UpFront with NGS: Google

Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

10 August 2015

Google Translate App -- Seems like this would be a wonderful family history research tool!

The headline caught my eye -- See the world in your language with Google Translate. My first thought was not my upcoming trip to Columbia, since I’ll have a real-time translator in the form of my Spanish-speaking daughter, and it was genealogy!

Most of us have heritage that spans the globe which means that we are often stymied by not being able to read something just because it’s not in our native language!

I often use Google Translate on my computer to facilitate my understanding of non-English terms and content or when I’ve needed to translate from English into another language to send an email requesting research support.

Well, I don’t always have my computer with me (or tablet or any of the techy toys that don’t fit in a pants pocket!) or if I do, I might not have easy access to WIFI (yes I could set up a WIFI hotspot on my phone and it’s all becoming rather involved at this point) and yet I do always have my cell phone (set on vibrate as any good library/archive researcher does) with me!

Using the link in the blog post, I downloaded the app to my cell phone. Obviously, you can also go to the "play store” (for Android phones) or equivalent, search on the app, and download that way. Do know that on my cell phone it is called Translate – I was looking for Google Translate & so it took a bit of elimination to figure out which app (my phone comes with an app called S Translate – wouldn’t you know?!?!).

To test it – I tried two things both in Finnish.

+ a column heading from an old Finnish document which said Admitterade

+ the heading from the Finnish Archives website, which says Arkistolaitos. I picked this because when you select “In English” for the page, this actually isn’t translated.

Using the app and taking an image of my first test item was not a success. I got the response No Finnish text found. To be fair though, Google translate on the web couldn’t handle it either because it happens to be a Swedish word. During select periods of times and in select areas of Finland (true even today), the official language was Swedish and not Finnish. Lesson learned – the correct language identification helps!

The app still didn’t recognize the word and so I used the typing feature. When I did that, it suggested that I really wanted admitterad though the English translation was also admitterad. So, a bust. Though, you can click on a speaker icon and have your phone pronounce the word selected. I thought that was kind of neat. If I couldn’t translate it I could at least hear it pronounced!

For my second test, I did have success. The app translated an image of the word Arkistolaitos as Archive Department.

Do know that you will need to download language packets (you will be prompted) for many languages. The app indicated whether this is required or not when you select a language.

Don’t forget to say what language! It can auto detect if you don’t know and otherwise, I do suggest choosing a language. The default for me ended up being Spanish to English and so obviously, a Finnish word was a non-starter.

Obviously, I did not strenuously test this app and the photo image capability. And, I had mixed success.

I do possibly have some colonial North Carolina German-language church records in my research future ... maybe I’ll have more success with those!

Did you try the app? Did you have success using the photographed image method? Can you see using it real-time while doing family history research when computer-less?

Editor’s Note: Upfront with NGS posts on related topics -- Global Name Translation (TM) Technology launched by MyHeritage [2015], Globalism in Genealogy Webinars! Foreign to us languages are less of a barrier than ever before! [2013], and Bye bye Babel: Breaking language barriers online [2012]

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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30 May 2014

Upfront Mini Bytes – Ashkenazic Jews, The Vault, Congregational Archive, British WWI Army Diaries, Google Newspaper Archive, Canadian Parliament, Durham (NC), American-Canadian Marriages

Welcome to our newest edition of our periodic feature Upfront Mini Bytes. In Upfront Mini Bytes we provide eight tasty bits of genealogy news that will help give you a deeper byte into your family history research. Each item is short and sweet. We encourage you to check out the links to articles, blog posts, resources, and anything genealogical!

We hope you found the past editions helpful. Use your favorite search engine with “Upfront with NGS” “Mini Bytes” or use this Google search link.

Do you have questions, suggestions for future posts, or comments? Please post a comment or send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

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Understanding of the origin of a surname can be very helpful as we research our ancestors. If you are researching Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry, consider reading Here's The Fascinating Origin Of Almost Every Jewish Last Name (Business Insider). [1 June 2014, Editor's note: the hyperlink to this article has been disabled. The article as originally written and as edited has been found to be filled with assertions which are non-referenced/sourced, myths, and contain untruths and inaccuracies. Rather than perpetuate this error-filled content, Upfront with NGS hopes to soon post an editorial about this article and the critical reaction it received from the community.]

If you don’t read The Vault on Slate.com with posts by Rebecca Onion, you might want to add it to your list. It is a neat blog where interesting historic information is often posted – typically in the form of a visual graphic that tells a story. Some examples are: Some Everyday Words That Meant Really Different Things to Early American Colonists, Chart Shows Occupations of Soldiers Most Likely to Be Rejected by the Union Army. (Sorry, Editors, Barkeeps, and Tailors.), and A Map of Hundreds of Noise Complaints in 1920s Manhattan, and Four Other Stupendous Digital History Projects. You can access the blog version here, which gives you a sense of the esoteric and interesting history tidbits shared.

Church archives and their records are fascinating. For some ancestors, early mentions in church records may be the only documentation of their existence, especially if they were landless, female, or just generally “under the radar” of who was documented. If you had practicing Congregationalist ancestors who lived in New England in the Colonial Era, check out the Congregational Library & Archives History Matters digital collection.

British Army war diaries (1914-1922) are online with more to be added. These are British Army unit war diaries for both Flanders and France. Note that these are not personal diaries.

Though the Google news archive of newspapers is no longer being added to, this doesn’t mean that you can’t access its really neat historic archives. Go to this page and you will see a list of all newspapers (or you can search for a title). Select a newspaper of interest and then you can browse the available issues. You can also search through the newspapers though I suggest you put the name of the newspaper in quotes along with your search term. The absence of a result may not truly mean that there is no matching content. Between the vagaries of the search feature and OCR indexing technology, don’t completely trust the search feature!

If you want a view of the Canadian Parliament in action, the historical debates (in English and French) of both the Senate and the House of Commons from 1867-mid 1990s are now online. Who knows, maybe a member of your family was a topic of conversation either directly or as part of a group impacted by the outcome of a debated topic.

Community digitization projects are always fascinating. Durham (NC) has a project, Digital Durham that includes Personal Papers, Business Records, Maps, Photographs, Printed Works, Miscellany, Public Records, and Audio all accessible online thanks to funding from Duke University and the North Carolina State Library.

The Maine Franco-American Genealogical Society has created a summary of American-Canadian Marriages 1599-1984 that reflects “Marriages from Canadian Parishes with American descendants.”

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

24 September 2013

Using Google Search for Different Countries -- a Neat Genealogical Research Tool!

Created using Wordle, http://www.wordle.net/create

Though there are many search engines out there, I still like to use Google Search. Part of the reason is that I do like to get “results” that are not in English and are not on “traditional” genealogy websites.

And, periodically, I will get results in a language other than English and using Google Translate in conjunction, I can typically get the “jist” of the information to be found on such a non English page.

I have now learned via Genealogy in Time’s post “A Country Guide to Google Search Engines” that I can actually search on country-specific search engines.

This was kind of a “duh” moment for me. Given that in the last year I have traveled to Canada, Mexico and Spain and inadvertently ended up on the Google version available in each of those countries, you think that I would have made the “connection” that I could force my browser to mimic that experience. Page 3 of the aforementioned article includes a list of those countries for which there is a Google Search Engine and also those countries/languages for which Google has translation capabilities.

Here I was so proud of myself in that I was “seeing” non-English results and translating them and, as they say, that is only the “tip of the iceburg” as far as really delving into that information that might be available to myself and other researchers via country-specific internet searches.

Though I did have to laugh that even on Google.pl (the Polish version of Google) when I searched on “Wola Pietrusza” + Barna, I ended up on my own website and family research. That said, when I searched on Google.fi (the Finnish version of Google) for Kujanpää + Ylistaro, I did see some of my own research again and this time though, there were many more pages which clearly are about members of the same Kujanpää family as researched by native Finns!

Have you used non-US Google Search engines?

Did you make a neat discovery?

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

07 August 2012

How Google Images can help you research your family history like never before

Unfortunately, we have photos where people maybe labeled or places maybe labeled and sometimes there are no labels and so we are scratching our head to try and figure out “where” a photo was taken and of course possibly “about when” and “who” is always nice!

My grandmother had some photos from my grandfather’s side (long-deceased) that she shared with me. Unfortunately, none of them are labeled, though based on other photos, I was able to “identify” some of the “who!” Except, there is one photo which has always bugged me because I’m not recognizing the “who” and I can’t quite figure out the “where” which might then help me narrow who participated. I know England. Probably Lancashire. Possibly the Manchester/Oldham/Chadderton area and even knowing it was a “Temperance Hotel,” I have not yet been able to place it? I have a few others and this is the one that has bugged me the most!

Well, I just read an article about using Google Images and how it might help with the “where!”

The web has made tracing our family histories more accessible and more affordable and, indeed, an increasing number of us are using the web to find out more about our past. Yet, even though our past is now more accessible few of us have the time to spend deep in research and many of us don’t know where to start.

Here is one simple technique, using Google Images, Google Maps, and Google Streetview, that can help you learn more about your past and give you more information about your relatives’ lives.

Read the full article by Piers Dillon Scott.

Did this help you? Share your successes? Or, share a method that has worked well for you when trying to figure out “where” for a family photo!

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

23 September 2011

Google News Archive - Gone for Good?

If last month you were following the news about Google +, Google Maps and many of the other Google services and their latest and greatest features, the bit of news about the final chapter of the Google News Archives may have escaped your notice.

Read what Kimberly Powell (About.com) had to say about this (18 August 2011) … “I was not a happy camper last night when I went to the main Google News Archive page, previously available at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, only to find it redirecting to the main Google page. Today Google News Archive is still redirecting, although it takes you to the Advanced News Search page. Does this mean Google News Archive is gone for good?...”

Read the full article to see what Kimberly learned …

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com.

28 August 2009

Set Your E-mail Free by Pam Cerutti, Editor

You may have heard about Verizon's sale of its internet services in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont a few months ago. Some readers may even be the victims of the sudden switch of their e-mail addresses from verizon.net to myfairpoint.net. Neither Verizon nor FairPoint notified all customers in time to tell their family, friends, and business contacts of their new e-mail addresses. Many people not only lost all e-mail they had stored on Verizon's servers, but they also lost new messages that were sent to their void Verizon addresses. Furthermore, when FairPoint took over those accounts, their servers were initially overburdened, causing still more lost e-mail messages.

A news article now reports that FairPoint may have faked its readiness to take over the Verizon service areas. The Brattleboro (Vermont) Recorder reports that authorities received an anonymous tip, believed to be from a FairPoint insider. This tip claimed that FairPoint created a computer program "to deceive the audience into believing they were watching a real demonstration" of its readiness. Whether or not this proves true, as the article points out, "FairPoint has been hit with unprecedented numbers of consumer complaints ranging from billing errors and service order delays to long waits on call-in complaint lines since it took over Verizon’s phone networks in the three states Feb. 1." You can read the full story at http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_13196920.

You may wonder why this news appears in UpFront. Every reader uses e-mail, and many have their e-mail accounts with their service providers. That is, if you get billed by Verizon, your e-mail address may end in “verizon.net.” If your internet service bill comes from another provider–say, “Comcast” or “Podunk”–and your e-mail address ends in “comcast.net” or “podunk.com,” your e-mail's fate is tied to that of your service provider. If that company were to either fold or even just sell your service area to another company, what would become of your e-mail? The same problem exists for anyone who ever plans to move out of their current service area.

Consider all the places where you have given your e-mail address as your contact information. Many genealogists place queries on various online lists: surname lists, society lists, DNA studies, and many others. They share their family histories online and supply their e-mail addresses for others to share back with them. These will all need to be changed if the service provider changes–assuming the individual remembers every place he or she posted that e-mail address and is given sufficient time to set up another e-mail account and change each occurrence to the new address.

I sympathize with those who dread changing their e-mail to a new service. It seems like a daunting task if you've had the same e-mail address for a long time. However, it is a relatively easy job, especially when you do so on your own timetable, allowing time to notify contacts in a leisurely fashion. For example, I signed up for Google's e-mail service, called Gmail, a while ago. My incentive was a decision to purchase a bundled service for internet, cable TV, and telephone. Other people might be forced to change due to a move out of their internet service provider's geographic territory, and still others may simply want greater assurance of their e-mail's safety. Although I chose Gmail, this is not the only free and reasonable alternative; Yahoo and Hotmail are the other major services, and you may know of others.

When I first started using Gmail, I still kept my old e-mail account active for a transition period. Gmail allowed me to receive messages addressed to both my new Gmail address and my old e-mail address. I only had to look in my Gmail inbox to see all messages. Gmail would even let me send messages that would appear to be from that old address if I wished, though I never chose that option. Instead, I notified all my contacts of my new gmail.com address and updated all my mailing lists and business notifications. Over the next three months I kept an eye open for incoming e-mails addressed to my old Charter.com account. There weren't many, but I sent a notification of the change to the few with whom I wanted to stay in touch. Once my Gmail inbox stopped getting messages of value addressed to the old account, I painlessly changed service providers. Of course, I didn't have to change service providers to reap the advantages of Gmail; you can use Gmail (or Yahoo or Hotmail or others) even if you are keeping your existing provider. The difference is that your e-mail will no longer be subject to the limitations of that provider -- or its business decisions.

Google's Gmail is excellent. I feel much safer storing all my e-mail online now. Google even handles some very large file attachments; a message can contain up to 25 megabytes, assuming the recipient's e-mail can also handle that size. I was also pleasantly surprised at the speed with which Gmail completes a search for messages from a particular person or including a particular word or phrase. In addition, I get almost no spam since this change! In fact, I cannot recall the last time I saw a questionable message in my inbox. The online Help is thorough and clear although the basics are pretty straightforward without consulting it. Gmail has many other features yon might wish to explore, but they go well beyond the intent of this article.

Genealogists stand to lose a lot more than casual e-mail users, should their service providers go bankrupt, get gobbled up by larger ones, or decide to focus on large metropolitan areas as Verizon has done in the Northeast and may do elsewhere. In truth, the e-mail services I've mentioned might also go out of business at some point; however, they have shown themselves to be more stable, more reliable, and more able to handle huge amounts of data. While there are no guarantees, choosing a free, independent, internet-based e-mail provider might give you a measure of insurance against the pitfalls of abrupt business changes beyond your control or even necessary changes within your control. The time to set your e-mail free is before you must.

To obtain a Gmail account, go to http://www.google.com/ and click on Gmail at the top of the page. On the Gmail main page, click on Create an account on the right.

To obtain a Yahoo account, go to http://m.www.yahoo.com/ and click on Yahoo! Mail on the left. Below the login fields, locate the words "Don't have a Yahoo! ID?" and click on Sign Up.

To obtain a Windows Live Hotmail account, go tohttp://tinyurl.com/l9ucsj, locate the words, "Don't have a Windows Live ID?" and click on Sign up.