News

This winter, Nicole and I have been hard at work on various fronts. We moved office a few weeks ago, worked with our local printing partner on a quality checklist, and created a new genealogy product roadmap for 2021. At the top of the 2021 product development list: genealogy charts that show multiple spouses. Having charts that show second husbands and wives has been one of the top requests from customers for years. Everyone has someone in their tree who married more than once. Some people have also asked about showing third or even fourth marriages!  What's held us back is the...

One of our favorite programs on TV is Finding Your Roots, the long-running PBS history/genealogy series hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. It would be a fascinating program if it were just about genealogy. In our opinion, what really makes it shine are the wonderful interviews with well-known people who go into the interview not knowing what's going to come out about their families' pasts. It may be touching, troubling, funny, or revealing, but are usually a combination of all of these elements. Moreover, the personal stories of long-forgotten ancestors not only connect modern-day interviewees with their family history, but...

One important task for today's genealogists is organizing and preserving old photos. Over the weekend, I spent a few hours looking through some old inherited photos that I'd seen before but never digitized or checked for important information. All too often shoeboxes of old photos are forgotten in closets or attics, or even thrown away ... but savvy genealogists know old photos are goldmines of information, and a joy to look at, to boot. The first task (digitization) was easy - I lay out the photos on a flat surface, took a high-resolution picture, and then flipped them over to record the captions on the...

When you order EasyGenie PDFs, you may be sent a .zip archive file. Don't worry, the PDFs are "inside" the archive, but you may need to perform an additional step to access them. Here's how: How to open a .zip archive in Windows: For Windows, follow the instructions on this Microsoft page to use File Explorer on Windows to open the .zip archive and extract the EasyGenie PDFs. You do not need to purchase additional software to extract a zip file on Windows - just follow the instructions below: Open File Explorer and find the zipped folder. To unzip the...

Recently, EasyGenie and many other companies have seen a sharp increase in delayed packages transiting through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) network and private carriers such as United Parcel Service (UPS). Some USPS first class packages are taking more than two weeks to be delivered, and even standard Priority Mail packages are taking more than one week to certain addresses.  For this reason, we have the following recommendations for customers: Make sure your address is correct and complete. Assume USPS First Class Mail or Priority Mail estimates are 2x to 4x longer than stated on the shipping page.  Select USPS Priority Mail Express or UPS...