The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Some PDF files can be searched for any word or phrase. Other PDF files cannot. Until recently, the ability to allow searches was at the PDF file creator's option: anyone who created a PDF file could decide whether or not to make the files searchable. That option has now become moot as several companies have created solutions to convert any non-searchable PDF files into searchable PDF files, regardless of what the file creator intended. Why should you care? I would suggest there are many needs ...

I have written quite a bit lately about ebook readers. I started with an Amazon Kindle several years ago. Amazon has since introduced newer models and has dropped the price several times. Only a month ago, Amazon dropped the Kindle's price from $259 to $189 in response to the introduction of Barnes & Noble's new $140 WiFi-only Nook ebook reader. Today, Amazon announced a brand-new Kindle. The third-generation member of the Kindle family will sell in two versions: a 3G wireless version for $189 and a Wi-Fi-only version for $139. The new Kindle will ship on August 27. Details may be ...

100 years ago this month, Hawley Crippen was an American homeopathic physician who was arrested for the murder of his wife in London, England. His wife had disappeared and a dismembered body was found under the basement floor of their home Camden Road, Holloway, London. The body could not be identified. Of course, DNA did not exist 100 years ago. Crippen was arrested, convicted, and later hanged for murder at Pentonville Prison, London. The mild-mannered murderer became a national celebrity and his waxwork stands in Madame Tussauds to this day However, a recent DNA analysis of preserved ...

FindMyPast.co.uk has just added 184,650 records and 1,003,794 images to the company's Chelsea Pensioners collection for the period 1760-1854. This brings the total amount of Chelsea Pensioner records and images on findmypast.co.uk to 691,520 records and 4,200,729 images. These records are of men pensioned out of the British Army from 1760 through 1913. It is not limited to residents of The Royal Hospital at Chelsea. The records are referred to as the ‘Chelsea Pensioners’ because the office that administered the pensions was located in The Royal Hospital at Chelsea. That office ...

I'm almost willing to travel to Fairbanks for this garage sale! If you live in or near Fairbanks, you might not want to miss this event. Candy Waugaman and her friends are again hosting a garage sale of historic proportions this weekend. The noted Fairbanks collector and archivist of Alaskana will be offering books, photos, postcards, magazines, certificates, brochures, buttons, pins, panoramic photographs, glassware, furniture and “all kinds of ephemera” from Friday through Sunday. The unique thing about this sale is that the proceeds all go to one or more good causes. You ...

With all the genealogical information being made accessible on the Internet, some might think this is the golden age of family history. To Curt B. Witcher, however, we may be entering a new dark age where vital records and the memories of people alive today are lost forever. "At the same time we have more (technological) ability we are losing interest and focus on keeping the thoughts and the words for future generations," Witcher said. Witcher, the manager of The Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., was the plenary speaker at BYU's Conference on ...

Are you planning to attend the FGS conference in Knoxville? If so, bring your old family photographs! The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

Schedule a Free Photo Detective Consultation at FGS with Maureen Taylor!

FamilySearch will be hosting Maureen Taylor, Photo Detective, as a free service to FGS conference goers in Knoxville, Tennessee August 18–21. The Photo Detective services will be offered as part of the FamilySearch booth’s activities in the exhibit hall during the conference.  Interested individuals can register for any available 10 ...

Ancestry.com Inc., the world's largest online family history resource, today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2010 and the news was all good news: Ancestry.com Subscriber Growth of 32% Year-Over-Year Total Revenue Up 36% Year-Over-Year "Greater than anticipated subscriber additions drove impressive performance in the quarter and boosted our revenue and EBITDA expectations for the full year," said Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com. "It's particularly noteworthy that retention rates and customer behavior trends are remaining consistent despite the ...

I was hoping after last week’s devastating revelation that I could improve the Rudd family morale by verifying the myth that we are descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims. Like the Uncle Sam rumor, this one has been purported by my mother’s family, so instead of blindly trusting the research (see below), I set about to prove it on my own. I began optimistically after reading an About.com article that said, “It has been estimated by Gary Boyd Roberts, of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, that there are some 30 million descendants of the ...

The following announcement was written by the National Park Service: NEW YORK, New York, July 28, 2010 - The National Park Service has awarded more than $29 million in contracts to repair the seawall on Ellis Island in New York Harbor, remove contaminants from one of the island's historic buildings and upgrade the communications infrastructure. Opened on January 1, 1892, Ellis Island became the nation's premier federal immigration station, processing more than 12 million immigrant steamship passengers before it was closed in 1954. Today, over 100 million Americans, one third of the ...

I blogged last year about my ancestor’s 1944 petition for naturalization, and how it refers to his 1918 filing of “first papers” (a declaration of intent to naturalize)—for which he apparently never filed second papers. It even gave a document number for those first first papers. But the papers are mysteriously missing both from databases of digitized naturalization records and from microfilm of naturalization records from the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, Cleveland, 1907-1946. So I got all ...

MacFamilyTree 6 has arrived. The latest version of the Macintosh genealogy program has been in public beta test for several weeks. (See my earlier article at http://tinyurl.com/2awyyb3.) Now the beta program has completed and the program is declared ready. MacFamilyTree's new version 6 is claimed to be the most significant update in program's 12 year-long product history. Notable new features include: a brand-new user interface more and completely rewritten charts more reports integration of "New FamilySearch" for online research (currently in closed beta, available for all users by ...

Twitter has tons of historical trivia to offer. These are some of the fun-to-follow history tweeps I’ve been enjoying (click Comments below to share your favorites): PatriotCast This online reenactment of the American Revolution will tweet a day-by-day account of the war for eight years. Tweets of Old Funny tidbits from old newspapers “attempt to reveal the lives of our predecessors through the tweets of yesteryear.” Timelines Get “today in history” tweets every day, such as this from July 7: “Houdini performed overboard ...

GedView is an iPhone/iPod/iPad viewer and recording tool for your genealogy database when you are out and about researching local records, or visiting locations such as graveyards looking for information. GedView acts as a way to quickly check up on family relationships, dates/locations of events, sources of information, and view your notes, or record newly found information while you are out researching.  It is compatible with all iPhone/iPod/iPad devices running iOS 3.0 or above. Now author David A Knight has released a new version: 2.14.2 . You can read my earlier review of ...

Ancestry.com Inc. (ACOM) is scheduled to announce earnings after the market closes on Thursday, July 29th. The consensus amongst most analysts is that ACOM is going to announce a profit of about 15 cents per share. ACOM has gained 37 cents (2.04 percent) during the past week and is currently trading above its 20-day, 50-day and 200-day moving averages.