Found History

For the past few years, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has undertaken a series of public-private digitization partnerships, especially with a company called Footnote.com. These partnerships provide NARA with free digitization services, and visitors to NARA’s reading rooms with access to the products, but allow Footnote.com and NARA’s other private partners to charge [...]

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(my) History of Technology by Verie Sandborg. A retiree’s recollections of a lifetime with personal technology. Roots Television. User-generated genealogy videos. Interesting, but too many ads. Technica. An archive of lego history, including early advertisements, a numbered set listing, and an extensive timeline.

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The tech blogs are buzzing about Geni, a new genealogy application launched by former Paypal executive David Sacks (see Valleywag and TechCrunch for example). Billing itself as “a unique approach to solving the problem of genealogy,” Geni “lets you create a family tree through [its] fun simple interface”: When you add a relative’s email address, [...]

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Found on the floor of the United States Senate: James Inhofe (R-OK) explores his family history.

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I just had an interesting meeting with Marshall Poe, historian, author, and founder of MemoryWiki, a MediaWiki-powered site that allows visitors to store personal memories. Last week, I had lunch with Sarah McCue, who launched The Remembering Site to help people record their family histories. MemoryWiki and The Remembering Site represent two different approaches to [...]

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