Easy RSS Feeds in Mac Mail

Blogs.  There are multiple blogs that I subscribe to or "follow".  Most about genealogy, but also some from family and friends.  Until today, I attempted to read them through my Google homepage using GoogleReader.  I must admit I wasn't very good at keeping up.  There are days when I would rev up the computer only to see 365 feeds waiting for my attention.  I would glance at the first few, and then click on the "mark all as read" button.  Just too much to deal with.  There is only so much time in a day!

It doesn't help that every single item posted gets a feed and pops up in the list.  That means I may be behind in reading say up to 10 posts from Dear Myrtle, 30 from Dick Eastman and 20 from Genealogy News, just to mention a few.  And buried in that list somewhere would be my daughter's last post about my grandchildren and my niece's description of their Texas escapades.

For some time now I've thought about the potential solution to this issue.  OK, I haven't thought too hard or I would have had it fixed long ago.  Aside from having multiple Google home pages with various themes and related feeds, I just hadn't found the right solution.  Until today.

Still fairly new to the Mac environment, having purchased my iMac just last summer, I can plead ignorance to the obvious.  After all, it takes a few months to acclimate to a new operating system after spending the bulk of your life on another, then another few months to selectively transfer all of your files (no I didn't want to migrate everything), another few months to get used to running Windows in the VMware Fusion virtual machine and subsequently unity mode.  So, now I'm several months into this transition and I have finally found the RSS feed option in Mail.  I had organized all my mailboxes so they come to one location, all of the mail folders to store things I needed to keep, but somehow I missed that nice "RSS" feed mode in spite of the fact that Apple automatically puts their feed there for you when you start the machine.

I decided to give it a try.  I opened up my Google Reader, pulled the URLs of the genealogy blogs I want to follow out and one at a time added them to the RSS Reader in Mail.  Now it seems logical that there would be a way to add multiple feeds at a time, but I haven't found it yet.  Nevertheless, it didn't really take me long to selectively move the most popular ones to try this out.

And voila!  All of a sudden I have an alphabetical list of the blogs I'm following along with the number of feeds received and unread.  Now, instead of reading one of this, one of that, skipping through looking for topics of interest, I can select the blog and glance through the topics in the same manner that I would glance through the subject lines of multiple emails, open and read or hit the delete key as appropriate.  In no time at all, I have made quick work of what used to be a daunting task.  And I don't feel like I missed anything--as I often did when GoogleReader numbers got out of control.  After all, if I don't want to wade through a particular list of feeds today, I can save it until tomorrow, and it will be there waiting for me in its nicely tidy little feed box.

I'm sold on this concept.  I've all of my genealogy feeds to Mail, leaving just family feeds for Google Reader. 

Now, knowing that not everyone owns a Mac, I did a quick check to see if other email products perform similar functions.  And many do.  For those who don't, there are services that allow you to subscribe for a certain number of feeds for free, more for a fee.  Perhaps you are way ahead of me and have been receiving your RSS feeds in your email for years.  If not, you might try checking your help menu to see how to add them in your particular program.  And see if you like this method of "keeping up" to be a bit more efficient.

Lesson of the Week

There is something to be said about the statement "we learn something new every day".  That has never been more true than as it relates to my study of family history research.  Not only does the landscape in this industry change constantly, but the breadth of knowledge that is available to us is phenomenal.  One could never know everything.  And we begin to specialize...whether it be in a geographical region or a family line.  And with that, we embark daily on the challenge of learning what is needed in order to move forward with our research.

Along this line, another favorite statement of mine goes something like this:  "just because I learned it once, doesn't mean I won't need to learn it again".  This is most likely to occur when I learn something and don't apply it frequently enough to make it stick.  But that isn't always the case, as was proven to me this past week.

My "lesson of the week" is this:

First, find out what records exist.  Then, determine if they are available.

No kidding you say--this is new?!  Well, yes and no.  Obviously, every time we take a look at the Handybook or Ancestry's RedBook to determine the boundaries of a county, when vital records began, and where they are held, we are applying the rule of first finding out what exists.  Then we work on determining where those records are stored and if they are readily available.  But how often do we really apply that principle?  Or do we, spoiled as we are with all of the readily available records going online daily, simply pull up a well-known website and do a search, fully expecting what we need to be there?  And when it isn't, we wonder why; but do we look to see if actually had the record series we need? 

So, how did I "re-learn" this valuable piece of information?  The professor in a British Family History Research class re-iterated it in the context of British records.  In this situation I learned that we should first access a "what exists" resource like the NIPR (National Index of Parish Registers) which provides a complete list by county (shire) of what records exist, for what dates, and where they are kept.  It also includes non-conformist records, and specifically outlines the gaps in the records. Then when we go to the Family History Library Catalog to see which of those records were microfilmed, or to some of the online resources to see which records are available online, we approach the situation fully educated.  

When doing my locality survey for this class, I totally skipped that important first step....went straight to the 1851 England Jurisdictions (maps.familysearch.org) to see what the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were and then the FHLC (FamilySearch online catalog) to see what had been microfilmed and to familiar online sources to see what was available digitally.  As assignments were returned, the professor pointed out the obvious and reviewed it again--apparently many of us had skipped that important time-saving step.

So, I knew this.  Perhaps not as it relates to British research which is somewhat new to me, but in general.  It just hadn't played out in my mind in a way that it could translate to a new geographic area of research.  Sometimes we just need to "re-learn" it.  And that was my lesson for the week.  I'm sure it will make me a better researcher overall if I apply it more frequently :)

 

Back in the USA!

While in India I had a great deal of difficulty in using the internet.  If we had electricity, we didn't have internet. Often we would have power but no internet.  How great it is to be back in the US of A! I spent the last 3 weeks setting up my daughter's town house in Rexburg, Idaho, to accommodate the addition of myself and my fifteen year old son. I have a work space and but I am using a borrowed computer. My next big task is getting a computer so I don't have to borrow my daughter's all the time.  After all, she is a student and needs to do her homework.  Who would have thought the day would come when I would heard the words, "Mom you need to get off the computer so I can do my homework!"

I have an iMac 27" in India much to my husbands enjoyment.  So, what to get for the American side of the family.  We will eventually be living in the same household again so do I really want the same computer?  I think I will be ordering the 21" iMac for here in the USA.  It will work well with my IPad, which is important, the IPad has been a wonderful tool for me, not only can I carry my family tree with me using Ancestry to go, but I have access to my e-mail and other files while on the road.  Dropbox has been wonderful for this transition.

 I uploaded everything I would need from my computer to Dropbox, before I left India, now all I need is my new computer! But, in the meantime, I still have access to my photos and files while on the road.  This will be very helpful when I travel to South Carolina for the annual NGS conference this May.
You can find Dropbox here:    http://db.tt/twTJ4mW

It truly is an amazing time to be involved in researching your family history.  Every day wonderful new "toys" and resources are being adapted to make our work easier.

On a side note, when I registered my son for school here, I felt like I had entered into a time warp. The girls  have adopted the hairstyles from the late fifty's, early sixty's.  After having traveled around the world it was even more startling to see. Nowhere else had I come across these retro hairstyles.  They also really like fishnet stockings here.  For a moment I felt like I had stepped onto the set of "Hairspray" or "Grease".  It just goes to show the more things change the more they stay the same1

Resources

There are a myriad of resources available online, from tutorials to waypointing sites to live webinars.  No shortage of methods by which to learn our craft.  Still, there are pieces that may be a bit elusive to the newcomer--like just where do we find all of these resources?  Or the overwhelmed--like how do I filter it down to just the ones I need the most? 

One of our goals is to help with the basics.  Not to replace what already exists, mind you, but to fill in some of the gaps as we see them--point to the resources where already quite nicely done, and add our own when we see fit.  So, having just attended a webinar by Dear Myrtle hosted by Legacy on Blogging, we have created a new page to store those resources.

The Resources Tab will be a work in progress.  But please feel free to let us know what you think the needs are.  What is missing out there?  What do you wish someone would just write a very simple instruction page for? 

Mary Jane has been quite busy of late reading through forums on the various software products and finds that one place we probably need to begin is a basic lesson on sourcing in software.  Many seem to avoid doing it or just place all their information in notes because it seems too difficult to navigate.  So, you can look forward to that one in the future, along with our personal reviews on some of the software options available out there.

What else?  You tell us!

RootsTech Success

I imagine with all of the official bloggers for the RootsTech conference going on right now, we will hear quite a bit about it.  So, I won't ramble on here.  What I would like to say is that I was quite pleasantly surprised.  Having come from the meeting planning industry I didn't hold out much hope when I heard last year of their plans to pull both developers and users together into one big conference.  To do something on the scale of what they have accomplished normally takes an 18-24 month planning and development time frame.  To completely revamp an already existing conference at least 13-18 months.  I hear they pulled this one off in seven!

So, the planning part--getting the sponsors, setting up a large trade show, running a program with many concurrent tracks, and developing special events--would have been quite a feat.  But to pull two such disparate factions of the genealogical community--the developers on one hand, and on the users on the other hand--seemed like a far reach from sanity.  But it worked!  At least from what I saw.  (Due to an unplanned surgery in the family, I was only able to attend Thursday.  Today I plan to review the presentation syllabus on CD to catch some of what I missed while the wounded one rests.)

I guess the jury will render their verdict after all the bloggers, associations, journalists and others have aired their opinions on the issue.  But from my point of view, RootsTech is not only a smashing success, but may have just put us all on the track toward much more open communication and collaboration in the refinement of the genealogical community of resources for the future.  Kudos to the planners.  Thanks to the sponsors.  I'm really looking forward to attending next year's conference when it rolls around.

The Miracle of Sharing

I began doing family history research over twenty years ago, back in the days of the first PAF release and dial-up Prodigy.  Somewhere along the line I took a very long breather due to a very busy career.  When I returned to family history research about three years ago, it was a very different landscape. Needless to say I felt I needed to get “caught up” on all the changes, so I started attending workshops, conferences, and online tutorials....anything that would bring my research skills and particularly my genealogy-related technological skills up to date.

Now, while I’m not an expert, I do enjoy teaching an occasional class and helping others navigate the technological mine fields to get to what they need. But there is one area of those “mine fields” I never really appreciated until just recently.  Today I wish to share that story and the miracle that goes with it.

Although any professional will tell you that a very important first step, after checking your family resources, is to check other compiled sources, I have traditionally skipped that part.  Somewhere along the line I had developed a huge prejudice against compiled family trees, finding too many errors, un-sourced work, and copied pedigrees.  Unless I was truly “stuck”, I didn’t even use them for “clues”.

I apparently carried that prejudice into this new more-technologically-advanced world.  Oh, I’d posted a couple of photos and things on Footnote, but why?  Just to try it out and see how it worked.  I still hadn’t set up a family tree on Ancestry, in spite of everyone talking about the “shaky leaf”, and I rarely checked the family trees  on any website for leads.  In fact, most of the time, I bypassed the general search and went right to what I was looking for.  For some reason, last December, I broke that rule, and gained the benefit. 

The story, which I won’t include in detail, begins with my great-grandmother, Harriet Brooks Skidmore, who was literally carried across the plains on a pillow at the age of four because she was so fragile and weak.  Her grandmother, Maria (Long) Brooks, sent a burial blanket with her family “just in case”.   I decided to research this Brooks line for a class project last semester (yes, I’m 56, and yes, I’m talking on-campus class).

The primary focus in the end was to resolve two questions about Harriet’s grandparents, “Captain” Josiah Brooks and Maria Long.  And yes, because it was required of the class, I consulted compiled sources.  They agreed with I had already gleaned from family sources....there were two opinions as to Josiah’s parents, and Maria Long was a dead end (in spite of the family having her actual death date and place from some unknown source).  And while I had a lot of fun along the way, following the family through Kansas to Oregon, finding newspaper extracts about marriages and deaths, and reading some amazing family histories written about Harriet and her family, I ended the semester with the same problem.  Only by that point in time, I had three opinions as to Josiah’s parents, two conflicting bible record extractions, no indication of what Josiah was a “Captain” of, and still nothing more on Maria, not even a confirmation of the supposed death date/place passed down through time.  

Trust me, this was not due to a lack of research.  In fact, I spent over one hundred hours on this project (no, the class didn’t require that much; as usual I went overboard).  While much of that time was spent on a preliminary survey, a census study, and a locality survey related to the course requirements, about fifty hours was related to online and library searches for vital and other related records.  I dug deep, and still at the end of the semester, came up short. 

Of massive concern was the theory that these family members were all born in Christiana, Delaware, and yet after searching every potential parish and civil record available in that area, I could not find records to prove that.  Census records showed them in the White Clay Creek Hundred (of which Christiana is a part) prior to migrating west; an 1868 land map showed three of Josiah’s brothers just southwest of Christiana; and the three newspaper extracts all mentioned that they lived in the White Clay Creek Hundred.  One would think, then, that a search of parish records in Christiana and surrounding areas would have produced exactly what I wanted.  Not.  I had begun to think whoever passed that information down the pipe had a very bad memory.

I was quite happy to put the unfinished work along with a copy of my class report on the bookshelf and take a breather.  And then the miracle occurred. 

I was about twenty minutes into a Hallmark Christmas movie when something said “you really ought to go check for information on Josiah’s brothers”.  I’m thinking, next generation, new problem, time to relax.  But you and I know that isn’t how it works.  Once a genealogy-related mystery or thought enters our minds, we can’t let it go.  So, I turned off the TV, turned on the computer, logged into Ancestry.com and began entering the Brooks brothers names (in the general search window with all the boxes checked--family histories, stories, photos, etc.--all those things I normally pass by). 
I enter the first name. Nothing.  Next name, nothing.  Next name, nothing.  Fine!  I tried the brother who didn’t own land and had a very odd name--Winslow.  Still Nothing.

Fortunately, Ancestry attempts to provide leads to things that “might be” related, so I scrolled down the page to see what they offered.  And there it was!  Part of a letter from a Maria Brooks to a Mr. Sanders, referring to her husband as Josiah.  Maria Brooks actually was a pretty common name back then, but with Josiah as a spouse?  What are the odds?

I immediately emailed the person who posted it; ends up she lives not far from me.  She put me in contact with the individual in Chicago who “inherited” a box of letters from yet someone else.  Within 24 hours I had in my hand (ok, on my computer) a scanned copy of a six-page handwritten letter documenting the deaths of two children, a recent move, Josiah’s subsequent change of occupation which brought him the new title of “Captain”, the price of commodities, and other historically interesting things.  A six-page handwritten letter, back in the late 1850s, from one friend (not a relative) to another, and with her own signature “Maria Brooks.” 

That was the miracle.  But first note how and when it came.  Not in the middle of my intense research through records online and off.  Not in my rush to meet class requirements.  And not while writing and re-writing the 26-page narrative report.  Instead, it came when I finally had a calm, quiet, stress-free moment and a little patience.  It came when I was willing to get past my prejudices and search records that others have found useful for years!  AND it came because someone else was wise enough to scan and share parts of that letter!

I learned a great lesson that day.  Technology has moved family history research into a new realm and I needed to move with it.  OK, I thought I had embraced all that technology had to offer, but that wasn’t true.  When it came to this one area--compiled records, online sharing of documents, etc.--I really was back in the dark ages.  As the result of this experience, I not only gained new leads on grandma Maria, but I gained a new appreciation for both on-line collaboration and sharing of resources. I even dropped a few prejudices (ok, I lowered the fence) as interestingly enough that letter was attached as a resource on (yes, you guessed it) a compiled family tree!

Peg

Technology is an amazing thing!

It has been awhile since we have posted anything.  Mary Jane has been busy with other things in India and I guess I've been sidetracked.  Then yesterday I read the post on Dear Myrtle about getting our blog listed on Geneabloggers even if we hadn't posted much or often.  Somehow I was naive enough to think that our listing would get buried quickly in the almost 1700 blogs on the list, and for now, maybe that was a safe place to be. 

So, you can imagine my surprise when returning to the computer only two hours after my request, we had four followers and one comment!  I am constantly amazed by what technology can do.  And the tenacity of the true genealogist in constantly looking for new information and new avenues of expression.

So, welcome new readers.  We are blessed to have you, and to learn and grow with you.