(Obviously AI, or "AI," is everywhere.)

I'm not paying as close attention to #RootsTech as usual, but I am digging the MyHeritage cousin finder that they announced. Family Scribe also seems like a promising service to transcribe/summarize audio recordings (though the standard security and privacy concerns stand). I'm also taking a second look at My Family Archive (fka Collectionaire).

A lot of the other "new" stuff I'm seeing isn't as interesting to me, personally.

Anything I've missed that I should see?

#NotAtRootsTech

MemoryWeb just announced that they will be shutting down in a month's time. I'm sad to see this happen because they were a genuinely good company with a solid product that had some real potential. I put a lot of time getting my photos and collected metadata uploaded initially.

Thankfully they offer a very good export option, so effort is not lost. You can download via the desktop tool at https://www.memoryweb.me/download (how-to video here: https://youtu.be/gxcg98jl6cQ?si=jTLdz7PvEbVer6fp).

I'll report back on how that goes.

Just posted a review of Artifcts, a service that aims to help you preserve the stories behind your stuff. It passes my tests for privacy options and export functionality in addition to having a nice UI and well thought-out feature set!

https://findthedash.org/cataloging-family-heirlooms/

I think about the people who have saved carefully constructed memorials to recently deceased loved ones. What happens to their work if they don't see the email or forget to go in and manually save everything? Poof. Gone, unless the Wayback Machine may have picked it up at some point over the years.

I understand offering CSV or JSON exports of the data may not be realistic (or even useful for most users), but it definitely feels like putting the onus of manual backup/export onto the users isn't the greatest thing.

And this is something I go on about so much these days: before you start committing to saving your stories and data to a service, ask yourself, "What if they shut down suddenly? What will I lose? Do they offer a good export facility? Can I deal with whatever loss there might be?"

The Lifeposts service (https://www.lifeposts.com/) is shutting down in May. I liked it for building life stories and timelines for ancestors and relatives, though I didn't use it all that much.

Probably a good thing because the only export/backup options they're offering are "go through and manually print a PDF of everything" or "save the page to the Wayback Machine," neither of which are terribly helpful.

And I'll be darned if it didn't do just that. Not only is it taking legalese from the 1800s and summarizing it in an easy-to-read way, it's somehow overcoming the messy transcription.

I feel like this is one of the less evil uses of AI that I might be able to get behind.

It was far from perfect, but I didn't do anything to clean it up. I took the text, pasted into Copilot (which uses ChatGPT) and asked, "I've got this transcribed text of a land deed that is somewhat messy and hard to read. Summarize this following text so that an eighth grader would understand it."

Here's the thing: even when transcribing the text of a land deed, the text is often so dense and written in a legal hand such that it's nearly impeneterable, even if the transcription is 100% accurate (which it isn't).

Then, I had a thought.

I started by grabbing some AI-transcribed text from a land deed on FamilySearch.

When it comes to the use of AI in genealogy (hold on! don't tune out just yet!), I don't get all that excited by AI biographies, image generation, or talking ancestors. Those things are all fine, but still feel more like parlor tricks than anything all that useful. However, I can definitely see its usefulness in record transcription, particularly long handwritten records like land deeds and probate records. #Genealogy

@david @emilyhegarty I've found that sometimes it takes finding that right cousin whose parents ended up inheriting all the photos... the problem is sometimes they're the second or third cousins we don't know so well (or at all).

@emilyhegarty @david That's a good idea because you can revisit it each year with a new set of photos, but keeping all the events in place. Nice! (Mind if I add that to the page, with credit?)

I started a new post outlining some various family history-themed gifts I've given to family over the years. https://findthedash.org/family-history-gift-ideas/

I'm curious to hear from others about what you've given and has been well received,

Another new FamilySearch feature I learned about today is their updated cemetery search, which uses data from both Find a Grave and Billion Graves. Log in, go to https://www.familysearch.org/en/cemeteries/ and then scroll down to "Explore the Map" and click "Try It." You'll initially see a map of cemeteries near you, but then you can filter to show ones that have just your relatives! This could be super useful for travel.

(Standard "FS family tree errors may apply" warning.)

The FamilySearch full-text search is pretty amazing, too. It's only a few limited datasets, but within a few minutes I was able to find loads of land deeds related to my fourth great grandfather. I'd say the handwriting was about 75-80% accurate, which is pretty amazing. And finding that record allowed me to add some previously unknown spouses for his children and even a set of grandchildren.

You can try it now by going to the FamilySearch Labs and turning it on. https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/

I really enjoyed Devon Noel Lee's #RootsTech talk "From Research to Draft: Rapidly Writing Your Ancestor's Story." I've already done a lot of this work with my own ancestors, but I really like her document-by-document approach and may give it a shot for some short chapters I need to revisit.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/from-research-to-draft-rapidly-writing-your-ancestors-story?lang=eng

It may turn out to be the biggest news to come out of RootsTech 2024: full-text searching of handwritten documents is available now in experimental form at FamilySearch -- with more coming in the future. #genealogy #rootstech https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2024/02/29/gamechanger/

The search does act in a funky way for me, though - the search from the front page seems to clear and bring up all items. I then need to re-search the term on the results page.

One of the more interesting new (to me, at least) companies in the #RootsTech2024 virtual expo hall is EphemeraSearch (https://www.ephemerasearch.com/?rt) which looks to index the handwriting on postcards sourced from eBay and multiple other postcard marketplaces. What a fantastic way to potentially stumble upon a physical artifact from an ancestor.