Yesterday saw the release of Apple’s MacBook. I have one in my hands (and am in fact typing this from it). I got one of the last half dozen in the store, I believe.

This is sort of a review. I know, you are thinking what does this have to do with genealogy, but this is going to be my genealogy platform of choice for the next few (hopfeully several) years, and I’ll explain why in a moment (if you are interested in Macs, but have some Windows-only applications, read on, you’re in luck).

Jason Probst has an article in The Hutchinson News (Kansas) that could serve as a friendly reminder to always check the items you haul around with you to a library, or in this case, courthouse. It’s an article about the lost and found at the Reno County Courthouse, including some genealogy documents.

Bethany Hoffstetter has an article, Experts to offer free appraisals of attic ‘treasures’, in the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, about the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center hosting an interesting event, “Fling or Keep? What to Do with Your Attic Treasures”, this weekened (saturday to be precise). Hopefully it won’t cause people to go out and sell family heirlooms.

My first impressions of PBS’s Texas Ranch House 1867 are not the best - it seemed like about half the volunteers put themselves in the right mindset. To give you a quick back-story - PBS and the BBC have put together a series of shows where they take volunteers and put them in a historical setting. It might be 1940 London, or the American West of the 1870s. This one is set on a small West Texas ranch.

This time around they cast more people who would be more comfortable with the environment, but at the same time some of the people didn’t have the sense of urgency or duty that the environment should have encouraged. They had certain conditions that needed to be met (rounding up so many cattle, etc.), and the ranch owner seemed more concerned with doing chores for his wife than going out with the cowboys to round up cattle, and this after they are already down a man, as well as having a few days of downtime due to illness among several of them.

Maybe it’ll get better (if you missed the first two hours last night, it’ll be repeated in the upcoming weeks). It runs several more nights this week.

According to Maija Palmer of the Financial Times, half a million genealogists visited Ancestry.co.uk after they placed the 1841 census. Apparently this was the first “comprehensive” census in the UK, which led to this rush.

In yet another acquisition, MyFamily.com, Inc., has acquired another company to help expand their services. They’ve acquired Encounter Technologies, which came out of the Georgia Institute of Technology Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

The Durham Region News has an article by Jeff Hayward,
Choose ‘yes’ on Census, urges group , that is pushing Canadians to check off ‘Yes’ on releasing their census information in 92 years.

The Genealogue celebrated its 1000th post monday with a listing of many of the genealogy blogs/sites that Chris reads. You should check it out - most, if not all, of the sites he mentioned deserve a place in your bookmarks (I’m not saying that just because RG is mentioned either!).