This week's news includes: RootsMagic releases the public beta of Version 4 of the RootsMagic software; Ancestry.com released five new databases in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday; Ancestry has replaced the Ancestry Weekly Journal with a new newsletter, The Weekly Discovery; Sonja Nishimoto, Family History Library Consultant, has invited genealogical and historical societies and their members to contribute content to the FamilySearch Research Wiki at wiki.familysearch.org; the Southern California Genealogical Society's 40th annual Jamboree will be held in Burbank, CA, on 26-28 June 2009, and its blog is online at www.genealogyjamboree.blogspot.com -- and a special guest speaker, Tukufu Zuberi of the PBS show, "History Detectives," will address the Friday evening banquet; the MyHeritage Genealogy Search Engine (www.MyHeritage.com) announces some newly released improvements; and Lisa Louise Cook of "The Genealogy Gens Podcast" (www.genealogygems.tv/Pages/Podcast/PodcastList.htm) announces the guest of the most recent episode of the podcast, Darby Hinton, who starred as Israel on the 1960s TV hit, "Daniel Boone." The episode also celebrates the podcast's second anniversary.

This week's listener email includes: Nancy in Ontario reported that she had a problem with the podcast loading in her Firefox Live Bookmark feed; Doug reminds us that the St. Albans Border Crossings immigration records reflect immigrations from Canada (and that St. Albans is in VT and not NH); Elliot asks for advice about what name to record when the surname changed over the centuries; Jane asked George for the name of his publish-on-demand resources, which is Lulu.com; Drew provided a resource for comparison of print-on-demand resources at http://mashable.com/2009/03/01/publish-book/; Joel Weintraub provides information about the origins of the 72-year privacy policy for U.S. federal censuses and his article on the subject at http://members.cox.net/census1940/; Bill discusses the fact that census images in the Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest Online databases are not the same; TC discusses the backups of genealogy files on Mozy.com; Gus recounts his experience of getting locked in a cemetery; Judy shares a follow-up story about storing photos on an external hard drive; Scott asks about the protocol for thanking helpful cemetery workers; Cheryl tells us that the 1935 and 1945 Florida census records are also available at the LDS pilot site at http://search.labs.familysearch.org, and that many records still need volunteers to help index them; Mary tells us that The Master Genealogist database software allows for the entry of GPS latitude and longitude coordinates on every event; Mac shares a service at http://www.mailstore.com/en that allows you to backup email from multiple email accounts and tools in one place; and Rollin asks for help with the definition of "freeman" as applied to Caucasians in 1600s New England colonial records.

George reviews two new products:


Suzanne Russo Adams, AG, has written a brilliant new book, Finding Your Italian Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, published by Ancestry Publishing and available through the Ancestry.com Store. The book is filled with well-written explanations and discussions, and includes a wide variety of document and Internet site illustrations.

Listen to the podcast and find out more about these two excellent new products!