Learn US History through the Census

 

Remember the board game LIFE?  Archives.com has put its own spin on this family favorite that experienced a revival in the 1960s.

(Quick Quiz: 1. What  year was the game of LIFE created?
Bonus: 2. What was the original name?)

 

We recently discovered this cool, interactive webpage for learning more about U.S. history through census facts. It’s called The American Family Through Time and you can “play” it here free at Archives.com.

This clever page uses census data to show how American life has changed over the course of 220 years (and 23 censuses). You can click on decade-by-decade summaries on the “gameboard.” In addition to the census questions, you’ll find some fun now-and-then comparisons for housing, education and occupations. Great for kids of all ages!

Quick Quiz Answers:
1. 1860
2. The Checkered Game of Life

Backblaze Security Gets Even Better for Computer Backup

We already trust Backblaze as the official cloud-based computer backup service for Genealogy Gems. Now they’ve added another optional layer of security: even better!Backblaze extra security

Recently Backblaze, our computer backup service and a sponsor of the Genealogy Gems podcast, let us know that we can now activate an extra layer of security to better protect the data we have stored with them.

The feature is called two-factor verification. It requires that we present both our account credentials and a verification code from a second device to gain access to our Backblaze account. That means someone who was trying to steal our data would have to have both our account information and access to the phone that’s tied to the account. Pretty unlikely!

“This feature is available immediately to all Backblaze users and does not require an update to be used,” they told us. It’s also not automatic–you can activate it if you choose.”

We’ve heard from so many Gems listeners and readers who have purchased Backblaze that we wanted to share with you how to enable this optional feature.

How to Activate Backblaze Computer Backup Service’s Two-factor Verification Security

1. Log in to your existing Backblaze account.

2. Open the “My Settings” page as shown here.

Backblaze phone number

Step 4

3. Click on the “Sign in Settings” link on the right hand side. If you already have a phone number set up for your account, go to Step 4. If you do not have a phone number set up for your account you will see this screen:

In the “Verify Phone Number” window, you’ll enter your phone number and then verify it is correct by having Backblaze send a verification code to the phone. That verification code is entered in this window. You can not turn on two-factor verification without successfully completing this step.

4. Once you have a phone number set up for your account, you’ll see a screen like this when you click on the “Sign in Settings” link.

Backblaze sign in settings

Step 5

5. Choose the two-factor verification setting you desire and select “Update” to change the setting.

6. The set-up/change of your two-factor verification setting is now complete.

What it will be like to use Backblaze two-factor vertification

Let’s say you have selected the “Every time I sign in” option for your two-factor verification setting. Here’s what happens when you sign in to Backblaze:

1. Click the sign-in button and enter your Backblaze account credentials.

2. A unique text message is sent to the phone number on your account, as shown here:

 

3. At the same time, a “Two-Factor Verification” screen is presented.

4. Enter the code from the text message you received into the “Two-Factor Verification” screen, then press “Enter Code.” You have 10 minutes to enter the code. If you do this correctly you will be logged in to your Backblaze account.

Why not use it?

backblaze online backup for genealogy Cloud backupThis is an optional feature on Backblaze. Why would you choose not to activate it?

“It is important to weigh the added security of two-factor verification against the possibility that you will not have the second device with you when you require access to your Backblaze account,” says an email from the company. Some users may not consider what they’ve got stored with Backblaze to be the kind of data that needs extra layers of protection. Others may not want the hassle of an additional layer of security.

But think carefully–Backblaze backs up ALL the files you tell it to. You may have personal and financial data in at least some documents: bank account or credit card numbers, digitized birth certificates or Social Security cards.

Consider what works best for you! Our best recommendation is to HAVE a computer back-up service in place. We chose Backblaze because of its reputation, the quality and security of its service and its very reasonable price. Click here to learn more about Backblaze and why we selected them as a sponsor of our free Genealogy Gems Podcast.

Resources

What’s Your Computer Backup Plan? Better Than Mine Was, I Hope!

Dropbox v. Backblaze: Does Cloud Storage for Genealogy Replace Computer Backup?

How Cloud Backup Helped One Genealogy Gem Get Closer to Living a Paper-free Life

 

Here’s Where Can You Get Free Genealogy Records this Labor Day Weekend

It’s a holiday weekend, so you know what that means? Genealogy record websites that are usually only available by paidFree Access to Genealogy Records subscription open up some of their collections for free.  Here’s where you can get access to family history resources this weekend:

MyHeritage
providing free access – from August 31 through September 2, 2013 – to all US Census records.
Click here to Search Now

Ancestry
providing free access to its collection of Immigration and Travel records through Labor Day including:

  • passenger lists
  • passports
  • border-crossing records
  • citizenship and naturalization records

Requires a free Ancestry.com account  Click here to Search Now

 

Evernote for Genealogy: Should Evernote Be My Digital Archive?

Evernote digital archive“If I put a PDF copy of a newspaper article or a jpeg photo into Evernote, can I get a copy back? I am putting them there for safe keeping and an easy way to archive them but I want to be able to use them in other places in the future.”

Recently Pam sent me the excellent question above. She’s been using Evernote for a couple of years, she says, “but not very well.” I’ve heard that before! I like how she’s now thinking carefully about not just organizing her genealogy research materials (which is important!) but also digitally archiving them effectively.

As I told Pam, folks have tried to accomplish this in a variety of ways. Here’s my two-cent’s worth on how I look at it.

First, I don’t save newspaper articles to PDF because you have to have a Premium Evernote in order to annotate PDFs and have OCR applied to them. (At least the last time I looked last week.) Personally, I prefer web clipping the article as a note and saving it directly to Evernote.

I haven’t found a simple free way to export a PDF that has been saved to Evernote back out as a PDF. This is a weakness of Evernote. (Click here for a blog post about this.)

organized videoIf you are keen on saving items to PDFs, I would suggest not bothering to store them in Evernote. If you really want a “note” of the item in Evernote, you could use this technique: First, save the PDF to your hard drive (using my Hard Drive Organization Premium Videos).

click_PDFThen right-click the PDF and “Create a Shortcut.” Drag and drop the short cut into a note. Now with one click of the shortcut in the Evernote note, you can instantly open the document on your hard drive and make any additional notations in the note about the item.

If you would rather save the PDF to a cloud service such as Dropbox rather than your hard drive, you can right click the PDF in Dropbox and select “Share Dropbox Link” and then paste that into a note. This, again, gives you one-click access to the item.

I don’t worry about making Evernote the holding tank for absolutely everything. Sometimes other technologies and services are better suited for the task at hand. But it’s pretty easy to create connections so that Evernote is still your central service. There is another alternative called CloudHQ, which can help you export items, but it is a paid service, and I don’t think the value is there for the price when you can use the method I’ve already described.

To get more answers to questions like these about using Evernote for genealogy I invite you to follow this blog.

Resources:

  • Ultimate Evernote Education abbreviatedEvernote for Genealogy Quick Guides for Windows and Mac will help you begin using Evernote immediately and effectively.
  • Become a Genealogy Gems Premium member to access the Ultimate Evernote Education: a series of videos that take you from beginner to advanced user.
  • Click here to find even more resources for using Evernote for genealogy!

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