Off to a rocky start with Dropbox , but I’ve got it now. Uploading, syncing and sharing files is what this is about. You download and install a small file that makes a folder on your computer called My Dropbox. It fits right in with My Pictures and My Videos in Windows XP. It also works on Mac and Linux. Inside My Dropbox looks like this: You can create other folders inside the existing folders or you can create other folders. Anything you want synced with your online account just copy it in there. Think of it as pickin’ and choosin’ your backups. Within seconds of ...

For awhile it was looking like Renee Zamora and I might be cousins. She descends from a Harris family in New York, and so do I. Same county, 1700’s. The odds were fair to middlin’. A Harris cousin of mine got one of our Harris boys to take a DNA test for the paternal lineage. That wasn’t easy. He had some fear that his DNA would be used to clone him in the future. When he finally admitted it, my cousin snapped back, “Who would want to clone you? You’re 70 years old!” So she got her sample, sent it off to the lab and got back the results which knocked ...

The actual numbers are unknown to anyone except Google but there are guesses. How many searches are done on Google every day? The guesses range from 200 million to 10 billion. And a very, very … very small percentage of those searches lead to this website. But nevertheless my own statistics are interesting … to me. The most popular Google search queries, by far, leading to JLog in 2008 were: how to crack keepass how to extract pictures from pps files neither of which has any direct (or even indirect) bearing on the subject of genealogy. This one I’ve only seen once and I ...

It’s not my fault this time. There may or may not be a disruption while Google moves all the FeedBurner feeds over to its own kingdom. They bought FeedBurner awhile ago and now they’re Google-izing it. If you don’t have a web property of some kind, you have no idea the kind of things that don’t interrupt your genealogy research. I’ve changed the address on the little orange button so if you need to you can always click on it and resubscribe.

Ha, ha, very funny. I can’t sleep so I get up. I’m planning to change the colors on my blog but I check my email instead. I don’t know why. I never get email between midnight and 5 in the morning. Other people have the sense to go to sleep. But, surprise! I have two emails from Twitter . Twitter? I signed up, oh, about a year ago, to see what all the fuss was about. In short order I found out I had to write something. Like daily. Even hourly. You’re kidding, right? I write a blog … albeit sporadically … and I’m usually in a panic about what to ...

I’ll admit it. Video language scares me. And the phrase ‘video encoder’ only one of many. Bit-rates, frames-rates, DivX, HD, DV, MPEG1, 2, 3, 4 … I’m going out on a limb here but I think an AVI file in the video-world is like a TIFF in images. It’s large and mostly un-fooled around with, like Florida orange juice. But even when producing an AVI file, the software will ask for a choice of compression. Unlike tiff’s, ‘none’ is not an option. See what I mean about scary? At this point, I’m guessing. There are 10 choices on this ...

I’ve been waylaid learning about video encoders. Video what? Yep, that’s what I said. If you, too, are not part of the YouTube generation, this might have gone right over your head. It started out a couple weeks ago, taking on a mission of mercy for a friend. One thing led to another and the next thing I was making a video. Pretty funny choice of person for the job considering I know nothing about videos. OK, almost nothing. I got a free video-making program when I bought my digital camera some years ago. Right off the bat I had a vision involving my turquoise-sequined frog. ...

As we know, telling stories of our ancestors is much enhanced by the use of photographs. Oftentimes a map can make a story clear in a way that words cannot. My Maps at Google will allow you to make annotated, customized maps that can be shared in a variety of ways and what could be better than that? If you go to Google Maps , there’s a small link to My Maps at the top of the page. In order to use this feature you need to have a Google account. It’s easy to sign up for one. Your same username and password are used for any of Google’s many useful options. (GMail, Notebook, ...

Are you still copying and pasting without a clipboard extender? I use mine, Ditto , dozens of times a day. Every time I select and Copy anything, almost anywhere on my computer, the text or image is added to the Ditto clipboard. Sometimes I want to copy several things in a row without pasting in between. With the Windows clipboard we’re limited to one clip at a time. With Ditto we can have as many as we want. After Ditto is installed, set a keyboard shortcut for opening the clipboard. You can also open it by clicking the icon in the system tray but this is faster. Put your cursor in ...

Christmas was good. Boxing Day was fine. In fact, all the way to New Year’s Eve was stupendous. Then I hurt my back shoveling our 5th or 6th foot of snow. Sometimes my younger neighbour comes over to give me a hand. Last week he said, “It’s going to snow another foot tomorrow and the day after and the day after.” I said, “In other words, what we’re doing is futile.” He said, “No, we just have to keep on top of it.” Ah-huh. This is my 42nd winter in Canada. Yesterday, I thought I’d go see the chiropractor, being as it was his ...

I’ve been playing around in video sites lately. One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a dearth of good genealogy videos. YouTube has the most but they also have the worst quality. So, I challenge you all to start making your own. If you upload them then I can download them again, post them on my site perhaps (if I can figure out where to put them) and contribute to making you famous. There’s a site called Revver than actually pays for video sharing. I don’t think this will make you rich overnight but there’s a percentage deal for the creator (40%), the ...