Friday, March 30, 2007

Online Backup & Storage

After trying 2 online backup services that offer free accounts, Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/ and Mozy http://mozy.com/, I see strong points in both. For accessing your files from another computer or sharing I must go with Xdrive, no online access to your files with Mozy. For automaticly backing up of importaint files I must go with Mozy, Xdrive is slow as tar. Mozy is much faster & you can restore you files to any point up to 30 days old. I think we can relate to adding wrong information in our genealogy, well if you catch it in 30 day you can restore your file back to the point you made the mistake. Another thing to concider is where Xdrive offers 5 Gigs of storage, where Mozy offers 2. If security is an issue nothing beats a good old fasion external hard drive.

More info:
Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/
Mozy http://mozy.com/

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Family Tree Guide

Family Tree Guide http://www.familytreeguide.com is a nice website were you can put your genealogy. It is similar to other web based PHP genealogy programs, but you don't have to have your own website or do any of the setup. More information on the features can be found here http://www.familytreeguide.com/home_features.php.

Things I like:
  • You get you own web address ie. name.familytreeguide.com.
  • Several different way to view people; Individual, Pedigree, Descendancy, Relationship Calculator, Timeline.
  • You register others for your account so you can collaborate.
  • The advanced search you can search names, dates, places, notes & more.
  • You can even add histories, documents, and photos.

Things I didn’t like:
  • You are supposed to be able upload a gedcom to update your file, but I tried to replace my gedcom to take out photo links in my file but was unable to. I ended up deleting the file & then uploading the edited gedcom as new.
  • The only way to add contact info was to put my email in the footer.
  • The biggest problem is the defalt is no event/facts (census, moved, etc...), but all I had to do was select them to be allowed & reupload the gedcom.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Need Extra Storage Space?

Dead Site!!!!

3 sure things in life are death, taxes & hard drive crashes. Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/ is an online storage service offering 5 Meg of free storage. There are a lot of free photo storage services out there but what I like about this is you can store other files.

Here are some things you can do with Xdrive:
  • Better secure your important files - photos, video, music, and more.
  • Keep your digital photos in full resolution.
  • Prevent bounced e-mail - share very large files without a problem.
  • Schedule Automatic Backups of your important files.
  • Share folders with others for just viewing or to work collaboratively.
  • Access your files anytime through any web connection.
  • Organize, edit and stream music playlists through any Web connected PC.


"Xdrive Desktop" acts as an auto backup of certain folders on your hard drive, but I found it slow as tar. The slide show you can add music & email an invitation out to people to view it, myself I don't like giving emails of friends to free services. The things I really like about this service is backing up your bookmarks. You can also upload groups of files or folders & download them just as easily. Downloads are grouped together as a ZIP file so you will need to uncompress them when done.

Should you find 5 Gig just isn't enough try putting your pictures on AOL Pictures http://pictures.aol.com, that is unlimited storage & can be accessed from Xdrive.

One last piece of advice locks & security only keep honest people honest, put confidential information online at you own risk.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Arizona Obituary Index

Mesa Regional Family History Center has a very nice obituary index on their website http://www.mesarfhc.org/. On this index you get names, age at death, newspaper, section, page, and date. Most of the hits I got were in the 1990s & 2000s, some are in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the oldest I found was the Arizona Miner 1864.

There was no list of what papers they have or time period, but here is what I was able to find:
Apache County Reporter
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Daily Sun
Arizona Miner
Arizona Republic
Au-Authm Action News
Casa Grande Dispatch
Cottonwood Journal Extra
Daily Courier
Daily News-Sun
East Valley Tribune
Eastern Arizona Courier
Gazette
Mesa Tribune
Navajo County Pioneer
Navajo Times
Payson Roundup
Phoenix Gazette
Prescott Daily Courier
Prospector
Republican
Scottsdale Tribune
The Spectrum
The Sun (Yuma)
Tucson Citizen
Verde Valley News
White Mtn Independent
Yuma Daily Sun

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Obituaries, Genealogy Treasures

One of the best places to get you over a hump in your genealogy are obituaries.

Start with dates off the Social Security Death index or other death indexes or cemetery records. With that you can get a death date and a possible death location.

Next check your local library website & see if they offer NewsBank or other national newspaper databases, they are good for recent obituaries.

Next check the newspaper websites for the county they died in. Smaller newspapers are more likely to keep a free obituary archive longer than the bigger cities. My experience, the bigger cities obituaries usually windups on NewsBank after 30 days or other pay sites.

Finally ask for a lookup on mailing lists, message boards, http://raogk.org/ or http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~obitl/ are good. But if no one gets back with you try emailing that county’s library & find out if they keep newspapers on microfilm and if they can mail you a copy. There might be a small fee involved, but usually not much.

Why is this document important? It is most likely to give you clues on your ancestor’s life, ie… Son or daughter of, born, married, survived by, where they lived and what they did in their life.