Lunar Mission One: You Can Put Your DNA on the Moon
A new project backed by top British scientists is crowd-sourcing space exploration by offering donors the chance to put their DNA on the moon. Their first Kickstarter campaign successfully ends today: over £600,000 has been raised in less than a month! Lunar Mission...
Merry Cemetery Displays ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of the Dead
A gravestone creator in a small town in Romania took his mission seriously to memorialize the dead. But he did in, er, "living color," so to speak. With plenty of colorful images and even dirty little secrets and gossip carved onto tombstones of the local residents at...
Genealogy Roadshow Season 2: Pirates, Holocaust Heroes and More
PBS' Genealogy Roadshow Season 2 (USA) serves up pirate stories, heroes of the Holocaust and more--all in the context of tracking down everyday people's family history! The season premieres Tuesday, January 13, 2015, at 8:00 p.m. ET and airs every Tuesday through...
Evernote for Family History: OCR Handwriting and Uploading Data
So many of you are harnessing the organizing and storage power of Evernote for family history research (and probably everything else you know!). Every time I teach on Evernote, a round of excited follow-up questions follows. Here are two great questions from Karen: Q:...
Evernote for Family History: How to Solve a Pesky Evernote Web Clipper Problem
Recently Karen wrote in to say, "I'm taking the Evernote challenge!" (Good for you!) She has this question about using the web clipper when using Evernote for family history: Q: How do I get a clip out of Evernote and into my regular file system on my hard drive? I've...
RootsMagic + MyHeritage = Heritage Magic!
If you're a MyHeritage user, you know how powerful their search and record matching technologies are--and how many records and trees they have. If you use RootsMagic, you know how adeptly this family history software helps you build and maintain your master family...
The Genealogy Industry: $2 Billion–and Growing!
Recently, Forbes magazine called family history a "2-plus billion dollar industry that is expected to grow to nearly 3 billion by 2018 (ifla.org). Any investor will tell you that any market described with the word 'billion' is a market well worth pursuing." The...
Genealogy Gems Book Club: MORE Great Books Recommended
Looking for something fun to read this holiday season? Whether you need reading material for holiday travels or just want to curl up under a blanket at home, here are two great titles I love. I shared these with Lisa in the December episode of the Genealogy Gems...
Evernote for Family History: Organizing and Tagging Your Data
Recently Richard wrote in with great questions on using Evernote for family history. “Thank you for ‘reinvigorating’ my interest in my family history,” he says. “I watched [your Legacy Family Tree webinar] on Evernote twice and I am now a Premium user thanks to the...
Heritage Display: A Centerpiece for Your Holiday Table
Recently we heard from longtime listener and Premium eLearning member Linda in Sweden. She shared this creative conversation-starting centerpiece with us (see a link to her blog below for more pictures). “My local genealogical society celebrated its...
Mobile Friendly Search Results Come to Google
Mobile friendly search is now within reach! If you Google-search on a mobile phone (or on a small tablet), you know how frustrating it can be to navigate some websites on the small screens. The text is too small, the links are too tiny to click on and you have to...
WEBSITE MAINTENANCE: Please Excuse Our Mess
You may have noticed so ups and downs here at Genealogy Gems the last 2 days. Our tech elves are busy upgrading the site to keep up with "the times." I really appreciate your patience, and we should have everything back to normal by the end of this weekend. Our Store...
RootsMagic 7 is Here!
RootsMagic 7 has just been released! It's the latest version of award-winning software that's been described by Family Tree Magazine as “probably the best all-around genealogy program." I agree: that's one reason RootsMagic is also a longtime sponsor of the Genealogy...
NGS 2015 Genealogy Conference Program Now Available
The FULL program and registration brochure for the next National Genealogical Society conference is now online. Browse the NGS 2015 program for some mouthwatering sessions, workshops, tours and social events! Why read it now, right when the holiday season is kicking...
Orphaned Heirloom WWI Medal Comes Home via Facebook
Thanks to an appeal on Facebook, an old World War I medal is back with its family! According to the North Devon Journal in the U.K., the medal was found with the belongings of a man who died in 1980. His sister only recently realized there was a name on the medal,...
FREE MyHeritage Webinar: Enrich Your Tree with Photos, Stories and More
Have you started using MyHeritage.com yet? I especially recommend this genealogy and family social networking mega-site for: searching internationally for relatives through 26 million family trees contributed by users worldwide (and supported in tons of languages);...
AncestryDNA Review and Breaking News! Updates Launched
"This is really the first time a DNA testing company has so fully integrated genetics and genealogy. We can now find cousins in the database who do not share our particular genetics, but who do share some of the genetics of our common ancestor. This is huge." -Diane...
NEW! Nova Scotia and South African Genealogy Records on FamilySearch
Among the 3.7 million+ records new on FamilySearch this week are two updates that caught my eye for international regions that need more record sets online: Nearly 1.4 million images are now browsable in a newly-posted collection of Nova Scotia, Canada, probate...
