The Casey Surname DNA Project

The following announcement was written by Footnote.com:

- The SmallTownPapers Collection details the lives and histories of people and events across the United States

Footnote.com announced today a new partnership with SmallTownPapers, Inc. that will add millions of pages of historical newspapers to the site. With over 28 million images of original documents already on Footnote.com, the historical newspapers will prove to be a valuable addition, providing a unique view of our nation’s history.

After using Footnote.com, SmallTownPapers President Paul Jeffko quickly realized the two companies had a natural synergy. "Our unique and exclusive small-town newspaper content is a boon for any researcher, and with Footnote.com providing high quality viewing, printing, and downloading, visitors are going to discover a new dimension and relevance to online history and genealogy research."

Unlike many of the major newspapers, small town newspapers give a glimpse into what day-to-day life was like for many Americans during that time. Visitors can browse articles of local news content, historic photos, and birth, marriage, and obituary announcements. The image viewer on Footnote.com enables visitors to see images of the newspapers exactly as they were printed, dating back to the mid-19th century.

“These newspapers can be found in other places, but what makes Footnote.com so different is the social networking component we offer,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “Social networking isn’t just for young people on MySpace or Facebook anymore. People of all ages with different interests, including history, are now interacting with each other on the internet. Footnote.com has created an engaging and fun experience with content like historical newspapers, that enables people to discuss their discoveries with others.”

Visit www.footnote.com/smalltownpapers to access free samples of these newspapers and to see what Footnote members have contributed.

About Footnote, Inc.
Founded in 1997 as iArchives, Inc., Footnote.com is a subscription website that features
searchable original documents that provide users with an unaltered view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com

About SmallTownPapers®
SmallTownPapers is a leading solution provider for publishers of America’s 5000 small market newspapers. Working with publishers nationwide, the Seattle-based company digitally preserves current and archive editions and provides searchable online access to the newspapers. Additionally, SmallTownPapers provides millions of news consumers across the country with access to real-time news and information from small town America. Today, more than 350 newspapers from 46 states can be accessed and searched through SmallTownPapers. The archive, containing editions dating as far back as the 1800's, continues to grow as publishers discover SmallTownPapers in their search for comprehensive digital archive solutions.

There are many different reasons for copying all or part of a web site. First of all, if it is your site, you need a backup! More than once I have talked with people who lost their entire site when their hosting service had a hardware problem or even went out of business. Another reason is that you wish to move your site. Perhaps you are responsible for a RootsWeb site and wish to move it elsewhere instead of participating in the transfer to Ancestry.com. Another reason is that you want a copy NOW just in case you wish to move it later.

Web site backups protect against hardware failures as well as “political issues.” You may have your site hosted now on a free genealogy web service, but what happens when that service changes its policies to something you don’t like? You never, ever want your data to be held “hostage” by some faceless corporation. Take control of your data! Keep a local copy.

It makes no difference where your site is hosted: USGenWeb, RootsWeb, or the local “mom and pop” hosting service up the street. You should always have a recent copy of your web site. Once a copy is stored on your local computer’s hard drive, you have many options. For one, if your hosting service goes out of business or changes its policies, you can easily upload part or all of your site to another hosting service within minutes!

When I write, “your web site,” I would include not only your personal site but also your society’s site, a USGenWeb county site that you maintain, or any other web site for which you have total or partial responsibility. What happens if the hosting service “pulls the plug?” That has happened before, and I am certain that it will happen again.

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The following was written by Tim Sullivan, CEO of The Generations Network, Inc. and is posted here at the RootsWeb blog: http://blogs.rootsweb.com/newsroom/

As you know, The Generations Network has hosted and funded the RootsWeb online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb as the world’s oldest and largest free genealogy website. TGN remains committed to this mission and believes that RootsWeb is an absolutely invaluable and complementary resource to Ancestry.com, our flagship commercial family history site. We believe in both services and want to see both communities prosper and grow.

As part of this goal, we have decided to “transplant” RootsWeb onto the Ancestry.com domain beginning next week. This move will not change the RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within RootsWeb. RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be different is that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from www.rootsweb.com to www.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Again, the RootsWeb experience is not changing.

The decision to host RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is being made for one primary reason: we believe that the users of each of our two main websites can be better served if they have access to the best services available on both. Simply stated, we want to introduce more Ancestry.com users to RootsWeb and vice versa.

Today, despite the fact that Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com are the two most frequently visited family history sites on the Web, only 25 percent of visitors to Ancestry.com visited RootsWeb in January 2008, while only 20 percent of visitors to RootsWeb visited Ancestry.com (according to Comscore Media Metrix). We think we will serve our users best by doing a better job of letting them know what is available on both Ancestry.com and RootsWeb. Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is the first step towards making this happen, but we will absolutely look for more and better ways down the road to advance this goal.

Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com will also make it easier for us to make changes and improvements to the RootsWeb experience in the future.

All old RootsWeb URLs will continue to work, whether they are bookmarks or favorites, links to or from a hosted page or URLs manually typed in your Internet browser. We will have a redirect in place so that all old URLs will automatically end up on the appropriate new RootsWeb URL. You will never need to update your old favorites or links unless you want to. We have worked to make the transition as seamless as possible for our users, and this change should have a minimal impact on your experience with the site.

RootsWeb will remain a free online experience dedicated to providing you with a place where our community can find their roots together. If you have questions regarding this change please email them to feedback@rootsweb.com.

Thanks,

Tim Sullivan
CEO
The Generations Network, Inc.

The following announcement was written by AGES-online:

LENEXA, KANSAS (March 13, 2008) AGES-online has just released an all new Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM) file export process. Subscribers can generate a GEDCOM file containing all of their own family data and transfer that file to their computer.

The new GEDCOM process can be accessed only by paying subscribers through their password protected account using the side File menu. No one other than the password holder can access the subscribers' data or download that data to a GEDCOM file.

"We take our subscribers' privacy very seriously here at AGES-online," said Ken Aubuchon, Chief Executive Officer. "We want to make sure that they have control over their data and who has access to it. We will never compromise that trust."

The new GEDCOM export process is fully compliant with the GEDCOM Standard Release 5.5, unlike many off-the-shelf packages currently in distribution today. The standard was created by the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to facilitate the open communication of computerized genealogy data.

"Genealogy software is very complex to write and the GEDCOM standards reflect that complexity." said Ken Aubuchon. "That is why there are so many Family Tree software packages that have their own interpretation of the standards. By following the standards, we are ensuring the integrity of our customers' data."

About AGES-online AGES-online is a small company specializing in genealogy and family research systems development. Founded by Ken Aubuchon, Debra Aubuchon and Kay Mitchell, AGES-online has over 50 years of genealogy research experience and even more experience in information technology. They promote traditional family values and believe one of the best ways of doing so is by bringing families together on AGES-online.

www.ages-online.com

All counties of England and Wales 1871 Census, plus the Isle of Man, Channel Islands and Royal Navy At Sea, are now complete on British Origins - over 22 million searchable names and images ot the original census documents. We believe our census indexes to be the most accurate available, and over 60 million names from three censuses (1841, 1861 & 1871) are now available on British Origins (www.britishorigins.com)

The census records are searchable by name, age, birth place, parish and county. The index records include the source record references, so that users with access to CDs of the original census records can use The Origins Network census index alongside these CDs.

For full information visit: www.originsnetwork.com/help/popup-aboutbo-census1871.htm

About Origins Network (www.originsnetwork.com)
Specialising in Britain and Ireland, the Origins Network provides an extensive range of collections for the genealogist and family historian. Most of these collection, which date as far back as the 13th century, are unavailable anywhere else online,

For details on our British Origins ans Irish Origins services, how to sign up and subscription rates, please go to: www.originsnetwork.com/signup-info.aspx.

On December 2, 2007, I published an article entitled, "The Latest Practical (?) Gadget: A Two-Pound Laptop." I described the Asus Eee laptop computer. I purchased one a few weeks before publishing the article and must admit that I have fallen in love with the tiny device. I wrote a Plus Edition article about it, which is still available at http://www.eogn.com/blogplus/2007/12/_the_latest_practical_gadget_a.html.

The Asus Eee is so tiny that it slips into an overcoat pocket, and I barely know that it is there. I have taken it on several trips, including a two-week trip to the west coast. I have checked e-mail, surfed the Web, written newsletter articles, and paid my bills online from hotel rooms and from a rental car in a number of different cities. Of course, I wasn't driving down the highway when operating from the rental car. I was typically parked, using a local Wi-Fi wireless network connection. The Asus Eee includes built-in “Wi-Fi” wireless networking as well as a standard ethernet network connector. It is easy to connect to the Internet at high speed from most hotel rooms and from the parking lots of many truck stops, coffee shops and from most Staples stores.

I am told these tiny computers are selling like hotcakes: the little $399 laptops are becoming hard to find. Asus is having difficulties manufacturing enough of them to meet the demand. Some dealers are now charging a premium above the $399 list price.

Obviously, a tiny (9-inch by 6 1/2-inch) computer with a 7-inch screen must have some drawbacks. Indeed, I find that the keyboard and the screen are cramped. Software is cramped also as the device ships with a 4-gigabyte hard drive – not much space for today’s software. Actually, it isn't a standard hard drive at all. It is a solid-state disk with no moving parts. This disk is very, very fast. Even with its modest Celeron M 900 MHz processor, the Asus operating system boots up much faster than a normal laptop or desktop computer with a high speed Pentium processor. The reason is the fast disk drive: this computer spends very little time waiting for the disk drive. Any application that reads and writes lots of data to the disk drive, such as a genealogy program, also runs quickly on the Asus Eee.

However, the biggest constraint of the Asus Eee turns out to be the operating system: it runs Linux, not Windows. That is a combination of good and bad. Linux runs faster and is more reliable than Windows. However, it suffers from fewer programs available. In particular, Linux does not run Windows programs at all. The Master Genealogist, RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, and other Windows genealogy programs will not run on the Linux operating system that comes with the Asus Eee.

I also missed the Verizon USB720 EV-DO wide-area wireless adapter that I use on my Windows and Macintosh laptops. I can use that to connect to the web while moving on a commuter train, from a city park, or most anyplace else in urbanized areas or along Interstate highways. I do not have to go looking for a Wi-Fi “hotspot.” Unfortunately, there are no Linux drivers available for the Verizon USB720 EV-DO adapter. It comes with Windows drivers, and the Macintosh drivers are already built in to the Macintosh OS X operating system. However, Linux computers and their owners are left out.

I found it irritating to travel with a Verizon USB720 EV-DO adapter in my pocket and not be able to use it on my new tiny computer.

The owner's manual included with the Asus Eee states that Windows XP can be loaded onto the Asus Eee and that it will run well. In fact, the CD-ROM disk included in the box with the Asus Eee even contains all the needed Windows device drivers to make it work. The only thing missing is a licensed copy of Windows XP.

I started thinking about replacing Linux on my Asus laptop with Windows XP. The disk drive space constraints appeared to be the biggest challenge. When shipped from Asus, the four-gigabyte, solid-state disk contains 2.7 gigabytes of files. This includes the Linux operating system as well as all the included Linux applications: word processor, web browser, e-mail program, Skype, and a bunch of games. This leaves 1.3 gigabytes left for the user to add programs and create documents, which isn't much of a challenge. After all, that is quite a bit of space for a 2-pound laptop.

I knew that converting the computer into a practical Windows XP system would be a challenge. First of all, squeezing all of Windows XP's required files into a four-gigabyte hard drive might be tough. Even if successful, how about the space required by the various applications I want to use? Could I actually install Windows XP and The Master Genealogist and RootsMagic and Legacy Family Tree and the Firefox web browser and Skype and a word processor and an e-mail program and an RSS newsreader and a few other programs onto this tiny device with a four-gigabyte hard drive? I know that Windows XP alone consumes more than three gigabytes, leaving precious little for anything else.

I decided to find out.

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For more information about the Plus Edition of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, go to http://www.eogn.com/plus.

NBC Television will soon launch a US version of the hit BBC genealogy series "Who Do You Think You Are?" The new program will be co-executive produced by Friends star Lisa Kudrow.

I have written many times about "Who Do You Think You Are?" which is a very popular television show being broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Television. It also has been exported to Canada, Australia and elsewhere for locally-produced programs that follow the same format. To read my earlier articles on "Who Do You Think You Are?" look at http://tinyurl.com/2sk59n.

The NBC network recently signed a contract with UK producer Wall to Wall. Program executives are now researching the family trees of several interested U.S. celebrities to see if they have compelling enough backgrounds.

The NBC version will be produced by Wall to Wall in association with Lisa Kudrow's company, Is or Isn't Entertainment. The actress will co-executive produce the format with her business partner, Dan Bucatinsky, and the Wall to Wall chief executive, Alex Graham.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" launched on BBC2 in 2004 and will air its fifth series this year on BBC1. The U.S. version will not air until the fall of 2008, at the earliest.

The following announcement was written by the Florida State Genealogical Society:

Submission Deadline: 1 Apr 2008

The Florida State Genealogical Society (FSGS) is accepting program proposals for the 2008 Conference (the 32nd Annual FSGS Conference) which is scheduled to be held 14-15 November 2008 in Maitland, Florida.

Among the topics being considered are lectures on Computers/Technology, Beginning Genealogy, Research Sources, Immigration/migration, Florida Research (i.e., history, available records, repositories, ethnic and religious groups, etc.), Society Management, and broader genealogical topics including methodology, problem solving, publishing, military records, land records, etc.

Proposals should include the following information:

1. The title of the lecture and a brief, but specific, outline and/or abstract.
2. Short summary for the program schedule (one or two sentences).
3. Audience skill level (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced or any mixture.)
4. Speaker's name, address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address.
5. Brief speaker's biography (150 words or less)
6. Brief resume of recent lecturers the speaker has given.

Each session will be limited to one hour. Presentations should include a brief ten-minute question-and-answer period. Camera-ready syllabus material (due 1 October 2008) will be required for each presentation whether lecture, seminar or workshop. The syllabus will be distributed at the conference.

Each speaker will be limited to a maximum of three presentations; however, up to six proposals can be submitted. FSGS conference lecturers will receive a limited compensation package (available upon request).

If you have any questions, please contact Ann Staley at astaley@comcast.net.

Interested individuals should submit proposals via e-mail to FSGS in an MS-Word, WordPerfect, or PDF file to Susan Roberts at sroberts4@earthlink.net.

The following announcement was written by Familybuilder:

New York, NY -- New York City-based Familybuilder™ (formally iFamily™), has announced it has launched its popular Family Tree Application on Bebo. Bebo’s 40 million-plus members will now be able to access and build their family trees through the Bebo network.

The launch of Family Tree on Bebo comes on the heels of surpassing 2 million registered users and over 7 million profiles on Facebook since launching there in June 2007. This further reinforces Familybuilder’s status as the fastest growing genealogy application on the Internet today. The company expects to exceed 8 million profiles in less than 8 months of operation.

Alongside the Bebo launch, Familybuilder has secured its Series A investment led by London-based DN Capital, and DN Partner Steve Schlenker shall join the Company’s Board of Directors. The company intends to use the proceeds of its Series A round to expand onto additional social networking sites and to roll out value-added services to its registered users.

Familybuilder is fast becoming the Internet's favorite social tool for people interested in genealogy and family history. Unlike stand-alone online genealogy services, Familybuilder is positioned to leverage the social graphs of multiple online social networks at once to help people find and communicate with relatives, build family trees, preserve family history, track family activity and more.

“Imagine having the ability to find new relatives with one click by searching a database of millions of users across multiple social networks. With Familybuilder, you can,” said Ilya Nikolayev, CEO of Familybuilder “The new round of funding will help us offer new and exciting services that will further differentiate Familybuilder from other companies in the genealogy sector.”

“Our investment in Familybuilder follows on similar early stage investments by our principals’ successful social networking companies and applications such as PlanetAll (sold to Amazon), Tickle (sold to Monster) and Shazam (partially exited to BMI), said Steve Schlenker from DN Capital. "When people see some of the services Familybuilder will be rolling out over the next 3-6 months we are convinced that this team and company will change an industry.”

About Familybuilder Familybuilder™ (formally iFamily™) is a leading software application development company focused on building family-oriented applications within online social networks. The company's flagship product, Family Tree, is the leading social genealogy application on Facebook. Family Tree can be found on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/familytree and on Bebo at http://apps.bebo.com/familytree or via the company's website at http://www.familybuilder.com/. New York-based Familybuilder launched in June 2007 and is privately held.

About DN Capital

DN Capital is a London-based venture capital firm investing in software and digital media companies targeting the enterprise, Internet and wireless sectors. The professionals at DN Capital bring over 35 years of private equity experience to their investments, and actively work with portfolio companies to steward their growth through the various stages of development. The firm looks to invest €1-5 million per company and has a history of bringing exciting U.S. companies to Europe and helping rapidly growing European companies expand to the U.S. Additional information can be found at http://www.dncapital.com.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is giving public notice of a proposal to enter into a non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc. (TGN), owners of Ancestry.com, to digitize and further expand public access to archival holdings in NARA's custody. Please note: this is for a NON-EXCLUSIVE agreement and will not replace any of several other agreements with other companies that are already in place.

NARA is requesting comments about the terms of the proposed agreement. The public is invited to respond and all comments must be received by April 9, 2008.

Please go to http://www.archives.gov/comment/tgn-preamble.html for an overview of the draft agreement and a link to the agreement.

I am so excited! I’m going to a family reunion in April! Some people think that a family reunion is boring although most genealogists consider any family get-together as an opportunity to ask questions and gather more information and research clues.

A few years ago, the children of my mother and her sisters decided that we needed to spend some quality time together. I was enthusiastic and jumped into the planning right away. Altogether, there are seven of us who are first cousins, and various combinations of us have gotten together once or twice a year for the last three years, along with our spouses or significant others. We’ve chosen birthdays or holidays (the last two Thanksgivings), and we’ve rotated around to different places. We’ve included friends in our reunions because they, too, are special members of our family. We are a fun-loving group of cousins who are not afraid of the occasional comical greeting card or e-mail, a good-natured practical joke, or sending or receiving what we call “the dreaded brown paper package” that might contain something funny, silly, or altogether impractical. (Recent packages have included a huge hairy spider for a cousin bitten by a nasty arachnid, a glow-in-the-dark dolphin Christmas tree, and wadded newspaper that buried a loving birthday card.) It’s a fun group that has adopted the fun name, “The Blackhearts.”

Let me tell you more.

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The family of Frances E. Malamy has given a $100,000 gift to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem in her memory. The donation has established The Frances E. Malamy Research Fellowship of the Peabody Essex Museum's Phillips Library. Malamy was staff archivist at the library for many years.

The purpose of the gift from Frances' husband, Michael Malamy, and children, Jocelyn and Adam, is to sustain the contributions she made to the library. It supports independent scholarly research using its archives and manuscript collection.

"Frances was a unique and extraordinary person who believed firmly that the Phillips Library provides value to the academic community and the public," said Sidney Berger, library director. "We are grateful to the Malamy family for its generous gift enabling the library to continue its outreach to scholars and the rest of the intellectual world."

The Phillips Library is known nationally as a major resource for maritime history and art, New England life and culture, American decorative art, Asian art and culture, Native American history and art, the art and culture of Oceania, natural history, and genealogy.

Scholars interested in applying for the Malamy fellowship can visit http://www.pem.org/museum.

The Doty Tavern in present-day Canton, Massachusetts was the location where rebels gathered in August of 1774, safely out of sight of their British rulers, to discuss the revolutionary principles that would become the Declaration of Independence. (The town boundaries have since moved: the tavern was in Stoughton in 1774). A photo of the tavern taken in the 1880s shows a sign in front. The tavern burned down in 1888 but the sign survived. Local historians kept loose track of it until 27 years ago, when it fell off their radar screen. No one knew where it was until last month when the sign appeared on eBay.

The Doty Tavern sign is a wooden board with two iron rod stanchions along the sides, 71 inches along and 44 inches wide. One side of the sign depicts a lion standing up on its hind legs with a collar and chain around its neck - believed to be an allusion to the British government. The other side is ornamented with a faded image of a horse and traveler. "T. Doty," - the name of the inn's proprietor - is written below.

Local genealogist/historian David Lambert saw the sign on eBay, listed for sale by the Skinner antiques auction company. He notified a few people and local historians won the auction. They wish to return the sign to its original location. Now all they have to do is raise the $28,440 they bid on it.

"This is an important piece of history for both Canton and Stoughton," said Lambert, of Stoughton, the online genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

You can read more in the Boston Globe at http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/09/history_for_sale/.

New Zealander Kevin Anthony Osborne had a lucrative scam going. He applied to District Courts for birth certificates, sometimes ordering large amounts claiming he was conducting genealogy research. He then looked for males with birth dates near his own who had since died. He then assumed their identity, applied for admission at various universities, and then applied for student loans.

“A couple of occasions they wrote to the courts saying they were conducting a genealogy research and could they have the birth certificates for x amount of people and they were subsequently supplied with them,” says Detective Sergeant Nigel Hughes, from Christchurch police.

Today, ten years later, Osborne was sent to prison. The judge sentenced him to 14 months behind bars, ending his 10 years on the run.

“He is a low life he must have had no morals what so ever and go around cemeteries and look at gravestones,” said Ian Barker. Ian and his wife Margerate are victims of his scam… Osborne stole their son Brett’s identity in the name of greed.

You can read more about this story in the TV3 web site at http://tinyurl.com/2wan2z.

The following announcement was written by BYU University:

Provo, Utah (March 6, 2008) - The Computer Science Department of Brigham Young University announced today the program agenda for its Eighth Annual Workshop on Technology for Family History and Genealogical Research. The day-long workshop will take place on March 13, 2008 in the BYU Conference Center, 770 East University Parkway, Provo, Utah.

The morning keynote speaker will be Josh Coates, founder of Mozy, Inc. His topic will be Back up Technology. Mr. Coates began his career in distributed systems research at the University of California, Berkeley and Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center. He specialized in high performance and parallel disk and network I/O. In 2005, Mr. Coates founded Berkley Data Systems (Mozy.com), a highly successful company which acquired over 300,000 customers within its first two years. In October of 2007, Mozy was sold to EMC for $76 million and is now run as a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC. Mr. Coates now works as the CTO in the Advanced Development Program at EMC and volunteers as an adjunct instructor in the Computer Science Department at Brigham Young University.

The luncheon speaker will be Paul Allen, CEO of FamilyLink.com, Inc., a family of services that includes WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilyLink.com, and We're Related on Facebook. Mr. Allen has made substantial contributions to the field of genealogy. As a result, he was elected a UGS Fellow, a prestigious honor in the genealogy industry, in 2007 by the Utah Genealogical Society. In 2000, he was chosen as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Utah.

Morning and afternoon technical sessions will feature more than a dozen presentations and a panel discussion on current and emerging research work and experiences with technology that support family history and genealogy. This year's presentations will include the following topics:

• Interactive Fan Charts: A Space-saving Technique for Genealogical Graph Exploration
• Geospatial Family History Research: Designing a Research Tool
• 10 Things Genealogy Software Should Do
• Contextual Note-Taking for Family History
• Lessons from FamilySearch Labs
• Open Edit and Source Centric
• Keeping it Spinning: A Background Check of Virtual Storage Providers
• Pattern Markup Language: A Pattern-Based Tool for Quickly Automating Genealogy Data Extraction
• Genealogical Record Linkage on International Data
• Can a Layered Approach to Historical Family Reconstitution Make a Difference in the Final Results?
• Utilizing Stacking for Feature Reduction in Graph-Based Record Linkage
• New FamilySearch Compatible Products Panel

The workshop is open to all those who enjoy presenting and learning about emerging technological research, as it applies to genealogy. Pre-registration is encouraged, and the cost is $75 per person. If you don't want to pre-register, the cost is $85 for walk on participants. Full-time students can register at the discounted rate of $35, with current ID. The registration includes a printed syllabus and DVD recording of the proceedings, along with a continental breakfast, catered lunch, and afternoon snacks. To register online, visit http://ce.byu.edu/cw/fhtw/ or call BYU Conferences and Workshops at (801) 422-8925.

The following announcement was written by GenealogyBank:

Over Four Million New Articles Available for Family History Research

NAPLES, FL -- GenealogyBank, a leading online provider of newspapers for family history research, announced today the addition of over 4 million historical newspaper articles and modern obituaries to its online digital archive.

GenealogyBank is the fastest growing newspaper archive for family history research with over 3,400 U.S. newspapers in all 50 states. The exclusive collection features newspapers from the 1600s to the present day with over 26 million obituaries and more than 112 million historical newspaper articles. Each article is a single digital image that can be printed and preserved for family scrapbooks.

"GenealogyBank now provides access to over 221 million family history records such as obituaries, marriage and birth announcements as well as interesting and often surprising facts about our ancestors," says Genealogy Director for NewsBank, inc., Tom Kemp.

This latest addition features big city dailies and regional weeklies including: Savannah (GA) Tribune (1875-1913), Boston (MA) Journal (1880-1917), Anaconda (MT) Standard (1898-1915), North (PA) American (1845-1879) and many others.

Kemp added, "GenealogyBank will digitize millions of family history records in the upcoming months that will continue to help every day people trace their family history. If you've always wanted to trace your family's history -- it's a great time to start."

GenealogyBank is currently offering a 30-Day trial for only $9.95.

About GenealogyBank:

GenealogyBank, a division of NewsBank, inc., supplies individuals interested in family history research with over 300 years of U.S. newspapers, government documents and other historical records in all 50 states. GenealogyBank contains over 214 million family history records including obituaries, birth, marriage, death notices and much more. GenealogyBank can be found at: www.genealogybank.com.

On February 19, I wrote about the plight of Laura Todd of Nashville, Tennessee. It seems that another woman died in Florida eight years ago, and someone entered Laura's Social Security Number into the death record. The assumption is that it was a simple clerical error. Laura Todd has had problems ever since. You can read that article at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/02/being-dead-ruin.html.

MSNBC now says that the problem is much bigger than what I had imagined.

It seems that thousands of U.S. citizens have wrongfully been declared dead, due to an average of 35 data input errors per day by the Social Security Administration (SSA). Many other agencies rely on the data provided by the SSA, such as the IRS. People who have been wrongfully declared dead face many problems, such as rejection of tax returns, cancellation of health insurance, and closure of bank accounts. The article states, "Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary."

Sadly, getting such an error corrected is very difficult. The hapless victim suffers needlessly because of government red tape. It seems far easier to declare a person's death than to correct the mistake. You can read more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23378093.

Stop by RootsBooks, your one-stop online genealogy bookstore. RootsBooks is the genealogy store for books, computers, software and more. Rootsbooks has two divisions:

North America: http://www.RootsBooks.com

U.K.: http://www.RootsBooks.co.uk

I was looking at some computer ads recently and marveled at how far the prices have dropped. One ad was for a $199 PC. As I read the specs, I realized that a similar computer would have sold for $2,000 a very few years ago. It contained an 80-gigabyte hard drive, 512 megabytes of RAM memory, a combination DVD and CD-ROM disk drive capable of watching movies, a 1.5-gigahertz processor, stereo speakers, keyboard, and mouse. As is typical with most desktop systems, this system is sold without a monitor, which must be added at extra cost. Instead of paying $2,000 or more for this amount of power as any of us would have done a few years ago, the system now sells for $199.99 plus a monitor for another $100 to $150 or so.

In fact, only a few years ago, an 80-gigabyte hard drive alone cost more than $199! Now you get an entire computer attached to the drive!

Even better, the low price includes an operating system, a great word processor, a decent spreadsheet program, a presentation program (similar to PowerPoint), a great web browser, and an instant messaging program that communicates with friends on a variety of chat networks, and it even makes telephone calls over the Web at little or no charge.

I wondered, “Is a $199 computer any good? Can it be used for genealogy purposes? Can it surf the Web as well as the more expensive computers do? If so, what makes the other computers worth more money?”

I decided to find answers to those questions. I needed a dedicated computer for a new project: I have been looking for a separate computer dedicated to just one program that I want to run 24 hours a day. I was expecting to pay $500 for a cheap Windows system or perhaps $800+ for a Macintosh. Instead, I ordered the new $199 computer.

I already had an extra monitor available that was left over from the time I upgraded another system to a larger screen. I decided to blow the dust off the old monitor and plug that into the $199 computer.

I received the computer a few days later and have now used it for several days. I believe I have found all the answers to my earlier questions.

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On February 19, I published an article describing a $1,075 device that converts microfilm to digital images. It should be the perfect device for your local society or museum to computerize their microfilms.

I ended the article by writing, "Has any newsletter reader tried the ST Genie or a similar low-cost device? If so, could you let me know of any successes or failures you have had with it? I'd love to write a follow-on article based on your experiences."

The readers of this newsletter kindly responded. Nineteen comments were posted, including several written by people who have a lot of experience using the ST Genie. There is nothing left for me to write as these people already wrote the follow-on article. You can read their words at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/02/st-genie-conver.html.