Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

Mobile Monday ~ What’s In Your Genealogy Toolbox?

Posted: August 27, 2012 in Mobile Monday, Monday, technology
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funfair mechanic

funfair mechanic (Photo credit: casper.tromp)

Remember those Saturday’s when your uncle or other male counterpart was constantly” fixing” something? Maybe he was replacing a blade on his handy, dandy, “don’t fail me now” lawnmower that is rolling on it’s last wheel. He could have been changing the oil in his truck, fixing a leaky radiator hose or any other thing he thought needed fixing! He always had a toolbox handy that had his basic necessities inside, didn’t he? Now, I’m not knocking today’s generation of women who can fix things. I make that attempt myself, although I usually do it the easy way by consulting “Google” for my easy fix!

I love the DIY (Do It Yourself) web sites and love to do the crafty things like refinishing old furniture because I see that it can still be used. I recycle! Don’t throw away what you think may be junk, may turn out to be a nice furniture piece for your parlor! One day as I was scouring the DIY pins on Pinterest, I found a unique coffee table made out of old wooden wine bottle crates! But sanded down and stained, they actually gave the room a modern but rustic ambiance to the room itself. It’s definitely on my list of “To-Do’s”! You can view the step by step here: http://diy-vintage-chic.blogspot.com/2012/05/vintage-wine-crate-coffee-table.html I heart this website! Such great ideas, especially if you like that “Vintage Chic” look 🙂 You can also follow my Pinterest page on the left sidebar at the top there is a button! Just click it and see what kind of stuff I have pinned! Pretty cool if I say so myself!

Okay. I think I have rambled endlessly about DIY stuff and that’s not what you thought you’d see coming to a genealogy blog now is it? HA! I fooled you! But seriously, back to the topic of the genealogy toolbox!

I have in my own toolbox, several apps I use and thought I would share with you the two that I use for today’s post. More to come next Monday!!

KINDLE~ OMG! I absolutely love this app! I use it on my iPhone4, yeah I don’t have the 4S with Siri who talks to me, but hey, who needs her when I have all these other apps that I love? I don’t need you Siri-sorry! But since I am a lover of reading and books, but also the more frugal “cheap” type of girl, I look for free or low cost books first. I have several genealogy books stored in my “cloud shelf” that I can read anytime I like. The Kindle app is free just in case you didn’t know. In my Kindle app, I have genealogy books that I downloaded for free, many creative writing books, some marketing, books about faeries and the fey, thrillers, and romance! My latest great read I want to share with you- the book is titled, “Forbidden Romance” and is cleanly written by Clinton Getzinger. You can check out the book and my review here: http://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Romance-Clinton-W-Getzinger/dp/1478248084/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346088256&sr=8-1&keywords=forbidden+romance+clinton+getzinger

Evernote~ Add new notes when you get great ideas or if you want to remind yourself to make that ancestral chart for your great grand aunt that you forgot to do yesterday~ OOPS! I use this app frequently. I have created notes on genealogy blog topics I would like to read about, genealogy correspondence logs, you name it and it goes in there. What is so cool about this app to me, is the fact that you can sync the app on your iPhone to your home computer! Ahhh! How great is that? That’s not all! You can add photos to your notes to give you that creative spark that you had at that particular time, on that day. You could have been walking your dog in the park and an idea just popped in your mind that you don’t want to take the chance that you may forget later. This is why I use this and guess what? IT’S FREE!

What genealogy apps do you use? Please comment below! I would love to find a new app that I haven’t seen or heard of!

Thanks for visiting and “Happy Monday” to you!!

Tech Tuesday ~ Shoe Box

Posted: July 10, 2012 in technological advances, technology
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Vintage Photo Backs

Vintage Photo Backs (Photo credit: HA! Designs – Artbyheather)

Last night as I was preparing for bed, I found myself browsing the App Store on my iPhone searching for free genealogy applications. I found one that seems very promising for the family historian, it’s called ShoeBox. It’s downloadable for both iPhone and Android and it turns your cellphone into a photo scanner! I was so excited to try it out that I did just that, and jumped out of bed like my cozy two bedroom apartment was on fire. Go figure! The things that excite me and it’s not even a sale at the Coach store! (Although, I could use another handbag.) But I’m a frugal kind of girl, so I’ll just stick with the ShoeBox app. For now at least. What is so great about this app? Well let’s take a look..

This app allows you to scan all your old paper photos and send them to family and friends. Imagine having an old, vintage photo of your grandparents that isn’t in the best condition, or a photo of your mother or father from the 1950’s. I love photographs, both new and old. I love being behind the camera more than being in front of it. I think I have more photo editing apps on my iPhone than any other type of installation.

ShoeBox has edge detection where it detects the edges of your photos and also has perspective correction capabilities to make sure your photos are scanned beautifully every time. This is perfect for me! Not so long ago I was going through some of my mother’s old photos, knowing my sister didn’t have many of them. She lives in Florida and here I am in Hawaii. So the only thing I could do at the time was to scan them from my printer or just snap a picture of them with my cell, shoot her an email or send the photo in a text message. I am so very happy to have come across this app, because not have cell phone cameras advanced in technology, but with this app, I will be able to scan the images and the perspective will be much better. It won’t have that glare you sometimes get when you take photos and just see a reflection of its’ glossy surface, it will be a nice clean scan. No crooked photos that I have to alter and crop so they look straight and I don’t have to crop each photo because it has the edge detection built right in.

Your photos can be saved on your cell phone but they are also saved on 1000 Memories, which is the company that created such an awesome app. Really, the best part is that you can scan an unlimited amount of photos, whether you scan 2 or 2,000, it’s still free! What better way to preserve your photos than to utilize this program. Consider it your Plan B just in case a natural disaster were to happen. A fire in your home or a flood could easily ruin these photos and then you would be left with nothing. Photos are memories, these memories should be saved as they are irreplaceable.

Organize your photos into ShoeBox albums, maybe you would like to capture an event like a wedding or graduation, name the album accordingly and you are all set!

Privacy concerns? No need to worry because it has enhanced privacy controls so you can choose whether you want your ShoeBox albums public or set to private and each album has this setting. So say you would like to publicize an album of your recent vacation, you can broadcast this to your friends and family but you have photos in another album that you would like to keep private. You can do all of this with these privacy controls and this can be accomplished all on your mobile phone!

The link to the site is below if you would like to check out the program yourself. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am! I know what I’ll be doing later!

http://1000memories.com/scan

Through The Looking Glass

Posted: July 25, 2011 in ancestor, brick wall, documents, Facebook, family historian, generations, historical maps, Oahu, old newspapers, past, technological advances, technology
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Our ancestors of past generations would probably think that living in today’s digital world of computers, the iPad, and even our smart phones, as alien. In their days, they were lucky if they even had a land line! Knowing what I know now, depending on Internet and my iPhone on a daily basis, I would be lost without them; I couldn’t imagine living life day to day without these items which have become so common in our world today. 

Image Source
My Smartphone



Taking you back in time, imagine life without any technology whatsoever. You don’t have electric or gas stoves, but wood burning stoves instead, you don’t have computers to write your family and friends an email or the ability to share photos, but you have to hand write everything down to the last letter, there was no such thing as a washer and dryer, you had to use an old washboard for every article of clothing you wore. Which by the way, had to be taken to the nearest lake or creek to be washed and you can just forget your handy dryer with your lavender scented fabric softener sheets! And what…no FaceBook? My husband’s grandmother, Evelyn is still in awe, when I show her pictures on my iPhone and she doesn’t understand how they got there! I have tried many times to explain to her what FaceBook really is and how you can share photos of family and comment on them. My favorite part of this is the way she says, “You can do this on the computer? It does that? Oh, how nice!” (Laughing) Oh the possibilities! We haven’t even really started to break the mold as far as what technology can do for us today.

Image Source
Time To Do Your Laundry!



So with this great thing called technology, I am searching and scouring the various websites and resources in search of my family. Making contact with relatives I never even knew I had, all through the use of the Internet and my laptop! Ha! Who knew?? But being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, living on Oahu, I find that I am forever grateful for the high tech world I live in, and being able to re-connect with family I haven’t seen since I was probably six years old! 


The digital world has turned my laptop into a great tool. I now have the power to see through the looking glass (my laptop screen) to the world that was once my ancestors, and see not only photos of them, but also see the homes where they lived, the town where they grew up, the ability to see historical maps as they were back in the 1700-1800’s, searching old newspapers and census records, and so on. 


Today, my research is at a standstill somewhat, as I am waiting to receive documents from a family member that will give me something solid and concrete as far as actual data and birth records. Having contacted several members of my family, who I might add, are gathering photos and documents for me as I type this article. I hope to read and go over these very soon!


Hopefully I will be able to tear down one or more of the brick walls that seem to have stopped me in my tracks. 


Happy Hunting!!