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Archive for November, 2010
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On Sunday, the Syracuse Post-Standard featured a story about personalized genomics and medicine entitled “Future medicine: Patients with genetic codes will seek personalized care from doctors” by Amber Smith. The article discusses several of the recent advances in the field of genomics, including the many DTC (“direct-to-consumer”) tests available to consumers, and what that will mean for medical care now and in the future. Smith writes:
“Interest in personal DNA analysis is growing, as the number of genomic retailers multiply. Navigenics is the first to obtain a license in New York state, last December, and other companies are going through the approval process now. A course at Syracuse’s Upstate Medical University prepares doctors for the new medical world, where patients arrive for appointments not just with symptoms and complaints, but with a list of personal genetic variants — and concerns about what it means.”
The Personalized Medicine 101 course (see #pm101 at Twitter) is a course designed to educate medical students about the tools and the challenges involved with personalized medicine and affordable genomic sequencing. I was a guest-lecturer for the course this year, speaking about “Ancestry & Genealogy: Foundations for Clinical Practice.” This is a groundbreaking course, one of the first of its kind, and it has the potential to educate 100s of future physicians about this vitally important field.
I was quoted briefly in the article about how I perceive the future of medicine:
“Ten years from now, I imagine the practice of medicine where an individual will always have their own genome. Ideally you would go in to see your doctor with your genome sequenced, and all of that available to the physician for analysis.”
If you’re interested in learning more about genetic genealogy or personalized medicine, you can check out the blog’s archives, or a list of some of my favorite articles.
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Dreading the long shopping lines during Black Friday? Wish you could give a gift this holiday season that is meaningful and will impact your family in a powerful way?
As many of you know, there’s nothing like the feeling of discovering your family story. And now you can share that feeling with your loved ones with an Ancestry.com gift membership that lasts up to a year, plus avoid the long shopping lines this holiday season.
With a gift membership, your loved one will get full access to billions of U.S. or international historical records on our site, plus they’ll be able to leverage the millions of family trees and helpful, timesaving tools available. The discoveries your friends and family can make on Ancestry.com will be a gift for generations to come.
So avoid the Black Friday shopping chaos and give a gift that will make the whole family happy. Gift memberships are now available by visiting www.ancestry.com/gift.
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You’ve probably heard that Turkey may or may not have been on the menu when the Plymouth
colonists and Wampanoag Indians sat down to their harvest feast in 1621.
Venison and wild fowl are the only
two foods historians know for certain were consumed at the meal. And the men sent
to capture fowl could’ve snagged small, seasonal birds such as quail, pheasant and
duck, instead of the harder-to-catch wild turkey.
So why do we make such a big deal out of the Thanksgiving turkey? Why doesn’t Grandma
serve up venison on her best platter every November?
I did some googling. The pilgrims’ countrymen in England would dine on goose at special
meals. Americans who later took up the tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving may have
substituted one big bird for another, because wild turkeys were more abundant here
than geese.
In addition, large birds were a lot more affordable than giving everyone steaks or
butchering all the laying hens. This quote about how the turkey became popular at
Thanksgiving, from an article
by Michelle Tsai, explains it well:
Among the big birds, turkey was ideal for a fall feast. Turkeys born in the spring
would spend about seven months eating insects and worms on the farm, growing to about
10 pounds by Thanksgiving. They were cheaper than geese, which were more difficult
to raise, and cheaper by the pound than chickens.
Americans started eating turkey for Thanksgiving in the mid-1800s, after Godey’s
Lady’s Book editor Sarah
Josepha Hale began a campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. At the
time, the holiday was celebrated mostly in New England on a different day in each
state.
Hale published editorials and wrote to several presidents. Finally, in 1863, Abraham
Lincoln—hoping to boost the war-weary country’s morale—supported legislation establishing
Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
Supposedly, Hale popularized a holiday
menu of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. But nostalgic
images of the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a huge feast didn’t enter popular
consciousness until later in the century.
Turns out the pilgrims and Wampanoag didn’t
eat pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes or cranberry sauce in 1621, either. Not much about
our modern Thanksgiving has to do with how the Pilgrims actually celebrated their
first harvest—except the most important part, gathering with loved ones to be grateful
for what we have.
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This is for all you deal seekers! Here are the specials we’re running this week on Family
Tree Magazine how-to genealogy books, CDs, back issues, webinars and more at ShopFamilyTree.com.
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Thursday, Nov. 25: Thanksgiving Day only, you’ll get free shipping on any
ShopFamilyTree.com US order. Even orders less than $25, and even products shipped
from our retail partners that normally incur additional shipping charges.
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Friday, Nov. 26 to Monday, Nov. 29: On Black Friday, you’ll receive 20 percent
off your ShopFamilyTree.com order when you enter offer code is SFT133 at checkout.
Some exclusions apply, including VIP membership, subscriptions, and products that
ship directly from our retail partners.
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Monday, Nov. 29: On Cyber Monday, in addition to the 20 percent off your
ShopFamilyTree.com order mentioned above, offer code SFT133 enables you to choose
a FREE digital download with your purchase (this also doesn’t apply to VIP
memberships, subscriptions or products that ship directly from our retail partners).
Choose from:
Start
your holiday shopping at ShopFamilyTree.com.
If your gift list also has woodworkers, writers, artists, gardeners, fabric and yarn
crafters, collectors, graphic designers, old car enthusiasts or hunters, you’ll want
to take advantage of the F+W
Media Friends and Family Free Shipping Special. (F+W is the publishing company
that brings you Family Tree Magazine.)
This Thursday and Friday, Nov. 25 and 26, my friends and family (you qualify as one
or the other!) can shop at any F+W online bookstore and get free shipping on US orders
by using the offer
code on this page.
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Got holiday traditions and decorations on your mind? So do genealogy bloggers.
Starting December 1, many will be participating in the Advent Calendar of Christmas
Memories blogging event. Through Dec. 24, participating bloggers respond to blogging
prompts by writing about memories related to the theme and their family history.
You can visit the Advent Calendar
of Christmas Memories blog to see the prompts (about cookie-baking, your childhood
beliefs about Santa Claus, your Christmas stocking, and more) and link to bloggers’
posts. If you blog and you’d like to participate, you’ll find the how-tos there, too.
Started as a bi-annual event in December 2007 on GeneaBloggers,
the affair is now annual and has dozens of participants. You can follow the Advent
Calendar of Christmas Memories on
Facebook and Twitter.
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Over the last year we’ve been working on a better way to let you view your Ancestry.com member tree. We’ve built this new tree viewer based on feedback from members, extensive user testing and hours of development and design. We focused on finding ways to let you view more of your tree at once and as I’ve viewed my own tree with the new viewer, it’s been great to be able to see my 12th great grandmother in the same view as me. I’ve also found that seeing more of my relatives in the new family view has helped me see new family lines to start researching.
You can check out the new tree viewer by going to your Ancestry.com member tree and by clicking on a link in a blue banner at the top of the tree viewer. The first thing you’ll notice is the “What’s new” feature. You can move your cursor over the headings to see pop-up boxes highlighting some of the new changes. You can dismiss this at any time by clicking the x to the right. Here’s a list of some of the other new things we’ve done to make it easier to view more of your tree.
More Generations in the Pedigree View – When there are more than 5 generations visible in any branch of your tree, you can click the arrow icon next to your 5th generation ancestor to expand another group of 4 generations. You can keep expanding until you run into that pesky brick wall.
Drag Your Tree Around the Screen – Now that you have so much more of your tree to look at, we’ve made it possible to simply hold down your mouse button and drag the background of your tree to move it around the screen without scrolling.
Larger Display Area – if you’re one of the lucky people with a larger monitor, we’ve made it so the tree view can expand the full width and height of your monitor.
Header changes
- Tree Pages – We’ve consolidated all the links to other tree pages to make them easier to find and give you more room to view your tree. Just hover over “Tree pages” in the header for quick access to these pages.
- Find a person in this tree – we’ve consolidated some other features to make more room. Hover over the “Find a person in this tree” search area to see the “last person viewed” and the “list of all people” links.
Tool Bar
- Home person link – We’ve moved the home person link to the tool bar for quick access
- Re-center the root person – Click the curved arrow icon to position the current root person in the vertical center of the screen and reset the zoom level
- Zoom – you can zoom in or out by clicking the plus or minus icons or by dragging the side bar. I like to expand branches of my family then zoom all the way out for a star-like view of my tree.
- Print – We’ve moved the print button and made it possible to print more of your tree. If you have expanded branches of your tree in the pedigree view, you’ll be able to print all the viewable generations at once.
Mini Person Card – When you hover over a person in your tree, a mini-tree card appears. When you click the name of your person, you’ll be taken to that person’s overview page. If you want to see this person’s tree, click the link that says “View his/her family tree” and this will redraw the tree with the selected person in the root position of the tree.
New Family View – Now you can see your relatives in what we’re calling the family view. This view allows you to see up to 2 generations of descendants, up to 3 generations of ancestors and all the siblings of a selected person. It’s a great way to see your family grow when adding siblings, children, cousins, aunts and uncles.
I’ve been using this new feature for over a month and it’s been great to be able to view more of my tree as I expand generations of my ancestors. In the new family view, I love being able to quickly add siblings and aunts and uncles and get the instant gratification of seeing them in my tree. We’re really excited to offer you these great new changes and hope to hear what you think about the new viewer. Once you’ve seen the new tree viewer and explored the changes, you can give us feedback by clicking the “Provide feedback” link in the new tree viewer or you can click here.
Click here to see your tree in the new tree viewer.
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Over the course of this year, we have been making incremental changes to our new search forms in response to your comments and suggestions. We’ve added name and place filters and changed the way you could do searches that included family members.
You’ll find we’ve modifed the search forms just a bit to make entering that information just a bit easier.
The updated form may not look that different, but the difference is all in the “Add an Event”:
Click on “Add an Event” and you will see a list of other events you can quickly add to your search. These events aren’t cluttering up the form if you don’t need them, but when you do want to use them in a search, they are just a click away.
Category and Subcategory Forms
You’ll also notice some changes on category and subcategory forms.
Previously when you looked at the Birth, Marriage and Death Category the search form was a bit long and even in advanced didn’t give you the granularity around dates that many researchers would like to have.
So we tightened up the form, and where we’ve got it indexed, we allow you to do searches with days and months instead of just years:
Data Collection Search Forms
Over the last couple of years talking to our members on the boards, blogs and at conferences, one of the most requested changes to new search was specifically in the Social Security Death Index. You wanted to be able to search by Day Month and Year. You now can, in either simple or advanced mode:
Any Event
You may have noticed the “Any Event” option on some of these forms. Sometimes you don’t know for sure exactly how the event was listed. If you enter a year or location into an “Any Event” search field, we will look for any event that is about person you are searching for: birth, death, military, you name it.
As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the forms.
Happy Searching!
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When you’re online Family Tree Maker connects directly to Ancestry.com so you can take advantage of the website’s valuable resources without ever leaving the software. One of these resources is the Web Dashboard. In versions 2010 and 2011 it gives you quick access to your Ancestry.com subscription; you can log in to your account, view your subscription expiration date, and access your Ancestry Member Trees. The Dashboard can also display a live news feed that tells you the latest news from Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker.
To view the Web Dashboard, go to the Plan workspace. You can click the Options link to select what types of information will appear and how often the data will be refreshed.
And new in 2011, the Dashboard contains Member Connect activity, links to message boards, and notification of new Ancestry messages. Simply click the link to access the record or message on Ancestry.com
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Congratulations to Lisa Louise Cooke on the 100th
episode of her Genealogy Gems podcast! This special episode celebrates the first
100 with a look at some of Lisa’s favorite gems, interviews and milestones, plus some
messages from listeners.
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Season 2 of Brigham Young University’s genealogy show, “The Generations Project,”
airs Monday, Jan. 3 at 7 pm Mountain time on BYUtv. You can stream
the channel online, or look for it
on cable for your area. Learn more about the show on
its website.
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FamilySearch Beta has added
or updated 34 collections of genealogical records—that’s 15 million indexed records
and 2.5 million images. The information covers 13 countries: Mexico, Chile, Colombia,
Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Jamaica, Canada and
the United States. Click
here to see a list of the new/updated collections.
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New York’s Larchmont Historical Society has created an online Photo
Index of Fallen World War I Soldiers from New York State. The images, digitized
from the book Soldiers of the Great War, don’t show all the state’s fallen
soldiers, including those whose photos weren’t available and those who grew up in
New York but enlisted elsewhere. You
can read more about the site and get search tips from the ResearchBuzz blog.
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The New England Historic Genealogical Society is holding a technology-focused Weekend
Research Getaway Jan. 27 to 29, 2011. The weekend will combine guided research at
the NEHGS Research Library in Boston with educational lectures about using technology
in your family search. Registration costs $300, or you can buy a day pass. See
the program and register at AmericanAncestors.org.
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Ancestry.com and National Geographic Digital Media have developed an online family
history “experience” on the National
Geographic Genographic Project website where visitors can learn more about researching
genealogy and search their roots. They’ll be able to start an online family tree,
get tips on doing family history, and links to Ancestry.com’s subscription record
collections. The Genographic Project is a DNA study of the genetic makeup of populations
around the world in order to chart the migration history of the human species.
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Family network and genealogy site MyHeritage revamped
its family tree charts feature with new designs site members can customize online
and print for free.
The site also launched a professional poster-printing service for any chart produced
on the website, as well as a chart design service.
If you have your family tree information on MyHeritage, you can click on the Family
Tree tab on your family site, then select Charts and Books. Choose from 18
chart types, including new bowtie and hourglass designs. The MyHeritage version
of the hourglass format is unique in that it can include the ancestors of any spouse.
You also can customize your chart with border designs, frames, backgrounds, decorations,
colors and fonts. You can opt to include information such as names, birth dates, wedding
anniversaries, photos and personal notes.
This is an example of a bowtie chart, with a nuclear family in the center and each
parent’s ancestors on the sides.
This all-in-one chart shows collateral relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings.
You can export your chart for free in high-resolution PDF format to print or share
via e-mail.
You also can order a professionally printed poster starting at $20. A variety of paper
types (standard, matte photo, glossy photo, vinyl or canvas) and sizes (including
huge wall charts for family reunions) are available, with optional lamination.
MyHeritage provides free hosting for family websites up to 250MB and trees up to 250
people, with more
storage and features for $6.25 to $9.95 per month. You can start a MyHeritage
tree by uploading a GEDCOM or typing in names.