fire became an obvious choice to help me in this process.

Since 1995, I've had a great deal of brand name loyalty to Amazon.com. The online retailer is the first place I ever visit when I am interested in a product and probably end up making my purchase from Amazon well over 90 percent of the time. I probably feel about Amazon the way other people feel about Apple. I've just never embraced Apple products, which may help explain my enthusiasm for the Kindle Fire. This post may come off sounding like a big promotion for Amazon, but it's difficult to write a review regarding the Kindle Fire without addressing the content and services available from this retailer.

Music in the Cloud

For me, as an Amazon consumer, the big selling point of the Kindle Fire is the access to my media content via the cloud. Earlier this year, Amazon introduced cloud storage for not only computer files, but for music files. Right now, I have about the equivalent of a large clothes closet crammed full of CDs and DVDs. I took advantage of the early promotions to get 20 gb of cloud storage for a year. With the promotions, I think this cost me about $5, and certainly it was no more than $10. Regular price for my plan is $20/year and music files do not count toward the 20 gb. Any mp3 music purchased from Amazon may be stored directly to the cloud drive - or downloaded to my computer at the time of purchase or later. So far, I have more than 2,000 songs stored on my Amazon cloud drive and I've barely started uploading all of my music.

Music is, and always has been, a big part of my life, so it's really nice to have my music collection available to play songs in the background on any computer, anywhere, with the Amazon Cloud Player. The Cloud Player is also available for Android devices.

Books

For the last year, I have absolutely loved being able to carry more than 300 ebooks on my Kindle Keyboard - right in my purse. There are thousands of free ebooks available on Amazon, Google Books and other online sources. It's great for transferring PDF files of those old county history books to a portable device. The Kindle Keyboard has been promoted for having "e-Ink" display - which comes close to resembling the printed page. There is no glare in direct sunlight. I've found it very comfortable to read books on the Kindle Keyboard. The Kindle Fire has a back lit display that more closely resembles a computer screen. So far, I've found reading on the Kindle Fire just as comfortable on my eyes as the Kindle Keyboard. In fact, the Kindle Fire would be my preference in a low-light situation. You could actually read a book in an unlit room with the Kindle Fire. Even with a portable light, it's extremely difficult to read the Kindle Keyboard in a dark environment.

Movies and Other Video Content

Just to give you an idea of the type of movie fan I am, over the years, I've managed to collect every film awarded the Best Picture Oscar. But I'm not a film snob, I can enjoy something like Vegas Vacation just as much as Citizen Kane.

More than a year ago, I started a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime. Interesting marketing technique: pay $75/year to get Free shipping. Well, I purchase enough from Amazon.com that I liked the idea of getting my merchandise in two days as compared to 10 days when I selected the normal 'free' shipping method.

Perhaps knowing that the Kindle Fire was on its way, Amazon made an ingenious move by including online viewing of thousands of movies and television programs available at no additional charge to subscribers of Prime. I'm not saying that watching a movie on my laptop or the Kindle Fire can be compared to watching on my HD television. But for catching up on films I may have missed or re-watching some of my favorites, I find the streaming quality quite acceptable. The availability of this content for $75/year is a good selling point.  This is $6.25/month average, compared to the Netflix online viewing subscription, which is advertised at $7.99, but with tax runs about $8.50.

Last weekend, I rented Larry Crowne, the new film with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. Rental from Amazon was $3.99 and streaming quality on the Kindle Fire was fine. Right now, the Beatles' first feature film, A Hard Day's Night, is playing on the Kindle Fire as I compose this blog post. This particular film is via my Netflix subscription, using the Netflix app for the Kindle Fire. Again, excellent video and audio quality. On most of the films I've sampled, the audio is much better if you use ear buds or other type of headphone device.

For most videos from Amazon, you may pay to rent a film or television show for 24 hour or 48 hour rental; some titles are available to purchase and download. Purchases may be downloaded to the Kindle Fire (or your computer), yet they remain stored in the Cloud on Amazon. You can easily move your media content back and forth between the Kindle Fire and the Cloud. I downloaded my purchased copy of All the President's Men to my Kindle Fire. Again, the quality is great. As I frequently have overnight travel for my "day job," I like this feature because much of the time, there's not much to interest me on motel room TV channels.

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts in this series, I've been able to watch Legacy Family tree webinars and other genealogy videos on the Kindle Fire. My friend, Jenna Mills of Desperately Seeking Surnames, told me that the iPad does not play any videos using Flash. So this may be one area where the Kindle Fire has a leg up on the iPad.

Applications

Applications for the Kindle Fire are designed for Android devices. There are thousands available, many for free, many for a low price. I've been playing around with these applications a lot this week (which probably explains why I've only read about 50 pages of book content!).

Being a news junkie, I've selected a few apps that access the mobile feeds from many news providers. My favorite is US Newspapers by Langtolang Inc. It comes with links to major providers already included, such as CNN, People, USA Today. I've added my local newspapers and other news providers as well. This one is Free.


A Radio app I like is called TuneIn radio. Not only does it include all of my local radio stations, but also any station in the world that has online streaming. So - I can transport myself to Nashville, L.A. London or Sydney with just a tap on my Kindle Fire. I can't imagine how giddy this would have made me when I was 13!


Many apps for social media are available. I've set up some that will notify me of incoming email in both Gmail and Yahoo Mail. With TweetCaster, I have finally embraced the power of Twitter. On a mobile device, this social networking tool finally makes sense to me in a way it never did using it online or even with Tweet Deck.

Weather, news, sports, music, games - there's dozens of apps to appeal to anyone's taste. I even tried out Angry Birds, but it just doesn't move fast enough for me!

I have also signed-up for trial subscriptions to Smithsonian and Vanity Fair magazines. The reading apps for these magazines provide the option of reading an article at a time by tapping on the table of contents, or you can scan through the pages just as if it were the printed magazine, complete with ads.

What I am hopefully optimistic about is that the genealogy companies will be developing apps for the Kindle Fire. Let's hope that Ancestry.com will be coming out with an app similar to what they have created for the iPad.

A few words about battery life

For casual web browsing, game playing, reading and listening to music, you can expect the Kindle Fire to go about eight hours. Turning off the WiFi while reading a book will add some time. I've found that a full recharge from about 10 percent battery life to 100 percent takes about four hours. You can continue to use the Kindle Fire while the device is being recharged. The AC adapter/wall charger that comes with the Kindle Fire may not provide a long enough cord in some settings.

Please note than live streaming a movie over WiFi runs down the internal rechargeable battery very quickly. But a fully charged device should easily last through a feature length film.

The Downside - maybe, maybe not

When making a purchasing decision, someone who has the need to be connected to the internet 24/7 may feel restricted by the Kindle Fire being a WiFi only device. This is not a deterrent to me. I will primarily be using the online connection while at home, over my own WiFi network. There is more than enough reading, music and game playing on the device to occupy me during those long periods in waiting rooms and other brief times when I'm just passing time. I can easily connect once I'm back in WiFi territory. My guess is that future versions of the Kindle Fire may come with wireless connectivity.

Related posts from LongLostRelatives.net:

Kindle Fire For Genealogy

Kindle Fire - Tablet or eReader? First Look

Kindle for Genealogy

Kindle for Genealogy Redux

Disclaimer: links to Amazon.com are via my affiliate relationship with the site.

Kindle Fire for Genealogy

Yesterday's blog post was about my first experiences with the new Kindle Fire. Based on reader comments and the fact that this is, after all, a blog about genealogy, today's post will focus on genealogy uses for the Kindle Fire.

At this time, genealogy-specific apps do not appear to be available for the Kindle Fire. I expect that will change in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Kindle Fire users have access to all of their favorite web sites, such as Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, FindAGrave (and for me, about 300 more). The sites appear just as you are used to seeing them, just on a 7" screen. However, you can turn the device to landscape mode or use your fingers to make the type on the page appear larger. This technique does not work on mobile-enhanced pages. Bottom line is that once I have become accustomed to managing my viewing space, I am able to read any web site fairly easily.

The Home Screen of the Kindle Fire
Books, documents and apps apear
on a virtual bookshelf  with most recent first.

Amazon is completely honest when they talk about ultra-fast web browsing with their "Silk" browser. Surfing the 'net is much faster than my laptop or netbook, which makes it my new device of choice for surfing and reading. As I mentioned yesterday, the mobile views allow me to scan through blog posts in Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter and check email in much less time than ever before.

Access to the internet also means that I have access to all of the files in my Dropbox folder whenever I have WiFi access.

As with the Kindle 3 that I've been using for more than a year, the Kindle Fire also serves as a large capacity USB drive. I'm able to transfer files to my Kindle Fire via drag and drop.

I recently created an Adobe PDF file of my ancestors from Family Tree Maker, so I dragged and dropped it into the documents folder of my Kindle Fire. It's nice to have some of those reports and other resources available if you're on a spur of the moment library or cemetery trip and don't have your mountain of paper with you.

You'll also see in the photo that I have the Kindle version of the Family Tree Sourcebook. More genealogy titles have become available for the Kindle in the past year, including books by Megan Smolenyak, George Morgan, and others. When I first got my Kindle 3 last year, only a handful of genealogy titles were available; now a search has more than 1,000 titles. Many of these are self-published eBooks and family histories. And just this month, Amy Coffin of the We Tree genealogy blog published her excellent resource for bloggers, The Big Genealogy Blog Book. Even if you don't own a Kindle device, you can order and read these books right on your computer.

As a teller of family history stories, I always have in the back of my mind the publishing of a family history ebook. Just get the information "out there" and available to other family historians. With electronic publishing so easily available, anyone can publish their genealogy books with little overhead.

I've also test driven the Kindle with Legacy Family Tree webinars. The sound and video quality is great. The wealth of instructional genealogy videos available on YouTube is at your fingertips. Anything you've accessed on the web is readily available for viewing on the Kindle Fire.

Catch up on your genealogy reading
PDF files transfer easily to the Kindle.

Recently, I made use of an incredible sale at Family Tree magazine, where I purchased four years of digital issues on CD. The CDs arrived this week and I've placed the PDF files on my computer. With the simple drag and drop feature, I have now moved the magazines to my Kindle. What easier way to catch up on my genealogy reading than to have all of these back issues in my purse?

As I mentioned in last year's post, you can also use the Kindle to house those 800 page county histories that you find on Google books and other web sites. At 14.6 ounces, the Kindle weighs a lot less than those dusty old books. And without that "old-book" smell!

Speaking of the weight, the Kindle Fire weighs more than my Kindle 3 at 8.5 ounces. This was an adjustment, since my older model is very lightweight. Even though under a pound, I'm finding the Kindle Fire is becoming easier to hold. It's just something to get used to.

Will I be sending my Kindle 3 to the Technology Graveyard? Not anytime soon. In a future post, I will address the differences between the two devices and how there is still room for them both in my life.

Related posts from LongLostRelatives.net:

Kindle Fire - Tablet or eReader? First Look

Kindle for Genealogy

Kindle for Genealogy Redux

Disclaimer: links to Amazon.com are via my affiliate relationship with the site.

Kindle Fire - Tablet or eReader? - First Look

If you've been wondering why I haven't been blogging for a few days, it's because there's a new love in my life - the Kindle Fire.Having been the owner and fan of the Kindle 3since it was introduced last year, it was with great anticipation that I counted down the days to the arrival of the new, much-hyped version of Amazon.com's tech baby.

My Kindle Fire arrived on Wednesday and I have experienced loss of sleep for several nights, information overload, the giddiness of a schoolgirl crush and absolutely no regrets about kicking it up a notch with my new eReader. Or is it a tablet? Or maybe an oversized smart phone without the phone?

Actually, it's all of the above. And more. Over the next few days, I will be blogging about my experiences with the Kindle Fire, making a side-by-side comparison to the Kindle 3 (now being called the Kindle Keyboard), sharing some of my favorite apps, and last, and by no means least, using the Kindle Fire for genealogy.

Out of the box, it's pretty simple. Just the device and the AC adapter. And a small piece of cardboard with an instruction on where to locate the power on button and to glide your finger across the screen to activate the device.

Tapping as fast as I can

Okay, confession time. I don't have a smart phone, don't have an iPad or iPod touch, so this touch-screen technology is all new to me. When I first had to use a mouse with a computer, I resisted, "I'm a keyboard person!" I insisted. The first days of using the Kindle Fire was adjusting to "tapping" instead of clicking. I'm still perfecting my tapping skills.

My first obstacle was to log-in to my wireless router. How DO I enter my password?? I struggled with this for at least 45 minutes until, entirely by mistake, the touch keyboard appeared at the bottom of the screen. It would have saved me a lot of time had that little cardboard instruction sheet said to tap the bottom of the screen to activate the navigation menu and keyboard. Please do not assume I know these things! And I even consider myself a gadget geek.

I had to make some password changes on my wireless router, restarted the Kindle Fire, and finally had access to my WiFi network. Here's where I should mention that the Kindle Fire accesses the internet only by WiFi, unlike a smartphone and some iPads which require a paid plan (or so I'm told). This is no different from my Kindle 3.

Books, books and more books

A few apps were preloaded on the device, so I logged in to my Facebook account. I test drove a few familiar web sites, then began downloading my Kindle books from my Amazon library (Cloud) to my Kindle Fire (Device). Over the past year I've accumulated close to 400 books for my Kindle. No, that didn't cost me a small fortune. I'm a big fan of FREE. If you like free ebooks for your Kindle or Nook, I recommend subscribing to the Free eBook Deal blog - they provide daily links to free books to feed your hunger for reading. You can also follow them on Facebook.

So, with a few taps, I began the process of downloading my existing ebook collection from my Amazon library to my device. All of my online cloud content from Amazon is at my fingertips as long as I have WiFi access, but I can download my books and music at will. I can remove my content from my device and it's still stored in the cloud on Amazon.

This morning I used an app for Audible.com (now an Amazon company) to access my library of audio books. I've started downloading several of my audio books to my Kindle Fire. The app is extremely easy to use, although it took me a while to get account and password recognition - that may have just been due to my less than perfect skills on the tap-keyboard.

Social networking and blog reading

Facebook. Twitter. GooglePlus. Google Reader. All of these are part of my daily routine. And I get behind. Outrageously behind. Two days without checking the blogs I follow in Google Reader and I have 700-800 posts that have accumulated.

This is where the Kindle Fire is going to make my blog reading time much more efficient.

I maintain folders for different types of blogs that I read. My favorite "must read" bloggers are in my "A-MR Blogs" folder. When I have no time to read everything, this is the folder of blog posts that I always read.

In the mobile version of Google Reader, only 15 blog posts are displayed at a time. I can read the ones I select (I'm a headline/title reader, so if you don't grab my attention there, I move on). After perusing the 15 posts on my screen, I can mark them all as read and move on to the next 15. This has made my blog reading so much more efficient than on my PC. So, from now on, ALL of my blog reading in Google Reader will definitely be done on the Kindle Fire.

Facebook is pretty much the same as on my computer, except that I just get the news feeds and not the extraneous ads that appear on the right hand side of the screen. Nice! The icons to "tap" for notifications and messages are very small and difficult for me to "tap". This needs some refinement or perhaps the purchase of a stylus for me.

But when it comes to Twitter, this is where I see the real difference between the web and mobile. Those of you with smartphones are probably already aware of this. Using an app called TweetCaster, I now "get" why people like Twitter. Twitter is clearly intended for the mobile user and it's quick and easy to browse through tweets on the Kindle Fire. Tapping on the Kindle keyboard is still much too frustrating for me to do much tweeting from the device, but I'll certainly use it for reading tweets.

This is just a quick look at the new Kindle Fire. I'll be back with more about my experiences in the coming days.

Related posts from LongLostRelatives.net:

Kindle for Genealogy

Kindle for Genealogy Redux

Using Adobe Professional software for genealogy

Let me be honest - I am involved in a new and exciting love affair. It leaves me dancing on air and giddy much of the time. The source: Adobe Professional software. It's not quite like the love affair that I have with my Flip-Pal scanner, but the contributions this product makes to my genealogy life are incredible.

No doubt you are already well acquainted with the Adobe Reader and Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Adobe Professional is a software product that is used to create and manage PDF files. Big deal, you say.

For this paper-loathing digital diva, yes, it's a big deal. I became acquainted with this software because I use it every day on my day job. I've been amazed at what I'm able to do with Adobe Professional and I became quite frustrated that I did not have it for use on my genealogy projects.

Cost vs. Convenience

The major drawback for personal purchase was its cost. List price is around $450. About a month ago, I ordered the Student and Teacher edition for $119. It arrived with the warning about the type of educational institution you must be affiliated with to be able to use the software. A photo ID of you and your affiliation had to be submitted to be able to unlock the registration. Alas, my type of educational institution did not meet the criteria, so I had to return the software.

I knew that this software was going to contribute greatly to managing my digital files and research, so I arrived at the solution of purchasing the old 9.0 version which was about $240. That saved me about $200 of the cost of the new X version. The price for 9.0 has jumped up to about $300 since I bought it a couple weeks ago. One of the tech guys at work made a great suggestion. Buy the old version of software at a closeout price, then later on purchase the upgrade for the newest version. You can shave off a pretty significant amount of cash by doing so.

If you happen to be a student or teacher at an accredited educational institution, the $119 for the Student-Teacher version is a bargain!

What will this product do?

First of all, the basic use of this product is to create PDF files and packages. Yes, the Microsoft Office suite of products has the "print to PDF" feature, so why is this different?

In Adobe Professional, you can create a PDF file or package from several different files. If you are publishing family histories or genealogies, compiling handouts or workbooks for speaking engagements, this is a miracle worker. You can select the files you want and begin assembling them in the order they will appear in the final product. Let's say for example, you have one file of a narrative history, another file of a pedigree chart, another file of photographs. All of these can be assembled in the order you want. Then you can add headers, footers and page numbers for the completed document. All of this can be done without doing any editing in the original file.

Genealogy uses

I am a huge fan of Google books and have downloaded several PDF files of family histories, county history books - you name it. I like to have these resources available for use when I want them - and at times when I am not connected to the internet. The problem with downloading some of these PDF files is that once they were downloaded, the search feature no longer worked in many of them.

Enter Adobe Professional. You can select the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text recognition option and the software will go through the entire book, recognize words and turn it into a fully searchable document. This process took about four hours for an 800 page county history book that I worked on recently. This process can be accomplished in the background while I'm working on something else on my computer. What a time saver.

This also works well if you are saving full newspaper pages from Ancestry.com. Once you download the file, it is no longer searchable and it's nearly impossible to find that reference to your ancestor without looking through the entire newspaper page. Run the OCR text recognition and you can find your reference instantly.

That's not all. I can highlight the text that I'm interested in and also add "sticky note" comments. At the moment, I have a library book checked out and wanted about 20 pages for my research. One of the pages refers to an endnote in the back of the book. I knew that I might need to view that original source at some point, so I inserted a comment that included the information from the endnotes.

Example of highlight text and inserting a comment

From scans to a searchable text document

I scanned the pages of this book that I wanted for my research into high-resolution JPG files. In my photo editing software, I cropped the extraneous space on the scan and margins. Then I added each image to a PDF file. Once all of the images were added, I used the OCR text recognition feature and the software converted all of the images to searchable text. Not only does it do the OCR scan, it also realigns the page if my book was not properly lined up in the scanner. These features alone make the product worth the price.

Then I am able to take notes, annotate the document, and easily find what I'm looking for - fast.

Other handy features

As with Adobe Reader, Professional has a snapshot tool so you can capture just one portion of an image. For example, you may have saved a full newspaper page from Ancestry.com and you want to save an obituary in a file by itself. You can do it with this software.

Perhaps you have become proficient at the Control-PrintScreen feature to capture images from your computer screen. Then you have to do touch-up and cropping in your photo editing software. Adobe Professional will extract all images in a PDF document for you easily. I have to record the steps here so I can find how to do it the next time I need this feature! From the menu bar: Advanced - Document Processing - Export All Images. It automatically creates a jpg file of the images recognized in the document.

Multi Media

I have yet to explore the multi-media functions, but there are options for creating and managing Flash, sound and video in this software. I have seen interactive presentations created with this software. I can imagine this would be a valuable tool for anyone who is creating multi-media family history projects to share with other family members.

Benefits

For me, the primary benefits of the product are to be able to search and index huge volumes of information so I can find something very quickly later on. I know I have only scratched the surface in using this product for genealogy. As with any new love affair, I'm looking forward to learning more.

Purchase options

Adobe Acrobat X Professional Student & Teacher Edition

Adobe Acrobat X Professional

Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 [old version]

Please share your experiences in using this product in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: This is an independent product review for which I received no compensation or consideration from the manufacturer. I'm merely a very satisfied customer. Links to the product may provide a small commission through my Amazon.com affiliate link.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History - Week 8: Technology - Space Program

This week's challenge: Technology: What are some of the technological advances that happened during your childhood? What types of technology do you enjoy using today, and which do you avoid?

John Glenn
Mercury Astronaut
Former U.S. Senator, D-Ohio
1968, Wilber, Nebraska

There was no question about this week's selection for the technological advance of my childhood.


Space travel - it doesn't get more technologically advanced than that.


When I was a child in the late 1950s, I vividly remember when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. I couldn't have told you the date from memory, but NASA says it was October 4, 1957. I remember standing in our yard, looking skyward, confident I would be able to see it pass overhead. I also tried to dig my way to China once, but gave up after I dug about four inches of dirt and decided I enjoyed life right where I was.


In his inaugural address in January, 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged the United States to place a man on the moon in the next decade. That seemed like the thoughts of a wild dreamer at the time.


The space race began between the United States and the Soviet Union (It was called the USSR then). Monkeys were being tested in spacecrafts, but the first human being to enter space was Yuri Gagarin of the USSR. We followed the current events surrounding the space race in grade school. I knew the names of all seven of the astronauts selected for the Mercury space program: Alan Shepherd, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, and Deke Slayton.


Shepherd became the first American in space and John Glenn was the first American to oribit the earth. His capsule was called Friendship 7. I read and re-read every article about the astronauts in Life magazine. Glenn's flight was in 1962. I took a huge risk by taking my transistor radio to school with an earphone so I could listen to the radio broadcast about his flight. I must have gotten away with it because I don't remember getting in trouble or having it taken away from me. John Glenn was my true American hero! In 1998, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to fly in space.


I remember the tragedy when Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died during a pre-launch test of the Apollo craft in 1967.

It was only two years later that the Apollo mission carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins took off for the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy's dream. I remember watching the live coverage of the landing and the first walk on the moon during that hot July of 1969.


Aspects of the space program have been well portrayed in the film version of The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. There was even a sci-fi thriller that pondered that the space program could have been smoke and mirrors and produced in a television studio in Capricorn One. On a family history note, my third cousin, David Doyle, appeared in that film. 


Current Technology


For the second part of this week's challenge, what technology do I enjoy today and what do I avoid?


All who know me probably think of me as Lady GaGadget. Really. Over the years, I've had to have the latest and greatest in electronics, including stereos, boom boxes, Sony Walkman, VCRs, DVD players, DVD recorders, Sony Camcorder, you name it. Over time, I learned to not jump on the technology bandwagon as early as I had before. Now I tend to wait for the bugs to be worked out and the price to come down. I didn't buy my HDTV until about a year and a half ago.


My first computer purchase was in 1986, a Tandy T-1000. No hard drive. Didn't need one. Since then, I had one other desktop model, followed by four laptops and a netbook. I don't love computers. What I love is what they allow me to do.


My other recent techno gadgets would include two Creative Zen mp3 players (I'm not an Apple or iPod fan), and the Creative Zen which plays mp3 files, audio books, videos from YouTube and stores photos. I had the first generation Flip Video Camera even before Oprah featured it on her show. My current love affair is with the Flip-Pal mobile scanner. I ordered that last summer and was in the first round of early adopters to begin using this product from the company's first shipment. This scanner also has to compete with my Kindle E-reader for my attention. I'm definitely glad I waited for the price to go down on the Kindle, but now I'm waiting for Amazon to come out with a color version. I also make quite a bit of use of my Garmin GPS.


What do I avoid?


Cell phones! I have a love/hate relationship with cell phones. I like having it when I need to make a call, but for carrying on a real conversation? Nope. Don't like it. And I can't imagine me giving in to a Smartphone. I figure that I can wait 8 hours to read all of my junk email and do it on my computer. I loathe the idea of texting and hope my state Legislature will outlaw the use of cell phones and texting while driving.


Mostly, I hate ring-tones. More specifically, yours. :-) 


Related blog posts:


Sending my stuff to the technology graveyard


Flip-Pal review, Part 1


Flip-Pal review, Part 2


Using Kindle for Genealogy

Using Kindle for Genealogy Redux

About 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: Amy Coffin of We Tree Genealogy has created a third year of blogging prompts for genealogy bloggers. The theme for 2011 is 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History. These are shared on the Geneabloggers.com web site, hosted by Thomas MacEntee.

Read all articles in this series.

Who Do You Think You Are - Kim Cattrall

It's Friday! And that means another episode of the hit NBC genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA).

Tonight's episode features Kim Cattrall in a search for the grandfather who abandoned his family. This episode first aired in the BBC version of the series. Watch a preview here. The show airs at 8:00 p.m. EST and 7:00 p.m. Central.

You can chat along with the first airing of the show on Twitter using the hashtag #wdytya. If you live in the Mountain and Pacific time zones and don't want any spoilers, I suggest you avoid Twitter and Facebook until the show airs in your area! The tweeters get pretty excited during the online viewing party.

Live Viewing Party on Twitter

Last week, Rosie O'Donnell live tweeted throughout the broadcast, although she was not using the #wdytya hashtag. If you don't quite have the hang of Twitter (I have a love/hate relationship with the little blue bird), I recommend the free software, TweetDeck. It makes keeping track of multiple "conversations" much easier. This software also provides several shortcuts for replying, responding to and re-tweeting messages as well as providing a one-click method for inserting those hashtags.

Here's where you can find me on Twitter.

Geneablogger Radio


Then you will definitely want to stick around for the fourth episode of Geneablogger Radio, hosted by the chief geneablogger, Thomas MacEntee. Topics for this call-in web-based radio show will be tonight's episode of WDYTYA, webinars, genealogy news and some door prizes as Thomas divests himself of some of the conference swag he picked up at the Roots Tech conference last weekend. You can listen to the radio show and join the chat room by following this link. If you happen to miss the show, you can listen to a repeat performance later by following the same link.

See you tonight!

Tombstone Tuesday - Sending My Stuff to the Technology Graveyard

The other day, Leland Meitzler of GenealogyBlog wrote about technology we use today that will be consigned to the rubbish heap in the near future - items like compact cameras, portable music players, CDs and DVDs, eBook readers, and everything else that seems to be incorporated into cell phones.

Confession time: My name is Susan and I am a gadgetaholic. However, my cell phone is just a cell phone. It makes and receives calls. That's all. I loathe cell phones. Especially those belonging to other people. Especially the ones with obnoxious ring tones.

That said, it brings me around to the topic of this post. I still have quite a bit of obsolete technology that was a "must have" when I started on the genealogy path in the 1970s and 1980s.

I got hooked on photography at a young age when a neighbor let me sit in her darkened bathroom while she printed photographs she had taken of our family. By the time I was in college, I worked and saved enough money to buy my first single lens reflex camera, a Minolta SRT 101. Then came the telephoto lens. Then the darkroom in my parent's basement. Then the Minolta SRT 102.

When I caught the genealogy bug, I needed something better than a copy machine at the library to copy the photographs I was borrowing from relatives. So I bought a set of close-up lenses for the camera and a copy stand. I would attach the camera to the adjustable pole, place the item I was copying on the base, set the lights for the best exposure, focus and snap. I had to copy my photos in batches of 36 because that was how Kodak Tri-X film was sold. Some of the photographs of my ancestors are still from those black and white negatives from more than 30 years ago.


I really started cooking when I bought an IBM Wheelwriter 3 typewriter. This was very VERY high tech since it had a one-line memory! If I made a mistake in that line, the correcting tape allowed me to make a very clean typeover. At the time, this typewriter was considered a "letter quality printer" and I thought it would work just fine until I could afford to purchase a computer that I would be able to hook it up to. Oh my, yes, I can actually remember a time when there was NOT a computer in every home.

Then I went through several different cassette tape recorders for interviews. I remember carrying this Panasonic model on road trips and playing music cassettes in the car - before cassette players were standard equipment in vehicles. That came after the 8-track tape players.

Next came the Sony camcorder. It was (still is!) about a foot long, cumbersome and heavy. But it was considered compact at the time. Next to my Flip video camera (not to be confused with my Flip-Pal mobile scanner), this thing is enormous. Handycam, it was called. Handy. Funny.

Then, in 1986, I really hit the big time when I bought my first computer - a Tandy T-1000 with not one, but TWO, five inch disk drives. Most computers did not come with hard drives at the time. Why would anyone need more storage capacity?

I immediately bought a very early version of Family Tree Maker software. And yes, I still have several three ring binders with descendant charts and family group sheets that were printed on my dot matrix printer. The IBM Wheelwriter wasn't compatible as a letter quality printer with the Tandy computer. Some things never change. So I still typed much of my correspondence and queries on the typewriter. And every time I got a new computer or new software, I had to re-enter all of the information in my family history database over and over again.

All of this was, of course, before the internet and email. That was back in the days when we used postage and enclosed SASEs with our queries. We sent letters through the post office before email or text messaging came along. You may recall there was once a U.S. Postal Service that was the main source of communication between family members. Handwritten letters were used for social networking and research.

Fast forward to 2011 - all of this technology, which added up to several thousand dollars when new, is still here. I checked eBay a couple years ago and these items were listed for about a $5.00 opening bid and had no bidders. I promise myself that I will do the right thing and have these once prized possessions recycled and disposed of properly - once I get used to the idea they have no value to me any longer.

Now I read that my mp3 player, tiny digital camera, my pocket size Flip video camera and my Kindle will soon be going down the same path as these once treasured essentials in my genealogy tool kit. All they need to do is add a scanner to a cell phone and that's going to be about all I'll need.

I did mention that I loathe cell phones, didn't I? But - I am beginning to see some value in upgrading - not quite yet, however. So don't rub this in my face if I eventually get a smartphone, ok?