Fun With my Christmas Present...an iPhone 5s

I can't resist sharing my fascination over the capabilities of my Christmas present, an iPhone 5s.

We went yesterday to the Verizon store, and I upgraded to the 5s, and we installed Linda's phone number on my old iPhone 4, at least until her previous plan can be updated.  I had signed up for iCloud previously, and all of the apps and data (very important!) were transferred onto the new phone from the old phone.  That made the transition really easy!

I missed the introduction of Siri (voice activated knowledge base - ask a question, get an answer) and FaceTime (a phone to phone video conference) on the iPhone 4s and 5, so this has been a new experience for me.

It turns out that Siri doesn't know much about genealogy, but "she" knows how to search for information.  Here are some of my questions:

1)  What is genealogy?

2)  What is the number one genealogy website?

I don't agree with the #1 referral above.  My hope was that it would say Genea-Musings.  Not!

3)  Who is the number one genealogist in the USA today?

Siri missed on that one...my fault I guess for putting USA and Today together in the question.

4)  Why did Frederick W. Seaver move from Massachusetts to San Diego in 1940?

It found my blog, but the specific post isn't the right one.

5)  Why did William Knapp move from Dutchess County New York to Woodbridge New Jersey in 1804?

Siri found my blog post about potential Knapp families, but didn't answer my question directly.

6)  Do you know Thomas J Newton's birthday and birthplace?

Siri has no clue on this one, she somehow found a date of birth for Jane Newton and calculated how old she was.  Why doesn't Siri know that I'm in Pacific time?

7)  Where are my ancestors hiding?

Siri tried to help - she found some blog posts and forum messages.

So that's fun.  I think that it has potential to help with relatively simple things - like county names, distances between places, finding definitions, etc.  At a minimum, there are links to Wikipedia and other resources for the user to click on and learn more about the subject.

I'll keep playing with it mainly for the novelty value.  Do you have suggestions for real questions?  What have you asked Siri about genealogy and family history?

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/12/fun-with-my-christmas-presentan-iphone.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

Ancestry.com iPhone/iPad App - Filters Work!

On my post Ancestry's iPhone App has a New Look (20 August 2012), Branden Neish of Ancestry'com commented:

"I wanted to bring up one additional set of features that you and your audience may be particularly interested in. When you tap on the 3 bars on the top left of the screen, an alphabetized list of all people in your tree is shown. Tap on the "All People" button to reveal several options: Direct Ancestors, End of Line, Living Relatives, All Hints, and Recent Hints. By tapping on one of these filters, the list of people is updated to show only those that apply. Tapping on one of the individuals in the list brings up the tree with that person selected as the focus person."

I had missed the "3 bars" icon at the top left of the screen, and decided to go explore this feature.  Here is what I found (it wasn't exactly what Branden described above):

1)  On the "Family Tree" view of the App, you can see the "3 bars" icon to the left of the Ancestry Member Tree title:

2)  Tapping on the "3 bars" icon, the user sees a list of different "Filter Types:"

The "Filter Types" listed are "All People," "Direct Ancestors," "End of Line," "Living Relatives," "All Hints," and "Recent Hints."

3)  I tapped the "All People" line and saw a list of the persons in this specific Ancestry Member Tree:

I could scroll down to find a specific person, tap on the person's name, and see the Person profile.

4)  I tapped the "Back" arrow key (lower right-hand corner of the screen above, I could have tapped the down arrow on the "All People" line) and went back to the "Filter Type" screen and tapped on the "All Hints" line:

This lists the names of persons with Hints, in alphabetical order, and the number of Hints for each person on the list.

A user can go back to the "Family Tree" view at any time by tapping the "3 bars" icon in the top right of the "Filter Type" screens.

5)  I tapped the name "Love Brewster" which had one Hint listed (in the above screen), but it really had 15 Hints:

I think that this is a wonderful addition to the Ancestry.com App!  This will be very useful to me while searching for Hints.

Thank you, Ancestry.com, and Branden for taking the time to tell me about it.

Note:  I made these screens on Monday night, and had 109 Hints in this database at that time.  Today, when I checked the App again, I have 4,023 Hints!  I wonder what happened?  Many of my Massachusetts colonials have over 20 Hints.  Not all of them are ones I want to attach to persons in my tree, however.  I will take a look at the Hints offered for an early colonial ancestor in a future post.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/08/ancestrycom-iphoneipad-app-filters.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Ancestry's iPhone App has a New Look

Ancestry.com has updated the family tree presentation on the iPhone and iPad Mobile App.  I showed some screens from the previous Ancestry.com App version in my post Searching Ancestry.com on my iPhone on 14 June 2012.

Here is the screen for my Ancestry Member Tree that I access with the iPhone:

The view above is the "Family View" - meaning siblings of my ancestors are shown on the screen.  The other significant change to the Ancestry.com App is that the pedigree chart is now vertical rather than horizontal.

If the user wants to see only ancestors, s/he can tap the three dot icon at the bottom of the screen, and only the direct ancestors will appear in the "Pedigree View:"

If the user wants to see the "Family" view, to see cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, etc. s/he can tap the nine dot icon at the bottom of the screen.

On the previous Ancestry.com App version, the background was a light brown, and the bottom and top of the screen was green.  Now, the colors are a dark gray for the entry screen.  There is now a "Back" button and a "Home" icon on these "Family" and "Pedigree" view screens.

As you can see in the top image, the green shaky leaf Hints are still available for users (I don't have many shown because I've accepted or rejected previous Hints already).

By tapping on one person on the Screen, their "Person" screen opens.  I tapped on my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) and saw his "Person" screen:

The top and bottom areas are now a dark tan whereas they were green on the previous version of the App.  There are still four buttons at the bottom - for "Info," "Family," Photos" and "Evidence."

I wanted to see what new Hint that Ancestry.com had found for my grandfather.  It was the 1940 U.S. Census entry for him:

I tapped the Hint itself and saw the Record Details:

It was for my grandfather, so I tapped the green "Yes, Continue" button:

The Facts from the Record were shown with the Residence, Residence Location and Residence Date facts checked.  If I wished, I could have selected any of the other Facts from the record (Name, Birth Date and Birth Location) by tapping the circle next to the Fact.

I tapped the "Next" button (upper right-hand corner) and was told that the record was added to my Ancestry Member Tree:

This process seemed to work a little faster than on the earlier App version.  Of course, I don't have a way to compare times now, since I updated the App.

I doubt that Ancestry.com had a chance to fix the Source Citations that are created by accepting Hints on the iPhone (or on the iPad).  I complained about the non-standard format and extraneous source information in Source Citations Created by Ancestry.com Mobile App.  If they fix it, I will post something about it.

I don't know if Ancestry.com has updated the Android version of the mobile App.  i'll check into it and see what it looks like too!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/08/ancestrys-iphone-app-has-new-look.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App - Post 3

...
The previous posts in this series are:

*  Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App in which I noted that the Media items that I had attached to my Ancestry Member Tree using my iPhone had not been added to the Family Tree Maker 2012 tree that I had synchronized to the Ancestry Member Tree. 

*  Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App - Post 2 in which I started over after my FTM 2012 database would not sync with the Ancestry Member Tree for some reason.  I unlinked the Ancestry Member Tree from the Family Tree Maker 2012 database, then created a new Family Tree Maker 2012 database from the Ancestry Member Tree.  This worked with no sync errors.

Last night, I added more links to historical records on Ancestry.com to my Ancestry Member Tree using my iPhone - and I did this only for persons in the Tree that I had not added links to records previously.  Let's see how we did:

1)  Before I tried to Sync the FTM 2012 database to the modified Ancestry Member Tree, I took this screen shot of the Plan workspace:

The screen told me that I was not in Sync with the Ancestry Member Tree, and that a Sync was needed.  So I clicked on the Sync Now button and waited while the FTM 2012 database synced to the ancestry Member Tree.

2)  It finished, and the Sync Change Log appeared:

The Sync Change Log told me that these items had changed:

*  30 People had Changes
*  2 Sources had been added
*  74 Citations had been added

3)  The Plan workspace screen showed:

The FTM 2012 database and the Ancestry Member Tree are now in Sync.

Note that the "Media processing" ribbon is only partially green, so I have to wait until that finishes.

4)  After the "Media processing" ribbon finished, I clicked on the "Media" workspace tab and saw:

There are now 89 images in the Media workspace, up from 67 yesterday.  So while I added 74 new Citations, only 22 new images were added to the database.  this is because more than one person were linked to the images, but citations were added for each Fact added to each Person. 

5)  What about the Person screens for these added citations?  Here is the screen for Severt Oliver Leland:

There are now seven Birth Facts for Severt Leland, and six of them have images attached to them.  I checked the other persons with Facts and links to record images added last night, and they all appear to be there.

6)  Summary:

*  All of the Facts added and the images attached using the iPhone to an Ancestry Member Tree were added to the Ancestry tree, and then synced to the Family Tree Maker 2012 database.

*  The origin of this Tree started as an Ancestry Member Tree, not as a Family Tree Maker 2012 tree.  So the iPhone to Ancestry to FTM2012 works fine when the starting tree is an Ancestry Member Tree.

*  Russ Worthington had me add Facts and links to images using the iPhone to a shared Ancestry Member Tree, created originally from an FTM 2012 database, and then he synced that to the FTM 2012 database.  That worked.  He reported on it in his  Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPad Ancestry App post yesterday.

*  Why did I have a problem with my iPhone to Ancestry to FTM2012 in my Post 1?  And why wouldn't it Sync for me?  I don't know. 

*  My conclusions here are: 

*** Be very careful how you add Facts and links to historical record images using any of these tools.  *** Keep your FTM 2012 database in Sync with your Ancestry Member Tree. 
*** Don't add content to them separately - use them one at a time, and Sync afterwards.  That way the last one you worked on can be used to create a new database for the other. 
*** If you add content with an iPhone or iPad or another mobile device, be sure to check the Ancestry Member Tree that the content was added, and then Sync the information to the FTM 2012 database. 
*** If you discover that some Media did not download to FTM2012, then try the Ctrl-F5 key combination to add missing media. 

*  The major problem I see for users working with these tools is that if a Shared Tree has added content, and an FTM 2012 database won't Sync with it, any changes made in the FTM 2012 database will be lost to the Shared Tree.  Deleting a Shared Tree, and uploading a new FTM 2012 database,  will result in having to invite the other tree editors and guests again to the new shared Ancestry Member Tree.

Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App - Post 2

...
Yesterday I posted Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App and noted that the Media items that I had attached to my Ancestry Member Tree using my iPhone had not been added to the Family Tree Maker 2012 tree that I had synchronized to the ancestry Member Tree. 

I had several comments to the blog post, and in email.  Russ Worthington and Dave Lynch suggested using Ctrl-F5 to add missing citation media.  I did that last night (several times), and some of the Citation media went into the Media file on FTM 2012 and the Media icon showed up on the Person pages.  I had not known about the Ctrl-F5 maneuver before. 

Duff Wilson (an FTM 2012 developer) and Russ Worthington noted that the Media had worked for them using an iPhone and an iPad.  Russ demonstrated it in his Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPad Ancestry App post today. 

Updated:  Russ asked me to attach some Media using my iPhone in the shared tree that we have, so I did.  He reported on the results in FTM2012 - Practical AP and FTM2012 TreeSync™ test.  It worked fine.

I appreciate all of the help!

Last night, the Plan workspace for my Seaver-Leland Family database in FTM 2012 indicated that my tree was not in Sync with the Ancestry Member Tree.  I tried to Sync it several times, and always got the message "The Last sync failed.  An Error occurred while "Analyzing online changes."  Please try again later."  I waited until this morning, and Russ in email suggested that I compact my file, try the Ctrl-F5 again, and then try the Sync again.  I did all of that, and the Sync still did not work.

At this point, I decided that I had a mess on my hands.  Since all of the recent additions to the file were in the Ancestry Member Tree, I went into Ancestry and deleted the link to the FTM 2012 tree. 

I then used Family Tree Maker 2012 to Sync with the Ancestry Member Tree, and named the FTM 2012 tree the "Seaver-Leland Family Tree."  The Plan workspace for this new tree looks like this:

I went to David Auble's Person page, and saw the Media icons on four of the six Birth Facts, and the Media that I had added, using the iPhone, had been added to Residence Facts also:

I checked some of the other persons in the database, and it looked like all of the Media items added by iPhone were added to Facts and are attached to Source citations in the database.

The Media workspace shows 69 Media items, including 27 items added to the database using the iPhone:

The 69 Media items are also in the My Documents/Family Tree Maker/Seaver-Leland Family Tree file folder on my computer:

My conclusion here is that the Facts and Media items created in an Ancestry Member Tree using my iPhone downloads into a NEW Family Tree Maker 2012 database.

The next step is to add more Facts and Media items to the Ancestry Member Tree with my iPhone to see if it will Sync to the existing Family Tree Maker 2012 database. 

This is important to me because if my children, siblings and cousins add content to the shared Ancestry Member Tree, I would like to be able to capture the information they add without entering their data again.  An FTM 2012 tree that won't capture all of the attached Media, or an FTM 2012 tree that won't sync with a changed Ancestry Member Tree, is not an attractive proposition, for whatever reason.  The Sync needs to work every time so that I and others can add content to the online tree, and I can add content from within FTM 2012.

Ancestry Member Trees, Family Tree Maker 2012, and the iPhone Ancestry App

...
I shared last week that I received my early Christmas present - an iPhone 4.  I synced a 7,000 person database from Family Tree Maker 2012 to a new Ancestry Member Tree.  Then I accessed that Ancestry Member Tree with the Ancestry App on my iPhone.  That worked fine.

I wanted to add the images of the historical records to the Ancestry Member Tree, and then be able to download them to my FTM 2012 database.  Using the iPhone, I went methodically through most of the hints for many of my recent ancestral families, and attached the records to the persons.  The historical record images opened on the iPhone after I had attached them. 

Note that other Ancestry Member Trees are not included in the Hints that show up on the iPhone Ancestry App.

Then I thought - "well, since I added the historical record links to my Ancestry Member Tree, I should be able to sync the modified AMT to FTM 2012 and the historical record images sgould be in the FTM 2012 database." 

Not exactly.

Here's the Ancestry Member Tree overview for David Auble:

The iPhone work added the 1850 U.S. Census record to a Residence Fact, and if I click on the Fact I can get to the historical record summary:

Above the record summary, the system told me that "You have attached this record to ... David Auble in your tree Seaver-Leland Family."  So far so good.

Then I synced my FTM 2012 database with the modified Ancestry Member Tree, and opened FTM 2012 to see if the historical record image is present.  Here is the David Auble Person page which shows the Residence Fact for the 1850 U.S. Census:

There is no Media icon on the Fact list, and there is no Media item in the Media tab for the Fact.

The Source tab on the "Edit source ..." screen for the 1850 Residence Fact shows this:

The Reference note for this source is:

Ancestry.com, 1850 United States Federal Census (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.Original data - Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the), iPhone Tree, http://www.iPhone Tree, 1850 United States Federal Census. residence date: 1850
residence place: Newark West Ward, Essex, New Jersey
birth date: 1817
birth place: Stillwater, Sussex, New Jersey, United States.

While I'm not doing this post to examine the source citation, I can't resist critiquing it:

*  The first parenthesis does not have a closing parenthesis (it should be after "2009" I think). 
*  A space is needed between "FamilySearch." and "Original"
*  The source citation does not include the census place, the page number or the NARA microfilm Roll number for the specific record.
*  The phrase "Records of the Bureau of the" needs closure - perhaps the word "Census?"
*  The URL given for the iPhone repository is http://www.iPhone without any file type.  Is www.iPhone.com a website?  Nope.  Nor is www.iPhoneTree.com or something similar. 
*  Three different Facts are provided by this historical record - the Residence, the Birth Date and the Birth Place.  The birth date on the census record summary is "about 1818," the Fact says "1817." While the birthplace on the census record image and record summary is "New Jersey" the birth place in the record above is "Stillwater, Sussex, New Jersey, United States."  Apparently, the Birth Date and Birth Place for this source citation pick up the Birth Fact data and not the data on the historical record summary.

Back to the Family Tree Maker 2012 database...  A click on the "Media" tab on the source citation does not show the historical record image attached to this Residence Fact. 

I'm really confused by all of this.  I thought that if a historical record was attached to a Fact on an Ancestry Member Tree that it would download the Fact, the Source and the Media item to a Family Tree Maker 2012 database through the synchronization feature.  It doesn't seem to do that.  The Fact is there, the Source is there, but the Media is not there.  I had really hoped that I'd be able to do it all in the iPhone Ancestry App but apparently I cannot. 

So what I'm going to do now is attach the 1850 U.S. Census record image to the Residence Fact in the Ancestry Member Tree and see if that synchronizes with FTM 2012 and shows up in the iPhone Ancestry App.  I'll report on that effort next time.

I am disappointed that the Source citations don't reflect the information on the historical record, and that there are text and punctuation errors for the iPhone generated Facts.

Does anyone have any experience using the iPhone Ancestry App and having the record image synced to their Family Tree Maker 2012 tree?  If so, please let me know how you did it!  I have lots more to do.