Follow Friday Newsletter: 29 April 2011

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Casting a nervous eye

on the reliability of various types of data storage/backup - James Tanner explains why he is never completely confident about this in “Reliability of the Cloud? Family Search Forums Still Down” at Genealogy’s Star. I love his “questions to self” at the end. Also from James Tanner this week: “Don’t rely on icons and stereotypes in historical research,” inspired by John Philip Colletta’s recent article in Family Tree Magazine.


Take this advice to heart

Paula Stuart-Warren provides some good suggestions for “Getting others involved in your genealogical society” at Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica.


Fun with Google Docs

The Minnesota Family Historian shows us another neat feature of Google Docs - making charts from spreadsheets - in “Fancy Chart How-To: Ethnicity in America.”


This day in history...

For a nice list of websites that do this, check out “Skillbuilder: Placing Your Ancestors Within Their Time” at the Leafseeker.


More neat map stuff

At Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter: “The Easy Way to Add Maps to Your Family History Projects.”


When the records changed

Daniel Hubbard at Personal Past Meditations examines what records were created as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, what you can find in Reconstruction-era records, and what unique information those records may provide in “Reconstructing the Post-War World.”


An unusual research aid

is examined by Kathleen Brandt at a3 Genealogy in “African American Research - Pre and Post WWI: The Green Book Travel Guide.”


More on preparing for the 1940 census

Jenny Lanctot at Are My Roots Showing? points us to some useful links and downloadable forms at her Research Toolbox website, Jenny-ology in “Preparing for the Release of the 1940 Federal Census” (there is also a comment from a representative of the Morse One Step website on the fact that there are actually 5 conversion tools on that site).


She did what I still wanna do...

Amy Coffin at We Tree found her 16th great-great-grandparent: “The Search for Number 16, part 1” and “The Search for Number 16, part 2.” Congratulations! I’m still hoping, waiting, thinking, planning, plotting....


Funniest post of the week

“Breaking News: Scientists Pinpoint the Origins of Piles of Genea-Crap” at Kerry Scott’s Clue Wagon. Not that any of us is guilty of any of this in any way....


Glad to see a couple of faves posting again: Consanguinity and Rainy Day Genealogy Readings.


This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

The Leafseeker

Climbing the Family Rosebush

From Helen V. Smith’s Keyboard

Generations Past

Janis’ Genealogy

Murmuring Trees

Who Does She Think She Is?

Heritage Paper Dolls


My Research Week

was not too bad. The main focus were two of my husband’s families, the Fichtelmanns and the Koehls.

This week I also finally set up a website at Weebly. Right now it is still Weebly-sponsored (= free; it may remain so until I see how much I will be using it). Does anyone else out there using Weebly or anything like it have any thoughts on sponsored versus own domain websites? Also, is this particular setup conducive to posting the kind of linked genealogical information in formats such as those provided by The Next Generation in Genealogy Site Building as demonstrated by Valerie Craft of Begin with Craft on her new website, BeginWithCraft.com (which I really like the look of, by the way)? I can generate web cards from my Reunion program, but I’m not sure whether the pages and linking system will be “clunky” or not. (Wow, those sentence certainly reveal my overwhelming ignorance in matters of web design.)


A Few More:

Since I post Follow Friday Newsletter on Thursday evening, I missed later “Great Discussion” posts. Here are a few:

Genealogy Leftovers - “Making Money from Genealogy”

Minnesota Family Historian - “Money Changes Everything - or Does It?”

JLog - “Genealogy, Computers & Money”

We Tree - “Money Changes Everything - Or Does It?”

GeneaBloggers - “Money Changes Everything - Or Does It?”

Genealogy’s Star - “More on money and genealogy? How can that happen?”

Genealogy Frame of Mind - “Yep Its That Free Genealogy Thing AGAIN!”


For more suggested blog reading

check out “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favs” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Follow Friday: Around the Blogosphere” at Susan Petersen’s Long Lost Relatives.net, “Best Bytes for the Week” at Elizabeth O’Neal’s Little Bytes of Life, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.