You've heard it on your computer or iPod, and now you can see a free live presentation of the Genealogy Gems Podcast show at Jamboree in Los Angeles, CA! I will be chatting with the audience and a glittering line up of guests on:
Saturday, June 12 1:00 p.m. The Pavilion
Bring your lunch and sit in on a rare opportunity to see a podcast production in action. My special guests include:
Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective
Get the dish on her new Civil War photography book
Suzanne Russo Adams, of Ancestry.com
Fresh from doing research for the popular new TV show Who Do You Think You Are?
Chris Haley, Genealogist and Artist
Listen in on a candid interview with Alex Haley's nephew the day after his Banquet presentation!
PRIZES WILL BE GIVEN AWAY THROUGHOUT THE PODCAST... so grab your lunch and head to the pavilion to be part of the live audience!
Blacks and bays, dapples and greys
Running in the night
When you wake
You shall have
All the pretty little ponies
Are there any pretty little ponies in your family tree photos?
That's what my friend genealogy blogger Ian Hadden asked in a recent post called Riding Ponies. He starts us off my sharing a pic of baby Ian riding high on a pony and then goes further back in his tree to a photo of his father doing the same.
Roaming photographers snapped pony pictures in towns across the land. Ian's photos reminded me of photos in my own collection and I quickly retrieved some favorites of my grandfather, Al...
Genealogy Gems Premium Members and those who've picked up a copy of the Google Earth for Genealogy DVD will recognize this street as 288 Connecticut, in San Francisco. The location was unknown to my family for many decades, but through the intersection of census records, voters registrations, and Google Earth the mystery was solved and the location identified.
The year was 1908, and San Francisco was still recovering from the great earthquake of '06. That's Al's father Charles Allen standing on the sidewalk (the man on the right) keeping an eye on his little buckaroo. (A bit of trivia: Charles is the son of the man in the Genealogy Gems Podcast logo.) The difference between Al's pony and Ian's is that this pony was stuffed! However, Al did eventually make his way on to the real thing...
Do you have a pretty little pony picture in your collection?
If you watch Law and Order than perhaps you saw the episode earlier this month called The Rubber Room where they are dealing with a blog and they call in a forensic linguist to see if the text matched up with a student or a teacher in a school. Gus Marsh wrote in to tell me that when he saw it he thought of Genealogy Gems. That’s because my guest on the last episode #89 was Forensic Linguist Dr. Robert Leonard.
I’m disappointed I missed that episode of Law and Order, but on the newest episode of The Genealogy Gems Podcast I am very pleased to feature more of my conversation with Dr. Robert Leonard, PhD, & Forensic Linguist. He was fascinating to talk to, and was totally game for looking at how forensic linguistics could be applied to genealogy.
"You carry traces of every place you’ve ever lived in your speech – they might not surface all the time, but then at the oddest times they will." Dr. Robert Leonard.
In this episode Dr. Leonard gives us some clues on how to revisit those documents that we thought we had already gleaned everything from and he explains how we need to look at them in new ways!
"Being educated people we are trained to ignore that which doesn’t make sense, where as now we find that which doesn’t make sense could be the keys that we are looking for." Dr. Robert Leonard
I just think it’s fascinating to see how scientific principles can be yet another tool in our genealogical toolbelt!
"The interesting thing always in science is not the single item, but it is the series of items, a wave of items, a pattern. So, that’s why it is good to write these things down. Because one or two or ten by themselves may not tell the story, but then you put that 11th together and then it’s like a little jig saw puzzle." Dr. Robert Leonard
Today marks the 5th year since YouTube first came on the Internet scene. But did you know that YouTube is also a phenomenal source of genealogy education and inspiration?
According to BBC News, YouTube now receives over 2 billion hits each day, with 24 hours of new video being uploaded every minute.
For more on the history of YouTube's first five years, watch the video below...
YouTube has definitely become more than just funny cat videos in the last five years (although those are great for an occasional laugh!) You can literally find a video about almost anything these days, including Genealogy Gems!
If you're interested in family history the Genealogy Gems YouTubechannel is for you. There are over 35 FREE videos on topics ranging from online genealogical search, to how to blog about your family history, to heritage quilts. My personal favorite is the very first one that Lisa posted, A Nurse in Training Part 1, which is also the video with the most views at 11,637! Hearing stories from her grandmother's diary transported me to that time period. I also love Socks to America (which Lisa hints is her favorite video.)
When you visit the Genealogy Gems channel you should definitely check out the latest video on Google Search, Google for Genealogy Update: Its All Related. You'll learn the latest and greatest techniques for using Google for genealogy searches.
Be sure to click the "Subscribe" button while there so you will always be in the loop when a new video is available to watch.
And finally, you can take Lisa's video instruction with you with her brand newDVD for your PC called Google Earth for Genealogy, which teaches you how to harness the power of the free Google Earth program to further your research. You can get it here. When it comes to genealogy and video, look to Genealogy Gems!
Hello readers, I'm Vienna Thomas from the Genealogy Gems team, and I have an exciting announcement to share. The iBooks store has just released Lisa's book Genealogy Gems for the iPad, available for purchase for only $9.99!
We are really excited to be able to participate at such an early stage in this new technology that has already sold over one million devices across the country. So if you are a lucky owner of the iPad, be sure to download your copy of Genealogy Gems today!
I also want to remind everyone that the Genealogy Gems Podcast App is available for purchase in the iTunes store. This app brings the Genealogy Gems Podcast to your iPhone or iTouch, and gives you access to great bonus material. Go to the iTunes store and search "Genealogy Gems," or click on the link here. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-genealogy-gems-podcast/id337736531?mt=8
Her fist went up and came back down with a resounding “Yes!” In the most recent episode of the NBC TV series Who Do You Think You Are? (which is now also available in iTunes!) Susan Sarandon experienced the rush of locating an ancestor’s obituary in the newspapers preserved on microfilm. (Watch the episode now)
It’s an exhilarating feeling to feverishly scan the microfilm reader screen and have your eyes zero in on a familiar name. But just how did Susan (or should we say the show’s experienced researchers) figure out where to look?
To find out what the burning questions of newspaper research are and my tips for getting the scoop on your ancestors read the rest of the story at the Visit Salt Lake City Blog where I am now a regular contributor. I'm very excited about this new gig, and I hope it will encourage more genealogists to make the trip to the greatest family history library in the world and the beautiful area that surrounds it.
