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Happy 2012 to you! It was a nice holiday lull, but now it’s time to ease back into
the swing of things. Here’s a roundup of some genealogy headlines to get things started:

• PBS’
  Winter-Spring 2012 lineup includes a 10-episode celebrity genealogy series called
  “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” premiering Sunday, March 25 at 8 p.m.
  

Gates will delve into the genealogy and genetics of famous Americans including
Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey, Jr., Branford Marsalis, John Legend, Martha Stewart, Barbara
Walters and Rick Warren. The
show’s website is here, though is hasn’t yet been fleshed out with any content.

• A few updates to the genealogy web search engine Mocavo.com: You can now upload files
  to your account using Dropbox; just
  follow these instructions on the Mocavo.com blog. Also, if you log in before you
  search, you can mark off Mocavo.com search results you’ve already looked at with an
  “I’ve Read This” button, and you can rank matches as “The Person I’m Looking For,”
  “Maybe A Good Match,” “Not Who I’m Looking For” and “Broken Link.”
  

Finally, the site has introduced Mocavo
Plus, an advanced version the site’s developer says will get you more-relevant
matches with features such as wild card searching, date-range searching, GeoSearching
(in the US) and more. Subscriptions cost
$9.95 per month or $79.95 (a sale price) per year.

• The California State Genealogical Alliance (CGSA) has started two new blogs: the CSGA
  Blog, with a goal to keep the California Genealogical community informed, and
  the Csgacopyright blog, which helps
  the genealogical community understand copyright issues. Learn
  more about the CGSA on the organization’s website.

• The National Archives and Records Administration has launched “Know Your Records”
  online videos from the popular genealogy how-to workshops hosted at its facilities
  on topics such as such as census, immigration and military records. Catch
  the videos on the archives’ YouTube channel.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announced its schedule of upcoming
  workshops at its Boston research library. If you’ll be in the area, you can learn
  about the library’s resources, local history, researching African-American ancestors
  and more (NEHGS also is organizing a research trip to Belfast in May). Check
  out the schedule on the AmericanAncestors.org website.

• Genetic testing site 23andme, which provides test-takers
  with medical- and ancestry-related analyses, has generated some controversy in changing
  site policies. Now, those who let their 12-month subscriptions lapse will lose access
  to their Relative Finder matches, Health Reports and other features that rely on their
  genetic data. They’ll still have access to the raw data. Read
  more about the controversy on the Your Genetic Genealogist blog.