Easter Family Genealogy Blog
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Technology Tuesday – HistoryPin
Another photo site, but not plain storage. HistoryPin‘s tagline is “Pin your history to the world”, and I’ve found it fascinating – photos, videos and audio clips, relating them to places. A large number of museums and history organisations worldwide have already uploaded some of their archives, but there are lots of individuals adding content too.
You can create collections (photos on a topic, geographical area, family, etc), tours ( following a place through time, or exploring an area), and maps which lets you look at photos of a particular place. Their partner for mapping is Google, so you’ll see the little yellow man on some photos – this lets you see the photo superimposed on the Google Streetview, and a slider that lets you change the date.
Repeats are created using the Historypin Smartphone App. They are modern replicas of historic photos taken by other people, or modern replicas of other users photos taken by you.
Your account is called a “channel”, and your channel homepage can be customised easily. I’ve changed the colour scheme, added a banner to match my blog, and some wallpaper to replace the plain background.
I’ve pinned two photos, one of which is an outdoor scene that I’ve been able to add to the HistoryPin Streetview.
Each photo has the option to add notes (called “stories”), both by the person who uploads and by other HistoryPin users. This could be a valuable tool for family history researchers, helping to record the way our world has changed, and memories that people have of those places.
You can browse without signing up, and joining is free. There are no limits to the number of images you can upload at the moment, and there is a bulk uploader for archives to use.
FAQS here: http://www.historypin.com/faq/
Sticky Posts
I started my blog on 3 January 2011 to encourage myself not to give up on researches. I’ve had several longish periods of time in 2011 when I haven’t had time to do anything, but it has persuaded me to take up my researches again when time is available. According to the WordPress stats, I did make 52 posts, so an average of one each week is OK.
Sites I started using this year:
http://www.genealogyintime.com/
http://beta.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ - browsing and searching is free, seeing the full results needs a subscription. Worth doing the searches, and then if you find anything you can decide on credits or subscription.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=easter_family – moved my family trees here. Still getting used to it – you upload your whole GEDCOM each time, and I’ve found duplicates that aren’t in my original GEDCOM. I have searched and found others researching the same families, but no replies to contacts yet.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
http://mocavo.co.uk launched the UK version – can’t see a lot of difference to the .com version yet – most results are still from my trees. Again it depends how many people upload their trees. A recent update lets you mark search results as already read, and whether they were relevant to your researches.
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/ - OS maps for Ireland. Set preview (right) to historic, and select “Historic layers”. If your ancestry is Irish, it’s worth taking a look.
http://www.surreyarchives.org.uk/
http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/
http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/history/devtales.htm Devon History Selection – links to many resources for Devon family history and genealogy.
Joined more groups at Genealogywise – I wish this genealogy networking site was more active, it would be an excellent hub. Take a look if you haven’t visited it yet.
Several contacts have come through this blog and my main website, so if you have the time and don’t already have a blog or site it’s worth considering. If you’re not a techie, using one of the blog providers is easy and free – I use wordpress.com but there are several others.
Plans for the next twelve months
I’m thinking about watermarking my gallery photos – some have been donated by other family members. I’ve no objection to relatives downloading them, but I wouldn’t be happy about commercial bots harvesting them and using them for profit. I could include a note on the gallery telling any relatives to contact me for unmarked copies.
Collecting information from people who have contacted me and adding it to the main family history site. Thanks Lucy, Jane, Glyn, Dom, Gill, Patricia, Dorothy, Mary, Lynn.
Increasing the gallery. Several people have offered photos.
Updates
- I've added a new page for William Samuel St John on the main website.
GenealogyWise
