Google+ has turned into a great meeting ground for genealogists from all over the world.  

Google+ is the a social networking platform offered by the search engine company Google, with its nearest rival being Facebook.  (I prefer Google+ to Facebook for a lot of reasons but that’s another post).

Google+ features an international genealogy crowd with lots of languages.  Being somewhat limited in my multilingual skills (with English and basic French) I was delighted to discover there is a Chrome extension for Google+ that will translate!  (For my non-techie readers – Chrome is web browser similar to Internet Explorer or Firefox).

The languages available are:

Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, English, Filipino, Français, Kiswahili, Norsk, Tiếng Việt, Türkçe, català, dansk, eesti, español, hrvatski, italiano, latviešu, lietuvių, magyar, polski, română, slovenský, slovenščina, suomi, svenska, čeština, Ελληνικά, Српски, български, русский, українська, हिन्दी, বাংলা, ગુજરાતી, தமிழ், తెలుగు, ಕನ್ನಡ, ไทย, ‫العربية,

You will be able to follow genealogists in their native language in your ancestors’ homeland.

Thank you to Michael Swanson, a genealogist researching in Finland and Sweden, for the information.  

The Chrome extension is available for free from the Chrome web store. 

Installation is easy – download and it automatically adds itself to the browser (after you grant permission).

Search on Google Translate for Google Plus Chrome Extension or go directly here to download.

Have you joined us?

On Google+  that is?  Genealogists are flocking there.

What is Google+  (Google Plus)?

Google+ is a combination of several services we already use and is sort of like Facebook and Twitter combined with some interesting twists.  It is still in the testing phrase and one needs an invite to join.  Getting an invite isn’t to difficult.  More on that in a minute.

There are different components to Google+.

1. Circles – create groupings of your friends and interests.

2. Sparks are your interests – for example I have a spark that picks up all mentions of “genealogy” in the google+ stream

3.  Hangouts are virtual chat rooms where you can chat with friends and acquaintances and even complete strangers with similar interests.

4.  Huddles is group messaging for within your circles.

5.  Photos – you can upload photos directly from your computer or phone to Google+

6. Apps – There are apps (applications) for Google+ for both the Android and iPhone.  I use the iPhone version and find it works well.

7. “Liking” a post is done by hitting the +1 button.

How does Google+ work?

If you have a gmail account you can easily get started with Google+.  Contact a fellow genealogist already on Google Plus and ask them to send you an invite.   The next step is to set up your profile then add people you know to your circles.  Once you have a a few circles start posting interesting and valuable content to the google+ stream either limited to a certain circle (interest) or to the public at large.

You will receive a notification if someone adds you to their circles or comments on your post.  The menu bar for Google + is the along the top of your gmail com webpage.  Notifications appear as a red box near your profile icon on the upper right of the page.

How can Google+ help the Genealogy world?

1. Connections, connections, connections!  Genealogists like to help each other.  One can brainstorm with other genealogists, share good content and resources.  And who knows you may find a new cousin.

2. Discovery – Discovery of techniques, services, and people in other niches that can enrich our genealogy world.  I think this is an important part of Google+.  Personally I’ve found many new “friends” through Google+.  One great website to find people to follow is Women of Google+.  UPDATE – Other websites creating lists of Google+ people are Recommended Users, Pluserati and GPlusSearch.

Invites

If you are a genealogist and would like an invite contact me with your request.  Please include your email address in your note so I can send you your invitation.  Google+ recently issued every member another 150 invites and I’ll keep adding people until I use the allotted invites up.  Once you are set up on Google+, add me to your genealogy circle and I’ll add you too.

Google+ has only been around for a few weeks and is still in a honeymoon phase.  There are glitches still being working out and that’s okay.  I personally like the format and find it to be a refreshing addition to the social media world. 

Dan Lynch has set up a webpage called Google + for Genealogists if you need tips to get started.

Perhaps we can call our gatherings “Genealogy Plus” …..aka Google+ for Genealogists.

Come join the Google+ Genealogy party.  See you there!

—-

Acknowledgements

Google+ icon by David Walsh

This is part 2 of a two part series featuring recording Family Oral History at an 80th birthday party. This part will discuss how we used a “smart” pen to capture 2 hours of recordings AND notes. (View Part 1 here)

PenCasts – With LiveScribe Echo Smart Pen

The second day of our family gathering dawned clear, bright and windy at the lake. The “Elders” of the family were sitting around visiting and my aunt was recalling more stories, and writing them down. She realized the importance of having these stories. I left my Sony digital recorder running while they hashed out their versions and exclaimed “No, no…It was this way!”

“No, no…It was this way!”

 This was great stuff.

After lunch we gathered for more stories. This time I brought out my newly purchased LiveScribe Echo Smart Pen. This is a gadget that is smart pen, computer and recorder combined and basically creates “PenCasts”. It is truly amazing.

I first saw a LiveScribe in action when Susan Kitchens (of Family Oral History Using Digital Recorders) interviewed me at SCGS Jamboree 2011 about my experiences recording family oral history.

The notes are made on special paper which can include triggers to jump to specific places in the recording. Take a look at the video (ABOVE) for more information about what it can do.

My aunt again was the impetus for the memories. I was asking questions about their life growing up and what it was like.

“Just how far did you walk uphill both ways to school??”

My Mom and Uncle would chime in with their version or to add to the story. We must have done this for couple of hours! It was another very successful recording experience.

I was glad I bought the 8GB version of the LiveScribe Echo Smart Pen!

 I personally felt it was easier to interview with the LiveScribe Echo because while I was busy making notes and asking questions they forgot the LiveScribe was also recording. The conversations were natural and they flowed.

At one point I also turned on my Sony recorder and had it sitting on the table because there were lots of people chiming in from around the room. I didn’t know how far the LiveScribe could pick up the sound as this was my first experience with this gadget.

It was easier to interview with the LiveScribe Echo vs the digital recorder

 My sister and I also did a LiveScribe Echo session where she went over a list of things she remembered from our childhood.

What Next?

I plan to make a master copy of the two sets of recordings for Mom (and for any family members who want it) plus I will transcribe the words into text to include in a photo album of Mom’s Big Day which she will receive as a gift. (Shhhhsss, don’t tell her!)

I’m actively blogging about our family stories and hope to put the blog posts together in a book one day. These recordings will help me recall the stories.

Most importantly is having the voices. I always regret we didn’t have my father’s voice recorded.

“Most importantly is having the voices.”

I now have many of family members on a recording whether it was from the Memories Game (see part 1) or from our post party activities on the next day.

Bottom line

Get creative with your oral family history interviews. Try interviews in a group setting and ask others to participate…and buy yourself a LiveScribe Echo.  It is so much fun!

Acknowledgements

THANK YOU to Susan Kitchens (of Family Oral History with Digital Tools) and Lisa Alzo (of The Accidental Genealogist and an expert in publishing family histories) for their inspiration.

A special thank you to my extended family for their participation in recording our family oral history.

Family Oral History Equipment and Resources

• Sony IC Recorder available from Amazon (ICD-UX200) – my model is an old one so check the website for the latest available.  (www.amazon.com).  I suggest getting one with a USB connection.
  

• LiveScribe 8GB Echo Smartpen available from Amazon – (also used by university students recording notes in class). One has the option to purchase the 8 GB Pro Pack which has extra recording devices.  (www.amazon.com or click on the photo below)

Note, you will need to purchase special notebooks to start. There is an option to print off your LiveScribe paper once you have the software installed on your computer.

LiveScribe NoteBooks – I recommend getting a medium size notebook.  If you are student taking lots of notes go for the full size notebook.

Questions?  Leave a comment below.

—

Please see my disclosure statement about my relationship with the vendors mentioned.

Capturing family oral history can be an important part of a genealogist’s ‘job’. In this post I will share how we recently captured family history in a recording using a “Memories Game”.

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series.

Starting out with Family Oral History

Over the past year I’ve ventured into recording family stories. My inspiration was a talk presented by Susan Kitchens at SCGS Jamboree 2010. Susan, author of the Family Oral History Using Digital Tools, started recording her family history over a decade ago when she captured the stories of her 99 year old grandfather.

Getting a family story down on paper is one thing. I feel a recording is better. Having a cherished loved one’s voice on ‘tape’ and especially having the story recorded for posterity is the best of both worlds.

I received my first recorder (an inexpensive Sony) this past Christmas and asked family members if they would like to participate in an oral family recording. Reactions were mixed varying from reluctance to
enthusiastic participation.

Reluctance to be recorded….what to do?

The reluctance expressed by some family members had me re-evaluating my approach. I wasn’t going to force anyone to be recorded but really wanted to find a way to make this work. I also wanted it to be a pleasant experience for all involved.

Lisa Alzo, an author and family historian, said something recently which struck a chord with me.  I had heard Lisa speak on the topic of writing one’s family story. (Legacy Family Tree Webinars – Ready! Set Write! Share Your Family’s Story by Lisa Alzo. Recording is available).  Lisa’s sage advice was to ask another family member if the first doesn’t want to talk.

 ”If one family member doesn’t want to talk, ask another.”

Recording Family Oral History

Guided by the wisdom of Susan and Lisa I revamped my approach to Family Oral History Recordings.

There were two approaches that worked well at our recent family gathering at the lake. Maybe they will work for you too.

The Memories Game using a Digital Recorder

We were celebrating Mom’s 80th birthday at the lake. I was emcee and one of the games we played was the “Memories Game”.  This game came to me in the one of the middle of the night brain waves.  It was a true experiment because I wanted to use the recorder, something I hadn’t done in a large group setting before.  I primed most of the family members in attendance ahead of time so they could think about their memories and be prepared.

How it worked

We went around the group one by one and I asked everyone to give a memory they had of the birthday girl, perhaps from her childhood or as a Mom,Grandma, aunt or sister. I also asked if people were okay with passing a recorder around while we were doing this. We were to pretend the recorder was a microphone; the individual was to give us their memory then hand the recorder to the next person. Whom ever had the recorder had the floor.

The Memories Game was wildly successful.

Everyone had a slightly different relationship with my mother and the most wonderful and poignant stories came out. My mother is a favourite aunt and a second Mom to several of my cousins. There were tears and there was laughter.  Mom is a special person to many people.  At the end Mom said her thank you’s while speaking into the recorder.

“There were tears and there was laughter. “

 All of these memories got my Aunt going with more stories. She kept saying “I have one more story to share!” and would grab the recorder. It was wonderful! I recalled Lisa’s words as my aunt jumped up to give us another story.

“I have one more story to share!”

All was good

The Memories Game using a recorder turned out to be a wonderful 80th Birthday Party Game. I will make a master copy or the recording for Mom and will use the transcription for a photo book.

PART 2 of Family Oral History is covered here.  Learn how a “smart” pen helped record 2 hours of stories!

—

TIP – get everyone to state their name before they start recording their memory.

Equipment and Resources

• I used a Sony IC Recorder available from Amazon (ICD-UX200) – mine is an ‘old’ version so I suggest you check the website for the latest model. Pick one in your price range with a USB connection. (www.amazon.com or click on the photo below)

—-

Please see my disclosure statement about my relationship with the vendors mentioned.

I have Google Analytics installed and with it comes Google webmaster tools.  This tool gave me a long list of reasons why my webpage is slow, most of which looked to hard or time consuming to implement so I put the task on the back burner.  Rainy day stuff….

Then I came across a MakeUseOf article entitled “10 Free Online to test website loading speeds and create faster webpages” which got me inspired to revisit this issue.

Webpage Loading Speed Checkers

I decided to give these free tools a try.

1. WebWait. The first one on the list was Webwait which gave me an average load time of 3.06 after 5 runs. Woohoo! Maybe my load time isn’t as bad as I thought.

Alas it lied.

Google Webmaster Tools says my page is a lot slower (10.1 seconds) and the rest of the web page speed tools I tested confirmed that finding.

Webwait

2. WebPageTest. The next one on the list was WebpageTest.  The nice thing about this checker are the visuals (also called waterfall graphs).   WebPageTest.org said my page loaded in a dismal 10 seconds or more.

One run was 14 seconds. Ouch!

A webpage should load a whole lot quicker than that.  Web surfers are an impatient lot and will move on quickly if a page doesn’t load FAST.

Hover over a result and you soon find who the time hogging culprits are.  More on that in a minute.

3. Loads.in. My blog clocked in at a turtle slow 10.8 seconds on Test #3 this time with Loads.in.  This checker also had a waterfall graph.  By now I was starting to see a pattern, both in time loading and which components were the slowest.

I ran my blog through several other checkers and with much the same result.  Slowcop gave me a list of page speed programs ranked by impact, which I found to be very helpful.

Here is the list of major speed loader hogs on my Luxegen Genealogy Blog.

1. Friend Connect (1089 ms)

2.  Networked Blogs (500 ms)

3. Sexy Bookmarks plugin (101ms)

4. Photos hosted on Picasa. (5410 ms) Yes!  I thought this would be a speedier option that hosting them on my own blog and server.  It appears not.  Granted I did have the large version of a newspaper headline featured on the page I tested.

But I shouldn’t be to surprised.  Any off site hosted content is bound to be slower than ones loaded on site.

Every plugin, addon and image does its part in making the website slower.  The embedded GeneaPress widget and GeneaWebinars banner slow things down too.

Decisions, Decisions…

Now, I need to make some hard decisions.

The first decision was easy.   I decreased the Picasa embed size to a thumbnail and may move the picture onto my server or onto Flickr (but is Flickr any better?).

Do I take down Friend Connect?  I like that one.

Networked blogs could go though.  Anyone that wants to follow my blog on Facebook can do so.

I plan to look at all of my plugins and decrease the number or replace with faster versions.   I also need to look at my blog theme which has a lot of images making it slower to load.

Javascript was also listed as a problem.  Javascript appears in some of the plugins and elsewhere.

How about your genealogy blog?

Do you have any of these blog time hoggers on your blog?

If so what were your solutions?   Please comment below.

–

Resources: 10 Free Online to test website loading speeds and create faster webpages

UPDATE: After removing many of the culprits above including Networked Blogs, GeneaPress and GeneaWebinars and one banner, along with resizing the picasa thumbnail on the post I did the test on, I’m thrilled to note that Luxegen Genealogy is now running at between 4.1 seconds and 7 seconds depending on the checker I use.   There is more work to do but at least we are headed in the right direction.

UPDATE April 14/11 – 3.8 seconds!  (using Loads.in)  Goal is to get load time between 2 to 3 seconds.  I’ll check Google webmaster tools in a a few days.

The Rootstech Conference and our genealogy research time in Salt Lake City is fast approaching.  We will be researching in the Family History Library prior to the conference. With that in mind I’m considering what will be in my SLC Genealogy Research Travel Kit.

Items on the list so far:

1. Netbook computer – this is all important for two reasons.  Research files and photos can be downloaded on the netbook.  Also a copy of our family tree can reside on the netbook for easy reference.

Secondly, I will be serving as an official Rootstech blogger. That means I will be reporting live from the event via social media such as blog, Twitter and Facebook and will require a computer or phone to do so.

2. iPhone (with  extra data roaming/phone service enabled).    I can tweet and Facebook from the conference with my phone if I don’t have room to bring out the netbook.  (I also have the family tree on the iphone…call me an addict).

3.  Research Plan – we will have several days prior the conference to research.  I have been reviewing my Genealogy To-Do list and creating a detailed research plan.   I will be concentrating on the KERRs, WILSONs and Irvines.  My husband, the “non genealogist” is “in training” as a research assistant and he plans to work on his MILLERs.

4.  Small accordion file organizer for the papers and photocopies I’m likely to collect.

5.  A Memory Stick or two – I can back this up onto my netbook at the end of each day.

6. My Magic Wand Portable Scanner. I plan to buy a Flip-Pal scanner at the conference but won’t have it in time for the research portion of this trip.  Many of the geneabloggers are buzzing about the Flip-Pal and how it is a very useful tool.

7.  Digital Camera for taking captures of microfilm screens.

8.  My Flip camera to capture moments with my fellow Rootstech bloggers and conference attendees.

9.  Magnifying ruler just in case the aging eyes let me down.

10.  Business cards – to hand out to conference connections.

11.  Small computer backpack to carry all of the above paraphernalia.

I’m sure I’ll think of more items for my SLC genealogy Research Travel Kit as the time gets closer.

Our adult children will be holding down the fort at home and will look after the cat and mail.  (It is our daughter’s cat anyway!)

I enter my genealogy search terms and Ebay emails me the listings that match.  For example below is my search of any items that match the term “Quebec Genealogy”.  As you can see there are some good gems in that list at reasonable prices.

Consider doing your own ebay searches.  It is free to register and to set up the searches.  The only time it will cost is if you decide to purchase any of those great garage sale items.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: eBay <ebay@ebay.ca>
Date: Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 12:48 PM
Subject: eBay Saved Search: quebec genealogy

eBay sent this message to Joan Miller Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more.

	Here are newly listed items that match your favourite search.

Hi Joan, We’ve found 8 new items that match your search for “quebec genealogy”. We hope this helps you find exactly what you’re looking for!

Find matching items

New Results

1893/4 Montreal directory genealogy Quebec Canada 1890 Quebec City directory of all residents genealogy Compton County Quebec Genealogy History Biographies C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 18-Oct-10 23:51:03 EDT C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 18-Oct-10 23:53:47 EDT C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:20:14 EDT Argenteuil & Prescott genealogy Quebec Ontario Canada 1922 Ottawa Ontario Hull Quebec directory genealogy 1916 Hull Directory genealogy Quebec Canada C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:24:40 EDT C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:27:03 EDT C $6.70 Shipping: C $2.06 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:27:22 EDT History of Brome County Quebec genealogy land grants Lot of Montreal Quebec Genealogy & Family History C $6.70 Shipping: C $1.02 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:47:06 EDT C $6.70 Shipping: C $1.02 End time: 19-Oct-10 00:50:14 EDT

See all results…

Are you blogging away about your family history wondering if anyone is going to ever read it?

Want to make your genealogy tweets more memorable?  Me too.

The Linkedin.com folks have put together a HOW-To List of  Writing Effectively for Twitter & the Social Web.

Click here to read more.

Use hastags (search terms) such as #genealogy or #travel or whatever interests you to find freshly posted tweets containing information of interest. 

Unlike Facebook where privacy of one’s posts can be restricted to friends’ only eyes, Tweets on Twitter are out there for the whole world to see.  This creates a wonderful opportunity to tap into the collective knowledge.   Consider tweeting the surnames you are researching for your family tree.  

A lot of the big corporations, news agencies, politicians, entrepreneurs, celebrities and folks like you and me can be found on Twitter.  Whatever you are interested in is being discussed, right now, right here on the net, this very minute on Twitter.

Check it out…it seems most of the genealogy people are tweeting.  See you there!