New research tool from Barnes and Noble

I've been a B&N Nook user for almost a year now. It is a very nice device for reading novels and other material without color or significant graphics. B&N has provided free downloads of software readers to complement their nook for PCs, Macs, Blackberrys, and iPhones. With these downloads, you can read the purchases you made for you Nook on your computer or smart phone, too.

Well, B&N has now advanced the capability well beyond just reading your nook books on your PC. They've created a new software product just for the PC and Mac that is targeted toward students and faculty who use electronic textbooks. The new NookStudy program is a free download from B&N. Once loaded on your PC or Mac, you have access to your entire library of B&N ebooks. In addition, you can load epub and PDF files into the application from your local file system. B&N ebooks are automatically sync'd with their server, while the locally loaded files are not backed up by B&N.

So, what does NookStudy give you that you didn't already get from the Nook ereader application? It becomes a central notetaking and study tool for anyone who maintains a library of ebooks for research and uses those books for study, research, and reporting. NookStudy provides advanced highlighting tools and annotation tools to the user. It also allows you to copy selections of text from the ebooks for pasting into documents such as term papers and reports. When a snippet is pasted, NookStudy automatically includes a reference for the source book or file - built in sourcing!

How can this be handy for genealogists? Most of us have many ebooks and pdf files collected for our research. As we prepare our research, we often copy material from these documents. NookStudy serves to aid us in our source referencing while we research. It also allows us to organize our materials into logical groups of documents. NookStudy calls these "courses", but they may as well be "families" or "countries". You click and drag your books and files and drop them onto the folders you create to stay organized. You can place books in more than one folder, too.

Check out NookStudy at B&N. You may find it helps you manage your source books and documents on line.

Got your iPad yet?

Just got mine, and wow, this is going to be great for genealogy research. The size of a thin book, the iPad can fit into any carry bag. It's easy to lose it in a pile of books on the table!

Couple it with a small 10 megapixel digital camera with macro and this is probably all you need for research at an archive, library, or town hall.

Believe it or not, but the touch keyboard in landscape mode is very easy to use and effective for taking notes. I've downloaded several apps from the App Store to help with this: Bento, Pages, Dropbox, Evernote, iDisk, Reunion (iPhone version only for now), and Office2 HD. The last app enables you to download, edit, create, and save .doc and .xls files using the cloud services supplied by Google, MobileMe, and Dropbox. In fact, I use Office2 HD as my primary writing tool on the iPad over the Apple Pages app because Pages cannot access the cloud. Pages stores its documents in a local folder accessible only to Pages on the iPad. If you want to use these docs in other places, you have to either email them as attachments or dock the iPad with your computer and sync them to your computer. I'm hoping Apple addresses this serious deficiency in the next release of Pages because the competition, namely Office2 HD, is way ahead of them right now.

Evernote has its own dedicated app for the iPad with limited functionality. You can create new notes and sync them back to all your other devices via WiFi or 3G. Dropbox also keeps your files in sync and allows you to download docs from the cloud to your iPad for local access.

I use Bento to maintain my source documentation and sync it between my iMac, Macbook, iPod Touch, and iPad. As I collect material, I create a source record in Bento for each referenced item. It is a fully searchable database that ensures I have all the proper information needed for creating full source references in my reports.

I've only begun to scratch the surface of what you can do with an iPad for genealogy. Future posts will dig into some of these products and methods.

Bento - nice, easy-to-use database for the Mac platform

I've been searching for a relatively simple to maintain and flexible database for my iMac and MacBook to track all of my digital files collecting on my hard drive. These files are organized in folders by record type and number sequentially. The filename includes the sequential number code and descriptive name. I could search using the Mac Finder for information, but I don't have an easy place to maintain the associated information for the records, like the source citation, detailed descriptions of the records, date accessed, surnames included, etc.

I've tried several systems to track this, starting with spreadsheets in Excel, OpenOffice, and iWorks, but spreadsheets don't provide the utility of a real database. I tried Circus Ponies Notebook last year. That is a very nice note-taking utility with some excellent indexing and search features, but it isn't designed for structured data as much as free-form data and clippings. I entered all of my digital records data in Notebook and used it for several months. It was just too cumbersome for maintaining the structured data I needed for each record.

A while ago I tried a Mac database called Bento from FileMaker. Version 1.0 was interesting, but missing some key features. After playing with it for a while, I shelved it and tried other products. Version 2.0 was released and I didn't think it was sufficiently improved to try again. However, FileMaker recently came out with Version 3.0 for Snow Leopard along with a version for the iPod Touch and iPhone that caught my attention. I bought the upgrade and was suitably impressed.

Not only does Bento automatically read and include iPhoto, iCal, and Address book records, but you can use these records in other databases you create. Bento is a relational database with much of the relational functionality hidden from the user. Enough is exposed to make it useful, though. You can create multiple databases (called Libraries in Bento) and relate records between them. I've created a Respository Library, a Source Files Library, and a Research Log Library. My Source Files Library is the master record for each source item (digitzed record, photo, etc.) with a link to the iPhoto item or actual file on the hard drive and a field with the full formatted source citation. The Research Log Library is a line-by-line entry of each search I do and the results. If the result of a search yields an electronic file, I link that Source Files Library record to the Research Log.

I'm trying this process out for a few months to see how it goes. My ultimate goal is to eliminate most of the paper and hard copy logs I keep with everything on my computer and backed up in the cloud somewhere.

By the way, there is an app for the iPod Touch and iPhone that supports two-way synchronization with your Mac-based Bento libraries. That means data you update or enter on the iPhone will be transferred to the sync'd libraries on your Mac whenever you do a (wireless) sync. The only things that don't sync with the iPhone at this time are iPhoto and iCal Bento libraries.

Check out Bento and see what you think.

Status of my online research tools

I’ve been researching my family history for about eight years. It has been an on again, off again activity — never seems to be enough time to spend on it. I’ve corresponded with many cousins over the years and the one thing I’ve really come to appreciate is the overwhelming amount of information one can collect about one’s family. I’ve used several genealogy database programs on PCs and Macs, but they tend to be rather limited and static in what I could do with the information once in the program. I needed a way to share and collaborate with others researching the same lines without having to go through extraordinary efforts to export and import data.

I also wanted a way to access my research from anywhere, regardless of whether or not I had my MacBook with me or just a PC in a library. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet looking at how others have collaborated and shared their research. I realized that I needed several things to achieve my objective:

1) A secure, online database that supported most of the features of my favorite genealogy programs, Reunion and The Master Genealogist, and that was flexible, scalable, and customizable

2) A mechanism for cousins and other researchers to exchange ideas, data, and conclusions and to maintain an ongoing research log to help others researching our family lines

3) A forum for myself where I could post observations of general interest and entertain comments and feedback from cousins and researchers.

The end result is this Web site, riddickhome.net, and a set of low cost or open source tools hosted on my own domain that tie everything together in one place for family, friends, and researchers to come together to share family information and keep in touch with each other.

The domain and web site is hosted by GoDaddy.com on Linux, using MySql, PHP, and Apache Web server.

The genealogy database is The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) by Darrin Lithgoe built on MySQL and PHP.

The collaboration forums are maintained using the Simple Machines Forum (SMF), a free application built on MySQL and PHP.

My blog is maintained using WordPress, another free application built on MySQL and PHP.

I’m in the process of learning and integrating a Content Management System (CMS) to provide an overall common look-and-feel for all of these applications. The CMS I am using is a free application called Joomla! and is one of the most popular in use today.

So, you will see a common thread in all of these — readily accessible from any Web browser and from anywhere with Internet access.

As I complete the integration of these tools over the next couple months, I will send out notices to family and friends so that you can check them out and set up free accounts so that you can access and share the information on this site. I will also provide my thoughts about how it has gone, if this approach is workable, and how it might be improved so as to make genealogy research and data collection easier.

- Chris