Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• Michael Hait at Planting the Seeds discusses the 5 Most Misused Words in genealogy.

• Michael Zhang at PetaPixel discusses The Impermanence of Digital Photographs

Genea-Announcements
There have been several announcements this week from Genealogy-Database vendors

• The 1940 census will be freely available at Ancestry.com to search and browse when it is released to the public mid April 2012

The reaction to this has all been positive.

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• Footnote.com has changed its name to Fold3.com and is focusing on their military documents, though they promise the non-military documents will remain.  (Though one wonders about the unfinished indexing projects for the non-military records.)

 There has been a lot of reaction to this change, much of it negative.

• Kate T. at ArchivesNext
• Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience
• An unscientific poll Tamura conducted on Google+ seems weighted against
• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star
• However, Cyndi Howells at Cyndi's List reminds us Change is Good

Back when Ancestry acquired Footnote (11 months ago) - I drew the comparison to Coke acquiring Pepsi.  In the comments, I said  "There might be some renaming of products, but the products could remain the same." The renaming has begun. I may be wearing a tinfoil hat, but I don't think the closeness to 1 year is a coincidence.  They assure us the non-military documents will all remain on Footnote.  But I won't be surprised if a year from now a migration of non-military records from Footnote to Ancestry begins.  And perhaps a migration of military records from Ancestry to Footnote.  (Even though, today, they are saying that isn't happening.) They have a business reason to encourage people to continue to purchase both subscriptions.

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• Geni made several changes to their website, requiring a subscription to do a lot that was previously free.

• Randy Seaver at Geneamusings has gathered a compendium of the reactions to Geni's changes

• Some have hypothesized that a jump in usage at WikiTree may be related.

• Geni made a few tweaks, hoping to appease the concerns.

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• Kimberly Powell at About.com discusses changes Google has made to their News Archives

At the Movies
(Movies currently showing, or being released this week, with some connection to Genealogy or History. The plot provided is taken from IMDB, so should contain minimal spoilers.)

The Help -- Jackson, Mississippi, 1962: aspiring writer Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns home after college, where unexpected friendships with African-American maids Aibeleen Clark and Minny Jackson result in a book that gives a previously unheard voice to a community's suffering. [Note: I have seen the movie, and highly recommend it.  I haven't read the book.]

Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy
• Liz Haigney Lynch's Links at The Ancestral Archaeologist
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogis
• Elizabeth O'Neal's Best Bytes at Little Bytes of Life
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS Roots World