It’s 2009! May this year be the best so far.
I look forward to helping you achieve your genealogical goals.
—-Ben
Other Software
Happy Holidays Everyone!
At this special time of year the focus is on family even more than usual. I count you all as members of my great family. Bless you all in the coming year!
Happy Holidays Everyone!
I haven’t made any snow people this season, so last year’s will have to do.
At this special time of year the focus is on family even more than usual. I count you all as members of my great family. Bless you all in the coming year!
Is that Your Family Bible on eBay?
The online auction site eBay can be a great tool for locating and obtaining genealogical items. For instance, there are regularly family bibles for sale. Imagine a family bible belonging to one of your relatives being sold without you knowing of its availability! Don’t let that happen to you. Watch this video, Finding Genealogy Items on eBay, in which I take you step-by-step through these common genealogy item searches on eBay:
- Family Names
- Place Names (including city directories)
- Companies
- Book Titles
Finally, here is a tip I didn’t mention in the video: Only use the word “and” in a search if the search phrase actually includes it (the same goes for the word “or”). eBay’s search isn’t as feature rich as most of the online search tools we are accustomed to as genealogists. It doesn’t have the ability to do and/or queries.
In the next screencast in this series I’ll show you how to automate these searches so you don’t have to run them yourself. If you like this video topic, you’ll be interested to know that the bonus screencast available exclusively in the MacGenealogist Archives, demonstrates a little known way to win eBay auctions at lower prices.
How to Download Your Family Tree from Ancestry.com to Your Macintosh
Ancestry.com is a great service. They make searching for and accessing records about our relatives very simple. They also have a very nice online family tree management system, but even if you maintain one or more family trees on Ancestry.com, you’ll probably want to get that data onto your Mac. If you don’t have an Ancestry subscription, click here to try Ancestry.com FREE with a 14-Day Free Trial.
The good news is that the service supports exporting in a standard format called GEDCOM. The bad news is that while they’ve made it relatively simple to do, the functionality is sort of buried in the site. In this video, How to Download Your Ancestry.com Family Tree for Use in Your Mac Genealogy Software, I show you where it is and how to use it to get the genealogy information you’ve captured in Ancestry.com onto your Mac.