Multiple people can add notes to a picture. For example, say you have a scanned photo of an old family photo but don’t know who’s in it. Upload your picture, and ask Grandma to identify who the people are in the picture by clicking on the people in the picture and adding a short description.

When you put your mouse cursor over the updated picture, the comments appear.

There’s not cost to uploading the pictures, and you can upload an unlimited quantity.

Vietnam Memorial Project

The site also has recently launched the Vietnam Memorial project in which visitors to the Footnote website can search for names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall and see details about the names, places and battles.

Search the wall by name, home town, enlistment type, or service branch.

Visit Footnote.com

Al Caholic, Anita Bath, Sloth Washington, Mayor Bland, and Gamble Moore are just a sampling of the names some poor folk had to endure during their lives.

From the database at Ancestry.com,
comes a book that reveals bad baby names throughout the century. The names have been taken from census and other records. Some are pretty hard to believe.

You may find some strange names in your family genealogy. If you have puritan roots you may find “Thankful” or “Content” but hopefully, you won’t find any as bad as “Doctor Love”, “Seymour Butz”, or some of the other wacky names parents have actually used.

Read the feature on the Today show or watch the Today Show video about the names/book below:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23631411

Take the book on a road trip and enjoy the fun. The book is available at Amazon.com: Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With, and You Can Too!

There are a few simple tips when taking pictures of family members to keep in a family history book or file.

Photo Tip #1: Zoom In

Your pictures will look ten times better if you zoom in or get closer to the person you are photographing. By taking a picture that encapsulates your subject head-to-toe, you lose a lot of facial detail and expression. If your subject is not a body builder or super model, they’ll probably appreciate a facial portrait rather than a full body shot.

Full shots are great, and you’ll definitely want some in your collection, but for family history purposes, you’ll probably want to capture more the essence and expression of your family member/subject.

For instance, the photo below is a great artistic photo. It makes good use of “depth of field” and is a fun composition with the flowers and the family holding hands.

It’s a great photo, no doubt about it. However, if you take a look at the picture below, you’ll see why zooming in or moving in closer to your subject greatly enhances the picture. There’s no fancy foreground or background in the picture (there’s actually no background), but you can really get a sense for the people in the picture.

Your pictures will instantly look better if you just move in a little closer. You’ll also avoid the “I-feel-uncomfortable-standing-in-front-of-the-camera-and-I -don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-arms-syndrome.” How many times have you posed for a picture and just felt uncomfortable the way you were standing? You just didn’t feel natural and didn’t know what to do with your arms…at the side, folded, hands in pockets, etc. (One way to avoid this is to put weight on one foot and not equally on both.)

Photo Tip #2: Get Good Light

Too bright, and your pictures will be washed out, too dark, and you won’t be able to see anything–lighting is key to taking a good picture. Taking pictures outside in the morning and evening hours provides good natural light. Taking pictures at noon and early afternoon makes lots of unhappy squinters. Go for soft, natural light. If you have to take pictures during the day, try placing your subject in the shade.

Try different angles. The light can come from the side. If you have a removable or adjustable flash, try bouncing the flash off the ceiling or from the side. This will help eliminate harsh shadows behind the subject.

Photo Tip #3: Compose In 3rds

You don’t always have to place your subject smack-dab in the center of the picture. Put them to the right or left side of the frame. It will ad variety and a different dynamic into the picture.

Photo Tip #4: Small Group Shots

If you’re taking pictures of a group, you normally have to scoot way back to fit everyone into the frame. That’s fine for a single shot, but try taking pictures in smaller groups and zooming in on the faces of the individuals (see tip #1). If it’s a family picture, take the group shot, and then split the group up by taking a picture of the parents with each child. You’ll also want a picture of just the parents alone and each child alone. It’s great to have sister, uncle, brother, cousin, etc. in the pictures, but a few generations down the road, descendants will be mostly interested in the individual they are most closely related to.

Since digital pictures really don’t cost anything (unless you print them), go ahead and take a bunch. Your posterity will thank you.

That should be enough to get you started, but once you have your pictures, remember to organize them and name them.

Many people have wondered where they can search the genealogy information found in the Indexing Project. As of this writing, the information can be found at the “Labs” section of FamilySearch.org.

Create an account for free to view and search the records. Among many types of records, you’ll be able to search are:

• Census Records
• Court Records
• Vital Records
• Military Records

Information has been indexed from various countries including the United States, England, Mexico, Canada, and many others. Search the indexed information or even browse the images of the original documents.

The interface is fairly intuitive and is not cluttered by too many links or instructions. The site appears to be using some sort of AJAX or AJAX-like programing which means the web page doesn’t need to be refreshed each time you click on a link or enter information. This saves a lot of time if you’re on a slower Internet connection and it makes for a better look-and-feel for the website.

This search site will probably graduation from the Labs section at some point, but it’s great to have access to the records even while the project is still in its beginnings.

Occupations such as yeoman, wright, longshoreman, cooper, whig, yatman, and more are probably going to be pretty hard to find on someone’s business card today.  However, in the past, and on ship and census records, you may come across terms like these more often.  It’s fascinating to see the definitions of the various occupations.

To help you out in finding and defining occupational terms, choose from the links below which detail many “old” occupations and their definitions (perhaps you’ll find an old term that you would like to adopt for yourself):

• http://www.familyhistory101.com/encyclopedia/job-A.html
• http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgwkidz/oldjobs.htm
• http://genealogyfix.tripod.com/jobdesc.html
• http://www.genealogy-quest.com/glossaries/occupations1.html

If you find a job title that you can’t understand in your research, you can also visit Dictionary.com to look up the definition. Another source for discovering more about a certain type of occupation is Wikipedia.

Ancestor occupations can provide tremendous insight into the life of your ancestor. A coal miner is going to have a much different life experience than an ancestor that worked in an accounting office.

Take special note if your ancestors left their country of origin to seek a new life and switched occupations.  In today’s world, people change occupations quite frequently.  A few hundred years ago, it might take several generations worth of the same occupation until a change was brought about.  Consider the hardships that an ancestor may have had in changing occupations and you’ll appreciate even more the struggles they went through to build a better life and future for their family.

A strong family will help ensure a family history worth keeping and a desire to make the most of it. There are many ways to strengthen the family and to better your family history. Spending time together and staying connected when apart are key to building a good family and memorable family history.

Spending Time Together - As simple as it sounds, spending time together with your family will help strengthen your family and your family history. One side of my family gets together for family reunions (these are big events). We enjoy the events and loads of family history info has been shared and swapped as a result. Unfortunately, on the other side of my family, it’s been decades and decades since the whole clan got together. There has been little shared in the way of family history. It’s not too late for us, but if you get started early, sharing family history will be much easier down the road, and hey, you might just have a more fulfilling family life.

Below are a few ideas of things you can do to strengthen your family ties. These are simple ideas, but the simple things are what can make the most profound difference if enacted on a regular basis:

• Eat a home-cooked meal together (with your immediate and extended family).
• Do yard work together (we have a “Help Grandpa Day” that is simply fantastic).
• Perform an act of service to the community together.
• Make a family video with pictures and music.
• Share family pictures during the holidays of what each family has done during the year (a 2-5 minute time limit isn’t a bad idea for this activity).
• Take a family vacation with the extended family.
• Visit the National Parks or State near your home.
• Turn that television off and go enjoy the out-of-doors with your family.

Staying Connected When Apart - Since we can’t always be together as families, there are many tools that we can take advantage of to stay connected with family while apart. It’s a shame not to take a part in some of these fascinating tools we have.

Email - If you don’t have or use email very much, I suggest you reconsider. Writing letters can make a big difference and are a treasure when saved, but writing emails is a great option because they are delivered much faster than conventional mail, it’s free to send, and it’s easy to store and preserve.

Many folks have an email address set up with their Internet Service Provider (the company that you use to receive the Internet). Getting your email through your Internet service provider isn’t such a great idea. I’ve had plenty of family members that keep changing their email address because they keep changing their Internet Service Provider. It’s a hassle for everyone. Try getting a free email account from Google’s Gmail. You’ll get plenty of storage space for your pictures and no advertisements will be placed in the bottom of the emails that you send to others (other free email accounts do this, but not Gmail).

Webcam - Using a webcam (camera hooked up to your computer) is a great way to stay connected with family members. If Grandma can use it, so can you. Just ask the resident “geek” in the family (just about every family has one) to help you set it up. Try using Skype for your video conferencing using your webcam. Skype is a free video conferencing software. You can also make national and international calls with Skype for well below the rates you’ll pay with your telephone company. The calls can be made from your computer’s microphone or from a special Skype phone that hooks into your computer. We had a family member do this on a trip to Asia and it worked better than calling on the regular phone!

Phone Home for Free - My favorite pick is ooma for staying connected to family by phone. With Ooma, you make a one time purchase of the Ooma Hub. You plug you Internet connection into the Hub and your phone into the Hub as well. You now have no more phone bill because your calls are routed through the Internet. That means free long distance to family members and you can still use your regular phones (no need to purchase a special phone). The person on the other end of the conversation doesn’t need to have any special adapter to receive your call.

I have an Ooma box, and I love it, love it, love it. The voice quality is great. The Ooma service will store voice mail for you, and you can even check and listen to your voice mail online after you log into the Ooma Lounge.

You can check to see if your current phone number is “portable” which means you can transfer your number completely over to Ooma from your old service provider without a break in service. If your old number can’t be ported for some reason, you can still use the land-line backup option which will retain your old number for you. You can also select the option for a brand new phone number.

Eliminate Your Monthly Phone Bill with ooma!

Whether away or at home, have fun, and stay connected. A better present-day family relationship will make for a better family history now and in the future.

We stumbled upon another great (and free) website that lets you preserve the list of books that you’ve read. The site is called Shelfari and lets you include a “bookshelf” of the literary works you’ve enjoyed reading, that you own, or that you want to read in the future and include the bookshelf right on your own website (if you so desire).

There are a variety of bookshelf styles that you can choose from. The bookshelves are interactive (meaning, visitors can scroll through the list of books you’ve placed on the shelf).

The service is free and will let you, if you choose, to connect with your friends to share info about your favorite reads.

How to use for Family History - Take advantage of the option to write a review of the books you’ve read. Wouldn’t you like to know what your ancestors thought about the material they read? You might feel lucky that you at least know what books some of your ancestors enjoyed let alone what they really thought of the books. Think of how beneficial and enlightening it would be if you had written down the thoughts and feelings of your ancestors as they read their favorite books. Those insights would be very valuable to a family history enthusiast.

Your descendants and family members will probably have an equal desire to know what you thought about the books you’ve read just as you have a desire to know what your ancestors read and thought about what they read.

So, there’s no easier place to start that with yourself. You can log on to the site for free and start to rank and write reviews for the books you’ve read. On the Shelfari site, you can easily find books you’ve read. Simple search by the title, ISBN, or author.

Share your reads by inviting family members and friends to see your book list. You have control as to the level of privacy on the site.

Get your friends, children, and grandchildren involved and linked on the site as friends. You’ll then be able to chat about shared interests in your reading and recommend your top picks to your friends.

Once your family members have created their list of books, ask them to export them (a feature included on Shelfari) so that you can store their favorite books in their family history folder you’ve created for them (if you’ve been so kind as to create a folder).

Why do this you might ask? - From personal experience I can attest that it is worth it. I’ve had many ancestors that have collected books and have written thoughts in the margins of the books. A precious treasure it is to read the same material that an ancestor had and to understand the thoughts, feelings, and insights. The only problem is that because there are so many descendants, it’s very difficult to share the books with everyone. Even distributing out one book per person doesn’t really cover it if the ancestor’s library wasn’t very large. By creating a digital bookshelf online and by writing your review (thoughts and feelings as you would in the margins of a book), you can share with all your family members the books you’ve read, how the books have affected you, and why you thought it was important.

As your posterity grows, they’ll be glad to have one more way to get to know you and your family members you helped get started keeping track of literary tastes and insights.

Go ahead, have fun and give it a try.

But wouldn’t it be inspiring if you had access to the books that your ancestors read and found moving and life changing?  You may even have the books they read, but unless they wrote down their feelings and insights about what they read, you’re left to guess what they thought about it.

GoodReads.com is a free service that lets you identify books that you have read, give the books a rating, and write your own thoughts and reviews about the books.  You can share the book list you’ve created with your friends and family.

Additionally, you can easily export (copy from the website) your list of books and your reviews so you can store them with your family history information on your home computer.

I had fun just listing the books I’ve read in the past few years and remembering what my thoughts were when I read them.

That’s why it might not be a bad idea to preserve the family “voice” in some way or another. Sure, now-a-days we have video that captures so much more than sound; however, most of the time, events are captured on video and not opinions, dreams, thoughts, and life lessons.

Audio recordings offer a great way for you or your family members to express themselves and to preserve that expression with tone and feeling.

Below are listed the top 5 ways to preserve sound recordings of your memories and insights or of those that you love:

1. Ancestry.com Family Tree - It almost couldn’t be easier with our top pick. You simply create a family tree on Ancestry.com using their free family tree program, click on the person in your tree for/by whom the audio recording will be made, and select “Audio.” You’ll then be prompted to create a new recording. You can choose to have the automated service call you and record your memory, or you can record straight from your own computer’s microphone. (Example picture below)

   

   You can share your recordings with other family members, or keep them private. It’s up to you, but let at least one other person have access to your recordings if you want them passed on some day.

2. To Your Computer - Many computers have either a microphone jack or a integrated microphone. Get a microphone or use the one on your computer and record your thoughts, stories, memories, etc. If you have Microsoft Windows, you can use “Sound Recorder” or even Windows Movie Maker (using the Narration option) to record your audio. The benefit of recording straight to your computer is that you can record for as long as you have hard-drive space and you can easily make a copy of your recording for family members. When you name the audio file you’ve created, include the date, your name, and the topic you discussed.
3. To a Digital Recorder - There are now many devices that will record your voice digitally. Many digital video cameras available that record to a memory card instead of a DV tape and also double as a voice recorder. You can record your stories to the device in audio format and then copy the recorded audio to your computer. Recording is a little less cumbersome since you don’t have to lug your computer around with you to get the job done, but you’ll need to know how to get the audio off the device and on to your computer.
4. Professional Studio - You could visit a professional recording studio to create your memories. Be prepared to pay a lot for the service; however, you’ll get a very high quality recording in a setting where you won’t be disturbed.  You’ll most likely be given a disc containing the audio files you’ve created.  Just make sure you go in prepared so you don’t waste time because you’ll be paying for the time you are there.
5. Non-digital Media - Recording voice to cassette tape or other form of analog recorder will still preserve audio for a while but will make extra work for someone else down the road. Media such as audio tapes will degrade over time and it will become increasingly more difficult to find devices that will play cassette tapes. Recording to tape will make it harder for someone to distribute copies of your recording to family members as making copies is a slow, manual process. Still better than nothing at all, analog recording would be our very last pick.

Tips on Recording - If you want to sound like you’re making up what you’re saying as you go when you record, that’s fine. However, you might want to consider making an outline of what you want to cover in your recording. To make things flow better, consider jotting down what you want to say so you don’t fumble with words and start the same recording over a dozen times trying to get it right.

If you’re making separate recordings of the same topic or experience, listen to your previous recording so you can pick up where you left off in terms of your tone, excitement level, and volume. It’ll make it easier for the listener who will probably listen to a good chunk of recordings in one sitting.

Purchasing a quality microphone might not be a bad idea if you’re going to record the audio to your computer. A crisp, clear recording provides a better listening experience. If you’re really serious, purchase a “pop screen” which is a little screen that is placed in between you and the microphone and prevents the “p” and “b” sounds from hitting the microphone with force making a “popping” sound.

Tips on Content - Take a moment to make a list of the various things you’d like to talk about. Try to keep each audio file you make centered around each topic. Five to ten minutes is a pretty good time frame to try to stick to for each file. Talk about things that are exciting to you so people can really come to know you better through what you’re saying.  Some ideas of what you can speak about are listed in a part article on how to write a personal history.

Pass it on - When you’re finished with your recordings, share them with others through email or by disk so that your “voice legacy” can be passed on.

Letters of Benjamin Franklin, of John Adams to his wife Abigail, of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and scores more contribute much to our understanding of the American Revolution as well as the opinions, habits, and views of the writers.

There is much to be gleaned from the well thought out correspondence of one person to another. Journals and biographies capture a wealth of information, but letters capture not just facts and thoughts; they capture interactions with others. Family insights can be noted that otherwise would be difficult to decipher.

So how can you best use and preserve family letters in our own families?

Organizing and Finding Letters - To make the best use of family letters, first, start finding where letters are stored. Ask your living relatives if they know good spots to look and people to talk to who might have old family letters. If you ask only “Do you know if we have any family letters?” you’ll probably get a “no” because it’s the easiest way out. So ask where things like letters might be hiding and it will help everyone take a moment to think about it.

Many individuals stored letters bound with a rubber band in a drawer or shoe box somewhere. Look, with permission of course, in attics, closets, basements, under the stairs, and in family garages. If you don’t find anything, you’ll at least clean up those places as you go (let’s hope).

Once you’ve found a few letters, see if you can find the matching correspondence, and then organize the letters by correspondence. Think about it as storing the letters and return correspondence as conversations. It will mean much more when someone reads the letters if related and follow-up letters are stored next to each other.

Once letter “conversations” have been stored next to each other, group letters by date or by purpose/location. For example, you may want to group letters together that we written during the war and group separately those that were written to grandchildren later on in life.

Storing Letters - Once you have found the letters and have organized them, you will have most likely found that the letters are an incredible vehicle that will take you back into the lives and times of your ancestors and family members. Don’t keep all those insights just to yourself. Share them with the family.

One of the best ways to share your family letters is to scan them to your computer (making them digital so you can email them and easily make copies). If you don’t feel comfortable with this step, have a family member help. It seems like every family has at least one technical genius that runs around fixing everyone’s emails.

Scan the envelop and then scan the letter contents. Saving the letters as a PDF is a good way to go so that the pages of each letter stay together and don’t get jumbled up (as would be the case if they were scanned and saved as separate pictures). Name your files with the date, the name of the writer, and a short topic description of the letter. If there were replies back and forth, use the same topic description and simply add a “1″, “2″, “3″, etc. to the file name.

Writing Your Own Letters - Sadly, our modern society has lost much of the eloquence possessed by those of earlier generations. Our communication tends to be much more curt, abrupt, and without prior consideration. However, we are not without tools to aid us in creating a legacy of letters. The computer has made it much more easy to write, revise, store, and share letters. Email has helped us to maintain the tradition of written communication. Take and save important communications that you have engaged in.

If you haven’t written much or feel what you’ve written through emails doesn’t amount to much, here is a fun exercise: write a letter. Write a real letter. Set aside some time to write a letter to your spouse, mother, father, sibling, or child. Write down your thoughts and feelings. Write as if you were thousands of miles away, and ask them to respond to you through writing. Not only is it fun, but you now have a family history record that is more than an “instant message.” It has caused you to think, to reflect, and to express.

Perhaps we can regain and reclaim a portion of the eloquence and thoughtfulness of those who have gone on before and have so graciously left to us some of their most important thoughts and conversations.