Archives

How to add a GEDCOM to familysearch.org

Mar5

familysearch LoginFamilysearch.org does not always have easy navigation. It may look pretty but there is so much available there that it is sometimes hard to find what you are looking for. Thank goodness for Google!

I could not find where to add my GEDCOM to their one world tree from the menus, so I googled around and found this URL for their user guide to uploading a GEDCOM which explains the details (no longer online)

As to why you want to do this, it is to use the cool tools at puzzilla.org (a blog post is coming on that soon)

Read on for my quick step guide to adding your GEDCOM at familysearch:

Continue reading →

Autosomal DNA testing confirms a suspected WOLD relationship!

Feb24

A long time ago I received an email from the husband of a possible cousin wondering if his wife’s WALD family was the same as our WOLD family. Naturally I suggested a DNA test and the results just came in. Yes she is a member of our WOLDs and is descended from my gg-grandfather Jørgen Oleson Wold via my g-grandmother Maren Wold’s brother Carl (Charlie) Wold. Below are the faces of four generations of my new 3rd cousin once removed’s ancestors.

4 generations of WOLDsNow for the details of how we used autosomal DNA testing to confirm this …

Continue reading →

Help index Obituaries in as little as 20 minutes a week

Feb9

KittyandPirate

Family Search has launched a massive indexing of obituaries project that needs citizen helpers. They had a very clever promotion at Rootstech – “Dead men tell no tales but their Obituaries do!” – with a pirate who strode about getting his picture taken with anyone who wanted to do that. That’s me with him in the picture on the left. Then they had prizes at their booth.

So the url for working on the indexing project is – https://familysearch.org/indexing/ – this one is fun! Please join in.

Making Genealogy Interfaces More Engaging, a Rootstech Talk

Feb8

Charles Knutson, a professor at BYU, had a very enticing title for his talk, “Genealogy Meets Angry Birds: Making Interfaces More Addictive.” You can see how I picked the presentations to attend … by catchy title.

Play is part of being human and a mammal. All mammals play. Playing develops our skills in a safe environment. It’s great fun to run from a dragon in a game but in real life getting burned while you scramble over the gold would not be fun at all.

So why is genealogy like doing taxes for most people and not more like playing? In a game like angry birds, you know what you have accomplished so far and what your goals are. Genealogy programs do not save your place nor do they set your goals. They are just tools to manage your data and do not engage you the way a game does.

In a quick display of numerical scale he mentioned that there are 2.7 million paying ancestry.com members which sounded impressive until he pointed out that there are 2 billion Angry Birds players …

Continue reading →