Genealogy Events, Hints & Tips, Historical, Media Coverage, News No comments yet

It’s All Relative: Getting Down To It

By on April 27th, 2006

Schelly Talalay Dardashti has a very interesting article, It’s All Relative: Getting down to it in Ynetnews, if you happen to be into Jewish genealogy. It’s about an upcoming Jewish genealogy conference that is huge.

Get this:

International Jewish family history researchers are signing up for an intense Jewish genealogy adventure offering more than 180 program sessions in 23 topic categories, more than 30 meetings and luncheons of special interest groups, and networking with global colleagues.

The 26th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy , set for August 13-18 in New York City, will offer conference speakers from 18 countries and an extensive computer education center sponsored by Ancestry.com.

180 different sessions. I don’t have any Jewish relatives, but I want to go anyways.

Family Sites, Media Coverage, Musings, News, Software No comments yet

MyFamily.com (Inc.) Acquires Encounter Technologies

By on April 27th, 2006

In yet another acquisition, MyFamily.com, Inc., (owners of Ancestry.com) 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).

According to the Georgia Institute of Technology, Encounter Technologies designs, develops and deploys innovative communications applications that help people stay in touch on the web. Unique solutions include SnapGenie multimedia photo albums and visual phone conferencing services.

From the Press Release:

The acquisition of Encounter Technologies is another strategic step MyFamily is making to grow their team and develop technology that will give families innovative ways to connect and share on the Web.

Other strategic steps include a new generation of executive talent that Tim Sullivan, President and CEO of MyFamily.com, Inc. has attracted to pioneer the next wave of the company’s growth and innovation. Michael Graff, a former Microsoft executive, is chief among them and recently joined MyFamily as a Senior Vice President and General Manager of the MyFamily business unit. With the acquisition of Encounter Technologies, MyFamily appoints Encounter Technologies’ founder Hoyt Prisock to Vice President of Strategy and Business Development of the MyFamily web service.

Some of it sounds like they are trying to apply the Web 2.0 stuff to genealogy. I’ve heard lots of rumblings about new “portal” sites for families that have genealogy services built into them, but as far as I’m concerned, all you need is something like Drupal, or phpBB.com combined with PhpGedView or The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding.

Out of the four applications I listed above, Drupal is a content management system (CMS) – basically you could have discussion forums, a recipes area (those seem to be popular with family websites), a photo gallery, etc., email/mailing lists, all out of one system, phpBB is a discussion forum, and PhpGedView and TNG are actually full-blown online genealogy applications. Out of those four, only TNG charges (and it’s well worth the money as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been happy over the past few years, as have many others).

You could literally host your own family site, completly under your control, and with the amount of privacy you want (with all of the concerns about identity theft, children, etc.), for a very cheap price – $5 or so a month for hosting, plus another $10 every year for a domain name.

That’s just me.

DNA & Genealogy, Media Coverage, Medical, News No comments yet

History is in Your Genes

By on April 26th, 2006

Joseph Hall has an article, History is in your genes, about the Genographic Project – the ambitious 5-year plan to use DNA and map out global migration patterns, that is being sponsored/handled by National Geographic and IBM.

Excerpts from the article:

As part of the worldwide Genographic Project — the largest-ever attempt to trace genetic ancestries across the globe — Royyuru and his colleagues are trying to map the entire scope of human migration throughout history.

“This is probably the most ambitious and fantastic population genetics study ever attempted,” says Royyuru, who spoke at a Toronto computer conference yesterday about the project, which is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and IBM. “Genetic evidence is the strongest evidence — it’s the history book that we all carry,” he says.
…
Royyuru says genealogical, anthropological and historical data can currently trace human ancestries back no further than a few thousand years.

“So if you want to infer ancestry and geography going back, let’s say, 40,000 or 50,000 years, genetic evidence is the only evidence you can bank on,” he said in an interview.

I disagree about the genealogy tracking back to a few thousand years, although I’ve ran into people who claim they are descended from this or that Roman emperor or whatever. In my opinion, and this is not meant to offend anybody – unless your ancestors were in one spot for very long lengths of time, and you have direct evidence, perhaps DNA even, anything past 500-700 years gets real dicey. I’m not saying that it can’t be proven or documented, but the evidence can get very slim at that point, especially when you look at all of the wars/upheavals/plagues/etc. over that timespan.

It’s not that I don’t think it can be done, I just think that a lot of people use evidence that wouldn’t hold up too well under scrutiny – basically evidence that wouldn’t be accepted by many genealogy professionals.

But I digress, this is a very interesting project, and it’s already causing some heads to turn – especially when it comes to North American migration patterns (Africa/Europe vs Asia).

Media Coverage, Medical, News No comments yet

Knowing Relatives Medical History

By on April 25th, 2006

Paula Story has a story (hah!) in the Union-Tribune (San Diego), Knowing your relatives’ medical history can help you identify health risks and develop a personalized prevention program, that gets into an area that some don’t want to confront or think about, or that, on the flip side, actually got some peole into genealogy and their family history.

Excerpts from the article:

Knowing the details of what diseases or illnesses have occurred in your family can be an important tool for you and your doctor in determining your risk for developing illness or disease. Perhaps more critically, talking about genetic risk and recording a family medical tree can be a gift you give to others.
…
One problem in going back much farther than grandparents with health history is that medical records were not generally as detailed as they are today. For instance, the term “heart attack” was often used to describe many types of sudden death, and “stomach cancer” could have been any cancer within the abdominal region, including liver, ovarian or colon.
…
Using the speed and accessibility of the Internet, many people are beginning to find tools that help them piece together an image of their genetic past, and the increased interest in genealogy in the United States is making those tools more readily available.

I think you are going to see a lot more people looking at this aspect of genealogy.

Hints & Tips, News, Software No comments yet

Google Maps Has Street Maps For Most/All of Europe

By on April 25th, 2006

According to Google Maps Mania, Google Maps has added street maps for most/all of Europe – good news for those who use the service in their look-ups and what not. Some people are saying that not all parts were updated, although it maybe more of a localization/server issue (i.e. the changes haven’t been pushed out to the servers they are using).

Google Maps Europe.

You can read more (as well as the changes) here.