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Copyright© 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. All rights reserved.

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In the course of a week, I get to see a lot of genealogy data. Some of what I see is abysmal. Many otherwise highly-skilled genealogists do not seem to know that their keyboards have a SHIFT key! Instead, they simply turn on CAPS LOCK and then ignore upper and lower case after that.

Of course, the use of UPPER CASE text has a long history in the computer business. The mainframes of the 1960s and 70s only used upper case text. Data typically was entered on 80-column punch cards. The IBM 026 keypunch machine, the most popular keypunch machine ever built, indeed did not have a shift key and was incapable of entering lower case text.

By the late 1970s, all of this had changed, and data was being entered from computer terminals in normal upper and lower case. However, not everyone got the word. It seems that a number of people do not realize that the keyboards of the twenty-first century have improved since those "stone age" computers of 30 or 40 years ago.

Here are two short examples produced by a popular genealogy program. Which one do you find easier to read?

Example 1:

Example 2:

I certainly prefer to read the second example. The first one is much more difficult to read – so difficult that I may miss important information.

If you are entering genealogy data, please take pity on the future readers of your text. Please use upper and lower case characters, the same as you learned in grade school. Your fourth-grade teacher probably would have flunked you if you used all upper case in her class. Guess what? I'll also give you a grade of "F" if I see your genealogy data in all upper case!

Yes, there is a shift key on your computer. In fact, you can probably find two of them. Please use them only when appropriate.

In a future newsletter article, I may write about spelling, punctuation, and grammar. In the meantime, I can suggest some good reading for you:

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I have written several times about genealogy videotapes produced by 123Genealogy. These videotapes have covered such topics as how to use and get the most out of a specific genealogy program, how to conduct tombstone research, and how to organize your records. This week I was pleasantly surprised to find that the newest release covers a topic that I want to learn about: Preserving Your Family History with Multimedia.

This video focuses on how to convert old photographs, 8-millimeter movies, and other family records to computer formats, including Web sites and CD-ROM disks. It also shows how to convert live or recorded audio to computer sound files. By converting information to modern multimedia formats, you can easily share your family heirlooms with other relatives. For example, not everyone can visit the location where you store the family Bible. However, you can take close-up photographs of the record pages in that Bible, copy them to CD-ROM with accompanying text and audio explanations, and then inexpensively make copies to give to others.

In the past, 123Genealogy has usually featured well-known genealogy experts to make the on-screen presentations. For instance, the video on using The Master Genealogist featured Bob Velke, the CEO of the producing company. However, in this case, 123Genealogy already had a number of "in house" experts who produce multimedia presentations almost every day. After all, the company specializes in video production. That includes a lot of experience in audio, video, and the conversion of documents to modern formats. The experts featured on this videotape are employees of 123Genealogy, not well-known genealogy writers or programmers. However, they all have hundreds and even thousands of hours of "hands on" experience with the topics they discuss.

Steve Lemmon, the CEO of 123Genealogy (and an expert genealogist) serves as the host of this video. He introduces each topic. In some topics he makes the presentation himself; for other topics he brings in a resident expert to talk about the details. The topics covered include the following:

The entire videotape focuses on typical genealogy uses of this technology. However, everything shown on this tape applies equally well to any multimedia use. You can record your bowling league’s annual dinner, your grandchild’s dance recital, or almost anything else that you wish to preserve, all by using the techniques shown in this videotape. These graphic, sound, and video files can be inserted into PowerPoint, word processors, or hundreds of other Windows programs. Steve Lemmon and his on-screen experts obviously know these topics intimately. They also do a great job of showing how you can do the same.

I learned a lot from this 88-minute videotape, and I certainly enjoyed it. I suspect that you will, too.

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The Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics is doubling its fees on April 1, 2003. Individuals performing their own research at the Registry will now be subject to a fee of $6 per hour, double that of the previous fee of $3 an hour. The cost of a birth, marriage, or death certificate ordered in person has also doubled: $12 per certificate instead of $6. The cost of a birth, marriage, or death certificate ordered by mail will now be $22 per certificate -- again, a doubling of fees.

The Registry's records include birth, marriage, and death records that occurred in Massachusetts from 1911 to the present day. Records for events that occurred from 1841–1910 are available at the Massachusetts State Archives, which has a separate fee structure.

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The following is from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

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I see frequent articles bemoaning the fact that genealogy information on the Web sometimes includes the maiden name of a living person’s mother. These articles are usually accompanied by great hue and cry that this is a security risk because this piece of information is often used for security reasons. These same articles often suggest that ancestral information should not be placed on the Web because of "security issues." That's dumb! From where I sit, this is a perfect example of backwards thinking!

Any institution that uses the mother's maiden name "for security purposes" is really behind the times and needs to quickly hire a security expert. Even novice security managers would immediately change that policy. In the United States and many other countries, mothers’ maiden names and other personal information have always been available from numerous public sources. This information has always been in the public domain. The invention of the Internet did not really change anything. A mother’s maiden name could easily be discovered fifty years ago, and the same is still true today. Any corporation that uses a mother’s maiden name for security purposes obviously doesn’t know much about security.

I usually refuse to do business with companies that insist upon using my mother’s maiden name as a security identifier. I don’t want to do business with any company with a lame security policy. I advise you to do the same: boycott companies that have inadequate security policies.

However, if you really want to do business with a company that has a policy of using your mother’s maiden name for security purposes, please remember that you can always create a fictitious name on the spot. I did open a bank account some years ago and the bank clerk smiled when she asked for my mother's maiden name "for security purposes." She did blink a couple of times when I replied, "Fudpucker," but she wrote that name in the blank on the application form and didn't say anything. Nobody will ever find that name on a genealogy Web site of mine!

There is no legal requirement to supply the correct maiden name, and the bank or other corporation really doesn’t care what name you give them. All they want is something to enter in the blank space on their form – a name that you can remember when they ask. I use "Fudpucker" because it is a name I can remember and also because I find it amusing. However, you can use any name you wish. My recommendation is that you never, ever supply your mother's correct maiden name. By using a fictitious name, your security will not be compromised by a Web site or by a criminal’s surreptitious visit to the state Vital Records Department.

If an elected official or other bureaucrat ever tries to limit access to vital records, please feel free to send them a copy of this article. Tell them it’s time to wake up and look at the real issues, and to stop trying to protect a maiden name policy that is ludicrous to begin with. Then vote against the politician in the next election. You don’t want a backwards mentality like that in public office!

A smarter politician would sponsor a bill to make it illegal for a financial institution to use a mother’s maiden name or any other piece of public domain information for security purposes. But, then again, when did you ever see a smarter politician?

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Sometimes we do hear good news. It is still a bit tentative, but Governor Jeb Bush's plan to transfer the State Library's circulating collection of 350,000 books and periodicals from the R.A. Gray Building in Tallahassee to Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale may have hit an obstacle: the Florida State Senate's proposed budget doesn't provide any money to fund the plan.

Governor Bush's new budget proposal announced in February included the dismantling of the State library. The Governor proposed to pay $5 million to privately-owned Nova University through the next four years to move and maintain the collection and provide for an extension beyond 2007. Such a move, Bush claimed, would save the state $10.2 million during the next four years.

Many groups, including genealogy societies, quickly pointed out that the figures were suspect. Serious legal questions also arise when the governor proposes moving state-owned property to a private corporation. Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood have described the circulating collection as being similar to any library's collection of books. After all, they have said, this is not the Florida Collection of priceless historical documents, which are to remain in Tallahassee. Nevertheless, it is still a state resource which should not be dismantled; say many other politicians and private citizens.

To be sure, the bill in the Senate is not a final decision. The Senate proposal does not include the funds but the House's proposal earmarks $2 million for the transfer, still far less than what Governor Bush asked for. All of these are proposals and could change before the legislation gets passed. Stay tuned…

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Speaking last week at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in Boston, Massachusetts, Caroline Kovac, the general manager of IBM Corp.'s life sciences group, predicted that the marriage of life sciences, computers, and genealogy databases will save lives and increase the lifespan of many. The profound changes in medical care won't initially happen in doctor's offices, but at research facilities and large pharmaceutical companies, with collaborative projects that lead to massive databases of information about patients, she said. Those stores of data will be tapped into by those involved in health care, including pharmaceutical companies that will develop better, safer clinical drug trials.

Sequencing the human genome marked "the race to the starting line." This event signaled the start of major new projects related to creating databases of information that track genealogies, for example, and can be used to figure out who is likely to come down with certain diseases. Kovac pointed to the work of Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics Inc. to collect data on people in Iceland as a way to determine genetic causes of common diseases. Similar work is being done in Estonia, Kovac said.

"This whole issue of genealogy and population data is going to be very important," she said.

Apparently Ms. Kovac was not referring to the present online genealogy databases that are available today on the World Wide Web. Instead, she forecasts that specialized medical history databases, including genealogy and genetics information, will be created in the near future. These databases should be able to show inherited medical conditions and be able to predict probable medical problems before they are detectable. Access to these databases obviously will be tightly controlled.

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- Polk County (Missouri) Genealogical Society Receives Grant

The Polk County commissioners have awarded a hefty contract to the local genealogy society: $32,044.44. The grant comes from the Delarue Trust Fund, a bequest that county commissioners administer for the benefit of Polk County residents.

Susan Sparks, president of the Polk County Genealogical Society, explained how the group won the grant, stating, "I think the county realizes there's a need for what we do. As people get older, they start to worry about where the pictures are going to go, where the history they've created and amassed is going to go."

The money will be used to renovate the upstairs portion of the PCGS building on the square in Bolivar, Missouri. Built in 1914 as an Andrew Carnegie Foundation library on the square in Bolivar, the building originally cost $8,000, Spark said. PCGS bought the structure in October 2001 and has done considerable renovation on the ground floor. "We are going to make the building ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act)-compliant, which means we are going to install a lift, not an elevator, that will take a person in a wheelchair to the top floor, or transport a box of books. We also are going to redo all the wiring upstairs, repair plaster, redo floors, and more."

The Polk County Genealogical Society is open to the public 3 - 7 p.m. Mondays and 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The society can be contacted at PCGS, P.O. Box 632, Bolivar, MO 65613-0632.

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Are you fed up with the junk e-mails you receive? I receive more than 100 "spam mail" messages every day, but a bill before the California legislature may change all that. The legislators propose to make it illegal to sell lists of e-mail addresses to spammers and would impose penalties on those who send unsolicited commercial e-mails to anyone in California. The proposed legislation also specifies a $500 fine. Best of all, this is a $500 fine per e-mail message!

The interesting twist is that it is not easy to differentiate California residents from anyone else in the online world. If this bill passes, and if California can really enforce it, the result should provide relief for all of us.

Imagine being able to sue the people who send you spam -- at the rate of $500 per unwanted e-mail.

Sadly, the bill is opposed by America Online, a financially troubled company that derives much of its revenue from the advertising it sends to its own customers on behalf of third parties. Microsoft also is on record as opposing the legislation. Both companies reportedly are spending a lot of money lobbying the legislators in an effort to defeat or moderate this piece of legislation.

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Anyone who writes and distributes electronic newsletters to large numbers of people is painfully aware of all the problems created by e-mail filters. These filters are pieces of software installed in mail servers or in desktop computers that search for unwanted junk mail messages and then either delete the messages or else "quarantine" them into separate folders. The problem is that these mail filters often have "false positive" hits. That is, they frequently will analyze a legitimate e-mail message and mistakenly label it as unwanted junk. That happens a lot to this and to other newsletters; desirable messages frequently are labeled as "junk mail" and are deleted.

AOL, CompuServe 2000, Netscape.net, and a few other mail services are notorious at deleting newsletters. They delete thousands of mail messages and never notify either the sender or the recipient. Sadly, these same services are also not very accurate; they often delete wanted mail messages and frequently do not delete the unwanted stuff. Thousands of copies of this newsletter get deleted. I understand that other e-mail newsletter publishers are wrestling with the same problems. E-mail messages from your friends and relatives also may trigger "false positives" and may be deleted without your knowledge.

I refuse to use any e-mail service that automatically deletes messages for me as none of these filters are 100% reliable. Instead, I want all mail delivered to me, both the wanted stuff and the junk. However, I encourage everyone to use a mail filter of some sort to automatically move suspicious messages to a "bulk mail" folder. That way, you are not bothered by the junk, but you still can go looking in the bulk mail folder at any time to see if something was placed there erroneously. All the better online services and e-mail programs offer some sort of mail filter software that will "pre-sort" the messages for you and will store the suspicious ones in a "bulk mail" folder. Sadly, AOL, CompuServe 2000, and Netscape.net do not give you that option.

I constantly look for new and hopefully better e-mail programs than those offered by the big e-mail providers. I have been recommending Yahoo's Web-based e-mail service as it is free of charge and does a much better job of filtering out unwanted junk mail than does AOL, CompuServe 2000, or Netscape.net. However, Yahoo likes to put a lot of its own advertisements on your screen, which I find to be somewhat objectionable. This week I believe that I found an even better Web-based e-mail service, thanks to newsletter reader Dave Welsh's suggestion.

MyWay.com is best known as a new Internet portal. It is similar to Yahoo, Lycos, and a bunch of others, but with one major difference: MyWay.com does not display pop-ups, banners, or any other non-text advertising. You have to see it and compare it to other services to really appreciate the difference. Because MyWay.com is not cluttered with all that graphics junk, it operates much faster than Yahoo or any of the others that are cluttered with ads. There is more information per page, simply because there isn't as much space devoted to advertising. To be sure, MyWay.com will have occasional text ads; however, the Web site promises that these ads will never be intrusive.

MyWay.com also uses the Google search engine, so you have a very powerful search capability built into the portal's main page. If Google is not your search engine of choice, you can also tell MyWay to use AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, AllTheWeb, or LookSmart.

MyWay.com offers a free e-mail service that rocks. It works faster than any of the other services I have just mentioned. Reading e-mail on MyWay.com is a pleasure; the pages are not cluttered with graphic advertisements. Best of all, MyWay's mail service does not delete suspected junk mail messages. Instead, it places suspicious messages into a Bulk Mail folder in much the same manner as Yahoo and Hotmail. If this newsletter or any other e-mail message does get routed to the bulk mail folder, you can always look in that folder and retrieve the message later.

MyWay's e-mail menus look very similar to those of Yahoo. I suspect that both services run the same e-mail software on their servers. However, Yahoo has a lot more ads displayed on the screen.

MyWay will allow you to set up your own e-mail filters to operate as you wish. You can specify which domains to be blocked or to be passed through. For instance, to make sure that you always receive these newsletters, you can add rootsforum.com to your "Safe List." The same can be done for other newsletters you wish to receive as well as for messages from friends and relatives. Should you change your mind in the future, you have full control over routing those messages. You can decide what goes to the in-box versus what goes to the Bulk Mail folder. This system makes much more sense than the limited pre-defined "all or nothing" approaches used by AOL and some others.

The thing that fascinates me is that Microsoft is spending $300 million to promote MSN over the next several months. AOL Time Warner is spending a similar amount to advertise their newest release. Yet neither of them provides an e-mail service that works as well as MyWay's free mail service. Conversely, MyWay's lack of paid advertising on its pages means that the company does not have a big budget to produce flashy television ads. You will probably never hear about MyWay except from recommendations by satisfied users.

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The PR Budget for this newsletter is $0.00. I rely upon "word of mouse" advertising in which you recommend this newsletter to your friends. This newsletter is a private project of mine, and I have a zero budget for a publicity campaign to get more readers.

Thanks.

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