Friday Update

Busy week. My brother-in-law is getting married tomorrow. It's been one of the busiest Genealogy years in a while for me this year. Births, deaths, and marriages on several sides of my family. I'm hoping, after this weekend, it will calm down a little. I have a feeling I'll have a big end-of-year summary about the changes in my tree this year as well as the finds...

Because it's been a crazy week, I decided to take it easy today, and had a friend down to watch some Buffy and just visit.

I did my usual scroll through my Google reader, though. I found a few interesting things:
A: Family Tree Maker 2011 came out this week. A lot of geneabloggers have been talking about it this week.

I've used Family Tree Maker for most of the time I've worked on my family tree--probably about 8 years now. But when Ancestry bought out the company, and it became more and more an offline version of their site, I became less and less pleased with it. I don't mind Genealogy programs that have connections to sites online, but to make whole sections of a program dependent on having a paid subscription to a site seems very greedy to me. But then, many things about the way Ancestry does their business bothers me.

So I've been looking for replacement. At the moment, I'm playing with Legacy 7.4. It's very equivalent to FTM, and has some things that work far better, though I'm not as pleased with their reports system. I also installed Roots Magic on a friend's computer, and that, too, has some nice options. I think, though, if I could afford it, I'd probably get The Master Genealogist. Mostly now, I just need to decide, I think. But those three seem to be the top contenders.

The main problem with choosing is that there aren't many people out there who have tried more than a handful of programs for a more than a moment or two, as Genealogy's Star mentions in a blog post.

So I'll keep playing with Legacy, and unless I find something in it that truly annoys me, I'll probably buy myself the latest copy. Unless I find I have enough money to afford the Master Genealogist, I think.

I'm still debating whether to type it in fresh to make sure I have the facts all sourced properly when I finally do choose.

B: I found an article about the dialogue between the Mormon Church and the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors about the Jewish ancestors found in the Mormon genealogical databases. I don't think this is likely to end any time soon, really. It seems uncomfortable to me that the only ancestors of Jewish faith that they're negotiating about are the ones who died in the Holocaust.

I'm glad the Mormons have this interest in genealogy, because it benefits the rest of us, but it feels wrong to baptize people in a faith they would have refused to take part in while they were alive. I don't care what their reasons are for it, it's like renaming an ancestor. Not something you should ever do, for any reason.

The problem is, those of us who have Jewish European roots need as many options as we can get. So do we let it go because we can get the information from them, and hope they follow the rules they're setting down for themselves? Or do we hope that JewishGen becomes that big and comprehensive on its own?

C: The Disney Channel will be premiering a kid-centered Genealogy program starting in November. I hope it encourages a whole new generation of genealogists.

D: The Slovak Yankee wrote an interesting article about standardizing Genealogy in the common law way.

E: Family Tree Folk made post about the Seven Daughters of Eve, or the Mitochondrial Mothers of the human race.

F: And last but not least, two articles about genealogy and the movies:
Movie vs Reality: The Real Story of the Von Trapp Family
and
Climbing up Gene Kelly's Family Tree

Some blogs I'm following as of this week:
We Tree and Apple's Tree, which I have been following on my reader for some time, and The Jones Surname, which covers the Welsh Jones roots. It's a new blog, so I'm not sure if it will help me or not, but I'm hoping so.

No moments in my family tree this week, though I think it's about time to update that soon...

And I do have a Surname post all ready for tomorrow.