Today’s parents are the first to raise children alongside social media and this generation of children is the first to grow up constantly “shared” online. Stacey Steinberg, a professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law is an expert on “sharenting” and the intersection of parents’ and children’s rights in the online world. In this episode, Steinberg shares her thoughts on how these rights can collide and roles of parents, tech companies and government in keeping children safe. She also offers parents tips on what to consider as they and their children navigate social media.

You can read an interview with Stacey Steinberg at https://news.ufl.edu/2021/12/from-florida-episode-14/.

James Vlahos lost his father to cancer in 2017, but still chats with him all the time. John tells his son stories about his childhood crush on the girl across the street and about Papa Demoskopoulos, the pet rabbit he had as a kid. He tells him about singing in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and becoming a lawyer. Sometimes he'll drop one of his signature insults: "Well, hot dribbling spit."

The elder Vlahos talks with his child via a conversational chatbot called Dadbot his son created after his father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. For months, Vlahos recorded his dying dad's life stories, then turned them into an interactive AI that speaks in his father's voice.

Dadbot "was a transformational experience for me because it gave me great solace. It gave my family great solace," says Vlahos, a former tech journalist and author of Talk To Me, a book on conversational AI. "It didn't replace my dad, but it gave us this really rich way to remember him."

Now Vlahos is bringing his Dadbot technology to HereAfter AI.

You can read more about HereAfter at: https://www.hereafter.ai/.

The records of thousands of British Indian Army soldiers from united Punjab have been made available to the public by UK-based citizen historians for the first time after around a century.

The ‘Punjab Records’, as they have been named, which so far lay neglected in an archive in the basements of Lahore Museum, have been accessed and digitised by the London-based UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA) in collaboration with the University of Greenwich to offer an insight into the contribution of Punjabi soldiers to the allied war effort, and uploaded to a website launched to mark Remembrance Day, the day World War I ended, across the world on Nov 11.

Comprising some 26,000 pages listing more than 300,000 individual names, the registers provide village-by-village data on the war service and pensions of recruits from the undivided Punjab, as well as information on their family background, rank and regiment. Un-researched for about a century, these registers were compiled by the Punjab government in 1919 after the war had concluded.

They also offer a detailed breakdown of the recruiting practices of the British Indian Army a century ago and information about individual soldiers revealing insights into their occupational, social, political and faith backgrounds.

Details may be found at https://www.dawn.com/news/1657266.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Microsoft Office consists of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Depending upon the version of Microsoft Office you purchase, it also might include OneNote, Outlook, Microsoft Publisher, or Skype. First launched in 1988, Microsoft Office has become the de facto word processing and office management software standard of the computer industry. Softpedia reported (at http://goo.gl/bGu7Dl) that Office is used by more than a billion people worldwide. As popular as the Microsoft Office suite has become, it still is not "the best" office suite of programs for everyone. In fact, Microsoft Office has some very good competitors.

Perhaps the biggest threat to Microsoft's dominance isn't pricing, however. I find that Microsoft Office is rapidly becoming obsolete.

Microsoft Office has added many new features over the years, but its primary use hasn't changed much in its thirty-three year history. The computing world is changing rapidly, and yet Microsoft hasn't kept up.

Since its introduction in 1988, Microsoft Office has become bloated as more and more features were added by various teams of programmers. It also has become slower, despite the fact that today's computers are much, much faster than those of 33 years ago. Perhaps the biggest drawback, however, is the price. Unlike most other computer software, Microsoft Office remains as a very expensive product. The lowest-priced version, Office Home & Student, retails for $149.99 while Office Professional will set you back $439.99. You can also subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium for $69.99 per year. If you shop around, you can find discounts from those prices; but the bottom-line price will still be much higher than any of several excellent alternative programs.

I used Microsoft Office for years and even paid for upgrades every time a new version was released. I eventually discovered free and open source software that did most of the same functions as Microsoft Office. The free programs have matured over the years and are now easy to install, easier to use than the Microsoft product, and generally faster in operation. My current favorite is LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/) although Apache OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) is also an excellent choice. Both are available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Kingsoft Office is also an excellent alternative, available in two versions: a free version and a Pro version. Kingsoft Office Office-Free Office suite for Word, PDF, Excel, is an all-in-one office suite combines Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms, Cloud Storage, Template Library and Sharing. Details may be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/wps-office-suite-pdf-word-spreadsheet-slide-view-edit/9nsgm705mqwc?activetab=pivot:overviewtab.

That being said, I am now using these Windows and Macintosh Office alternatives less and less.

A few million people, myself included, have found that tablet computers provide much of the functionality of desktop and laptop computers, but they are far more convenient to use. These are excellent devices for reading and writing email messages, surfing the web, and reading ebooks, wherever you are.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12199471.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

The following announcement was written by GeneaNet:

NOTE: GeneaNet is a very popular genealogy website based in France with 4 million members. The database consists of data added by participants and is intended for all genealogists.

Two hundred years after the death of the emperor on Saint Helena, we are excited about a major milestone: Geneanet’s community of genealogists has indexed over 1 million of Napoléon’s soldiers!

At Geneanet, we accompany our community of genealogists by organizing and supporting indexing projects which, like all data provided by members, are free for all. We are excited about a major milestone: our dataset of Napoléon’s soldiers has just passed the 1 million mark!

Every record of a soldier lists complete information: military roll number, last name, first names, parents’ names, date and place of birth including the French département, the military unit dates, and a link to the original image scanned and hosted by France’s Ministère des Armées. Each record also has the username of the volunteer transcriber and the index ID rank number in the Geneanet database. This precious information – names, parents’ names, birthplace, and dates – is a goldmine for genealogists. And with the original scan 1 click away, further information is available in the register image, such as the enrollment and discharge dates and the list of campaigns which can be matched with historical sources covering the unit in question.

From 1802 to 1815, Napoléon recuited approximately 2 million soldiers for his Grand Armée which crisscrossed Europe and participated in a number of legendary battles: Austerlitz (1805), Jena-Auerstedt (1806), Friedland (1807), Somosierra (1808), Wagram (1809), Borodino (1812), and of course Waterloo (1815), to name only a few. These fighting men, volunteers and conscripts, were mostly French. But as many as 200,000 of them came from other European countries: Belgium, Italy, today’s Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and elsewhere. Following the Revolution, the “registre matricule” or military roll register was kept by every army unit with a copy for the Minister of War. Every soldier was assigned a number (unique only to that military unit, so different from today’s unique service numbers) and the register is a treasure trove of information: birth date and place, parents’ names, physical description, date enrolled, list of campaigns, injuries, decorations, and date and cause of departure – and injury or death. The registers were used for years afterward for pensions or as proof of military service.

Each record is rich in information

If you have French ancestry, it is quite possible you will find an ancestor in this dataset. François Ollivier was one of Napoléon’s young recruits who battled to save France in 1814. What, he was a deserter? This register tells the story: every recruit not in hospital deserted that spring. Why? Well, by the first week of April, Prussian and Russian troops were in Paris, and Napoléon had abdicated and fled to Elba Island. François remained in service until May 29th, and no doubt wished to return home as the war was over…

The military roll register shows that this soldier was conscripted in 1812 and participated in the 1814 campaign. Like the other soldiers of his unit, following the defeat and exile of Napoléon, François Ollivier left and no doubt went home. Be sure to check the first page of any series where you find an ancestor; there may be information about the unit’s history!

France’s Ministère des Armées scanned these images from 1,191 registers – representing about 38% of all of Napoléon’s soldiers – and published them online in late 2013. [The inventory, in French, of the original documents can be found here.] However, finding a soldier’s record within the images was nearly impossible if you didn’t already know the unit and timeframe. A Geneanet member passionate about history, Claude Valleron, began indexing the registers in 2014 and was soon joined by other volunteers; since 2016, the project coordinator is member Alain Brugeat who works tirelessly to check and correct data. For example, the image above shows a birthplace difficult to decipher. French indexers are able to correctly identify many such place names. The Ministère des Armées published a second series of registers in 2019; eventually, all surviving registers will be online – and Geneanet members will continue to index them. Parlez-vous Français ? Help us grow this dataset here!

Anecdote of the battle of Jena-Auerstedt, shown in Horace Vernet’s painting (detail) hanging in Versailles: Napoléon was galloping in review past his reserves standing at attention during the battle, while noting his flanks were threatened by cavalry. The impatient troops cried “Long Live the Emperor!’ but also: “En avant !” – “Forward!”. “Why, that could only be a beardless young man, who could be so sure of what I must do; he should wait until he has commanded thirty battalions in a pitched battle before presuming he can advise me.”

There are many other indexing projects at Geneanet honoring soldiers in France and elsewhere in Europe. In particular, there are hundreds of thousands of photos of gravestones of Allied soldiers who fell in France during the First World War and were buried there. Over 600 Allied military cemeteries have been completely photographed and indexed, and a thousand other cemeteries with military plots have been indexed too.

Geneanet volunteers regularly contribute photos of archival documents, monuments and cemeteries, as well as historical postcard images. Volunteers also index the names and places in uploaded documents, which makes pertinent search results possible. The Geneanet website provides members with an easy-to-use interface for uploading and indexing documents. If you are passionate about genealogy and have time to spare, please consider contributing unpublished archives or helping index archives uploaded by others. Visit our forums if you have any questions, the community is there for you!

You can search the Napoléon military rolls (in French) at: https://en.geneanet.org/fonds/search-event/76/napoleon-s-soldiers. 

Boxing Day is almost unknown in the USA although it remains well-known and is celebrated in many other countries around the world. Boxing Day originates from the United Kingdom, but people around the world join in the celebrations as well.

Boxing Day is celebrated every year on December 26, the day after Christmas. It is traditionally a holiday dedicated to giving gifts to the poor or serving those in need. For many, it’s a day to give back and consider the needs of others. It also offers a chance to show appreciation for the service you receive from others—from your mail carrier, your garbage collector, or even your neighbor.

The tradition has been around for centuries—often as a day off for servants who worked on Christmas Day. It also coincides with the celebration of St. Stephen’s Day, which falls on the same day. Today Boxing Day is also widely known for shopping and post-Christmas sales, similar to the U.S. holiday Black Friday. It’s also a big day for sports fans, as many sports—such as football, rugby, and horse racing—feature Boxing Day events.

You can read a detailed description of Boxing Day in the FamilySearch Blog at https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/what-is-boxing-day.

If you have Acadian heritage in your family tree, you may find some of your ancestors in a book produced by Aroostook County genealogists. Those people might be difficult to find in any other records.

For those not familiar with Maine's geography, I will point out that Aroostook County is the northernmost county in the state, bordering New Brunswick and Quebec provinces. It is also (by far) the largest county in the state and the least populated. For many years, it was also disputed territory, claimed by both the United States and by Great Britain (which felt it belonged to what today is called Canada).

By the way, I used to live in Aroostook County and I later identified a number of my ancestors in a book produced by Aroostook County genealogists.

NOTE: During the War of 1812, the British occupied most of eastern Maine, including Washington County, Hancock County, and parts of Penobscot County, Maine, for eight months, intending to permanently annex the region into British North America as New Ireland. That plan obviously never succeeded. 

The disputed claims of which country governed the territory was settled by negotiations between British diplomat Baron Ashburton and United States Secretary of State Daniel Webster who quickly settled the dispute.

The Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 established the final boundary between the countries, giving most of the disputed area to Maine while a militarily vital connection between Lower Canada and the Maritime colonies was secured by Britain, as well as a project for a commercial right-of-way that would allow British commercial interests to transit through Maine on their way to and from southern New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.

Prior to the treaty that was signed in 1842, the territory was settled by both Americans and Canadians (mostly Acadians). There were few legal restrictions; most of the settlers felt they (and their governments) had a legal right to live there. Because of the disputed territorial claims, very few government agents or employees would ever set foot in the area. These agents and employees from both governments were afraid of being arrested and then incarcerated as "foreign spies."

These "government agents or employees" who would not set foot in the area included census enumerators (those who record the census records). As a result, most of the families living in the area were never listed in the U.S. census records of 1790 through 1840. (The first Canadian coast-to-coast census was not taken until 1881.)

The families that were never documented in U.S. census records were primarily French-speaking Acadians families who had earlier escaped the British Army following the British victory after the Seven Years' War fought between England and France. The British took command of what had been known as Acadia (including present-day regions of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Magdalen Islands, and Prince Edward Island).

The book “The Families of the Upper St. John Valley in 1790” contains information regarding 68 families that were not included in the United States’ first census in 1790, compiled and published in 2014 by members of the Aroostook County Genealogical Society.

The 172-plus-page softcover book documents families on both sides of the St. John River, and includes information from all of the known original Acadian families. Some land deed reproductions along with basic details — like marriages and deaths — are included. This publication is a compilation of all the known original families now contained in one volume.

From this small community, literally thousands of descendants are scattered to the four corners of North America. Each chapter includes the head of household, their spouse(s) and their respective parents, their children, and who they married. Other information that will be found is the head of household’s occupation(s), applicable crown land grant(s) and acreage received. Most of this information is not available elsewhere.

The book “The Families of the Upper St. John Valley in 1790” might be found in public libraries in the former Acadian cities and towns but probably will not be found elsewhere. However, you can purchase a copy directly from the Aroostook County Genealogical Society at https://ac-gs.org/publications-for-sale/ for ($34 + $11 shipping & handling) USD funds.

To find out if a person you are searching for is in this book, click here: 1790 Families Name Listing. 

Hampshire County Council is to make more than 500 years of historic records free to access at its libraries and record office from next year.

The council has signed an agreement with Ancestry, the largest family history site in the UK, to digitise parish registers and probate records.

The registers comprise Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials for Hampshire parishes in Winchester Diocese dating from 1536 to 1921.

You can read more at https://bit.ly/3GPskho.

The world has lost one of the leaders in Hispanic Genealogy.

Here is an excerpt from the obituary of Eugene Lewis Torres:

"Eugene was a man of many things, and he helped many who knew him. He grew up learning the ways of a ranch, was a jet airplane mechanic in the Air Force, studied at the Colorado State University and became a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. For Most of his life he had been caring for animals, but the one thing he was even more passionate about, was being a genealogist. He was a trendsetter in Hispanic Genealogy in the area of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. He helped form the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, an organization with chapters from California to Colorado."

You can read the entire obituary at: https://legcy.co/3yA9E2g.

It is amazing to think about the changes during the lifetimes of our ancestors. However, we rarely get to hear those ancestors describe the differences themselves. There is one exception: YouTube has a video of a fascinating interview with an 87-year-old farmer that was recorded on film in 1929.

The man admits to having been born and raised in the first half of the previous century (it must have been in 1842). He then compares the changes in his life since the invention of telegraph, typewriter, automobiles, electric lights, and airplanes.

My favorite quote from the interview? "You boys think you're living in just the best time of the world's history, but it's no better than [what] our father's had."

You can watch the (colorized) interview of the old-timer at: https://youtu.be/0yf_c0LYNOw.