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Thursday, September 30, 2010

Fun Software to try.

Just back from the good old US of A with some fun software to play with here in India. While in the states I picked up Family Atlas, a genealogy mapping and publishing software, as well as GenSmarts, an automated research assistant.  Both were easy to load and initiate into my research.  I really enjoyed the mapping program, as I have always wanted to see the trail my family followed after coming to the United States. You can then print the maps in PDF.

The research assistant hasn't provided any new yet but then I have only played with on a very well researched line.  I am hoping that it will help me document some of the lesser researched lines. The two programs can be found here:  http://www.rootsmagic.com/family-atlas/ and for GenSmarts  http://www.gensmarts.com/ . One of the things about GenSmarts is that you can try before you buy.  I always appreciate it when a company has enough confidence in their product to let you try before you get out your credit card.

I also thought that the tutorials were very helpful and well done, after watching them I was able to jump right in and use the software.  In fact, I need to run so I can use it some more.  Have a great day!

MJ

Monday, September 27, 2010

Free Webinar and Online Course for Newbies

Family Tree University has just announced a free how-to course for beginning genealogists.  Discover Your Family Tree:  Genealogy for the Absolute Beginner will focus on "how to begin, where to look for information to extend your family tree, what to do with what you find and how to put it all together". 

The course begins on October 11th and continues for two weeks.  It is touted as providing self-paced lessons, quizzes or exercises to check your progress, and email feedback from an instructor as well as message board discussions with the instructor and other students in the class.

In addition to the on-line course, Family Tree University is offering a free webinar: 10 Steps to Discover Your Roots:  How to Get Started in Genealogy.  The webinar is targeted toward those who are completely new to genealogy as well as those that have dabbled a bit or need a "refresher".

The live webinar will be held on Saturday, October 16, 2010 from 2:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (don't forget to adjust your calendars for your local time).  Pre-registration required.

Interested parties may register for both.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Newbie Post

OK, so I'm a "newbie"; not in the genealogical research realm, but in the blogging world.  Other than reading the blogs of others occasionally, or watching the feeds on blogs related to genealogy scroll past my eye on the screen, I'm as green as they get.

It is an awkward stage but one I'm not unfamiliar with.  After all, I probably personally raised the national average for the number of times an adult changes careers in their lifetime.  That is another story.  The point here being that as one embarks upon learning something new, there is always what feels like a very steep learning curve.  Then it gets better over time, and we begin to build on the foundation we have built along the way.  At some point in time, we are able to share with and help others, and amazingly enough, as has occurred at least once in my life, we might become an "expert" (which, by the way, a former colleague says is just a drip under pressure).

Blogging is like that for me.  Mary Jane had to literally sit me down at the computer and tell me where to point and what to click on in order to get started.  Not unlike my first experience with Facebook, where my daughter did the same thing.  I consider myself fairly computer-literate, but on these two fronts, I'm back at building that foundation.  I don't foresee myself becoming a blogging expert any time soon, but I'm really looking forward to this project....where we share our genealogical experiences and escapades from two different perspectives and two different places in the world.

I'm sure in the process, I'll learn something about blogging.  And hopefully any readers we have will find something to help them with their genealogical research.  If nothing else, it will be great fun.