Google Toolbar Site Search

In addition to the Google Toolbar Word Find Highlighter to immediately pinpoint all occurrences of word or surname on long web pages, the Google Site Search is another great use for the Google Toolbar when genealogy searching. You can use it to:

• Search a site that doesn't have its own search engine. You will find that many smaller genealogy sites, and surprisingly some larger sites, do not have a site search.



• Search a site whose site's search doesn't work very well. One example of a site search that doesn't work very well is the Ancestry.com free library. See Searching the Ancestry.com Library Using the Google Toolbar.

Download the free Google Toolbar. When the Google Toolbar is installed on your computer, it automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar.

Once the Google Toolbar is installed on your computer, go to Settings, then Options on the Toolbar to choose the options you want displayed on your toolbar. I highly recommend "Search Site" under the "Options" tab and "Highlight" and "WordFind" under the Buttons tab.

I also like the Google Toolbar pop-up blocker. Can't imagine surfing the web without it.

Using Google Picasa's Sort to Find Photos on your Computer

Picasa, Google's Free Photo Organizer, locates all the photos and images on your computer and organizes them for easy finding.

Use Picasa to keep your scanned photos organized for free.

The folders of photos in Picasa are organized by year created, but if you have a large number of photos on your computer, it can sometimes be helpful to change the sort to more easily find a photo. You can change the sort order of all of your folders in Picasa by clicking on View > Folder View > then select

• Sort by Creation Date,
• Sort by Recent Changes,
• Sort by Size, or
• Sort by Name.

If you don't know the year, selecting Sort by Name will arrange your files alphabetically and remove the year markers.

You can also sort your photos within an album or folder. Right click on a folder or choose Folder > Sort by. You can then sort your photos by

• Name,
• Date, or
• Size.

Examining the photos by a different sort order not only helped me find the photos I was looking for , but also helped me discover duplicate photos I had taking up computer space I needed.

In addition to changing the sort order to find photos, you can search for photos by album, photo name, caption, keyword, or by color using the Picasa search box in the upper right corner.

Most Popular Male Names

A while back, I did a post on the Most Popular Female Names in the 1990 US census. I thought it was time to give equal time to the boy names. Here is a list of the most popular male names on the 1990 US census. This is a very different list from the most popular baby names of today because the 1990 census lists includes all ages - from newborns to those who are over 100 - everyone who was on the 1990 census Most Popular Male First Names on 1990 US Census

1. JAMES
2. JOHN
3. ROBERT
4. MICHAEL
5. WILLIAM
6. DAVID
7. RICHARD
8. CHARLES
9. JOSEPH
10. THOMAS
11. CHRISTOPHER
12. DANIEL
13. PAUL
14. MARK
15. DONALD
16. GEORGE
17. KENNETH
18. STEVEN
19. EDWARD
20. BRIAN

Compare these names to the top 20 male names today, and you can see how a persons first name may help place his birthdate.  Scroll down on that page and you can see the popular names by region and decade which may give birth clues to some names in your family tree.

You can go to the US 1990 census database at httpp://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/dist.male.first to search for the popularity of your own name.

Google Currency Conversion

In my genealogy research, I inevitably am writing to someone in Europe where the language, currency, and time zone are all different.

I can get help translating with the Google Translation Dictionary and Google Search Translation and get help with Google time zone conversions. Now, Google's searchbox can be used as a currency converter.

Google Currency Convertor

The format is:

pounds in dollars

where Google gives the following results:

1 British pound = 1.9486 U.S. dollars

So, if I am told a book I want to buy costs 50 euros, I can enter into the Google searchbox

50 euros in dollars

and Google answers

50 Euros = 72.49 U.S. dollars

Even if you don't know the name of the currency in a country, you can still use the Google Currency Convertor.

The format is:

currency of romania in usd

or

currency of romania in US dollars

The answer from Google

1 Romanian lei = 0.389681 U.S. dollars

Another way to ask the same thing:

romanian money in us money

For the Google currency calculator, the words money and currency are interchangeable.

Google helps make conversions a little simpler in my pursuit of family history. Other Google Conversion Helps :

• Google Search Translator
• Google Translation Dictionary
• Google's time zone converter.
  
  

Ancestry Magazine - Digital Copy free to Ancestry.com Subscribers

Did you know that Ancestry.com subscribers receive a copy of the Ancestry Digital Magazine for FREE? I didn't know that, and I have a subscription to Ancestry.

Now that I know I should be receiving the magazine, I will be on the lookout for my copy in my e-mail.

Here is the notice on Recent Website Additions at Ancestry way down at the bottom of the page.

FREE Ancestry Digital Magazine

As an Ancestry.com member with an annual subscription, you now also receive a FREE subscription to the digital version of Ancestry Magazine. You get the ideas, inspiration, and insight from our print magazine in an easy-to-use desktop format—delivered 6 times each year to your inbox for as long as you remain a paid subscriber.

Database Links at Ancestry.com

I can never find these links on the Ancestry site when I am looking for them, so I'm posting them here for easy reference:

New and updated databases
A detailed List of all new and updated databases listed by date added.

New Featured Collections
What's New and Coming Soon Featured Collections of Large Databases.

Ancestry.com Searchable Card Catalog
Search the Card Catalog by database name, keyword, year range, or record type to find Ancestry.com databases.

Complete List of All Ancestry Databases
Complete alphabetical list of all Ancestry.com's 26,000 databases.

Free Ancestry Databases
List of Ancestry.com FREE databases.

I find it helpful to check the new databases frequently to make sure I don't miss anything that is relevant to my genealogy search. I recently found Ancestry.com had posted the indexed
1895 New Jersey census without any fanfare - something I had been waiting for anxiously.

Search the Books in your Home Library Using Google

With the My Library feature in the Google Book Search , you can create an online customized personal library of the genealogy books you own and then quickly search the pages of your home library collection using Google.

To set this up, use the Google Book Search to find the books you own, then click the Add to my library link. Or import your books by typing in a list of ISBN numbers to save them all at once.

Now you can easily search your own home library using Google and not miss any references in your books. This is so much easier and so much more thorough than taking every book you own off the shelf and checking the index (and hoping what you are looking for has been indexed).

You can organize your My Library collection by adding your own labels, ratings, and book reviews.

If you have a genealogy research buddy, you can easily share your library by passing along your My Library URL.

I started doing creating my own MyLibrary and found that some of my books have not yet been scanned by Google, so I cannot search all my books yet, but I was surprised at how many obscure books I was able to find in the Google book search.

The Ancestry Store Sale

I was pleasantly surprised when I visited the The Ancestry Store this morning to find that many of the items are on sale including Family Tree Maker 2008.

The Ancestry Store says that for a limited time you can get 15% off a lot of the products in the store. This includes reference books, history books, cookbooks, software, maps and photo reproductions, scrapbook supplies and more. It appears all the sale items are marked with the sales price in red, but the Ancestry site says to enter the coupon code "Winter" at checkout to receive the discount.

Ancestry doesn't say when the sale ends, but it looks like a great opportunity to pick up some items on your wish list. Check it out.

The Ancestry Store

Looking for more coupon codes, sales, discounts or other deals at Ancestry.com? Go to Ancestry Sales, Discounts, and Coupons

Google Time Zone Query

If you ever have to make a phone call to someone in a different time zone, you can query Google to find out the time in that time zone before you make the call. This doesn't work for small towns, so you may have to ask about the nearest large town.

The format is:

time Salt Lake City Utah

Simply enter the word time followed by the city name and state name into the Google search box. Google gives this answer:

10:28 AM Wednesday (MST) - Time in Salt Lake City, Utah

This works for large cities worldwide.

time Nancy France

6:29 PM Wednesday (CET) - Time in Nancy, France

Very handy for those like me who are time-zone-challenged and never know whether to add or subtract hours to my local time.

"Our Name in History" Series of Books now at Amazon

Our Name in History


The Ancestry.com "Our Name in History" series of books is now available at Amazon.com through BookSurge, the Print on Demand Service. These books give the history behind a family name in a custom-printed book.

The Our Name in History series is customized by surname and created using historical records dating from the 1600s to provide a blend of interesting facts, statistics and commentary about a surname. There is a unique book in the series for each of the most common 279,000 last names in America.

If you are looking for a unique Christmas present, this series serves as an excellent entry level tool to help the beginner and non-genealogist get excited about family history. The end of the book also has a section on “How to gather and organize information about your family”.

The book follows a family name through history to get an idea of where people sharing the surname settled and where they may reside today in the United States, Canada, England and other countries.

The book differs from other “surname” books in the past in that the “Our Name in History” book is actually full of interesting FACTS about the last name. Ancestry takes the records from the Ancestry website and other sources and pull these facts out and summarizes them in a custom book. The facts that are included in these books ranging from name distribution to life expectancy to Civil War service to immigration.

The “Our Name in History” books by Ancestry include information about a surname, not a particular individual or family. I got one of the books last year when they were available from the Ancestry.com website. My husband, who is not a genealogist, found the book of his surname fascinating and read the book cover to cover.

To find your surname, click on Our Name in History and add your surname to the Amazon search box. Free shipping.

The press release yesterday says:

The Our Name in History series leverages Ancestry.com's unmatched historical data to chronologically trace a particular last name and tell its story through interesting facts placed in a historical context," said David Symonds, general manager, BookSurge. "These unique books offer hard-to-find historical information on hundreds of thousands of common U.S. surnames and make a great holiday gift for friends and family."

"This collection sets a new standard for customized books available on-demand," said Scott Sorenson, Senior Director Commerce of Ancestry.com. "

With BookSurge's Print on Demand technology, it's now economically possible for us to make this breadth of selection available to millions of Amazon customers. We are excited about this collaboration that allows more people access to these timeless, priceless books." The 279,000 last names represented in the Our Name in History series account for nearly 90 percent of all U.S. households, according to the 2002 U.S. White Pages.

To create these books, Ancestry.com studied more than five billion names from U.S. Census data, as well as immigration, birth, marriage, death, military and other historical records to detail origin, definition, popularity and other facts unique to each name"