Sunday, August 21, 2011

Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.
Genea-Announcements
There have been several announcements this week from Genealogy-Database vendors
The reaction to this has all been positive.

  • Footnote.com has changed its name to Fold3.com and is focusing on their military documents, though they promise the non-military documents will remain.  (Though one wonders about the unfinished indexing projects for the non-military records.)
     There has been a lot of reaction to this change, much of it negative.
    Back when Ancestry acquired Footnote (11 months ago) - I drew the comparison to Coke acquiring Pepsi.  In the comments, I said  "There might be some renaming of products, but the products could remain the same." The renaming has begun. I may be wearing a tinfoil hat, but I don't think the closeness to 1 year is a coincidence.  They assure us the non-military documents will all remain on Footnote.  But I won't be surprised if a year from now a migration of non-military records from Footnote to Ancestry begins.  And perhaps a migration of military records from Ancestry to Footnote.  (Even though, today, they are saying that isn't happening.) They have a business reason to encourage people to continue to purchase both subscriptions.




      At the Movies
      (Movies currently showing, or being released this week, with some connection to Genealogy or History. The plot provided is taken from IMDB, so should contain minimal spoilers.)

      The Help -- Jackson, Mississippi, 1962: aspiring writer Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns home after college, where unexpected friendships with African-American maids Aibeleen Clark and Minny Jackson result in a book that gives a previously unheard voice to a community's suffering. [Note: I have seen the movie, and highly recommend it.  I haven't read the book.]

      Other Weekly Link Lists

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