Have you ever wondered how your family came to be Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran or Muslim or Hindu or whatever faith they may be? I have been fascinated by this question since learning about the conversion of my ancestor Tellef John Israelsen to the LDS (Mormon) faith in Norway in 1857. HisContinue reading “Conversion Stories of Your Ancestors”
Category Archives: Genealogy
FamilyLink Hiring Microfilm Operator / Manager
As part of our effort to turn FamilyLink into the most useful site for people to connect with living relatives and discover their recent family history, we are about to digitize our first major microfilm collection. We have 10 scanners in place, and 3 part time employees, but we need someone to manage this projectContinue reading “FamilyLink Hiring Microfilm Operator / Manager”
BYU Family History Technology Workshop – Wed, April 28
This year’s Family History Technology Workshop will be held at the Salt Palace. NGS has been a magnet that drew all of the annual computerized genealogy and technology conferences to Salt Lake City. Obviously, conference organizers wanted to make it convenient for many NGS attendees and developers to attend as many sessions as possible. TheContinue reading “BYU Family History Technology Workshop – Wed, April 28”
FamilyLink is (or soon will be) For Genealogists
Randy Seaver is one of my very favorite genealogy bloggers. (Click here to visit his blog.) He has excellent insights about tools, technologies, and content that genealogists find useful, and he often provides better reviews (and screenshots) of new products and services than anyone else I follow. He is into genealogy – not social networkingContinue reading “FamilyLink is (or soon will be) For Genealogists”
This Week: Ancestry IPO, FamilyLink Goes Viral, Navigating Facebook Platform Changes
This week is going to be amazing. Possibly, the most interesting week of my career. I’ll explain. Ancestry.com is slated to go public on Wednesday. I always dreamed of being part of that IPO, but I’ve been out of the company (7 years) longer than I was in the company (6 years). But my excitementContinue reading “This Week: Ancestry IPO, FamilyLink Goes Viral, Navigating Facebook Platform Changes”
Top 10 Family Websites – July 2009
via marketingcharts.com I like rankings and lists. This particular chart from Hitwise tracks only one metric — share of visits. In some ways that is more interesting than the more common “unique visitors” reports, which can easily be inflated by successful marketing campaigns. Share of visits can’t be inflated much by spending a lot ofContinue reading “Top 10 Family Websites – July 2009”
Apology to Terry Thornton
Terry, I want to add my sincere apology to Nathan’s. We have made more than one mistake in the 8 days since GenealogyWise debuted. Censoring your comment was completely inappropriate, and the moment I heard about it (I was in a meeting with FamilySearch in Salt Lake City at the time) I said, we needContinue reading “Apology to Terry Thornton”
GenSeekers Wanted
A few months ago I twittered about wanting to hire someone to travel for the next 365 days throughout North America for a special project (which is still in the works.) I even suggested the person may have to legally change their name, in the publicity-stunt spirit of Half.com, Oregon or DotCom Guy from Texas.Continue reading “GenSeekers Wanted”
Near Death Experiences
No, this blog post is not about metaphysical near-death experiences, but I bet the title caught your eye. (As an aside, I read the book Life After Life as a teenager, and thought it was pretty interesting. Since reading that book, though, I’ve seen many efforts to commercialize near-death experiences that I think are bogus.Continue reading “Near Death Experiences”
Top 25 Facebook App and Hybrid Business Models
I remember when I first learned about LinkedIn.com, and was the 4th person to sign up for it in Utah County. Soon I got into a competition with two friends to see who could end up with the most (real) connections. I finally won that competition, but we all ended up with hundreds of connections. But I remember when one of my friends knew they were losing on the connections number that they claimed to be winning on "endorsements." They changed their key metric, so that they could claim that they had actually won.
