GeneaNet

Visiting a Virginia Civil War battlefield can be a profoundly moving experience, especially for visitors who have an ancestral connection to those battles. More than two million soldiers fought in the American Civil War and more of them fought in Virginia than in any other state. It follows that millions of Americans today are descendants of Civil War soldiers who fought in Virginia. Now for the first time visitors can track the movements of a soldier or regiment with the new Walk In Their Footsteps program at www.VirginiaCivilWar.org/footsteps.

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From an announcement by Cyndi Ingle Howells: "Cyndi's List is proud to announce a newly upgraded web site. With improved navigation, a custom database, and a custom administrative interface, the upgrade means that everything will be quicker and easier for both visitors and for the site's owner and administrator, Cyndi Ingle Howells. The upgrade has been done by fusionSpan of Maryland. Their staff worked closely with Cyndi to make improvements and to implement new technology and new ideas designed specifically for Cyndi’s List and for the genealogical community."

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Ireland Genealogy is a fascinating new web site for anyone doing Irish Family Tree Investigation. Irish Family History studies are normally quite hard and time-consuming due to the deficiency of information, and much more specifically the possible lack of virtually any comprehensive Census details right before 1901.

That's why almost any records which contain knowledge extracted from the Irish Census are usually of such vital value in ancestral investigation. One way to obtain info is the Irish Pension Records.

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Folkloreinsweden.com is a web publication in English aimed at Swedish descendants around the World, but primarily in North America. It contains Swedish history, genealogy and other related articles. Besides being just a web publication it will also be a meeting place and knowledge bank for those interested in their heritage.

Folkloreinsweden.com

An announcement by the Ellis Island Foundation: "There is an urgent need to support Ellis Island Online, and I hope you can be one of the supporters of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation who acts now to make a real difference.

You see, the recent recession has been tough on non-profits. Many charitable organizations cut back on services or shut down altogether. But for ten years now, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has made Ellis Island Online available to you and millions of other Americans for free, and we hope to continue that excellent public service."

Our Ontario is a unique partnership with cultural and heritage organizations of all shapes and sizes, designed to make their digital content discoverable to a global audience. They are part of Knowledge Ontario, a not-for-profit collaborative that offers programs and services addressing the information and learning needs of Ontarians in the digital environment.

Their goal is to help Ontarians of all ages discover the extraordinary stories contained in the digital collections of their culture and history organizations and communities.

Our Ontario

An announcement from Family Tree Magazine: In the July 2011 Family Tree Magazine, we’ll name the 40 Best Genealogy Blogs—the Family Tree 40. And we’d like your help in choosing from blogs nominated by the genealogy community.

Voting is open until 11:59 p.m. Monday, Dec. 20. You may vote multiple times.

To vote for the GeneaNet Genealogy Blog and your other favorite blogs, use the survey at www.surveymonkey.com/s/ft40-2011voting.

Historvius is a community-based historic destinations directory run by history enthusiasts who are passionate about the web.

The site grew from a desire to make historic sites more accessible to those planning a trip. We have designed Historvius to give a smooth and simple user experience that will allow people to find historic sites near their holiday resorts, or to assist them with planning a bespoke tour based around the particular period of history they love.

Historvius

Family Tree Magazine has announced that it will be naming the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs.

All genealogists are asked to nominate their favorite genealogy blogs through Tuesday, Nov. 30. You can nominate your favorite genealogy blogs using Family Tree Magazine's nomination form.

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A group of genealogists and programmers have established a workspace called Build A BetterGEDCOM for developing better data exchange standards to facilitate sharing between researchers using a variety of technology platforms, genealogy products and services.

The BetterGEDCOM wiki site is open to all, and is located at http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com.

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Old Weather is a revolutionary approach to naval, as well as family history research. More and more people are fascinated by their past, including the naval and military careers of their British forebears, especially in the two world wars. As so many families are now spread around the world, this is a global interest, especially in the United States and the Commonwealth.

A decade or so back finding out about World War 2 experiences was a lengthy task, but possible. Now, with the advent of the internet and many fine naval history sites, this is often a ten minute task. But not when it comes to World War 1. There are great gaps in the published stories of the many ships that served.

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BackupMyTree (www.backupmytree.com), a new service offering free and automatic backup of family trees, launches today. BackupMyTree enables worry-free research for genealogists and family history enthusiasts, preventing loss of years of work due to a computer disaster such as a virus or hard disk crash. By automatically finding family tree files and creating a remote, off-site backup, BackupMyTree’s software ensures complete protection of family tree data.

The free backup service provides:

- Support for a wide array of family tree file formats created by popular family tree software packages. Industry standard GEDCOM files are supported too.
- Anywhere access of family tree files using a web browser.
- Monitoring of all family trees for changes and automatic backup of the updated files.
- Storage of previous versions of family tree files should anything become corrupted.
- Instant retrieval in case of data loss - by simply re-downloading the latest family tree backups.

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The Canadian government announced Monday 900,000 U.S. dollars for the creation of a new website documenting the experiences of Chinese settlers, past and present.

The bilingual portal, "Chinese Canadian stories: Uncommon stories from a common past history," will be created by the University of British Columbia with funding from the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP). It will focus on the collection, documentation and preservation of the legacies of Chinese Canadians and their role in building Canada.

The portal will launch in March 2012, with an online virtual experience featuring portable interactive kiosks and a searchable database of digital materials created by the CHRP-funded partner organizations.

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The website, http://www.guamwarsurvivorstory.com, allows community members to submit their own stories and photos, and includes a section where people can sign a petition to Congress. It was set up by Reyes' son-in-law, territorial Sen. Frank Blas Jr.

According to the site, more than 22,000 civilians lived through the war on Guam but fewer than 1,000 are still alive today. Guam's delegate to Congress, Madeleine Bordallo, has submitted legislation that would set aside $126 million to compensate living survivors.

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