For %%emailaddr%% Jan. 18, 2006 Among the spate of family Web sites popping up (read about three below) is the still-in-beta Geni, which lets you build a family tree by entering relatives' names and, if you choose, e-mail addresses. People you add get an e-mailed invite to add more names until, theoretically, the whole world is on there. Though developers (who include former executives of PayPal, Yahoo! Groups and eBay) say Geni will help solve "the problem of genealogy," it's more of a social networking site: You can't upload a GEDCOM, for example, and there's no way to resolve conflicting information. Plus, genealogical protocol usually means you don't post living relatives. Only those in your tree can see your information on Geni, but once your tree starts growing, it's bound to include folks you'd—how shall I put it?—rather not hear from. More privacy options are on the way, as are other features such as photo-sharing, say webmasters. We expect there'll be even more to Geni, given its illustrious staff and venture-capital backing. For now, its appeal is in its simplicity. Visit Geni at http://www.geni.com, then go to the FamilyTreeMagazine.com Hot Topics Forum and let us know what you think. —Diane Haddad, Newsletter Editor ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com P.S. Make sure you don't miss a single issue of your E-mail Update! Add our address (familytree-newsletter@fwpubs.com) to your e-mail-address book—your software will recognize the Update as an e-mail you want to read. Footnote to History Ancestry.com Goes to Germany World Change From the Forum: Pet Peeves and Publicity Tip of the Week: Scan Swiftly Worthwhile Web Sites Identifying Family Photographs: Ruffled Up Speakers' Schedule Advertiser Special Offers Footnote to History Buoyed by a contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), a new online records service called Footnote debuted this month. Footnote is digitizing and offering paid access to NARA records including Civil War pension index cards, Southerners’ property claims against the US Army, and naturalization records for New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Subscriptions cost $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month, or purchase a single image for $1.99. Visitors to NARA facilities get free on-site access, and if you can stand to wait five years, the records will be gratis on NARA's Web site (http://archives.gov). Right now, searching Footnote is almost too simple: Type a name or keyword into a single field. Spokesperson Justin Schroepfer suggests using quotation marks and Boolean symbols (+, -) to focus your search; his team is working on adding Soundex capabilities and a search tips page. You also can browse by record type, year and other categories (such as place or military rank). Once you find a record, you’ll see a small image and some transcribed information. Click the image and you’ll be prompted to subscribe or buy a page view (unless you're in one of the occasional free collections, such as the Pennsylvania Archives series). Similar to Ancestry.com, Footnote lets subscribers and those who sign up for free registrations build "Member Pages" with document images—their own or those downloaded from Footnote. They can invite others, even nonmembers, to view the pages. NARA, facing acute budget shortfalls, stands to benefit from the partnership through licensing fees—an arrangement not unusual for national archives: Both Britain’s and Scotland’s archives have similar agreements with private firms.   Ancestry.com Goes to Germany More Americans claim German heritage any other kind, so it’s fitting The Generations Network (http://thegenerationsnetwork.com, formerly MyFamily.com) made its first foreign-language site, Ancestry.de (http://ancestry.de), a German one. The company has stocked that site with German port and census records bearing more than six million names. Most notable are the Hamburg Passenger Lists, containing records of more than 5 million people who sailed from that port between 1850 and 1934. The Hamburg passenger lists also are part of Ancestry.com’s $155.40-per-year US Deluxe records collection; all the German records are available in the $299.40-per-year World Deluxe subscription. Ancestry.de membership costs 9.95 Euros for a 14-day subscription that allows 10 record views per day.   World Change Subscription-records site WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com), which debuted late last year, already has a new look and easier navigation, the results of user testing. The cleaner-looking home page now includes an automatically updated list of new databases as well as tabs for online genealogy training (in the form of live chat sessions) and membership benefits. WorldVitalRecords.com, headed by MyFamily.com (now The Generations Nework) cofounder Paul Allen, isn’t through yet: The team (including several Ancestry.com designers) is working on a "wiki-type" project—which the site unabashedly bills as the greatest family history tool ever created—to make a Web page for every deceased person and every location in the world. (A wiki is a site for which anyone can create and edit pages.) An annual subscription costs $49.95, with a limited-time offer of two years for the price of one. Your Genealogy Pet Peeves Does it bug you when you see the nonword "geneology"? Hear loud chatter in the library? Visit the Hot Topics Forum and tell us what most irritates you when you're researching. And if you've got a solution to your own or another's peeve, we're all ears. http://www.familytreemagazine.com/forum/forums/ thread-view.asp?tid=190&posts=1#M375 Publicize Your Events If your genealogial or historical society is throwing a family history fair or hosting a speaker, tell everyone about it using our Forum Calendar. Posting is easy, but we offer tips under Forum Guidelines and Updates. http://www.familytreemagazine.com/forum/calendar/calendar-list.asp Scan Swiftly This tip comes from the February 2007 Family Tree Magazine: Do you find it time-consuming to scan old photos for preserving, editing and sharing? Don't scan your photos one at a time. Most flatbed devices accommodate three or four typical-size photos at once, letting you scan them all in a single pass. Then using your photo-editing software, you can select each picture from the batch, copy it and paste it into its own file. For more genealogy tasks you can accomplish in 20 minutes or less, see the February 2007 Family Tree Magazine. Do you have a great idea for discovering, preserving or celebrating family history? Post it on the FamilyTreeMagazine.com Forum at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/forum/forums/ forum-view.asp?fid=21 (you must be a registered user to post). If we publish it, you'll win a free genealogy book. Overwhelmed by the number of family history-related Web sites popping up? FamilyTreeMagazine.com sorts through them all—whew!—to bring you only the very best. We recently recommended the following as Sites of the Week: • 1940 Census http://www.1930census.com/1940_census.php Only five years to go until the 1940 federal census is released in 2012, but genealogists are already speculating about how the National Archives and Records Administration will handle the demand. Learn more here. • Canadian WWI Soldiers Database http://www.collectionscanada.ca/02/02010602_e.html Search by name or regimental number for Canadian soliders who served in World War I. • Easy School Search http://www.easyschoolsearch.com If you have the name and state of your ancestor's school, look here for the phone number and address so you can inquire about genealogical records. Ruffled Up Dave Woolgar’s father captioned this photo of an elderly woman "great-great-grandmother born about 1820 in England." That'd make her Woolgar’s fourth-great-grandmother—if the caption is correct. I think it's wrong. So what is the date for this picture? Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor weighs in at  http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/ current.htm. If you have a family photo mystery for Taylor to solve, check out our Submission Guidelines at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/ photohelp.htm. New! FamilyTreeMagazine.com Events Calendar Publicize your genealogy and living history seminars in our online calendar —and find upcoming events. You must be registered with our online Forum to post events. http://www.familytreemagazine.com/forum/calendar/calendar-list.asp 4,000 local history books featuring nostalgic archival photos of American communities. www.arcadiapublishing.com. Receive 15% off all online orders - Enter FAM07 at checkout. Get Family Tree Magazine back issues at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/mags. Explore Family Tree Magazine E-mail Update past issues at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/newsletter/archive.html. Get free Family Tree News Service articles for your genealogy newsletter or Web site at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ftns-subscribe.asp. Sponsor This Newsletter For information on sponsoring this newsletter or to receive a rate card, e-mail kelly.kleiner@fwpubs.com You have received this e-mail because you expressed interest in receiving updates about genealogy and genealogy products from Family Tree Magazine and Betterway Books by e-mail. Thanks for your subscription! You are currently subscribed as %%emailaddr%% To unsubscribe, send a blank message to %%email.unsub%% To change the address we send messages to, click here: http://fwpubs.sparklist.com/read/my_account/?forum=familytree Questions? To ensure a timely response to your questions concerning magazine subscriptions or other general help, please see www.familytreemagazine.com/contactus.html Please only reply to this message with newsletter-specific questions. Entire Contents Copyright © 2007 F+W Publications, Inc. 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236 All Rights Reserved February 2007 Issue Table of Contents Subscribe Now!