Kindo Family Blog

In my book,Genealogy Online 8th Edition, the first chapter is about how to begin your genealogy project. For a detailed description, read my book ;D. But here is a short version of how to get started.

To begin your genealogy, begin with yourself.  Collect the information that you know for certain about yourself, your spouse, and your children. The data you want are birth, marriage, graduation, and other major life milestones. The documentation would ideally be the original certificates; such documents are considered primary sources. A primary source is an original piece of information that documents an event: a death certificate, an adoption order, a birth certificate, a military record, a marriage license,  a divorce decree, etc. Photographs, with the people in them identified and the date on back, can also be valuable. Such documents are considered primary sources because they reflect data recorded close to the time and place of an event.

If possible, scan in your sources of information on your immediate family.

Now, you’re ready to begin gathering data on one surname. A good place to begin is interviewing family members—parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws. Ask them for stories, names, dates, and places of the people  and events in the family.  It’s a good idea, and lots of fun, to record these interviews. You’ll cherish the audio or video later, I promise.

You can also gather secondary sources to expand your information: A secondary source is a source that may cite an original source but is not the source itself: an obituary, wedding story, or birth notice in a newspaper; a printed genealogy; a Web site genealogy, etc.  When possible, get documents to back up what you’re told. Family Bibles, newspapers, diaries, wills, and letters can help here. A good question to ask at this point is whether any genealogy of the family has been published. Understand that such a work is still a secondary source, not a primary source. However, if such a genealogy has good documentation included, citing primary sources, you might find it a great help.

Now you’ve got a good start on your genealogy!

The Swedish newspaper GÖTEBORGS-POSTEN has published a two page article about Nils and Kindo in their section about people. The headline reads something like this: “Nils is planting trees on the Internet.”

Yeah, not only Nils, Kindo allows everybody to start his family tree on the Internet Thanks anyway to London-based journalist Susan Gotensparre for coming over to our office, taking all those nice pictures and writing an interesting article.

Something funny to add: As you can see from the picture below, he has come a long way

Eight years ago I was touring France  with a group of 30 students (including my two children), three teachers and about 5 other adults. We learned so much about records and history in France! If you have some French genealogy, you might want to check out these sites:

• Footnote has some documents related to the Bastille
• This site has a list of all those executed by the guillotine. It’s in French, so you may need to translate it.
• Alliance Genealogie is another French site
• Notre Temps.com is a French portal aimed at seniors, with a Genealogy Beginners Guide. It has searches of several French databases and articles highlighting genealogy. This site is exclusively in French.
• The French president’s site has a page (in English) on the history of 14 July.
• Cyndi’s List has a whole page of links related to France.
• This clip from Casablanca c’est formidable!
• And this site has the French National Anthem’s history and lyrics.

With Kindo’s successful Hindi launch let us take a look at the various ways to enable Hindi support on Windows and Mac environment.

Windows XP

Enable support for Indian languages (Indic) on your computer. Windows XP has inbuilt Indian languages features. If you enable these features, you will be able to view the Hindi pages much better. You must have at least 10 MB of free hard disk space. Before starting, please close any open programs.

1. Launch Control Panel (from the Start button)
2. Go to Regional and Language Options.
3. Select the Languages tab.
4. Check (click) the line marked Install files for complex scripts and right to left languages (including Thai) When you check this line, a new window will appear, which will give a list of languages that will be installed. This list includes Indic. (You need atleast 10MB of hard disk space and need to restart you computer).

If Windows XP users are unable to read Hindi text on the website:

* Go to View menu of your browser followed by the Encoding submenu
* Select Unicode (UTF-8) option. If the Autoselect option is available check it.

The above steps will allow Winxp users to view Hindi
For writing in Hindi you can download Baraha Software.

For instructions on Hindi support for Mac please visit the following link.

The Kindo team is proud to announce that we are now available in ‘Hindi’ which is amongst the most widely spoken languages across the world. We have also become one of the first social network in Hindi at all.

The successful Hindi launch is a collaborative effort of our dedicated translation & development team members who have worked to ensure the smooth rollout. So far no social network has paid much attention to Hindi, but for Kindo it was an easy choice. Hindi is among the top 5 languages spoken in the world, with over 500 million native speakers, 330 million in India alone. Of India’s Internet users, 44% prefer Hindi to English on the net.

Nils Hammar said, “We’re excited about this launch”. “We believe Internet access and usage will grow among Hindi speakers over the next few years, and that many Indians will want to use the service in their mother tongue. Apart from connecting typical Indian homes, Kindo will provide great assistance to families of many Indians who are based all over the world. Kindo is meant for all generations so it’s Important to make everyone feel at home.”

For Indians, the family is central to the daily life, which is another reason why Kindo decided to launch in Hindi.

To make this release a reality, the translation team has looked towards multiple issues like installation of the correct fonts-package on operating systems (Windows & Mac), cross-browser compatibility with Hindi (Mozilla Firefox and IE). The structured approach to ensure high quality involved the usage of multiple translation interfaces like google’s indic and translate engine.

What some German archeologists have discovered might well be seen as the oldest family tree ever. A teacher from Förste and an engineer from Nienstedt in the German “Harz” region descent from the same caveman, who lived in the valley as much as 3000 years ago.

Archeologists had found skeletons from the Bronze Age in this cave. The two new found relatives had replied to a call for DNA tests that the scientists had issued to people living in the area around the cave.

Guess there is lots of work left in filling gaps in the several thousand year spanning family tree

photo credit: macwagen

Two weeks ago Techcrunch and the Turkish website Webrazzi were holding a Internet and startup event in Istanbul and Kindo was part of it. Our Turkish colleague Oguzhan was invited to the Istanbul meetup which is part of a whole European tour initiated by Techcrunch UK host Mike Butcher.

So Oguzhan – who is also taking care of our Turkish blog – was presenting Kindo and our activities in the Turkish market in a brief presentation from the panel. He did a great job and the attendees liked his talk as well. Both is proven in a nice 10 minute video of his presentation. Though we couldnt embed the video into this blog, you can have a look at it here:
http://televidyon.com/p/364/startup-kindocom

And you can now see Oguzhan presenting Kindo directly on our blog:

The event was funded by a series of sponsors, one of which was xing, who wrote about the meetup on their blog and whose pic we are borrowing here (hope you guys dont mind)

Hopefully, some of you have noticed me being absent from this blog in the last weeks (You should have noticed if you read the German blog as well). I have been on sumer holiday in South America. Our plan was to visit the sister of my girlfriend in Ecuador and then fly with her to Peru and then travel all the way down through Bolivia to Santiago de Chile. What my (kind of) sister in law did not know was that we had inviter her brother as well, who was waiting for her (and us) at the arrivals of Lima airport. It was quite emotional… imagine seeing your brother again after a year and at a place where you would never have expected him to be

The three of us had travelled for a week already, but after some tears of joy she realized that the next two weeks it would be four of us. We went on to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, the summit of a 6080 meter mountain close to LaPaz, the salt deserts of Bolivia and the sand(boarding) desert in Chile.
And finally we went on a roadtrip along the famous Panamericana all the way to Santiago.

The Kindo team hopes you enjoy your holidays, if they are still to come. If you don’t have any no worries: Even I am back at my desk now and have to walk to the Tube in the rain every day

Scams in genealogy are as old as the hobby itself. Many of the time honored ones (which I’ll cover in a minute) have moved from junk mail and classified ads to online. Others are brand new, taking advantage of the fact that on the Internet, no one knows if you’re a skunk. Here are a few of the more common ones.

The complete family history of [your surname here]! These scammers have been operating by regular mail, classified ads and online all my lifetime. For an exorbitant amount of money, you get a hard-bound book that is a mass-produced, glorified phone directory of randomly selected names, accompanied by a brief generic history unrelated to your actual family. This particular scam was run by Halberts of Ohio for years, by bulk surface and email, until they finally were run out of business by widespread reports of what they were really selling. However, it may reappear at any time; be forewarned.

A closely related scam promised you various junk with “your family crest” or “[Your Surname] coat of arms” and a “history of your family name.” Unless your genealogy can prove you are related to a family enrolled by the College of Arms, you don’t have a family coat of arms. The history of a given surname is often available for free on the Internet; don’t pay for it.

“Guides” and “programs” that only point you to free sites. Some software products and online services claim to be genealogical gold mines, but they really only point you to readily available phone books, compiled surnames and GEDCOMs.

In most cases this information available for free, but the scammer charges you for simply pointing you toward Cyndi’s List, RootsWeb, and Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. Or worse, simply to the many different white pages available online.

The old phony inheritance ploy. This scam is designed to separate alleged rightful heirs from their money by charging them fees for “processing”. In fact a surface mail version of this was popular with scammers in the last century. The victim is informed that unclaimed inheritance connected to his family must be settled, and details on how to claim the inheritance will be sent to him—after paying for various service fees to the informer to handle the lost estate, which never existed to begin with.

A modern variation is the foreign widow who wants help transferring her money to your country. Any time you are asked to send personal and financial information, delete it. Check out this page: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/scams.asp#inherit for more on these scams.

Falsified credentials as professional genealogists. Genealogists are unregulated and do not require an official license. Anyone can legally claim to be one. Genealogical data is easy to just make up, and con artists often do. However, certain bodies do issue legitimate credentials to persons who have passed education and skills tests. If you want to hire a professional, look for certification from a third party such as the Association of Professional Genealogists, The International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists, and the Board for the Certification of Genealogists.

BTW,  I have an appendix in my book about how to choose a professional genealogist!

Spanish striker Fernando Torres might have scored the lone goal in Spain’s Euro 2008 final victory but German goalkeeper Lehman still feels that Torres has a long way to go when compared with Thierry Henry.

Many experts have started terming Torres as the successor to Henry’s throne but Lehman believes it would still take him more time. Lehman played alongside Henry as a goalkeeper in the Arsenal team. He watched Henry’s exploits from the other side of the post and feels that Thierry Henry is close to god in terms of performance on the football field.

Team Kindo follows soccer quite closely. Football fans can checkout the celebrity trees of Thierry Henry and Fernando Torres. There are other soccer stars too including our friend Martin’s favorite Zlatan Ibrahamovic