This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches a new Florida State Census Collection (1867, 1875, 1935, and 1945); the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that president J. Mark Lowe has resigned for personal reasons, and Vice President of Administration, Pat Oxley, has assumed the presidency; a Union County, Illinois group, Promoting Appreciation of Structural Treasures (PAST), is seeking to purchase the "House Where Lincoln Stayed" in Anna, Illinois, in 1858 when he was there to debate Stephen Douglas in one of the most historic political debates in U.S. History. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to PAST Lincoln House Project, Mona Diefenbach, 190 White Pine Lane, Anna, IL 62906.

Listener email this week included: Peter is concerned that searches in Ancestry.com for his family always include his own data at the top of the search results list, and believes that Ancestry.com should be able to mask or omit his own results; Virginia asked for clarification about ordering SS-5 applications for a Social Security Number, especially for deceased persons not in the SSDI; Roxanna shared a strong tip for researching in Salt Lake City; Scott wrote again to clarify his method for storing data at Ancestry.com and using his RootsMagic software; he also shared his excitement at having found old family photo albums and having found great information on the back of important photos; Sean recommends a product called SpinRite from Gibson Research Corporation (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) to help recover data from damaged magnetic storage media.

Drew discusses the crash of his desktop PC, and the steps he is taking to repair the hard disk and restore his data.

This week's news includes: The North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) announces a workshop on 14 March 2009 with Craig Roberts Scott, CG, in New Bern, NC -- more information is available at the NCGS website at http://www.ncgenealogy.org/ (click the Calendar button); Science Daily has published an interesting article at this location; Tim Skinner, author of the Map My Ancestors program (http://www.familytreeassistant.com/), informs us that the program allows you to view your tree on Google Earth, Google Maps, and many GPS and SatNav devices; and Mike O'Laughlin has two new genealogy podcasts -- Irish Families enhanced podcast at http://www.irishroots.com/podcasten/rss.xml (free QuickTime player preferred) and Irish Roots Cafe video podcasts at http://www.irishroots.com/irishvideo/rss.xml (free iTunes player preferred).

This week's listener email includes: Marie found lots of Body/Bodi surnames in the FHL microfilm for Ottawa County, Ohio, birth records; Ian Towler shares information on another open source program, PhpGedView, at http://phpgedview.net/ that allows you to view and edit your genealogy on your website -- and Ian has shared the URL for his website (http://familytree.itowler.com/) that uses this program so that everyone can see what he was able to do with the software; and Michael Moore has begun a website and library called Bookscanned (at http://bookscanned.com/) which allows you to upload scanned pages of a book, such as a family history, and then he OCRs them, and then adds the image and the OCR text to a Web page -- and then a search engine can find the page; Scott tells us that (re: episode #159) that he maintains his family tree at Ancestry.com, and then downloads a GEDCOM file into his copy of RootsMagic genealogy software.

The Guys discuss Christmas traditions in their families and others over the years.

This week's news includes: Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, submitted his resignation to the President, effective 19 December 2008, citing health reasons for his decision; and FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) just completed digitizing its 25,000th book. (Visit http://www.familysearch.org and click on Search Records and then on Historical Records.)

This week's listener email includes: Rich discusses how he used Windows Home Server to back up his data, and how he was able to use it when his son's hard drive failed; he also shared another website at which a small program can be downloaded for free that allows you to locate and use special characters -- It is at SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars; Rollin wrote to clarify that support for adding GPS coordinates is available in the purchased Deluxe version of Legacy and not in the free Basic version; Rich in PA advised us that Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/) has added the great facility to link parents and children, and spouses, to records there (using the Find A Grave Memorial number at the bottom of the left-hand column); he also shares another social networking site for book lovers called Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/), similar to LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com); Claire shared an excellent census map resource at http://www.familyhistory101.com/map_census.html at which you will find maps for most U.S. states that you can use to see boundary changes for each of the census years; Tom shared a story from the Kansas City Star from 15 November 2008 [the story has been retired from their website] in which Linda K. Lewis was highlighted as having spent 5 years with volunteers documenting and photographing 40 of the 44 known cemeteries in Johnson County, KS -- and she has documented them all at http://cemetery.cottonhills.com/;  Tim asked for The Guys' opinions about using a genealogy database software program vs. Ancestry.com as a repository for his genealogy information; Rod in Australia shared an excellent interview from Australian Radio National regarding cousin marriage with Cathy Day, PhD researcher, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU -- listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2426440.htm or click on the link above.

We have a new microphone cable for the mixer this week, and we hope that alleviates the stereo cut out problems. We are also sending out our logo as album art.

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This week's news includes: Footnote.com announces a new Interactive World War II Collection; The Generations Network, owner of Ancestry.com and other companies, announces the appointment of Howard Hochhauser as the new CFO; Ancestry.com's first World Archives Project Collection, Wisconsin Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880, has been completed; The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced two new awards to recognize significant achievements in genealogy research, based on records from the National Archives, and eligible applicants must attend a U.S. college or university; the Arizona State Archives (http://www.lib.az.us/archives/) has moved into the new, $29M Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building in Phoenix; and the Ohio Genealogical Society (http://www.ogs.org/) has reached its $2.5M funding goal to construct a new 18,000 square foot library in Bellville, Ohio, with construction beginning in early 2009.

This week's listener email included: Brian asked if there are online church records available for Northern Ireland, and Drew suggested the Ulster Historical Foundation site at http://www.ancestryireland.com/, a pay site; Brian also has started a family site at MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com/) and was concerned about privacy -- Drew found that you can log in, set up your site, and specify that it is a) a public site, b) a private site (for invited persons only to access), or c) a mixed site that is a combination of public information and private information that you define; Mike had asked for help locating his great-grandfather in the census prior to his marriage; Gus provided an excellent link to a website that shows the keyboard equivalents for UTF-8 special characters, at http://www.typeart.com/special_characters.asp; Rollin advises us that Legacy Family Tree software allows the recording of GPS coordinates; Peter advises us that Brother's Keeper software also allows recording of GPS information; Karen shares information about the importance of using small, hometown newspapers in your research; Bill asks for help with linking to the podcast using a WiFi radio, and Drew suggested the use of Reciva.com (https://www.reciva.com/); Jack shared information about communities and church membership, and about another look at researching the information; Russ shares information about the destination of Episcopalian records for a church that closes; and Jonathan discusses the transformation of maiden names down through the generations.

Drew discusses DNA mailing lists: the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (http://www.isogg.org/) has a free monthly email newsletter, as well as other resources at its site; and RootsWeb's DNA-Newbie mailing list is available for free subscription at http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/DNA/DNA-NEWBIE.html.

Drew also explains how a DNA paternity test works.

We apologize for the few cut-outs of stereo in this week's episode. We have replaced a damaged cable and should be fine in the future.

This week's news includes: Edna Parker, world's oldest woman, died in Shelbyville, Indiana, this week at age 115 years, 220 days; social networking site Genoom.com (http://www.genoom.com) announces the expansion of its international support for 17 languages; social networking site itsourtree.com has been renamed to dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com/); FamilySearch.org is seeking assistance with indexing projects, and you can learn more at http://www.familysearch.org/eng/indexing/frameset_indexing.asp - particularly Canadian and Norwegian censuses; Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com) has recently added more than 1100 U.S. city directories with more than 50M names; Calico Pie Limited, maker of the U.K.'s leading family history program, announces the forthcoming release of version 4 of its Family Historian program at http://family-historian.co.uk/; Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announces the launch of a new online database, Immigrants to Canada, accessible by clicking here; and FamilySearch.org has released more online courses.

George reviewed a book last week, and inadvertently misspelled the author's name. The book is Finding Your Chicago Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide to Family History in the City and Cook County, by Grace DuMelle, and published by Lake Claremont Press. My sincere apologies!

This week's listener email includes: John's confusing ancestral marriages for the Muson family; Sharon had questions about sources, and about resources for Tory ancestors [Listeners can weigh in on the topic]; Kathy asked about content in the Ancestry Publishing surname books, and she offers information about TinyUrl.com (http://tinyurl.com/); Deborah makes suggestions for your 2009 genealogy project; Peter tells us that a Palm OS handheld application for genealogy, MobileGenealogy, has been newly updated and is available at http://www.mobilegenealogy.com/ [Correction: MobileGenealogy is not a Palm OS application, but instead a website that discusses handheld genealogy applications.];Claire discusses the Shrubs app for iPhone, and she shares another excellent online newspaper application at the Library of Congress at Chronicling America (http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/); Beth shares an excellent and simple database program for Macintosh called Bento from FileMaker (http://filemaker.com/); Victoria asked for clarification of how George has been able to run RootsMagic, a Windows program, on his Mac; and Russ asked about how to handle the sourcing of a burial in his database.

This week's news includes: Sirius Innovations introduces a new genealogy website at http://www.siriusgenealogy.com/ "with a focus on using today's technology in documenting a family's history"; Ancestry.com has introduced the Ancestry Toolbar for use with your browser (IE or Firefox, ostensibly for Windows users only) to save photos and stories/text from the Web to your Ancestry Member Tree and more information and the free download can be found at http://landing.ancestry.com/toolbar/. George also has corrected his typo on the URL for the National Library of Australia, which  has launched Australia Newspapers at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au. Please check it out!

George reviews the book, Finding Your Chicago Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide to Family History in the City and Cook County, by Grace DeMelle, and published by Lake Claremont Press. (The publisher has a number of additional excellent titles concerning the Chicago area.)

Listener email includes: Gus tells us that his mystery concerning his grandfather, Vere Preston Marsh, in Virginia, St. Louis County, Minnesota, has been solved and he now has a photo of the gravestone; Rich suggested that Gus check at Find A Grave and post a request for a volunteer to get that photo for him too (and I see that Gus has added a record for Vere already!); Tom advised us that the Rome [GA] Tribune-Herald newspaper is online and searchable; Linda responded to last week's podcast regarding the PDF version of Elizabeth Shown Mills' book, Evidence Explained, and the fact that it can be used on multiple computers; the Family History Library (FHL) has introduced five free video classes about English research [click here] and requests feedback on them; Tom asks for advice about treatment and preservation of a collection of moldy documents received from his great aunt; T.C. and Claire shared information about another iPhone application (app) for loading genealogy information onto your device -- it is FamViewer from Aster Software (http://www.astersoftware.biz/)and sells for $14.99 at the iTunes Store (iTunes for Mac and PC is a free download at http://www.apple.com and you can access the Tunes store through that software); Russ has published information on his blog concerning moving Family Tree Maker Version 16 (or earlier) from one computer to another with the new FTM 2009; Dave wrote to continue the discussion concerning primary vs. secondary sources; and Russ discusses church history.

This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches the world's largest collection of Jewish documents; they also have added French collections at their Ancestry.fr site: Paris, France, & Vicinity Births, marriages, Deaths, marriage Banns -- AND -- to their UK site at http://www.ancestry.co.uk the UK incoming Passenger Lists (1878-1920); the National Library of Australia has launched Australia Newspapers at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au; Ancestry.com has won the contract to digitize and host key collections from the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and the Guildhall Library, representing more than 500 years of records (more details of the content are available at http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/digitisation.htm); The National Archives (TNA) in the U.K. is using Digital Microfilm to make available remote access to four series of military records.

Drew announced that George's newest book, the second edition of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com, has just been released, and it is available at the Ancestry Store.

Drew shares "11 Creative Ways to Pay Homage to the Dead" from the Life Hackery blog at http://lifehackery.com/2008/11/03/life-26/.

This week's listener email includes: Sherry visited a courthouse to access her great-grandfather's probate file, and found that these records are being digitized and will then be thrown away. (She was given her great-grandfather's probate file.); Peter asked about the eBook of Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained, and wants to know if it has Digital Rights Management [Listeners can respond if they know.]; Ian asked about how to cite a source using a location that no longer exists (i.e., Prussia); Gus reports on the status of his search for his grandfather, Vere Preston Marsh; "William comments on huge GEDCOMs on Ancestry.com, and asks about uploading his own research; Claire reports on a new iPhone application (app) that allows people to load a GEDCOM's contents to the iPhone and take it along (George is trying to get this loaded and will report back); Joel suggests that Barry's search in the 1900 U.S. federal census in Kentucky might be aided by using the new upload at http://search.labs.familysearch.org or at Stephen P. Morse's site at http://www.stevemorse.org/census/index.html; Russ asks questions concerning primary and secondary sources, and about using the "complete event;" and Sam shares his concerns about his grandmother's real name and the many spellings in different records throughout her life.

George reports the death on 1 November 2008 of singing sensation Yma Sumac at the estimated age of 86. Miss Sumac, born in Peru, had a phenomenal 6-octave singing voice and had a wonderful recording career in the 1950s and 1960s, and then a cabaret act in the 1970s and 1980s.

This week's news includes: Ancestry.com has renamed its self-publishing tool from AncestryPress to MyCanvas, and has also doubled its yearbook collection; ItsOurTree.com announced that its site (http://www.itsourtree.com/) can help predict male baldness through members' postings of family photographs; FamilyRelatives.com (http://familyrelatives.com/), a subscription website, has one of the largest collections of Irish records on the Internet, and they announced that they plan to add more than 10 million new records by the end of the year; Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has begun to publish digitized and indexed Civil War Widows' Pension Files; the University of Michigan has announced that it has digitized and indexed 428 titles in its Michigan County Histories and Atlases Digitization Project, and the search template is available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/; and Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/) has announced enhanced search facilities and improved privacy at its website. Finally, the Wall Street Journal published an article on 22 October 2008 about University of Texas El Paso, librarian Claudia Rivers, who has formed an aggressive program to identify 50,000 photographs taken bythe closed Cassola photography studio. Check the WSJ site for an article published on that date titled, "In Old El Paso, This Detective Story Is Written in Pictures."

George announces that Ancestry.com has just received copies of his new book, the new second edition of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com in its warehouse the end of this past week. Ancestry.com's online store will be listing the book and advertising it for sale very soon.

George interviews Gary M. Smith and Diana Crissman Smith, two of his fellow speakers on the recent RootsMagic Cruise.

Listener email this week includes: a thank you and report from Pat (Ms. DNA Manners) about communicating with people with potential genetic genealogy matches; a question from Pattie concerning obtaining SS-5 applications for deceased relatives whose deaths predate the SSDI database; Drew responds to Ann about the Harvey Girls, and provides a link to the Harvey Girl Historical Society (http://www.oerm.org/pages/Harveygirls.html); Robert Reeve of VideoJug has contacted us to say that their website has more than 43,000 free videos, including a number concerning genealogy (located at http://www.videojug.com/tag/genealogy); Michael tells us about his Dutch genealogical research, and asks about the benefits of seeking genealogical certification; and Sandra asked for advice about how to organize the many family letters and other documents she has in her possession.

This week's news includes:Art Lassagne, founder of The Gold Bug (producer of AniMap software), died on 29 September 2008 at his home after a long battle with lung cancer; Ancestry.ca has published the Canadian Passenger Lists (1865-1935); the Godfrey Library (www.godfrey.org) of Middletown, CT, announced that its product, the online American Genealogical Biographical Index (AGBI), will no longer be available at Ancestry.com after the end of this year, but it will be available at the Godfrey Library and at World Vital Records (www.worldvitalrecords.com) beginning in January 2009; Northern Hills Software (www.northernhillssoftware.com) announces Pocket Genealogist Version 3.3 for Windows Mobile devices which includes support for multimedia; Summit County Ohio Probate Court received a grant to digitize and index to birth, marriage, and death records, and those records will be available at their website and those of their partners, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, and the National Association of Government Archive and Records Administrators (NAGARA); the St. Petersburg Times in Florida has brought up it digital archives of more than 100 years of its newspapers (May 1901 through August 2007) and it is available at news.google.com/archivesearch (Users should type "St. Petersburg Times" before they enter their query terms.); Dick Eastman, of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (blog.eogn.com), has announced the addition of Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck to the writing team at the enormously popular online publication [George also writes a weekly column for Dick]; and the free 12th annual Central Florida Family History Conference will be held on 25 October 2009 in Orlando, and more details are available at www.familyhistoryconference.org.

Listener email includes: Gus added this podcast to his site at www.macapart.com/gen; Jon asked for more information about portability of Family Tree Make 2009 on a flash drive (and Drew will report back); Russ recounts his search for his grandfather in the 1900 census and discusses names; Kevin reminded The Guys to remind our listeners to celebrate October as Family History Month and as Hispanic Heritage Month; Tim asked for suggestions concerning the best national or regional conferences to consider attending for a relative beginner; and Dee found a great online out-of-copyright map site at commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_maps.

George interviews Bruce Buzbee, creator of the RootsMagic genealogical database software. Bruce discusses this year's great cruise to the Mexican Riviera and talks about the upcoming release of RootsMagic Version 4, a complete rewrite of the software with many exciting new features and improvements.

Because I had to delete episode #152 and then re-upload it (to fix the missing interview), it's possible that some users who automatically download episodes using iTunes may not immediately see the corrected episode #152.  You may need to delete the flawed episode from your iTunes, and then refresh the Podcast so that a new copy is downloaded.  If you run into any problems with this, let me know.

Drew