Book Review: Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com Is a Winner

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Nancy Hendrickson is a prolific writer–about genealogical research and a variety of other subjects. I recently learned that she had written a book about using Ancestry.com. Immediately, I was interested and I ordered a copy. As soon as it arrived, I began dipping into it, reading a chapter or part of a chapter at a sitting.

Unoffical Guide to Ancestry.com

I have subscribed to Ancestry.com for many years, and use it on an almost daily basis. Even so, in reading Nancy’s book, I have learned many new ways to search for ancestors. Here’s one example: Nancy starts out recommending that a user become familiar with the Card Catalog. I had always considered this to be a relic of library practice before digital indexes and search engines. Her examples illustrating the use of the Card Catalog convinced me to use it often to refine my searches and obtain more relevant results.

On Amazon.com, the book description states “Each chapter includes step-by-step examples with illustrations to show you exactly how to apply the techniques to your genealogy. Whether you’ve just begun dabbling in family history or you’re a longtime Ancestry.com subscriber, this book will turn you into an Ancestry.com power user!” After putting her suggestions to use, I concur.

Nancy also gives tips for creating and managing a family tree on Ancestry.com (with a subscription), and for connecting your tree to others on the site.

List price on Amazon is $19.25 for the paperback edition (see photo), but it also is available in a Kindle edition for only $11.99 for reading on your digital device. (Publication date: 21 Oct 2014; 256 pages.)

Whether you use Ancestry.com at home with a subscription, or the Library Edition in a Library such as the Research Library at the Western Reserve Historical Society , you will benefit from reading Nancy’s advice on using the world’s biggest genealogy website.

Rootstech 2015 Video Archive Now Online

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It’s another wonder of current Internet technology. If you didn’t travel to Rootstech 2015 in Salt Lake City (Feb 12-14), you can now view selected presentations from there in the Rootstech Video Archive 2015

These hour-long videos cover a variety of subjects. Here are the speakers and their subjects (click on each speaker’s photo to view video) that have been made available as of this morning:

Dennis Brimhall, Mike Mallin, and Tan Le, all from the Thursday Keynote Session, 1 hr, 31 min.

Joshua Taylor, 30 Pieces of Tech I Can’t Live Without. 58 min.

Karen Auman, You’ve Master’ed the Census and Basic Search, What Next. 44 min.

Devin Ashby, What’s New at FamilySearch. 60 min.

Diahan Southard, Getting Started in Genetic Genealogy. 44 min.

Thomas MacEntee, Building a Genealogy Research Toolbox. 43 min.

Ann Leishman, Bring Your Ancestor Back to the Future. 48 min.

NOTE: I watched each of these via streaming video as they happened Thursday and Friday, and felt that each was worth my time.

More videos may be added later, so watch this space.

Ancestry Announces 2015 Product and Content Lineup at Rootstech

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Ancestry <http://home.ancestry.com/> has rolled out innovations and new collections in time for the 2015 Rootstech Conference <https://rootstech.org/?lang=eng> in Salt Lake City. Here is the official company announcement:

(PROVO, Utah) – February 11, 2015– Ancestry, the world’s leading family history service, is ushering in the next generation of family history, with the debut of an updated story-centric website, groundbreaking advancements in AncestryDNA that will revolutionize how people discover their ancestors, and the anticipated addition of nearly 1 billion new records to the largest collection of historical records online in 2015.

“We’re incredibly excited about all the amazing things we have in store for our members this year,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry. “In 2015, we’ll be launching some of the most innovative new features and services in our company’s history. We think these additions are going to make Ancestry an even more powerful resource for our existing users, while also making family history easier, more accessible, and more fun for those just getting started. We’re also proud of our commitment to continue investing in new content. Our 2015 content roadmap will be anchored by our expected fall release of more than 170 million Probate and Wills images, one of the most exciting, engaging, and interesting content collections we’ve ever published.”

Over the next year, Ancestry will introduce breakthrough features and compelling content – made possible by powerful advancements in science and technology – that will give you an easier, richer and more engaging way to discover and tell your family story, and make your family history journey easy and engaging, through a highly customized, relevant and historically rich experience rooted in discovery and storytelling.

Major Product Developments

A new and improved Ancestry website will make it easier for anyone to discover and tell the rich, unique story of their family, through new features and site enhancements that will reinvent the ways Ancestry members create and showcase their family story. The new site experience is currently in limited Beta and will be demonstrated at RootsTech on Friday, Feb. 13 at 1:00 pm MT (Room 151) as well as at the Ancestry booth. Visitors to the Ancestry booth will be able to opt in to participate in the Beta.
Ancestry mobile will introduce a full search feature in the iOS app that will empower users to access 15 billion historical records and hints anytime, anywhere in the native app environment. The intuitive interface will make both simple and advanced searches easier, while the presentation of search results will also help you quickly identify and prioritize the most important results, making search less complicated. The Ancestry mobile team will showcase version 1 search in the Ancestry booth and discuss search and other mobile features in length during an FGS class, “Ancestry’s Mobile World,” on Saturday, Feb. 14 at 1:00 pm MT.

Ancestry will also remain committed to providing the best in educational resources with the launch of Ancestry Academy in April. The new resource will offer how-to tutorials and historical guidance to help experts and novices alike. Released as a limited Beta this week, Ancestry Academy will be showcased via demo in the Exhibit Hall on Friday, Feb. 13 at 3 pm MT. Those interested in participating in this Beta should stop by the Ancestry booth for more information.

Continued Growth for AncestryDNA

With a database of over 700,000 genotyped members, AncestryDNA has generated over one billion cousin connections to date. In 2015, we project this database to grow to exceed well over one million genotyped members, resulting in even more and higher quality cousin matches.

Following the successful launch of AncestryDNA in the UK, we will soon be bringing the service to our members in Australia and Canada, and in doing so, will connect the major English-speaking migrations and globally connect families like never before.

Building on DNA Circles, in 2015 we will launch a new experience that will use the latest genetic technology to discover new ancestors without the customer having to search records or build a family tree. This new feature will transform how family history research is done by providing valuable hints to help experienced genealogist looking to break through brick walls, as well as open family history to a whole new segment of the population. Through this new experience, AncestryDNA customers will be able to discover new ancestors as far back as the 1700’s by connecting into existing DNA Circles.
Ancestry Around the World

Last winter, Ancestry expanded the availability of Archives.com to users in the UK, and just last month in Australia and Canada.

Later this year, Ancestry will announce resources for users in Germany and Mexico. With more than 58 million Americans claiming sole or partial German heritage, and an estimated 34 million residents of Mexican origin, the new sites will give nearly 100 million people in the US alone, the ability to learn more about their family’s story.

New Record Collections

This fall Ancestry will release more than 170 million name-searchable images of million Probate and Wills records. The most comprehensive collections of its kind, these records will provide access to almost all wills probated in the United States from the mid 19th century to 2000– an unprecedented treasure trove of information to better inform familial narratives.

This spring, Ancestry will release the comprehensive service records collection for the Australian Imperial Forces – the main expeditionary force of the Australian Army during World War 1. Made available in time for Australia’s 100-year commemoration of its entrance into the war, the historical records will help honor the brave men and women that served.

Also in 2015, Ancestry will make available in the UK, a variety of content collections including WWI War Diaries, Parish Baptism Marriage and Burial Registers, and a collection of Francis Frith historic photos gathered from over 7,000 individual cities, towns, and villages across the UK from 1860-1960.

Professional Research, Award Winning Television and You

With more than 150 years of combined research experience, Ancestry’s professional research group, AncestryProGenealogists, has helped people trace their family trees and connect with the past for more than 15 years. The team has grown to become the largest service of its kind, supporting research for the Emmy Nominated Show “Who Do You Think You Are?.”

AncestryProGenealogists will continue to grow and help solve family mysteries, break down brick walls, and discover the stories that tell you who you are and where you came from.

Ancestry will also continue showcasing family history around the world, through shows like “Who Do You Think You Are?,” “Genealogy Roadshow,” “Finding Your Roots,” and “Long Lost Family.”

“Your family story is a universe that is always expanding,” said Sullivan. “With new products and even more records, Ancestry will provide the most unique, personable, and engaging family history experience on the planet.”

 

FamilySearch brings technology and genealogy together at Family Discovery Center

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Breaking News–An announcement from FamilySearch <https://familysearch.org/>:

SALT LAKE CITY — Celebrating families across the generations, FamilySearch on Wednesday officially opened its new Family Discovery Center in the Joseph Smith Building.

The opening coincides with the world’s largest genealogical conference — RootsTech, sponsored by FamilySearch — that begins Thursday at the Salt Palace.

Beware, the Family Discovery Center is not your mother’s genealogy center. Wednesday’s event was run by teenage youth hosts who showed attendees at a special gathering just what technology mingled with genealogy can do to make your own story a living museum.

“We are creating the Museum of Me,” said Dennis Brimhall, executive director of FamilySearch. The center is completely run by technology and advanced research data. Each person attending the center is given a programmed iPad and is invited to experience seven exhibits that feature a number of activities.

The first activity requires you to take a selfie photo. That will begin your story. Each location will add to that story with information about you, your world around you, your name and then information about your ancestors. You can tell your family story, your own story, and you can even have a virtual experience wearing the clothes of any era you want to experience from your ancestor’s lives.

After you have finished the exhibits, your host will take the information collected on the iPad and will send it to your home email address. You can visit again and again to continue to add to your Museum of Me throughout the years.

“We believe that families can be together forever, and that leads us to the start of the Discovery Center,” said Elder Allen Packer of the Quorum of the Seventy and director of family history for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said the idea is to find ourselves, prepare names for use in LDS temple work, and then teach others the same thing. The Family Discovery Center is a fun way to do that. The target market is obviously youth, but old folks are having just as much fun using the easy technology.

Packer noted the center information changes daily. The LDS Church continues to gather images and is recording them at a staggering 1.1 million a day. Images of ancestors you may have seen today could be added to tomorrow, or new ones may come online.

“We make things that work for youth and everybody will come,” said Scott Stout, the center’s director. “We created this as a lab and have been testing it since last summer. We have had thousands of test subjects. This will always be our test lab.” Stout said there is also a smaller-scaled version of the center in Seattle, and the next center will be located at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Additional areas around the world are being looked at for future centers.

“Seeing all this and finding who you’re related to is exciting,” said Jacob, a 14-year-old youth host. “When I went through my tree I found out I was related to royalty. I know who I am. “When I walked in here I said wow. It’s hard to get bored.”

The center is free, but is currently taking reservations because of demand. To make reservations visit  https://familysearch.org/discoverycenter.

Who Do You Think You Are — New Season Coming Up March 8

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The original announcement from TLC was that the U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? will return for a new season on February 24th. In checking on the website, WDYTYA–First Look, we learn that the new season will launch on Sunday, March 8, 2015.

The eight new episodes will include celebrities Julie Chen, Angie Harmon, Sean Hayes, and Bill Paxton. Here is the announcement from TLC:

NEW CELEBRITIES GET THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME ON NEW SEASON OF “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” ON TLC

The two-time Emmy nominated series is back with eight new hour-long episodes and a brand new batch of celebrity contributors. Executive Produced by Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? continues to shed light on the mysterious, and often surprising, family histories of some of America’s famous faces. The season premieres Tuesday, February 24 at 10/9c.

Today TLC announces half of the featured celebrity contributors in the upcoming season, which includes:

· Julie Chen, who brings the series to China for the first time ever and learns about her grandfather’s brave and generous contributions to his country.

· Angie Harmon, who meets a family member she didn’t know existed, and learns that he fought under George Washington.

· Sean Hayes, who travels to Ireland to learn more about his father’s side of the family.

· Bill Paxton, who reads captivating first-hand accounts of wartime battles in which his four times great grandfather was involved, and walks in his footsteps at the site where he fought a battle in the American Revolution.

Ancestry, the world’s largest online family history resource, is teaming up again with TLC as a sponsor of the upcoming season. As part of the show sponsorship, Ancestry provides exhaustive family history research on each of the featured celebrities, which is used to build out the story of each episode.

Last summer’s season of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? averaged 1.4M P2+ viewers. The series is produced for TLC by Shed Media and Is or Isn’t Entertainment, and is based on an original format created by Wall to Wall Media and Alex Graham. More information can be found at TLC.com/WDYTYA. ‘Like’ Who Do You Think You Are? on Facebook.com/WDYTYA and follow @WDYTYA on Twitter.

About TLC

Offering remarkably relatable real-life stories without judgment, the network celebrates the reality that “everyone needs a little TLC.” TLC’s hit series share everyday heart, humor, hope, and human connection with programming genres that include fascinating families, heartwarming transformations, and life’s milestone moments such as wedding-themed programs anchored by Say Yes To The Dress. In the first half of 2014, TLC had 25 series averaging 1 million P2+ viewers or more, including six series that averaged 2 million P2+ viewers or more: The Little Couple, 19 Kids and Counting, Return to Amish, Sister Wives, Long Island Medium, and 90 Day Fiancé.

TLC is a global brand available in more than 95 million homes in the US and 352 million households in 185 markets internationally. A destination online, TLC.com offers in-depth fan sites, exclusive video content, and original editorial. Fans can also interact with TLC through social media on Facebook, Instagram, and @TLC on Twitter as well as On Demand services and mobile platforms. TLC is part of Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA,DISCB, DISCK), the world’s #1 pay-TV programmer reaching nearly 3 billion cumulative subscribers in more than 220 countries and territories.

Ancestry.com Learning Videos on YouTube

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Did you know that Ancestry.com has literally hundreds of learning videos on YouTube? Here’s what Ancestry.com says about the The Ancestry YouTube Channel 

At Ancestry, we work hard to provide you with the best educational tools available through our Learning Center and our Social Media networks. One of our most popular destinations is our YouTube channel where there are hundreds of videos available to view free, on demand.

I have benefited quite a bit by viewing many of these videos, learning what is available on Ancestry.com, and how to improve my search results. NOTE: You don’t have to be a subscriber to Ancestry.com to benefit from viewing these videos.  Nearly all the information provided applies to Ancestry Library Edition, which you can use free at the Library of the Western Reserve Historical Society and many public libraries.

If you are interested in tapping into this free learning resource, start here: Exploring the Ancestry YouTube Channel, a five minute intro by Julianna Szucs, in which she shows off some of the offerings available 24/7 on YouTube.

Megan Smolenyak Does It Again–Her Report on Stephen Colbert

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This morning I opened an email notification from Facebook about Megan Smolenyak sharing a link. When I checked out the link, I learned that it actually was dated 29 Jan 2015. So what’s a few days delay?

Anyway, the link was to Irish America magazine and its new issue with her genealogical report on Stephen Colbert on the cover. I’ve long been a fan of Megan’s so I immediately went to the link and accessed her article. It’s at Stephen Colbert: One Last Report (It’s Genealogical). You may be aware that Stephen’s “The Colbert Report” on the Comedy Central network recently ended a successful run so he could prepare to take over “The Late Show” on CBS when Dave Letterman retires in September.

I have quite a mix of ancestry on my mother’s side, including Scots-Irish ancestry, but no pure Irish ancestry that I know of. Nevertheless, I found it fascinating to read Meagan’s report on Stephen’s Irish origins.

Check out Megan’s report. I bet you will find it fascinating too!

Note: I even signed up for the Irish America Newsletter. You can too at Irish American Newsletter.

Note 2: You can still view episodes of “The Colbert Report” at The Colbert Report Episode Guide.

 

 

FamilySearch Digitizing Records from Trumbull County, Ohio

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Recently, FamilySearch.org has been uploading digitized images of a wide variety of records from Trumbull County, Ohio. The records range from 1795-2010. As of today (02 Feb 2015), the collection includes 666,927 browsable images. If you are interested, you will find the collection here: https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2065327.

Having this available for online research will be very valuable for genealogists and family historians because Trumbull County once encompassed the entire area of the Connecticut Western Reserve (aka Northeastern Ohio) before it was divided into smaller counties. Many of the early deeds to land in the Western Reserve were recorded in Trumbull County.

FamilySearch indicates that this is a work in progress with the following statement:

Various records from the courthouse in Warren, Ohio. This collection is being published as images become available.

Because I have ancestors and collateral relatives from Trumbull County, I decided to take a look at what is available so far. I found records under these record categories.

Cemetery records
Common Pleas records
Court records
Land and property records
Naturalization records
Probate records
Tax records
Vital records

To see what the images look like in this collection, I delved into Cemetery Records and learned that one of the components is “Grave registrations (veterans) vol 1 1809-1997.”  At this time, there is no index. I opened this set of records and found very clear digital images of journal pages consisting of typed entries of veterans who died in the 19th and 20th centuries. The entries obviously were entered as information was collected cemetery by cemetery. The entries are arranged alphabetically, so it is much like browsing through the actual journal pages. I found two Betts ancestors who were buried in Kinsman Cemetery in Kinsman Township, and learned the exact locations of their graves in the cemetery.

I also looked in the Vital Records section and found the image of the marriage of my great uncle Walter Chase Dingman to Mina Mae Woolley. It was Uncle Walter’s first marriage — at age 65! Mina was a widow and she listed her age as 61. I remember attending their wedding, which was held in her home in Kinsman, Ohio. Here is a image file of the record of their marriage (if you click on it, it will open in a larger size and you will be able to see that it is high quality):

Marriage--Dingman, Walter C and Mina Woolley

Here is how FamilySearch recommends that we cite records from this collection:

“Ohio, Trumbull County Records, 1795-2010.” Images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 2015. Trumbull County Courthouse, Warren.

 

Researching in City Directories on Ancestry.com

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City directories are valuable resources for learning about ancestors–and collateral relatives–in the late 19th and 20th centuries. When I started out in genealogy almost 20 years ago, I had to visit archives and libraries that held printed copies of city directories in their collections to do this type of research. One repository, the Cuyahoga County Archives, had an extensive set of Cleveland (Ohio) City Directories, but they, of course, were printed on inexpensive paper, and they were disintegrating at a rapid rate. Many pages crumbled into paper fragments that ended up on the floor.

Fortunately, a great number of city directories were microfilmed during the heyday of microfilm technology in the middle decades of the 20th century, so they were preserved in a usable form. In recent years, those microfilms have been digitized, and thus city directories resources became more user friendly.

Today, you can do research in these digitized city directories online using various database providers. My favorite is Ancestry.com. You can learn about researching in City Directories on Ancestry by viewing a 17-min video if you go here: City Directories and How to Use for Family History.

Recently, as a test case for searching in the All U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 collection, I entered Wallace Dingman in the search window that comes up for the collection. I could have entered more detail, but for this test, I kept it simple.

The search came up with 28 results for Wallace Dingman residing in various localities on various dates ranging from 1886 in Battle Creek, Michigan, to 1928 in San Francisco, to 1941 in Buffalo, New York. Bingo on that last location! It was for my uncle, Wallace B Dingman, living in Buffalo in 1941 with spouse Betty E Dingman. The entry informs us that the family was living at 78 MIdway ave, and that Uncle “Ding” was working as a supervisor at Curtis Wright Corp. Interestingly, there were 11 other Dingman listings in this particular Buffalo directory, but to my knowledge, no others were close relatives.

I clicked on the side panel offering details about the collection and learned that the directories contained in this database can be browsed. This would be useful if you believe that someone who should have been included, but was not, perhaps because the OCR (optical character recognition) process used in creating the collection misread the name of your ancestor. The individual publications are arranged alphabetically, so browsing is easy to do once you call up the appropriate directory using the browsing search window below:

U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989

This database is a collection of city directories for various years and cities in the U.S. Generally a city directory will contain an alphabetical list of its citizens, listing the names of the…

Learn more about this database

Browse Individual Records

To browse this image set, select from the options below.

State

City or County

Year

Title

Give city directory research a try. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.

Eastman Online Genealogy News (EOGN) Is 19

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This is a somewhat belated birthday congratulations to Dick Eastman on the 19th birthday of his e-newsletter: Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (EOGN), which is available at http://blog.eogn.com/.

Here is a quote from Dick’s first newsletter published on January 15, 1996:

Well, it’s started. This newsletter is something that I have been considering for a long time, but I finally decided to “take the plunge.” I’ve subscribed to several other electronic newsletters for some time now and have found them to be valuable. On many occasions I have said to myself, “Someone ought to do a weekly newsletter for genealogy news.” One day the light bulb went on, and I decided that perhaps I was that someone.

I hope to collect various bits of information that cross my desk and appear on my screen every week. Some of these items may be considered “news items” concerning events and happenings of interest to computer-owning genealogists. Some other items will be mini press releases about new genealogy software or other products and services that have just become available. I may write a few articles about things that are not genealogy-related but still seem to be of interest to me and probably to the readers. This may include articles about online systems, operating systems or other things that affect many of us.

You will also find editorials and my personal opinions weaving in and out of this newsletter. Hopefully I will be able to clearly identify the information that is a personal opinion.

The expected audience of this newsletter includes anyone in the genealogy business, any genealogy society officers and anyone with an interest in applying computers to help in the research of one’s ancestors.

I chose to distribute in electronic format for two reasons: (1.) it’s easy, and (2.) it’s cheap. In years past I have been an editor of other newsletters that were printed on paper and mailed in the normal manner. The “overhead” associated with that effort was excessive; I spent more time dealing with printers, maintaining addresses of subscribers, handling finances, stuffing envelopes and running to the post office than I did in the actual writing. Today’s technology allows for a much faster distribution, and it is done at almost no expense to either the producer or the subscribers. I want to spend my time writing, not running a “newsletter business.”

Dick states that he has followed the original plan “rather closely” during its publication run.

There is one big difference. With the expansion in interest in genealogy and family history, Dick found it necessary to convert the frequency of EOGN from weekly to daily more than ten years ago. He still sends weekly “collections” of all the articles by e-mail to all Plus Edition subscribers as well as shorter, daily e-mails to Standard Edition subscribers.

Dick also includes the following comments about how EOGN is put together and distributed:

I was amused a while ago when someone sent a message to me that started with the words, “I hope someone on your staff will forward this message to you.” After eighteen years, my staff remains almost the same as when I started: myself plus one very talented lady who edits this newsletter every week. I do the up-front work; she then converts my written words into real English. She also functions as a business adviser, confidante, and good friend. She has done this for nearly every newsletter since the very first edition.

Pam has edited nearly every newsletter article despite the travel schedules of both of us; sometimes we both have been in hotel rooms but in different countries. I well remember one week several years ago when I was writing newsletter articles from a hotel room in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Pam was editing the articles from her hotel room in California. (We both lived in Massachusetts at the time.)

As a computer professional, her travel schedule used to be at least as hectic as mine although she travels less these days. She and I have passed the proposed newsletter articles back and forth by e-mail time and again.

Thanks, Pam. I couldn’t do it without you.

In addition to Pam’s magnificent editing efforts, I was also fortunate when Bobbi King (her Association of Professional Genealogists page is at https://www.apgen.org/directory/search_detail.html?mbr_id=1476) joined the newsletter staff almost two years ago. Bobbi writes most of the book reviews published in the newsletter and she, too, has contributed much to the success of this publication.

If you are interested in keeping up with developments of all kinds in genealogical and family history research, you should subscribe to EOGN. You can subscribe to the free edition here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=948986 simply by providing your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time if you don’t find it useful.  To learn more about the Plus Edition, with its special offerings, go here: http://blog.eogn.com/subscribe-to-the-plus-edition/.