Sunday, June 27, 2010

Weekly Genealogy Picks

Weekly Genealogy Picks --June 20 to June 27
from genealogy blogs, newspaper articles and elsewhere

Lynn Palermo at The Armchair Genealogist discusses the leap between Family Historian and Family Writer.

Cyndi Howells of Cyndi's List explains how she saved thousands of broken links on her website through using the Wayback Archive.

Jen Holik-Urban at Family History Research Tips discusses Women and the Naturalization Process.

DearMyrtle discusses US Civil War pension files

Edith Shain, believed to be the nurse kissing the Navy sailor in the famous WWII photograph passed away this week.

The MyHeritage blog discusses recent studies linking personality traits with date of birth.

The Ancestry blog has an entry on their County Land Ownership Atlases

The Facebook blog has an entry on families using Facebook for reunion planning

The WolframAlpha blog has an entry on how to use their website to compute relationships. (WolframAlpha may have been handy for some reporters this week...see below.)


There were two hot stories this week around the Geneablogger Water Cooler.

1) Is Robert Pattinson (star of the Twilight movies) related to Vlad the Impaler?

* The blog at Ancestry.co.uk makes the claim.
* Randy Seaver at Genea-musings questions the evidence,
* As does Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience.
* In two posts, Nick Gombash addresses the connection between the Royal family and Vlad.
* The blogger at One Minion's Opinion points out that a similar quote is reported to have been said by both Anastasia Tyler, "a genealogist at Ancestry", and Dan Jones, "International Content Director."

It appears Ancestry is making the claim that a cousin of a cousin is somehow a relative of some sort.  One cringes when newspapers and magazines make a blunder like this.  But Ancestry's so-called experts?  Of course, magazines such as People will still take the story further down the road of cluelessness, and they refer to Vlad as Pattinson's ancestor.  (Repeat after me: A cousin is not an ancestor...unless incest has been involved.)

2)  The other issue is on Rootsfeed and splogging, which I commented upon earlier this week.

Other commentary on the issue:
* GeneaBloggers initial post, and their update
* DearMyrtle
* EOGN
* FootnoteMaven
* Genealogy's Star

In Technology This Week

Blogger has released some "Share Buttons," which you now see at the end of my posts.

Google Voice has been opened up to anyone.  You can get one telephone number that rings all your phones at once (home, cell, work...wherever you may be.)  And if you are unreachable, the recorded message is sent to you by email.

Apple has released their iPhone 4...but left handed people might have some difficulties with calls being dropped.

Other Weekly Lists 
Amanuensis Monday: June 21st participants
[Amanuensis Monday is a weekly blogging theme I began in February of 2009, where participants transcribe letters, audio, and other documents.]

Leah at The Internet Genealogist
Lisa Wallen Logsdon at Old Stones Undeciphered
J.M. at Tracing My Roots
John Newmark at TransylvanianDutch
"anonymous" at Nolichucky Roots
Heather Wilkinson Rojo at Nutfield Genealogy
Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings
Judy Shubert at Genealogy Traces

If you participated, but don't appear on this list, please, let me know.

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