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A study of people in 40 countries illustrates long-established changes in Europe's population. Going back a few thousand years, researchers find that everyone on Earth is related to everyone else. The Huns and the Slavs made incursions into Eastern Europe about 1,500 years ago. Migrants moved from Ireland to England in recent centuries. Populations in Italy and Spain have been comparatively stable. None of this is breaking news. But scientists were able to see it anew by examining the patterns of genes in 2,257 people now living in 40 countries on the continent. You can read more in an article... Dick Eastman

The following is an announcement from the Family History Information Standards Organisation: Date: 8th May 2013 Eneclann (www.eneclann.ie) and Family History Information Standards Organisation, Inc. (FHISO) announced today that Eneclann has finalised its plans to become a founding member of the organisation. Brian Donovan, Eneclann’s CEO, said of the partnership “Digitising, indexing and publishing family history records online is fraught with problems. Genealogy needs FHISO to help navigate a collaborative solution to shared problems, and to set meaningful standards, and we in Eneclann are delighted to be partners in this”. The company will participate with other FHISO members from the... Dick Eastman

Elissa Scalise Powell is an expert genealogist, instructor and lecturer who exhibits the highest of professional standards. She is also President of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, or BCG. The Board for Certification of Genealogists is an independent organization not affiliated with, or part of, any group. It functions as a certifying body, not a membership society. Its primary aim is to certify genealogists as meeting professional standards, somewhat similar to certifications as a CPA or other professional standards. In this audio recording, Elissa describes the goals of BCG and how it operates. She also explains in detail the... Dick Eastman

I have seen more and more live genealogy "webcasts" on Google Plus lately than ever before. These Google+ Hangouts are great ways to hold meetings and are especially useful for online seminars, classroom instruction, and more. Now Google has announced even more powerful features are being added. These are not revolutionary but are simply incremental improvements to the service. The features reportedly have been "highly-requested." Live users can now rewind during live broadcasts to review information just presented. Regardless when you start watching, you can always go back to the beginning. Playback recordings of the entire session will also be... Dick Eastman

John McColgan, Boston’s city archivist, and a team of four other city workers and archivists are preserving the hundreds of messages and other items left at Copley Square in the wake of the bombing. Thousands of notes were left by people from all over the world. Items to be preserved include notes on paper, paper chains, flowers, crosses, candles, photographs, scores of pairs of running shoes, stuffed animals, hundreds of baseball hats, and more, all left in Copley Square. The fragile keepsakes will be moved to the city archives in West Roxbury, where the items (except for the flowers) will... Dick Eastman

Rick Aschmann has created a web site quite unlike any other I have ever seen. Rick describe it this way: "Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects." The web site contains hundreds of audio and video samples of speech all over North America. In each case, Rick has captured the accent of a native (more specifically, someone who was raised in a particular location, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place). Did your ancestors speak like this? I grew homesick just listening to accents from Maine! While this is a hobby for... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by Coret Genealogie: This week the website Genealogie Online reached 20 million profiles. Genealogie Online is a Dutch service which allows genealogists to easily publish their genealogical data and images. Over 5000 genealogists use this service to publish their data. The result is multi-language website with a lot of freely searchable information about ancestors. The focus of Genealogie Online isn't solely on quantity. Bob Coret, who runs this service from his one-person business Coret Genealogie, also puts the quality of genealogical data in the spotlight. Genealogie Online automatically performs genealogical sanity checks on the data... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch: May 7, 2013 FamilySearch Adds to Collections for BillionGraves, Canada, Italy, Peru, Sweden, and the United States FamilySearch has added more than 9.4 million index records and images this week from BillionGraves, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy, Peru, Sweden, the United States, and Venezuela. Notable collection updates include the 3,368,091 index records and images from the U.S., Michigan, Death Certificates, 1921-1952, collection, the 2,187,206 images from the new U.S., New York, Southern District, U.S District Court Naturalization Records, 1824-1946, collection, and the 848,610 index records and images from the BillionGraves... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by the sponsors of the Monaghan-focused Family History initiative: Monaghan, Ireland, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 A unique Monaghan-focused Family History initiative is being organised as part of The Gathering 2013. It will provide two 4-day training courses within the county for tourists tracing their Monaghan ancestors. The project is entitled ‘County Monaghan Genealogy – home to the little hills’. It will give participants information on the genealogical sources available, the cultural history of County Monaghan and the diversity of origin of its people. The courses will take place in North Monaghan from Monday to Thursday,... Dick Eastman

In the January 25, 2013 newsletter, I described new software that keeps files in sync on two or more different computers. It operates a bit like Dropbox except that no data is ever stored on a web server belonging to someone else. All data is stored only on computers you specify, such as at your home and at your office or any other locations you specify. It also works well to make sure you have the same copies of files on both your desktop and laptop computers or on any two or more other computers. All data is encrypted before... Dick Eastman

By the time you read these words, I should be en route to Las Vegas to attend the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society (NGS). This annual conference is always one of the larger, and better, genealogy conferences of the year. Holding it this year in Las Vegas is a great idea, in my opinion. Las Vegas is well equipped to handle all sorts of conferences, large and small. Visitors to Las Vegas can always find things to do so everyone is invited to bring family members along. If I have time this week, I hope to take in... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by the Troy Irish Genealogy Society: A new data base on the Troy Irish Genealogy website - www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ identifies the 240 different newspapers that were published in Rensselaer County starting in 1787 up to the present day. To see this new data base, click on RESOURCES and then click on NEWSPAPERING IN RENSSELAER COUNTY. The newspapers prior to 1880 will be especially valuable to genealogy researchers as they predate the New York State Law on centralized reporting of death and marriage records.These early death and marriage records may be available nowhere else except possibly in... Dick Eastman

As many genealogists already know, DNA has many uses. It can help you trace your family tree and find distant and not-so-distant relatives. Even the body found under a a parking lot in Leicester, England, was not positively identified as that of Richard III until DNA from the body was compared to living descendants of one of Richard's close relatives. Different DNA markers can identify medical problems, often before other symptoms appear. In some cases, DNA helps to prolong or even save lives. In some cases, DNA can even predict the future. Scientists can now determine whether a fetus has... Dick Eastman

Many genealogy organizations are upset that our elected officials and other bureaucrats want to delete Social Security Numbers from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). Genealogists have protested that eliminating those numbers will actually help commit fraud, not prevent it. Now new proof is given in an article in the ConnectionNewspapers.com web site. One new form of fraud targets recently-deceased home owners without requiring Social Security Numbers. Con artists recently used online death records, including Ancestry.com and the D.C. property tax database, as well as in-person visits to search court records at local courthouses, to locate vulnerable properties where they... Dick Eastman

This is an update to an article published two days ago. I have added a few details, such as the menu, the price, and the URL for the order form. Tickets are now available at http://eogn-2013-las-vegas.eventbrite.com! I would like to invite you to a dinner for EOGN Newsletter readers, their guests, and other genealogists, to be held at 7:30 PM Pacific Time in Las Vegas on Saturday evening, May 11. That will be a few hours after the close of the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. NOTE: This is not an official event of the NGS and is... Dick Eastman

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Two weeks ago I described the easiest way to start a new blog (web log): sign up for a service that hosts blogs on their own servers. The process is simple. You can publish your first articles within a very few minutes after opening an account. The drawback is that people can only read your blog by going to some other company's web server. Last week I described how to install blog software on your own web server. The advantage is that the blog remains on... Dick Eastman

What may become a major genealogy site has been announced. Genealogy Karma hopes to replace an earlier web site that has been missed by thousands. Many of us used Bridgett and Doc Schneider's Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) web site. The site went offline in 2011. Sadly, Bridgett passed away a short time later. Several people have tried to create replacements for RAOGK but none of the new sites have achieved the popularity of the original. Now a commercial company has created a new web site with similar aims and has dedicated the site to the memory of Bridgett... Dick Eastman

An article by Jill Krasny, published on Mashable.com, states: "People curious about family history spent a whopping $2.3 billion on genealogy products and services last year, according to a study by market research firm Global Industry Analysts. They took most of their work to sites like Ancestry.com, which charge between $22.95 and $34.59 per month for access to billions of pertinent records. One-on-one consultations set them back $2,000 to $5,000 per session, depending on the length and complexity of the project, a spokesperson told Mashable. Despite those sites' popularity, 'it’s perfectly possible to do everything without spending a dime,' says... Dick Eastman

Here is a sign of the times: one town in New Jersey is converting to all wireless telephone service. Hurricane Sandy destroyed many of the telephone lines and hardware all around the town. The cost of purchasing new copper wire, new hardware, and the labor to install all the new equipment is in the millions of dollars. Instead, Verizon realized it would be much cheaper to provide wireless telephone service to everyone. The new Verizon Voice Link service will connect each home's wired and cordless telephones to the Verizon Wireless network. There will be no copper wires running from telephone... Dick Eastman

This is great news for Nook owners and potential Nook owners! If you own a Nook HD or HD+ tablet, you probably already know that it runs the Android operating system "under the covers." That is, Barnes & Noble added a great, user-friendly menu system on top of the Android operating system, then has sold Nooks at lower prices than most other Android-powered devices. While easy to use, the one big drawback to the Nook has been that you could only add new applications from the Barnes & Noble app store. That app store only contained a small subset of... Dick Eastman