The Genealogy Guys Podcast #279 - 2014 December 20

There are date-sensitive announcements in this podcast episode. The Genealogy GuysSM announce additional keynote speakers for RootsTech 2015. The Guys are RootsTech 2015 Ambassadors. You can win a free all-access pass to RootsTech 2015 from The Genealogy Guys Podcast! Simply submit your best technology tip for genealogy to The Guys. Send your tip to us at [email protected]. Entries must be received by midnight Eastern Time on 31 December 2014. Include your name, address, email address, and telephone number. The news includes: MyHeritage has launched a new facility called Instant DiscoveriesTM that provides first-time users information about their ancestors and relatives while signing up for MyHeritage. Watch the video at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQYCO1hFskU) to learn more. MyHeritage continues its challenge to preserve and digitize cemeteries worldwide. It recently spent a day at Israel's largest cemetery, Holon, with a small army of volunteers, and photographed 150,000 gravestones. Family Tree DNA has a sale on their DNA tests through 31 December 2014, including the Family Finder (autosomal), Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA tests. The National Library of Ireland is digitizing more than 400,000 images of Catholic parish record microfilms and publishing them online for free. The images will be online by the summer of 2015. The National Library of Australia now has the largest freely available collection of digitized newspapers in the world, with the 15-millionth page going online in December at its award-winning website, Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au). The Virtual Institute of Genealogical Research offers a new interactive option for courses. Learn more at http://vigrgenealogy.com. Findmypast has announced the release of millions of new records for the United States, England, Wales, Ireland, and Australia. Findmypast has announced the inaugural Findmypast Tree Competition and will award prizes across multiple categories. They announced their Start Your Family Tree Week from 26 December 2014 to 1 January 2015. Calico Pie has released Version 6 of their Family Historian software, which includes the MyHeritage Smart Match data matching. Unlock the Past Cruises has announced its 2015-2016 program of seven history and genealogy cruises at their website (http://www.unlockthepastcruises.com). The Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a collaborative project between the Joseph Smith Papers project and FamilySearch.org. A new website has been created at https://familysearch.org/joseph-smith-papers#/ to make this facility available. Drew shares information about new record collections and images released by FamilySearch. RootsMagic has released two new videos at their YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/RootsMagicTV: What's New in RootsMagic & Using RootsMagic Publisher to Create a BookMobile app news: Mobile app news: ·      A new Android version of the Find A Grave app has been released and is available for free in the Google Play store. ·      Beverly asked for information about downloading the podcast onto her Samsung S mobile phone or Nexus 10 tablet. Drew found five Android apps for podcasts at http://www.androidcentral.com/top-5-best-podcast-apps-android/. Book news includes: Janet Hovorka and Amy Slade have released two new Zap the Grandma Gap activity books for young people. These include My Jewish Ancestor and My British Ancestor. These join My Swedish Ancestor, My German Ancestor, My Civil War Ancestor, My Mormon Ancestor, My Pioneer Ancestor, and other titles. They can be ordered at https://zapthegrandmagap.com and at Amazon.com. Jim in Iowa suggested additional genealogy mystery books by Steve Robinson, an English writer whose main character is Jefferson Tayte. Four books have been published: In the Blood, The Lost Empress, The Last Queen of England, and To the Grave. Listener email includes: Matt Miller updates us with news that there is now a Facebook page for the Fort Madison Prison Memory Project at https://www.facebook.com/fortmadisonprisonmemoryproject. The Guys discuss genealogical research resources for Puerto Rico. The next podcast will be a themed discussion: “Copyright on Photographs”. The Guys welcome your questions and suggestions on this subject (or on anything to do with copyright) at [email protected].