The heat and humidity make this the perfect time to catch up on your family history – preferably inside under an air conditioner vent. Does your family tree need a bit of pruning? How about your research notes? They could probably use some editing.
We all have memorabilia that needs scanning before storing them safely away. Over at The Family Curator, Denise Levenick and Cyndi Ingles discuss how to deal with “the family stuff”. They’ve got some great ideas.
This is also a good time to improve our research skills. Here are some interesting and useful resources to do just that:
Lisa Louise Cooke has a great article on how to use online genealogy trees and hints wisely.
Video on how to find the maiden names of women in your family tree from Ancestry.com’s Christa Cohen via YouTube.
The FamilySearch Learning Center has an impressive collection of video lessons covering a broad range of topics. You do not need a FamilySearch account to view them.
The Family History Guide is your free learning, research and training center.
Are you looking for an easy but effective way to add stories to your photos? The Supermatic app for iOS devices may just be the thing. It comes with a collection of templates, graphic elements and fonts to help capture your family’s attention. Those elements give you lots of flexibility without much effort. The app costs $1.99 and can be found in the App Store. The developers also have a series of quick and easy tutorials to get you started. You’ll find them at
Are you a Firefox (web browser) user? If not, you may want to take a look. They recently released several companion apps that can be quite useful for researchers. Android users will find the Notes by Firefox (Android, Desktop) handy. The desktop version was released some time ago and it syncs nicely with the new Android version. The two combined give you a secure, encrypted notepad to jot down anything you want and have it available anytime on either your desktop or your mobile device.
Another handy app is the Firefox Lockbox – a password manager that is built into the Firefox desktop browser and is now included in the iOS version of Firefox. Now you can stay secure with different passwords for the many accounts you access online without worrying about remembering each password. Want to learn more? Here’s an article describing Lockbox and Firefox has a demonstration on YouTube showing how it all works.
This week’s recommended reading comes to us from Amy Johnson Crow. Her 31 Days to Better Genealogy is full of practical tips and resources to help you find your ancestors and even engage your family members. This a Kindle book and can be read on a Kindle reader as well as Android and iOS devices using the free Kindle app. The book costs $4.99 and is worth every penny.
Final Notes
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Sample of the “fine print” at the bottom of each post.
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