James Tanner's Blog – November 2010 Archive (10)

Genealogists' stock in trade are names, dates and places. I have been

thinking about names. My name "James" happens to be the number one most common name in the U.S. (according to some sources). John, Robert, Michael and William round out the top five. The top five for women are Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara and Elizabeth in that order. Now, we aren't talking here about popular… Continue

René Descartes in his influential book Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, [Descartes, René. Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason and seeking truth in the sciences.

[S.l.]: Project Gutenberg Association, 1993], in part, addresses some

of the fundamental ways of applying an early formulation of the

scientific method. Those who attempt to do genealogical research could

well implement… Continue

René Descartes in his influential book Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, [Descartes, René. Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason and seeking truth in the sciences.

[S.l.]: Project Gutenberg Association, 1993], in part, addresses some

of the fundamental ways of applying an early formulation of the

scientific method. Those who attempt to do genealogical research could

well implement… Continue

Continue

The Wiki.FamilySearch.org website has been incorporated as part of the newer Beta.FamilySearch.org

website. Presently, the Research Wiki, as it is commonly referred to,

is growing at the rate of over 400 pages a day. It is my opinion that

this website is quickly becoming the first place to go to for starting

any research project. I am continually pleasantly surprised at the

amount of… Continue

It is certainly interesting to watch the changes as the Beta.FamilySearch.org website continues to grow and improve. Thanks to Sue Maxwell at Granite Genealogy

for quickly noticing the newest changes. It looks like many of the

improvements to the Search capability and Library Catalog that were

discussed at the Bloggers' Day in Salt Lake, have now been added. The… Continue

Thanks for asking! One commentator took pity on my plight of unending

scanning and questioned me about where I put all the stuff and keep it

organized. Very interesting questions. Very difficult answers.



Have you ever looked at ads for computers? Have you ever noticed that

there are no cables in any of the pictures? Try it now. Go to Best Buy

or Amazon and look for some kind of computer. Any kind will do. If you

can't think of one, try a Dell 3.0 Ghz GX. Do… Continue

Several bloggers put up posts about a new website called Build a Better GEDCOM Wiki. The current goals of the site include the following:

Based upon information provided on this page and others, we will attempt to build a set of goals here for the current project of replacing/updating GEDCOM. This new standard will be referred to as BG

(Better GEDCOM) in this discussion.

1. BG should remain a file format…

Continue

In a FamilySearch Wiki article from a presentation at the NGS 2010 Conference entitled "Blazing Digital Trails at FamilySearch"

Bill Mangum, of Product Management explains the process of record

acquisition used by FamilySearch to augment its already huge collection

of documents. In addition to giving some interesting insights into the

FamilySearch record acquisition process, the process… Continue

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is probably the most influential lineage

linked database program in the world. To quote BradJackman on LDSTech back in 2008,

" However, I think most genealogists will agree that PAF still holds a

major position in the field, and it's ease of use, simple GUI, and huge

user base make it a force to be reckoned with, not some little

freeware experiment to be swept under the rug."… Continue