patientgenie

Ancestry released two new product upgrades at RootsTech today. Storymaker Studio DNA Compare Storymaker Studio will be of particular interest to those who would like to work with other family members to work together to publish family stories using a range of digital tools. To quote the company press release: "Storymaker Studio it’s easier than ever to turn those stories, combined with personal family memories and heirlooms, into engaging, shareable content. Storymaker Studio is a centralized, one-stop destination to curate facts, images, records and memories and tell the stories of your family history. With this new tool, members can upload and enhance photos and images, record and upload audio files (for the first time on Ancestry), integrate photos with audio, and publish their Ancestry Stories to their trees, on their personal social channels and within the Ancestry community. We all have a storyteller inside us but with Storymaker Studio you can become the storymaker for y...

 It's that time of year again - and three years since the last face to face event combining genealogy, technology and innovation at Salt Lake City. RootsTech 2023 There is a huge virtual component - so wherever you are you can access the virtual exhibition hall and many of the presentations . Or head to the RootsTech home page  https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/ Lots of snow still on the ground - so much cooler than Sydney! Apart from imagining flying across the planet to attend in person and experience the change in seasons, there are things you can prepare for if you haven't already. Download the new RootsTech app Build your online playlist for watching live and on demand - many of the sessions are pre-recorded and you have a long time after the event to watch these. The new app for Android or iOS - search for RootsTech2023. The links to watch the live sessions are within the Classes area - you can use the "Type" filter to find Live Webinars. My recommendati...

One of the things I look forward to at RootsTech is the new technology and tools that are released. On a huge scale the various digitising companies are using machine learning to read handwriting - on those documents we love to get our hands on - we had the 1921 UK Census come out in January 2022 and no doubt my USA genie friends are looking forward to the 1950 USA census release later this month. What about something closer to home? Researching a number of unknown photographs that had belonged to my maternal grandmother, turned my casual interest in Family History into an addiction. I look back now and see how much I was striving to find connections within those photographs - and eventually to find someone other than my father whom I looked like. I grew up as an only child of an adopted mother, living with my parents and my maternal grandmother in her family home. Sadly Grandma ( Ada Irene Douglass nee King b 1884 ) died when I was 7 years old. My father had left his home in England y...