BG's Genealogy Blog

February 2012, MacGen Meetings

2012-01-29T23:21:00.000-08:00

We will have two MacGen presentations in February, 2012

Wednesday, February 8, 2012, 7pm. Oakland Regional Family History Center
This is a workshop, driven from audience questions and requests for help
Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:30pm Oakland Regional Family History Center
Subject: Editing Chart Objects. This should be a great session, focusing on how to make a great charts. Reunion has an object menu to give many choices when editing your chart. The term object usually refers to photos that are dragged on to charts, but it also includes special shapes and text boxes on the chart. They can be manipulated extensively to produce stunning effects. Examples are (1) Grouping pictures; (2) Layering pictures (3) Shape Backgrounds (4) Picture frames and much more.

Address: Oakland Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA 94602 Web Site: http://www.macgen.org

January 2012 MacGen Meetings

2011-12-26T00:24:00.000-08:00

We will have three MacGen presentations in January, 2012

Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 7pm. Oakland Regional Family History Center
This is a workshop, driven from audience questions and requests for help
Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 10:30am, Danville Family History Center
Subject: Reunion Lists - These are a variety of text reports
Attendees of the Jan. 18 mtg. need to be members of the San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society
Saturday, January 28, 2012 1:30pm Oakland Regional Family History Center
Subject: Relationships in Reunion. We'll cover such things as (1) Bold Children; (2) Listing relative reports; (3) The Relative Chart; (4) Building a two person relationship char;. (5) Defining relationships from a source person;

Addresses

Oakland Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA 94602
Danville Family History Center, 2949 Stone Valley Rd, Alamo, CA 94507

Web Site

http://www.macgen.org

December 2011, MacGen Meeting

2011-11-23T14:02:00.000-08:00

Because of the Christmas holiday in December we will only be having one MacGen Event in Oakland, on the 2nd Wednesday at 7pm. Please refer to the web site below for more detailed information.

Wednesday November 9th MacGen Oakland FHC
Subject: How to enter data into Reunion - 7pm

November, 2011 Macgen Events

2011-10-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday in November we will only be having one MacGen Event in Oakland and one in Alamo (Danville Family History Center). Please refer to the web sites below for more detailed information.

Wednesday November 9th MacGen Oakland FHC
Subject: Using iPhoto for a Photo Project - 7pm
Wednesday November 16th SRVGS MacGen at the Danville FHC
Subject: Reunion's Cascading Pedigree Chart

September, 2011 Macgen Events

2011-09-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

The image above, is a collection of family photos turned into a collage by a free program called Collage Creator Lite. It's available for free from the Mac App store, just search for "Collage Creator Lite". This "Picture Pile" collage was assembled in a few minutes and saved to a file with a choice of dimensions. The program has all kinds of bells and whistles like rotating and resizing individual pictures, moving pictures forward and backwards, adding backgrounds, adding custom text boxes and changing from to portrait or landscape orientation.

MacGen will have three presentations in September, 2011

Wednesday Sept. 14th

MacGen Oakland FHC

Subject: Workshop - 7pm

Wednesday Sept. 21st

MacGen SRVGS at the Danville FHC

Subject: Reunion Relative Charts - 10:30am

Saturday Aug 24th

MacGen Oakland FHC

Guest Speaker: Pat Burrow from SVCGG

Subject: Reunion Timeline Charts - 1:30pm

See the MacGen web site for details at http:www.macgen.org

August 2011 MacGen Events

2011-08-05T23:06:00.000-07:00

I've been experimenting with Google Plus to see if it can possibly compete with Facebook and Twitter in Social Media. It does appear to have promise. We will do a brief talk on G+ (as it's known in shorthand), a Lion update and present our main topic, "Reunion, Drag/Dropping". Drag/Drop applies to a number of things in Reunion including photos, sources, gedcom files, text, chart objects and more. We will touch on starting new FamilyFiles, documenting people, applying multimedia items to family cards and more. This topic should help improve your overall knowledge of how Reunion works.

Wednesday Aug 10th MacGen Oakland FHC
Subject: Workshop - 7pm
SRVGS MacGen at the Danville FHC
No Meeting This Month
Saturday Aug 27th MacGen Oakland FHC
Subject: Reunion Drag/Dropping - 1:30pm

I hope to see you on the 27th.

Oakland Regional Family History Center

4766 Lincoln Ave.

Oakland, CA 94602

Bill George E-Mail

July 2011 MacGen Events

2011-07-03T01:12:00.000-07:00

July is a pretty good month with a full state of Macintosh Genealogy meetings. If you have a Mac, try us out. We have a great group, that's free and has very good advice for your genealogy and Mac hobbies. We have our two meetings at the Oakland Family History Center. A couple extra meetings are listed with Macintosh Genealogy Topics. The Oakland meetings are free and the SVCGG and SRVGS meetings require that you be a member of that group.

I came upon this EXCELLENT free program in the Mac App Store. It's called "Collage Creator Lite" and there's nothing light about it. It creates photo collages with text options, many photo options, background colors and background pictures. There are too many options to describe and it gets very high ratings. I generated this month's graphic using it.

Saturday July 9th SVCGG Santa Clara FHC - Subject: Mac/Gen - 9am
Wednesday July 13th MacGen Oakland FHC Subject: Workshop - 7pm
Wednesday July 20th SRVGS Danville FHC - Subject: Address Lists, Logs, Treetops - 10am
Saturday July 23rd MacGen Oakland FHC - Subject: Source Citations - 1:30pm

Bill George

June 2011 MacGen Events

2011-05-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

We have a LOT to choose from this month it you have a Macintosh and are into Genealogy.

Thought I'd throw in this tip I read about in the May 21st, 2011 post from the Geneamusings blog. Randy writes about a web site, http://www.wordle.com, that produces a word collage like the one I posted here. It's great with surnames or given names. Repeat names produce bigger words. It creates many different designs.

Wednesday June 8th MacGen Oakland FHC Subject: Charts Workshop - 7pm
Saturday June 11th SVCGG Santa Clara FHC - Subject: Reunion Find - 9am
Wednesday June 22nd SRVGS Danville FHC - Subject: Gedcom - 10am
Saturday June 25th MacGen Oakland FHC - Subject: Match Merge - 1:30pm

Hope to see you there.

Bill George

May 2011 MacGen Events

2011-05-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

Please Note: Our MacGen General Meeting will be one week early this month because the FHC in Oakland will be closed Memorial Day Weekend. Our Workshop will be covering Charts this month, as it wasn't covered as thoroughly as I wanted to in April. Also we will be touching on social media web sites each month. This month, Twitter.com is being covered. It's an excellent resource that's easy to set up and use. It also has depth if you want to follow specific people or topics. Learn all about it at our three meetings.

Wednesday May 11th - MacGen Workshop on Reunion Charts with scans and photos Oakland FHC

Wednesday May 18th - SRVGS MacGen Meeting at Danville FHC. Subject: Reunion Notes and Text

Saturday May 21st - MacGen General Mtg on Fixing Reunion screw-ups. Held at the Oakland FHC

April 2011 MacGen Events

2011-03-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

Notice: This month our MacGen General Meeting will be April 30th, 2011 (the 5th Saturday of the month) due to a scheduling conflict. Are you all using FaceBook to research living relatives? You should be. It's an amazing resource. Keep your genealogy current by finding and friending them on Facebook. What you will find is, that each of them is a center of influence, which will lead you to MORE relatives, ones you may never have heard of.

This month, April 2011, will be our 2nd anniversary and the start of our THIRD YEAR. Wow, has time flown by. It's being celebrated in our 4th Saturday meeting by a a presentation of two of the most popular topics, iPhoto and Reunion Charts. It should be a very informative meeting.

Wednesday April 13th, 2011 7pm -9pm - MacGen Workshop - At the Oakland Family History Center 4766 Lincoln Ave, Oakland, CA. This is our monthly Question and Answer session. Anything goes.

Wednesday April 20th, 2011 10:30am-12 noon - SRVGS MacGen Meeting - At the Danville Family History Center 2949 Stone Valley Rd, Alamo, CA. Our topic is Reunion's Family History Report. This is like writing a book about your family. Find out all about it

Saturday April 30th, 2011 1:30-3:30 - MacGen General Meeting - At the Oakland Family History Center 4766 Lincoln Ave, Oakland, CA. We will be covering iPhoto 11 and the latest in Reunion Charting. Example charts provided by LeisterPro, but printed by Heartland Family Graphics, will be displayed.

March 2011 MacGen Events

2011-03-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

Hi Mac Enthusiasts. I will be doing four Genealogy presentations in March, 2011

March 9th Wednesday 7pm - Oakland Monthly Workshop
March 12th Saturday 9am - Santa Clara - Organizing your photos - SVCGG
March 17th Wednesday 10:30am - Alamo - Importing/Exporting - SRVGS
March 26th Saturday 1:30pm - Oakland - Reunion's Find Feature

In all of these talks I use a computer projector with projection screens. We always have questions and answers. The Santa Clara presentation is at the Santa Clara Family History Center, to their Mac SIG. And the March 17th meeting is with the San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society at the Danville History Center in Alamo. Location information can be found on the web sites. I hope to see you at one or more of these meetings.

Bill

January MacGen Events

2011-01-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

There is a fair amount of Mac-related genealogy activitiy in January 2011

January 8th - 9-11am - Pat Burrow of the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group will be doing a presentation on Reunion Charting. I will demonstrate a new projector and assist as necessary. 9am-11am. 875 Quince Avenue, Santa Clara, California. http://svcgg.org

Jan 12 - MacGen Workshop 7-9pm - This is our MacGen monthly no-host workshop at the Oakland Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, California 94602. Audience Q & A. This is our last chance to prepare for the January 22nd meeting on Evaluating your Research. http://www.macgen.org

Jan 19 - SRVGS MacGen - 10:30 am Creating Web Content with Reunion - This is a MacGen meeting for the San Ramon Genealogical Society. It's being held at the Danville History Center, 949 Stone Valley Rd, Alamo, Calif. http://www.srvgensoc.org

Jan 22 - MacGen 1:30-3:30pm - Evaluating your research. Patrick Lofft, a knowledgeable person on genealogy matters will evaluate some people's genealogy research reports and tell us how our research stacks up and what to expect our research to look like. Oakland Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, California 94602. Audience Q & A. http://www.macgen.org

Five MacGen Events in October

2010-09-30T01:16:00.001-07:00

Bill George has a lot of MacGen work in October 2010:

1. Fri Oct 8th, All Day - Pleasanton County Fair Grounds - Family History Expo - Representing MacGen at the CGS Booth on Friday.

2. Wed Oct 13th 7pm - Oakland - MacGen Workshop http://www.macgen.org. This is a computer and genealogy workshop, for users with Mac/Genealogy problems and questions. LDS Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland, CA 94602

3. Thu Oct 14th, 7pm - Pleasanton Tri-Valley Mac User Group, http://www.clubtmug.com. A presentation by Bill George demonstrating the Reunion Lineage program (only available for the Mac).

4. Wed Oct 20 10:30am - Alamo - San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society MacGen SIG http://srvgensoc.org/sig.html. A presentation on how to dress up your Reunion Genealogy charts with pictures, backgrounds and other graphics.

5. Thu Oct 23 1:30pm - Oakland - Macgen General Meeting - http://www.macgen.org. A presentation on Reunion's very useful Index. Used to for much more than just locating families in the database. LDS Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland, CA 94602

Four Mac Talks in September

2010-08-31T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is an active month for Macintosh Genealogy. Here are four talks I have planned for September, 2010.

September 8 - MacGen Workshop

September 11 - SVCGG - Reunion Web Family Cards

September 22 - SRVGS - New Reunion Family Files

September 25 - MacGen - Export Reunion Family Files

Census Analysis: Sat., July 24th, 2010

2010-07-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

MacGen will present a program on Census Analysis on Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 1:30pm at the Oakland, California LDS Regional Family History Center. Documenting and analyzing census records is one of the toughest things for a family researcher to do. It can be very difficult to even read some census records, let alone compare them with other census records for the same person. Using spreadsheets to consolidate information and spot trends in your relative's life and family can be done in an easy, straight-forward manner. We will use free census spreadsheet templates from Census Tools web site and a Census Analysis Form designed by Richard Rands, President of the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group. The address of the Family History Center is 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA 94602. The presentation will last about 2 hours and include Macintosh and Reunion tips.

Back to Basics: Sat., June 26, 2010

2010-06-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, June 26, 2010, 1:30pm at the Oakland LDS Regional Family History Center Conference Room, we will cover the best basic topics covered by MacGen in the last twelve months. We will also show a new program that lets you easily resize open windows on your Mac. If you want to get updated on the Preview App, Reunion's Marking People function, Reunion Charting tips, easily creating Screen Snapshots and more, don't miss this meeting. The presentation starts at 1:30pm and will last about two hours in the Regional Family History Center at 4677 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA. Come early and do some research. They open at 10am. See also http://www.macgen.org.

Put Your Genealogy on the Web: May 22, 2010

2010-05-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

At the May 22nd, 2010 MacGen meeting, Bill George will show how to put your family history on the web. The main tool he will demonstrate will be iWeb 9.0, part of iLife that comes free with your Macintosh computer. Bill will also show how to create web content using the Reunion lineage program and do-it-yourself free genealogy web sites. You will also be shown how to get free web space for genealogy and how to upload your content to the web. The presentation starts at 1:30pm and will last about two hours including Mac Tips and Q & A at the Regional FamilyHistory Center at 4677 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA. Come early and do some research. They open at 10am. See also http://www.macgen.org.

Spring Break in April, 2010: No MacGen Meeting

2010-03-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Everyone has to take a break, so the MacGen Group is taking one in April, 2010. The May and June meetings should be interesting, though. Everything you wanted to know about putting your genealogy on the web (for free) will be revealed in May. In June, 2010 we will review a group of topics you thought you knew. For example, "Using Reunion's Index", "Report Layouts for Experts" and "The Preview App" are a few of the things you will become more knowledgeable about. http://www.macgen.org To thank you for reading this, here's a tip on county formation maps from familyhistory101. Try this link to see, year by year, how the counties in your state evolved, at http://www.familyhistory101.com/maps/pa_cf.html. It's fascinating!

Rich Peterson: Family History Slide Shows March 27, 2010

2010-03-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

Come to our MacGen Meeting Saturday, March, 2010 at 1:30pm. What you need to know about making family history slide shows will be presented by MacGen Member, Rich Peterson. Rich uses a number of tools on the Mac to create family history slide show presentations. Of course he will describe how to do it with iPhoto, but he also will demonstrate his favorite slide show application. There is quite a bit to producing an effective family history slide show including titles, annotations, music, transitions and transmission. You will have renewed enthusiasm for contributing to your family's history at your next family gathering. The presentation starts at 1:30pm and will last about two hours including Mac Tips and Q & A at the Regional FamilyHistory Center at 4677 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA. Come early and do some research. They open at 10am.

Pat Burrow: Reunion Reports Feb. 27, 2010

2010-01-25T13:31:00.000-08:00

Our presentation for February features Pat Burrow with a presentation titled, ROCK'N REPORTS. She's covering these topics:
o Getting the Report you want
o Rewording a Report
o Creating batch reports of just one branch of your tree
o Where is my report going (Word, Pages, Textedit)

Pat will show us how to customize and generate genealogy reports using the Reunion lineage software program by Leister Productions (leisterpro.com).

The meeting will be held at 1:30pm as usual, at the Oakland Regional Family History Center at 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA 94602. Come early and search their library or review some microfilm.

Pat is the Macintosh leader of the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group. http://www.plumlady.com.

Ed Mason: Family History iMovie Jan. 2010

2010-01-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

The topic of our Saturday, January 23, 2010, 1:30-3:30pm Macintosh Genealogy Group (MacGen) General Meeting is "Making Family History Movies: with iMovie and Final Cut Express. The presenter is Ed Mason, a co-founder of MacGen. Ed did a similar presentation last October in Concord, CA that was well-attended. It should be a great meeting with Mac Tips, Reunion Tips and your questions and answers on Mac and Genealogy topics. Come early and do research at our meeting place, the Oakland LDS Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, CA, 94602 510-531-3905.

Marge Bell: Vital Records, Nov. 21, 2009

2009-11-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009 Marge Bell from the Oakland Family History Center will be speaking to MacGen members about Vital Records at the Oakland LDS Family History Center. The meeting starts at 1:30pm at 4677 Lincoln Ave, Oakland, Calif. This will be our seventh session, this year. Please see the MacGen web site at http://www.macgen.org for more details. There will only be a workshop on December 8th and no general meeting. In January, 2010 we will show iMovie and March, various ways of creating Slide Show, mainly with iPhoto.

GenWise

2009-08-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

Genealogywise.com is a new genealogy social networking site. It has a lot of promise, but appears to be just getting started They do make it easy to upload photos, start groups and read forums. Stay tuned.

Macintosh Genealogy Meeting April 24, 2009

2009-04-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

I live in Castro Valley, Calif. and belong to four Bay Area genealogy groups. Each has a small number of people that use Macs to help with their genealogy research. There are just not enough people in these PC-dominated genealogy groups to have substantive meetings that cover the wonderful advantages a Macintosh can bring to your genealogy avocation. The best group for Mac Genealogists I've encountered so far is the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group (used to be Silicon Valley Personal Ancestral File group) in Santa Clara. They have a sub-group headed by Mac Guru Pat Burrow (plumlady.com) who is a treasure of Mac information. Every second Saturday, they have their two hour Mac presentation in the South Bay. They also have a Getting Started Class taught by Pat Solomon. But, it's not enough for me. I think our East Bay Mac users deserve a way to share their two passions, genealogy and their Macs.
So, I'm exploring this month to see if such a need exists. On Saturday, April 25th, at 1:30 pm at the Oakland LDS Family History Center, a meeting will occur with as many genealogy enthusiasts that use Macs, as can be found. Please see a flyer I created with more details, and hopefully I'll see you on the Saturday the 25th.

Geni.Com Genealogy Web Site

2008-08-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

I and millions of others, it seems, have discovered this excellent genealogy for the masses, web site. It's easy to use and motivates you to put up your family trees and share your life with your family. One great feature is that it only allows people you choose to view information about live members of your family. It's at http://www.geni.com.

Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group

2008-07-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

I attended the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy group's Santa Clara meeting last Saturday (the 2nd Saturday of the month). They had open discussion then split up into classes. It lasted from 9-11 am. I chose the class demonstrating how to insert graphics and movies into the Reunion Genealogy Program. They had five classes to choose from this day including, "Organizing your stuff", "Scanning Techniques" , "Using New Family Search (from LDS)" and "PAF and PCs for Beginners". They used to be the Silicon Valley PAF User Group, but morphed into the Silicon Valley Computer Genealogy Group. Nice move I think, since our Genealogy obsession requires a lot of computer technology. They had about 70 people in attendance at their LDS location at 875 Quince Avenue, Santa Clara, CA. Their web site is http://www.svcgg.org/ (http://www.svpafug.org/ works too).

Alameda County Fair Jun 20-Jul 6, 2008

2008-06-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

There will be a well-staffed Genealogy Booth at the Alameda County Fair this year from Friday June 20th through Sunday July 6th, 2008. On the Fair's web site click on "Fun Things" and then "Technology" to see the listing, "Learn about your Heritage at the Genealogy Booth". The large booth with multiple computers and access to the internet will be open from 10:45am through 8pm every one of the 17 days of the Fair. Many thanks to the Livermore Amador Genealogical Society for coordinating this event and to the Fair for providing space for it.

New EBGS Web Site

2008-05-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

I uploaded a new East Bay Genealogy Society web site. Their previous web site had been down at least a week. URL is http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~caebaygs/. Included was a Blog http://caebaygs.blogspot.com/ and a listserv, ca-ebaygs@rootsweb.com.

Livermore Amador Valley Genealogical Society

2008-04-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

I joined the Livermore Amadore Genealogical Society last night, after attending LAG's monthly study group. They seem quite professional with 256 members, lots of monthly activities, enthusiastic members, a great newsletter and an informative web site. We discussed a field trip Kay Speaks led, to the San Francisco Main Library recently. The library is very convenient, across the street from the Civic Center BART Station. The main lesson of the night was to join every library you can, as their web sites require a library card that gives you access to many genealogy-related web sites.

East Bay Genealogical Society Talk

2008-04-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

I gave a talk on how easy it is to set up a free Blog site, to the East Bay Genealogical Society (I'm a member) at their Wed. 10 am 4/9/08 meeting at the 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, California, USA LDS Family History Center. It seemed to be well received, with lots of questions. We also discussed obtaining free genealogy web sites from Rootsweb and free email accounts from Google.

PC Community User Group Genealogy Presentation

2008-04-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

I did a presentation for the PC Community Computer Club about Genealogy last night, and uploaded a web page with local links and a description of how to file your research. If you're into computers, you should consider joining a Computer User Group. A new six session weekly Genealogy Class started (3/31 - 5/5/08) at CVAS (Castro Valley Adult School). We get to access Ancestry's databases as part of the course that only costs $5 for the 6 sessions, a very good deal. A second person has expressed interest in a Castro Valley Genealogy Group. I'm working on a web page for an East Bay Genealogical Society (EBGS) presentation Wed. 4/6/08, 10am at the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, Calif.

Cindi's List, Google Genealogy, Familytreesearcher

2008-02-25T23:13:00.000-08:00

Three items for you:

Cyndi's List - You need to add Cyndi's List to your Genealogy bookmarks at http://www.cyndislist.com/. This is a tremendous resource!.

Google Genealogy Search - There is also a clever genealogy search page that uses Google technology that's quite helpful at http://www.genealogy-search-help.com/index.html.

Family Tree Searcher - This is a Multi-Site Genealogy Search utility that lets you search eight genealogy sites and once. It may save you a little time. http://www.familytreesearcher.com/

Genealogy.about.com

2008-02-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

A good free resource for beginning genealogists is http://genealogy.about.com. There are podcasts and frequent email updates available as well as the web site itself. If you want the ultimate genealogy reference book, try http://www.everton.com, the home of the "Handybook for Genealogists, 11th edition". It appears to be available now and the book + CD is $60 plus shipping and handling.

Castro Valley Genealogy Group web site updated

2008-02-21T16:14:00.000-08:00

I updated the CACVGG web site today, adding several sections will assist readers obtain free genealogy software and learn how to build genealogy web pages.

CACVGG Rootsweb Web Site is up

2008-02-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

Rootsweb emailed me that http://users.rootsweb.com/~cacvgg has been set up. I think the acronym stands for California Castro Valley Genealogy Group, so that's what I'll call it. That way it's easier to remember. Rootsweb has plenty of documentation to explain how to create and update our free web site. One thing you need to upload files to the web site is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. One of the best I've seen is Filezilla, available for free at http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/. So, this Blog will be like a stream of conciousness about Genealogy and the Web Site will have everything organized. Class members, please review and email me with questions.

Rootsweb sites have been requested.

2008-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

I requested two free web site acccounts from Rootsweb, one to post research on family lines and one for a Castro Valley Genealogy Group. These free web sites are available at Rootsweb.com, at http://www.rootsweb.com... then click on "Web Sites", "Request Free Web Space", then choose either "Freepages Accounts" or "Genealogical/Historical Society Accounts" and provide
minimal information. After this an email to the webmaster is generated that requests the web space. So now, I wait to hear if the free web sites were granted. For the Freepages Account, you need to request a unique name, so you might think of one ahead of time that's also easy to remember.

Just started genealogy class today

2008-01-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

I just started a Genealogy Class today in Castro Valley that runs from Jan 28 - March 10, 2008. The school website is at http://www.cvadult.org/activeadults.html (search for "Genealogy"). I volunteered to set up a Blog to share information.
Two items I have for this post are:

1. Free Genealogy program, Personal Ancestral File, available at:
http://www.familysearch.org/. Click on "Software Downloads" and then PAF version 5.2. You can also download a User's guide.

2. Free Picture organizing and editing program, Picassa is available at http://www.get-picassa.com/.

Please consider adding comments and updates to this Blog. The password is the same one we use in class. Also, if you can, please ask a friend to join the class, that helps us learn even more. If you care to leave your email address I can post it, or keep it private as you prefer.

There is a lot more free stuff to come.
Bill George
http://www.billgeorge.com/