Google Maps Street View was given an edge today over Google Earth’s street view when Google launched a “time travel” upgrade. The ability to time travel is high on most family historians list, and Street View imagery for Google Maps desktop provides a taste of that prize.
According to Google’s blog post today they have “gathered historical imagery from past Street View collections dating back to 2007 to create this digital time capsule of the world.”Here’s an example of viewing Gettysburg with the new feature. In many cases, there’s nothing earth shattering to see. But in some locations which have undergone substantial change in that short time period (such as viewing the reconstruction after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan) the results are riveting.
Don’t worry if you don’t see Google Maps Street View Historical Imagery feature yet. When you have millions of users it can take a while to roll out upgrades.
Members Have Been Time Traveling for a While Now If you’re a Genealogy Gems Premium Member then chances are you made a bee-line for the Time Travel with Google Earth premium video as soon as you joined. In that video we explore some incredibly powerful ways to travel back through our ancestor’s lives and times. And while I still think that those techniques deliver more relevant results for genealogists, this new Street View time travel in Google Maps is exciting in its own way. It offers a glimpse into the future.
Consider this: Google has been amassing incredible amounts of data over its short life including satellite and street view imagery. 7 years in and they can now begin to offer this collection of older imagery in a meaningful way. Imagine what historical street view imagery will look like in 10, 25, or 50 years from now!
After Looking Back in Time, I Offer This Prediction for the Future
While this feature has just rolled out in Google Maps, and is not yet available in our beloved Google Earth, I predict this omission will not last long. You may have already noticed that as you zoom in closer to street level in Google Earth a small clock icon appears at the bottom of the screen indicating historical satellite imagery is available. Next to the icon a date now appears indicating the earliest available imagery. Click the Historical Imagery icon in Google Earth’s toolbar and a time slider indicating the years available will appear.
For most areas of the world this spans about as long as satellite imagery has been around. But in some key areas, such as London and parts of Europe, the slider goes back to the World War II era. Black and white aerial imagery of war torn areas are plainly visible. (If you have World War II veterans in your family tree, this is a feature you’ll want to explore.) It can only be a matter of time before this same Historical Imagery comes to Google Earth’s Street View.More Ways to Explore and Time Travel Now
If you are intrigued by the idea of using this technology to simulate your own genealogical time travel experience, watch my free video called Google Earth for Genealogy. You’ll travel along with me as I uncover the secrets of a photograph taken just over one hundred years ago, pinpoint the location today, and then travel back in time to further explore my ancestor’s neighborhood. From there, the sky is the limit with Google Earth and Google Maps!
AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: In episode #289 of the Genealogy Gems podcast, Lisa Louise Cooke covers the groundbreaking LiveMemory™ tool from MyHeritage, a revolutionary advancement that harnesses the power of AI to transform still photos into mesmerizing short videos.
Launched on November 22, 2024, this innovative feature is an exciting evolution of the Deep Nostalgia tool introduced in 2021, which focuses on animating individual faces. Now, with LiveMemory™, users have the remarkable opportunity to breathe life into their cherished memories by creating stunning five-second videos with just a few taps in the MyHeritage app.
This tool offers an unprecedented and captivating way to reconnect with the past, allowing users to share their family stories in a dynamic and engaging format that resonates across generations. Don’t miss out on this unique chance to see your family’s history come alive!
Listen to the Podcast Episode about LiveMemory™
To Listen click the media player below (AUDIO ONLY):
LiveMemory™ is a new photo animation tool from the MyHeritage. It allows you to upload a digitized old family photo and turn it into a short video clip using AI technology. According to MyHeritage, “It animates the scene in the photo, reimagining it as if you had traveled back in time to watch it live. It’s the ultimate way to reminisce.”
MyHeritage is on the forefront of bringing new and exciting things to family history, ways to tell stories, to get people interested in family history and genealogy. In addition to all of the records, the tree building and the DNA, they have also focused a lot of their energy on photographs. I love that because I learn and I get inspired by seeing things visually, as do many of our relatives. So, it makes a lot of sense to focus on the photos that we have as a way to bring family stories to life.
What role does Artificial Intelligence (AI) play?
Not surprisingly, in today’s age, MyHeritage is accomplishing these photo innovations with artificial intelligence (AI).
LiveMemory™ springboards off of a tool that MyHeritage launched in 2021 called Deep Nostalgia™. It’s still available on the MyHeritage website in the menu under Photos. That feature had the ability to take a static photo, identify the faces and give you the option to select one of those faces to be animated. It was truly amazing.
Understandably, many of us looked at that and thought, “that’s great, but when are you going to be able to animate the whole photo?” Well, that’s exactly what LiveMemory does. It brings the photograph to life using AI.
AI has been able to “learn” how people and objects typically move by analyzing the massive amount of video online . This is much like how machine learning first got going by devouring all the digitized books on Google Books. It was able to learn language and then shape it. Now you can use AI chatbot products like Gemini or Chat GPT to create language by uploading documents, providing prompts, and so on. So, it’s not surprising that AI has been able to devour all of this video content and determine that arms move this way and legs move that way. Clothing flows in certain ways when you’re running. The minute details that can be internalized and used are endless.
How long are LiveMemory Photo animations?
MyHeritage’s LiveMemory animations aren’t very long. They currently run approximately five seconds.
Would you like a longer video clip? One way to achieve that is to download the .MP4 file and then import it into a video editor. Within the editor you can copy the clip and loop it. This allows you to generate a slightly longer video so your viewers can really take in the magic of it.
Within a video editor application you could take it further by adding some text that identifies the people or other elements of the video. You can also zoom in and out and add other features depending on the app you use.
How much does MyHeritage’s LiveMemory cost?
According to the company’s announcement, there are a variety of ways to gain access to LiveMemory to animate your photos. At the time of this writing, MyHeritage is making LiveMemory available for free but for an unspecified very limited number of videos. To create more than a few videos, an annual Photo plan or Omni subscription plan is required.
The annual Photo plan currently runs $49.90 yearly and is available exclusively on the MyHeritage app. It provides unlimited access to all of the MyHeritage photo features including MyHeritage In Color™, Photo Enhancer, Photo Repair, Deep Nostalgia™, and the Photo Scanner.
The Omni plan provides access to all of MyHeritage’s features. It currently runs $399 a year, with the first year being available for $239.
MyHeritage states, “As a thank you for their loyalty, Complete subscribers are eligible for a 25% discount on the Photo plan, and can purchase it for just $37.”
How many videos can I create?
Users with a MyHeritage Omni plan can create 30 videos annually. Photo plan users can create 20 LiveMemory™ videos annually.
No, there isn’t a desktop version of LiveMemory, at least not yet. Currently, you’ll need to use the MyHeritage app to create your videos. You can download the app for free from your app store. If you already have the app, you’ll want to ensure that it’s up to date. If you don’t see the LiveMemory “Try it now” banner at the top of the app screen, update your app.
How do I animate a photo with LiveMemory?
Tap the orange “Try it now” button on the Home screen of the MyHeritage app. You can also navigate to LiveMemory through the menu in the upper left corner of the screen.
Select a photo from the photos you’ve already added to your account or upload a photo from your phone. If you store old family photos on a cloud service like Dropbox, you can open the Dropbox app, select a photo and download it to your phone so it’s ready to use in the MyHeritage app.
Once selected, tap Next. Be aware this will activate the LiveMemory processing. Since there is a limit to the number of videos you can generate, be sure it’s the photo you want before tapping Next.
You’ll see a message on the screen that your video is being processed and that you will be notified by email. In a few moments or minutes, check your email. The video will be attached to the email sent to the email address attached to your MyHeritage account. Currently MyHeritage says they are saving the videos to your account; however, I don’t see a way to download them from their site or app. So, you will find the video attached to the email.
Click it to download it to your computer or phone. I like that it encourages us to retain the final content ourselves on our own computer, which I’m a big advocate of because I think it’s really important to not just have your family history on somebody else’s website. Even if they eventually store the videos in your account, download a copy to your computer where you have automatic backup installed. I’ve used Backblaze as my online backup for years. (Here’s my affiliate link which supports this free podcast: https://Backblaze.com/lisa)
Be prepared to be amazed when you watch your video!
My first attempt was a photo from the late 1950s of my husband Bill, he’s probably about six, with his family and his dad is playing the organ. His mom is pregnant with his youngest sister, Carol. This photo has hung on the wall by our piano for decades. And now MyHeritage has brought it to life!
Does AI ever get the animation wrong?
The animation is based on best estimates by AI. It usually comes out pretty natural-looking, but sometimes not so much. I did notice that sometimes the faces change a little bit as they’re moving and look some of the authentic look of the original photo.
Sometimes, things are just sort of this world. An example of that is the photo of my dad and I in the late 1960s playing on homemade Romper Stompers. Do you remember romper Stompers? If you watched Romper Room as a kid like I did, you’ll recall that they were sort of cups with long strings that you’d stand on and walk making yourself a sort of marionette. Hhmm, if you haven’t seen it. That doesn’t probably sound like it makes any sense! Back then we thought it was so cool. Well, my mom made me my own set of Romper Stompers with two tin cans that my dad drilled holes in and ran ropes through them. My photograph is of me and my dad on the back porch standing on Romper Stompers. You can only imagine what AI tried to make out of that. It didn’t understand that you lift one leg at a time. In the video, I end up hopping along two legs at a time, which would have been quite a feat!. My dad is even wider, leaping up and hanging in mid-air! So that video is a winner with my grandkids!
All this to say, keep this in mind as you are selecting photographs that might lend themselves more to movement and accuracy. if it’s an unusual action taking place, AI might not quite be able to make total heads or tails of it, but it’s entertaining anyway.
How can you tell if a video is a LiveMemory animated photo?
It’s important that family historians can differentiate between AI-generated content and the “real thing”. MyHeritage has stated their commitment to the responsible use of this technology. They add an “AI” watermark to all videos so everyone can tell the difference.
MyHeritage describes the video results as “highly realistic” “reenactments”, which is an interesting way to put it. They are reenactments created by artificial intelligence. They’re not authentic, so they distinguish them with that AI watermark around the area of privacy.
Are my MyHeritage LiveMemory videos private?
MyHeritage says they will not license or sell your photos to third parties and will not use them to train internal AI models. They also say in their blog post that it’s “based on technology from a third party that does not obtain rights to your photo or the output video. Your explicit consent is required granting MyHeritage permission to process your photo before activating the LiveMemory™ feature.”
They do ask you to use the tool responsibly and consider carefully the photos that you’re uploading. They do not allow pornography or offensive subject matter, or military scenes or photos of dead people. They actually have live people who will review the videos for violations.
As I saw the live memory results, I knew how I was going to be using it. Back in 2008 on the Genealogy Gems Podcast I talked about that we had received a box of Bill’s grandfather’s belongings from a cousin. Back in the day, Raymond and his wife Isabelle both played in the orchestra for silent films. In fact, that’s how they met. Bumpa played violin, and Nanna played the piano and organ. Later in the 1950s they used to get together quite often with the family for evenings of music. One evening they recorded the live music on a reel-to-reel audio tape and years later I had it digitized.
I’ve had this audio in the form of an mp3 file for years. And I have just one photograph from the 1950s of Nanna and Bumpa, dressed up in old-timey costumes, playing together. He’s playing the violin, she’s playing the piano. Finally, I had a way to create a video with the original music!
Raymond and Isabelle Cooke circa late 1950s (from the collection of Lisa Louise Cooke)
So, I animated the photo through the LiveMemory tool. Then I used my video editing skills to pull in the 5 second video and the audio file. I replicated the five second video clip a couple times, applied some zooming effects, added color adjustments, and added the music mp3. It all came together in a 35 second video of this photo coming to life complete with music.
I would not be surprised if down the road, MyHeritage finds a way to bring in audio. Perhaps some royalty-free music backing tracks. I’m sure that must be on their radar, because it’s just a logical extension of being able to expand into animating your photos. But if you want to see it now, here’s my version:
Here’s the video I posted on the Genealogy Gems podcast Facebook page and Instagram:
If you like what you see, head to the Comments section below and let me know. Then check out the links in the Resources section below to my video editing tutorial videos.
Spot This Genealogy Error and Fix It FAST!
I recently spotted what could be called “fake family history” on TV news program recently. Get the show notes and watch SpotThis Genealogy Error and Fix It Fast! as I share this weird example of mistaken identity on online & television news. I’ll explain how I went about solving the case. Then, try out these techniques when you spot errors in your own family history whether they occur on TV, in books, online family trees, genealogy blog posts or elsewhere.
Comment below:
What would you like to see next from MyHeritage? Longer clips? Full video editing capabilities? The ability to purchase a larger number of videos?
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The history of Memorial Day–formerly Decoration Day–and what he will be doing to honor it are shared here by Military Minutes contributor Michael Strauss. We also give you quick links to more free family history articles on researching your ancestors who...
Are your DNA ethnicity results exciting, confusing, inconsistent, exasperating…or all of the above?
Recently Kate expressed on the Genealogy Gems Facebook page her frustration with her ethnicity results provided by AncestryDNA. She gets right to the point when she writes, “the way they refer to the results is confusing.”
Kate, you are not alone. Many genealogists have been lured into taking the autosomal DNA test at one of the three major DNA testing companies just to get this glimpse into their past. Remember that the autosomal DNA test can reveal information about both your mother’s side and your father’s side of your family tree. Many take the test hoping for confirmation of a particular ancestral heritage, others are just curious to see what the results will show. Though their purposes in initiating the testing may vary, the feeling of bewilderment and befuddlement upon receiving the results is fairly universal.
Kate has some specific questions about her results that I think most will share. Let’s take a look at a couple of them. First up, Kate wants to know if our family tree data in any way influences the ethnicity results provided. The answer is an unequivocal “no.” None of the testing companies look at your family tree in any way when determining your ethnicity results. However, the results are dependent on the family trees of the reference population. The reference populations are large numbers of people whose DNA has been tested and THEIR family history has been documented for many generations in that region. The testing companies compare your DNA to theirs and that’s how they assign you to an ethnicity (and place of ancestral origin?).
Next Kate asks, “Do they mean England when they report Great Britain?” Or to put it more broadly, how do these testing companies decide to divide up the world? All of the companies handle this a little bit differently. Let’s look at Ancestry as an example. When you login to view your ethnicity results, you can click on the “show all regions” box below your results to get a list of all of the possible categories that your DNA could be placed in. These 26 categories include nine African regions, Native American, three Asian regions, eight European regions, two Pacific Island regions, two West Asian regions, and then Jewish, which is not a region, per se, but a genetically distinct group.
Clicking on each individual location in the left sidebar will bring up more information on the right about that region. For example, clicking on Great Britain tells us that DNA associated with this region is primarily found in England, Scotland, and Wales, but is also found in Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Basically, this is telling us that people with generations of ancestry in Great Britain are quite a genetic mix from many areas.
The first chart here shows that if we are to test the DNA of 100 natives of one of these primary regions (England, Scotland or Wales) then 50 of them willhave the great Britain “pattern” of DNA covering 60% or more of their entire genome, and 50 of them will have that pattern in less than 60% of their DNA. The fact that this half-way number is so low, only 60%, tells us that there is a lot of uncertainty in this ethnicity estimate because there is so much mixture in this region. Kate, for you that means that when you see Great Britain in your ethnicity estimate, it could mean England, or maybe it means Italy- Ancestry can’t be certain.
But that uncertainty isn’t the same for every region. Pictured here is also the ethnicity chart for Ireland. You can see that half the people who are native to Ireland will have 95% or more Irish DNA. Kate, for us this means that if you have Irish DNA in your results, you can be pretty certain it came from Ireland. From these tables you can see your membership in some regions is more robust than others, and Ancestry is using these tables to try to help us tell the difference.
In the end, the ethnicity results reported by each DNA testing company are highly dependent on two factors: the reference populations they use to compare your DNA against, and the statistical algorithms they use to compute your similarities to these populations. Every company is doing both of these things just a little bit differently.
Kate, if you want to get another take on your ethnicity results, you can take your data over to Family Tree DNA, or you can be tested at 23andMe. A free option is to head over to Gedmatch and try out their various ethnicity tools. If you need help downloading and transferring, you can head over to my website: http://www.yourdnaguide.com/transferring. Most people have found after searching in multiple places that their “true” results are probably somewhere in the middle.
While these ethnicity results can be interesting and useful, for most they will just be a novelty; something interesting and exciting. I have found that their most useful application is acting like a fly on a fishing line. They attract our family members into DNA testing where we can then set the hook on the real goal: family history.
If you’re ready to bait your own hook, I recommend you check out my series of DNA quick guides. These guides will help you choose the right DNA tests for your genetic genealogy questions. You’ll become a smart shopper, more prepared to choose the testing company that’s right for you. And you’ll be prepared to maximize your results from each company, rather than look at them blankly and wondered what the heck you just spent that money on. Click here to see all my DNA guides: I recommend the value-priced bundle!
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
Social history plays a significant role in successful genealogical research. The events of a particular time-frame shed new light on the lives of our ancestors and ultimately lead us to new finds. In this post, Gems Reader Trisha asks questions regarding her family’s ties to the Colored Farmers’ Alliance.
“The Colored Farmers’ Alliance.” NBC News. NBCUniversal Media. 29 July 2007. NBC Learn. Web. 22 January 2015.
Did a Member of the Family Belong to the Colored Farmers’ Alliance?
Our Genealogy Gems Editor, Sunny Morton, received the following email recently from Trisha:
I am researching my great-grandparents in Northeast Arkansas. The census records I have found so far list that my great-grandfather was a famer. So, I started looking up farming associations hoping that maybe he was a member and I could find out more information about him and possibly any relatives that lived nearby. I came across the Colored Farmers’ Alliance that was in existence from 1886- 1891 in the southern states, but I have only been able to find out basic general public information about this agency. Do you know if, or how, I can find an Arkansas member list or something similar? Any help or advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
The History of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance
The Colored Farmers’ Alliance was formed in 1886 in the state of Texas. A group of southern African-American farmers had been barred membership to the other Farmers’ Alliances and hoped by creating this group, they would be able to cooperatively solve the common problems of its members. The group also encouraged African-American farmers to become economically independent by purchasing homes and eliminating debt. [“Colored Farmers’ Alliance,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/populism-and-agrarian-discontent/timeline-terms/colore : accessed 28 Oct 2016).]
The organization took off and spread across the Southern United States. It’s peak membership was up to 1.2 million in 1891. However, the organization did not survive long. In 1891, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance called a general strike of African-American cotton-pickers and demanded a wage increase from 50 cents to $1 per hundred pounds of cotton. The strike failed and the group dissolved. [“Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_Farmers%27_National_Alliance_and_Cooperative_Union : accessed 28 Oct 2016).]
Pulling Together Some Answers
We pulled the whole team together for this one, and Sunny reached out to me regarding Trisha’s questions. In our initial research, we didn’t come across any references online to membership lists for any branch of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance, including Arkansas where Trisha’s ancestors lived. We did however find an article titled Preliminary research for writing a history of the Colored Farmers Alliance in the Populist movement: 1886-1896by Omar Ali, written May 11, 1998, which states:
“Little detail is known about individual members of the Colored Farmers Alliance, including its leadership.”
That may not be surprising considering that the organization was attempting to improve member’s situations and fight for better pay. It’s possible that members may not have wished to be named due to concerns about repercussions. It would be important to learn more about the organization and the political and historical environment in which it operated in order to determine the probability of membership rolls existing or surviving.
While not everything is online (by any stretch of the imagination,) the web is the best place to do further homework to track down offline resources. Trisha could start by contacting the Arkansas State Library, and then exploring these search results from WorldCat.org which include a variety of works on the subject. It would also be very worthwhile to spend some time digging into the wide range of online resources such as Google buy syphilis medication Books and the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America digital newspaper collection. Let’s do that now!
Google Books
A search of colored farmers alliance delivers several results on the topic. Use search operators to help Google deliver even better results, by putting quotation marks around the search phrase “colored farmers alliance.” This instructs Google to return only web pages that contain that exact phrase. You’ll find more Google search strategies in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, which also includes an entire chapter on using Google Books for genealogy.
Here’s an example of one book I found called The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics by Solon J. Buck (1920).
While I didn’t discover any references to actual member names beyond some of the leaders, Google Books certainly offers more depth and history on the Alliance.
Digitized Newspapers
Indian chieftain., March 03, 1892, Image 1 at the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America. (The Indian Chieftan was published in Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1882-1902
While only a small fraction of newspapers published throughout history are digitized and online, what can be found offers a wealth of information. The Library of Congress’ Chronicling America offers an excellent cache of searchable newspapers for free. Subscription websites such as Ancestry’s Newspapers.com and Newsbank’s GenealogyBank offer real value if the newspaper you seek is held within their collections.
Since Chronicling America is free, that’s a good place to start. At the main search page, click the Advanced Search tab. On that page, you will have the option to search by state, publication, and dates. Under “Enter Search” fields, there are three options. Type the phrase colored farmers alliance into the “with the phrase” field. That will narrow the search results down to newpaper pages that include the entire phrase and will eliminate pages that have some or all of the words independent of each other. A search of all states for that phrase delivers over 325 digitized newspaper pages featuring articles that include that phrase.
At Newspapers.com, I found dozens of references as well, many from Arkansas newspapers. I also noticed that several individuals wrote and signed letters to the editor on the subject.
For more help on researching newspapers for genealogy, listen to my two part podcast series titled “Find Your Family History in Newspapers, Part 1 and Part 2.”
members named
Google Scholar
Google Scholar offers not only well-researched works on a given subject, but also the ability to request only results with source citations. These citations not only help you weigh the accuracy and value of the paper, but provide intriguing new leads for research materials.
Using the same search operators as I did in Google Books, I retrieved over 175 results. To filter these results to only those with source citations, click the “include citations” box on the search page at the bottom, left side.
The savvy genealogist will also want to experiment with variations on the query by adding words and phrases such as members included, members list, list of members, and so on.
YouTube
Since I devoted another chapter of my book to using another free Google tool, YouTube, I would be remiss if I didn’t run a quick search at the video giant website. Here is a link to the video I found online.
It’s amazing what the family historian can discover from the comfort of their own computer. With so many valuable resources discovered through an online search, a well-prepared trip to the library or archive will prove even more fruitful.
Here’s an example of viewing Gettysburg with the new feature. In many cases, there’s nothing earth shattering to see. But in some locations which have undergone substantial change in that short time period (such as viewing the reconstruction after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan) the results are riveting.
More Ways to Explore and Time Travel Now
