Ancestry, has integrated an automatic colorization feature that it says lets users bring make black and white photos more lifelike. The company says it already enables the ability to capture, digitize, retouch, and preserve old family photos, but it is now adding the ability to colorize them with a new tool. This allows users to gain “a more vivid, real-life snapshot of ancestors and their lives.”

The feature comes by a partnership with archiving specialist company Photomyne, whose technology was integrated into the Ancestry app in March to allow users to take photos and attach them to a family tree on Ancestry’s website.

While interesting, today's announcement about Ancestry.com is not the first web site to add such capabilities. Similar capabilities have been available on MyHeritage.com for some time,

The following is an excerpt from a (longer) announcement from newspapers.com:

We’re excited to announce that in conjunction with our publishing partner Gannett, we’ve added 13 more papers from five states to our archives! These papers date back to 1910 and chronicle more than a century of local, national, and international news. Our new papers come from:

Presented by the Augusta Genealogical Society

Augusta, Georgia

When:    Saturday, August 27, 2022

Time:      9:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m  EST

Where:    Online - Register at https://www.augustagensociety.org/

                Registration deadline is August 26, 2022

Price:      $35.00 for AGS members and $45.00 for non-members

Session 1: Guide to the 1950 US Federal Census

Speaker:  Lisa Louise Cooke

 

Guide to the 1950 U. S. Census. How to find your family in the newly released census by using census tract maps, initially available limited indexes, and what the 1950 Census tells us about our families.

Lisa Louise Cooke is the author of several books including The Genealogist's Google Toolbox.  She produces and hosts the popular Genealogy Gems Podcast and weekly videos at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel.  She offers a Premium Membership service at her website at https://lisalouisecooke.com featuring exclusive on-demand genealogy education. Lisa also writes a regular column for Family Tree Magazine and produces the Family Tree Magazine Podcast.

Sessions 2, 3 and 4:  Genealogy and DNA

Speaker:  Diane Southard

 

Session 2: DNA Questions Answered. Understanding the basics of DNA and the terminology that is used.

Session 3: Using YDNA and mtDNA in Your Family History. Learn how both YDNA (thedirect male line), and Mitochondrial DNA (the direct female line) can enliven your familyhistory research.
Session 4: Connecting DNA Matches. How to identify and organize the cousin connections among those in your Autosomal DNA matches. Work together to determine how you are related to your matches and how to use that information to find ancestors.

Diahan Southard is a leading voice for consumer DNA testing, one of the world’s most fascinating, dynamic and socially-transformative new hobbies. As Founder of Your DNA Guide, Diahan teaches internationally, writes for popular magazines, and consults with leading testing companies. She authored Your DNA Guide–The Book and produced Your DNA Guide–the Academy, an online learning experience.

Click here for a program Flyer. 

JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of several programs, which will be free to members in 2022.

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a non profit organization founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979.

This year, California's government approved a plan to pay reparations to residents of the state who can show that they are descendants of those formerly enslaved. Seeking the evidence will be a process, genealogists say.

Adrienne Abiodun knows she is a descendant of a once-enslaved man, named Phillip Branch.

She knows the name of his former enslaver, as well - John Whitaker. Ms Abiodun's fourth great-grandfather, Mr Branch, was born in North Carolina around 1795-1800 and then was brought to Mississippi.

Mr Branch's entire family was enslaved by the Whitaker family.

Ms Abiodun has several close family members in California who descend from formerly enslaved ancestors. Her grandparents fled the south to escape post-slavery segregation and were in California as early as 1947.

A professional genealogist at Legacy Tree Genealogists, she is closely watching announcements from the state.

On Wednesday, 1 June, the task force released a 500-page report detailing how it says the legacy of slavery has affected black Americans in the state, laying out the case for payments.

It will then deliver a reparations proposal in July 2023 for the California government to consider turning it into law.

While Ms Abiodun is based in Florida, her family would be eligible for these reparations. But first, they - and any of the 2.5 million black Americans in California who plan to seek the payments - will have to show the evidence of their relationships to their forbearers.

Ms Abiodun says that while proving lineage is "not necessarily the easiest to come by, it's not impossible."

You can read more in an article by Chloe Kim published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60960524

Records that could offer insight into some residential schools in British Columbia are being handed over to the Royal B.C. Museum. The Sisters of Saint Ann staffed more than 30 residential schools in Alaska, Yukon and B.C.

Archives, which include information about day schools, residential schools, hospitals and more, will be transferred to the museum. The religious group will also fully fund an archivist at the museum to manage those archives.

The museum says they also plan to digitize the records — or at least those that can be digitized. Some of the content date back to as far as 1858 and may be too delicate to handle.

You can read more in an article by Courtney Dickson and published in the MSN News web site at: https://bit.ly/3x8lZvo.

The following is an extract from an article in the MyHeritage Blog:

We are delighted to announce that MyHeritage published 11 million historical records from two death collections that include images: Germany, Hesse, Deaths, and an update to Germany, North Rhine Westphalia Deaths 1874–1938. The North-Rhine Westphalia death collection is exclusive to MyHeritage and cannot be found on any other commercial site. With this update, the total number of German historical records on MyHeritage is 187 million.

More details about each of these collections may be found at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/05/myheritage-publishes-11-million-german-historical-records/. 

As a frequent user of Google's Duo, I was a bit disappointed to read this announcement:

Note: Google's app called Duo (today) is much like Apple's FaceTime except that it works on both Android and Apple iOS phones. I find it to be very useful for communicating with others, regardless of which brand of cell phone they have. Unfortunately, Apple's FaceTime only works on Apple hardware.

Google announced today that it's combining two of its video-calling apps, Duo and Meet, into a single platform. The Verge reports:

Pretty soon, there will be only Google Meet, and Google's hoping it can be the one calling app users need for just about everything in their lives. By bringing them both together, Google's hoping it can solve some of what ails modern communication tools. [...] Over the last couple of years in particular, Meet has become a powerful platform for meetings and group chats of all kinds, while Duo has stayed more of a messaging app. Google promises it's bringing all of Duo's features to Meet going forward and seems convinced it can offer the best of both worlds.

It's not quite right to say that Duo's being killed, though. The app, which Google originally launched in 2016 as an easy way to make one-to-one video calls, does a number of useful things that Meet doesn't. For one thing, you can call someone directly -- including with their phone number -- rather than relying on sending links or hitting that giant Meet button in your Google Calendar invite. Duo has always been more like FaceTime than Zoom in that sense. (Google also launched an iMessage competitor, Allo, at the same time as Duo. Allo didn't turn out so great.)

As the two services become one, Google is leaning on Duo's mobile app as the default. Pretty soon, the Duo app will get an update that brings an onslaught of Meet features into the platform; later this year, the Duo app will be renamed Google Meet. The current Meet app will be called "Meet Original," and eventually deprecated. This sounds... confusing, but Google claims it's the best way forward.

I'll withhold final judgement about the wisdom of this move until I have a chance to use the new Google Duo/Meet. However, I do have some reservations.

The following is from the South China Morning Post:

China has a grand plan to digitalise and connect the country’s cultural resources, from libraries to television channels, into a massive ‘digital culture infrastructure and platform’ by 2025. According to the newly published national strategy on ‘cultural digitalisation’ by the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council, the country will build a “national culture big data system” by 2035 to allow digitalised cultural products to be ‘shared by all people’.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3zt9BYL.

The following is from the MyHeritage Blog:

Just before the release of the 1950 U.S. Census in April 2022, we released the Census Helper™, a tool that scans your family tree and compiles a list of your relatives who are very likely to be found in census records. In the initial release, the Census Helper™ calculated a list of family members to find in the newly released 1950 U.S. census records as well as all available U.S. census collections. Now, we have expanded the Census Helper™ to include census records from other countries, so people with roots in places outside the U.S. can take advantage of it as well — and we’ve added some handy interface improvements that we’ll expand on below.

Use the Census Helper™ now for free

The Census Helper™ is a powerful free tool that offers help with census research and enables you to focus your research. Armed with the list it creates, you’ll know exactly which family members to search for in census records. 

Genealogists were excited to jump-start their research ahead of the 1950 U.S. Census release: for example, Maureen Taylor, the “Photo Detective”, commented on how quickly it helped her. “This is very handy!” she wrote. “I hadn’t gotten around to making a list. The Census Helper™ did it in seconds.” 

With this current update, the Census Helper™ now supports nationwide censuses in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and Norway. 

The full article is much longer. You may read the entire article at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/05/myheritage-census-helper-gets-a-major-upgrade/.

A newsletter reader asked, "How can I encourage people to sign up for electronic delivery of our quarterly newsletter? I am sending out 15 by email and 405 by US Postal Service. Any savings we can spend on other worthwhile activities."

My suggestion is simple and I know it has been effective for others. First, you need to determine how much it costs to print and mail the printed newsletter. Calculate the printing costs, the postage, the cost of envelopes (if used), and any labor charges incurred.

Next, send an announcement to all members that they now have an option: each member can now receive the newsletter at no additional charge if they accept it electronically. That means by email or on the society's web site or both. Those who wish to continue with the printed version can do so but at an additional charge that is equivalent to the actual cost to the society for printing and mailing.

For instance, a quarterly newsletter that isn't too thick will cost perhaps $2.00/year per addressee for postage. Printing might be another $1.00/year. There may or may not be additional charges. In this case, it seems fair that those who insist on printed newsletters should pay an additional $3.00/year.

Those who will accept the newsletter electronically continue at the old rate.

Substitute your own numbers in place of the above example.

The simple method of doing this is to create a PDF version of the printed newsletter. Free PDF software is already included in your Macintosh and in later Windows computers. For older Windows systems, you can obtain FREE PDF software from a number of sources. The expense to the club for additional software is zero and the amount of time required to create the PDF version can be measured in seconds. You can then send the PDF newsletter by email or upload it to the society's web site or do both.

Will you receive some complaints? Probably. However, I suspect the number of complaints will be small. After all, you are offering a choice of delivery options and both are priced according to the actual expense to the society.

As my correspondent stated, "Any savings we can spend on other worthwhile activities."