May 18, 2013

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3 Reasons You Need the New Version of Google Earth Just Released

May 17, 2013 By

Google celebrated Earth Day by releasing Google Earth 7.1 and announcing some great new content! And there are three reasons you will want to make the upgrade:

1. New Hands-Free Navigation Technology
The big news with version 7.1 is Leap Motion support, a touch-free 3d technology that lets you “navigate Google earth with simple hand gestures.” The Leap Motion Controller ($79.99) will start shipping mid-July, so you’ve got some time to get to know Google Earth a little better before you start flying around in it like this:

You KNOW I have to get me some of that!

2. More 3D City Views
There’s also exciting new 3D data in Google Earth, most notably for New York City. But there’s also more imagery for other cities around the world: Innsbruck, Austria; Dijon, France; Cagliari, Italy and the Spanish cities of San Sebastian, Santander, Pamplona, Manresa and Burgos. Other U.S. cities with 3D coverage include Miami, FL;  Houston, TX; Orlando, FL; Encinitas, CA and Spokane, WA.

3. The Addition of the 50th Country to Google Maps’ popular Street View Feature
You can now view 50 countries with Google Maps’ popular Street View feature. The newest nations to be added are Hungary and Lesotho (a tiny country within South Africa), and there’s new or updated coverage for Poland, Romania, France, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Thailand and other locations worldwide. Google calls this “the largest single update of Street View imagery we’ve ever pushed, including new and updated imagery for nearly 350,000 miles of roads across 14 countries.”

Help for Using Google Earth for Genealogy
How can you access these fabulous features, both for fun virtual travel and for seriously fun genealogy research? Upload the latest version of Google Earth for free (for PC, Mac or Linux). Then check out my Google Earth for Genealogy 2-CD Bundle. There’s a reason is this one of my best-selling Google Earth for Genealogy Bundlepresentations: Google Earth is one of the best genealogy research tools around! In these CD presentations, I show you how to locate and map ancestral homesteads; use historical map overlays; identify where old photos were taken; create 3D models of ancestral locations; create custom family history tours and much more.

Filed Under: Google Gem, Maps, Tech Topics, What's New Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Tech Tool for Discovering What Your Speech Reveals About Your Heritage

May 13, 2013 By

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How you speak can reveal much about your heritage.

If you’ve ever lived in or visited the U.S. or Canada, you already know we don’t all speak English the same way. But did you know that we actually speak eight different major dialects in North America?

The website North American English Dialects has put those dialects on the map. In fact, it even traces their origins and spread: 2 dialects from the west and 6 from the east, reflecting the way the English language originally spread across the continent.

Creator Rick Aschmann notes how we say our “r’s”, the 19 vowel sounds we use, and all those other great tiny variations that go into our Southern drawl or “broad-A” Boston-speak. Aschmann is just doing this project for fun, but he takes his map pretty seriously. He even asks anyone with a “native accent” to upload a sound file of themselves speaking.

Dialect MapIt’s fun to look at this map and think about how our American or Canadian ancestors may have pronounced things differently than we do (or the same, depending on how far we’ve wandered). If your families have migrated within the past 50 to 100 years, click on some of the sound samples from your old stomping grounds and see if you catch some familiar cadences or phrases.

A Huffington Post writer says he could look at this map for hours and not get bored, and I agree! It’s complicated–there are lots of color codes and lines and such–but our speech is complicated, too. Some cities or small regions need their own enlarged maps to show neighborhood-level differences.

You can learn more about how our speech reveals our heritage and family history by listening to my interview with Dr. Robert Leonard Ph.D., Forensic Linguist in Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 89. Dr. Leonard has been featured on the TV series Forensic Files and has a fascinating personal history as well.

Filed Under: Candian, History, Maps, What's New Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Online Historical Maps: From David Rumsey to the DPLA

May 8, 2013 By

Opening pages of rare 1905 Sanborn Map of San Francisco, showing city just before 1906 earthquake. Find the entire map book at the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Genealogists rely on historical maps to help us navigate the geography of our ancestors’ lives. One of the most important resources available online is the David Rumsey Map Collection. Well, Rumsey recently announced on his website that he will be making more than 38,000 of his historical maps–everything he’s currently got online–available at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

I blogged recently about the DPLA, which aims to create an enormous, free digital library we can all access online. It will be great to have the Rumsey map collection searchable on the DPLA so we can search these maps while we look for any other sources on any particular location our ancestors lived. “Maps tell stories that complement texts, images, and other resources found in the growing DPLA library,” says Rumsey. “And the open content policies of my online library fit perfectly with DPLA’s mission to make cultural resources freely available to all.” He applauds what the DPLA is trying to accomplish and even encourages other collectors to donate content.

Rumsey has spent years collecting thousands of old maps  and putting them online. Now he’s working to share them even more widely. His entire collection of about 150,000 maps will eventually be housed at Stanford University. Meanwhile, we can all enjoy the thousands of images we can search on his site or at the DPLA.toolbox kit

Google’s free program Google Earth includes nearly 150 historic maps in the Layers panel.  You can also add historic maps downloaded from Rumsey’s site to Google Earth by using the Overlay feature. My video tutorial series called Google Earth for Genealogy will show you how. You can also get step-by-step instructions in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. Or get them all in a discounted bundle.

 

Filed Under: Maps, What's New Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Civil War Maps for Genealogy Available in Online Newspapers

August 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In my last Premium podcast, I mentioned that Chronicling America, the Library of Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov Congress’ historical newspaper website, sent out a newsletter on using Civil War maps printed in the New York Daily Tribune.  I just have to share more on this with everyone!

Chronicling America reports that as hostilities progressed, “people on both sides of the burgeoning Civil War [sought] to make sense of what [was] taking place in their country. The press rushed to publish stories and accounts of the battles, but perhaps the most telling features were the maps that they published. The New York Tribune published…graphical accounts of the Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Gettysburg and more.”

Of course I had to check out the links they provided to these incredible maps that were printed right in the newspapers.

This topic page  provides useful information for finding these maps, including significant dates, associated search terms, as well as sample article links.

This is just one more example of how newspapers continue to be an amazing resource for genealogists. If you haven’t dived into historical newsprint yet to research your family stories, you don’t know what you’re missing! My book How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers will get you started.

Filed Under: Maps, What's New

Google Earth Street View Story (Video)

April 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Ya gotta love Google Earth’s Street View!  It can bring you up close and personal to locations important to your family history. For instance in our family there’s the house in
England where Grandpa Cooke was born…

And the Opera House where he and his mother played in the orchestra in the early 20th century…

It’s almost like being there!  But what if you really could be there?  There’s a great little video that brings street view to life. It’s called 2nd Avenue, and it’s one of the finalist WNET’s Favorite short videos contest. Check it out and cast your vote for Street View!

Images like these are just the tip of the iceberg as to what Google Earth can do for your family history.  Watch this short video to see more, and my Google Earth for Genealogy DVDs will show you step by step how to do it all.

3/21/12

Filed Under: Google Gem, Maps