Mocavo and Findmypast are coming together

The following is from Mocavo.

Mocavo and Findmypast are coming together

We wanted to let you know that in the coming months Mocavo will be coming together with its sister site, Findmypast. This will create a single experience for our US customers in a move that aims to deliver a more focused, efficient and comprehensive service to US family historians.

Mocavo's Story
We launched back in March 2011 when, only three months old, Family Tree Magazine named us as one of the best 101 genealogy websites of 2011. In 2012 we released The Free Yearbook collection and since then we’ve continued to publish hundreds of records and archives every day. We’d like to thank you, our customers, for being there with us as we’ve continued to grow.

We are now in the process of moving all Mocavo site content to Findmypast so you’ll soon be able to enjoy everything currently available on Mocavo and more. As part of our 'Free Forever' promise, Mocavo subscribers will continue to enjoy free access to all of the same records that were previously published for free on Mocavo. We will be transferring your account over to Findmypast soon so stay tuned for updates.

What's next?

You don't need to do anything just now. When we bring the two sites together, we'll be in touch with specific information about your account and some how-to guides that will help make the most of the new experience.

How does this move affect you?

• You'll still benefit from the same great content you’ve been enjoying on Mocavo and this will all be available on Findmypast soon. In addition, you'll be able to take advantage of hundreds of millions of new and exclusive US records to further enhance the experience for US family historians.
• Findmypast has more British and Irish records than anyone else and is adding new records from the US and other locales every single week, so you’ll be able to take advantage of these to help your family history search. You’ll be able to explore nearly 8 billion names now andhundreds of millions of new names coming this year alone!
• You can easily import your family tree and we’ll start to hint against names that we find in the archives to help you discover more about your family and even find relatives you never knew existed.

About Findmypast

Currently the home to billions of names, including the largest collections of Irishrecords and British Parish records, military records and the British Newspaper Archive, not to mention the 1939 Register. It currently has a plethora of USrecords and will soon be home to all the Mocavo records once the two sites come together.

Findmypast has a free and easy-to-use family tree builder and it releases new records every week to keep your family history search alive.

For more information

If you have any questions, please get in touch with our support team here or please call 1-866-279-4013 (Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm MST).

860 Million New Records Added To Mocavo

The following is from Mocavo.

Today we are excited to share that we’ve added more than 860 million new records to Mocavo!  Thanks to our partnership with FamilySearch, Mocavo community members now can access information from more than 22 million family trees submitted by FamilySearch users. Uncover a wealth of clues (such as names, dates, and locations) for the people who could be your ancestors.    Search Now Since announcing our Free Forever Revolution, we’ve continually added millions of records, revealed revolutionary technologies (including handwriting recognition, transcription, and photo detection tools), and worked with organizations to digitize offline collections — all with the goal of helping our community make more discoveries than ever. Thank you again for all of your support and we hope you enjoy this new collection.   Have any questions? Feel free to give us a call at 1-866-279-8013 All the best, The Mocavo Team

Inside Scoop on What's Next for Mocavo and FindMyPast

The following is from Mocavo.

Get the Inside Scoop on What's Next for Mocavo and Findmypast Join Chief Genealogist Michael J. Leclerc and his special guest, D. Joshua Taylor, Director of Family History at Findmypast, this Wednesday, July 16 at 5:00PM EST to get the inside scoop on Mocavo's acquisition by Findmypast, and find out more about Josh and the work he does in the genealogy community. Don't forget to submit any questions at www.mocavo.com/fireside. We look forward to seeing you there! Watch Past Fireside Chats »

Free Access to US Federal Census Indexes

The following is from Mocavo.

Earlier this week, we shared the exciting news that Mocavo is joining the Findmypast family. This partnership represents a major turning point in our quest to bring all the world’s historical information online for free. The wonderful folks at Findmypast share our vision of the future, and we couldn’t be more excited to join them. One of the immediate benefits of the acquisition is we are putting the complete US Federal Census index online for free (forever!), making us the first commercial provider in history to ever do this. This means that as a Mocavo Community member, you now can now search each individual United States Federal Census Index to your heart's content - all for free! Search the United States Federal Census Now Not sure where to start? With the help of our Chief Genealogist, Michael J. Leclerc, we compiled a United States Federal Census Guide that is full of research tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your census research. Download your United States Federal Census Guide Our commitment to bring all of the world's historical information online for free has only grown stronger and we cannot wait to see the what the future brings. Thank you again for all of your continued support, and we wish you a lovely week full of new discoveries.  Best regards, Cliff Shaw, Founder

Mocavo Acquired By Findmypast: A New Chapter Begins

The following is from Mocavo.

Today is an exciting day for genealogists everywhere as we're announcing that Mocavo has been acquired by Findmypast/DC Thomson Family History. This is a groundbreaking development for the industry and a major turning point in Mocavo's quest to bring all the world's historical information online for free. The wonderful folks at DC Thomson Family History share our vision of the future of family history, and we couldn't be more excited to join them. For the past few years, the Mocavo team and I have dedicated ourselves to bringing innovation and competition to an industry that is sorely lacking in both. From the very beginning of Mocavo's history, we had this burning desire to figure out how to organize all of the historical information disparately spread across the Web. Not long ago, even with a hard-working and incredibly talented team, our service wasn't resonating with users and our business wasn't working. In October of last year, we decided to do something audacious and bold – something never before tried in the industry. We launched our Free Forever revolution and this became the day when Mocavo’s soul was born. Everything turned around once we put a stake in the ground and stood for free genealogy (and now Mocavo is growing rapidly, putting more than 1,000 free databases online every single day and more users discovering us than ever). We have our loyal and supportive users to thank more than anyone! One of the immediate benefits of the acquisition is that we’re putting the complete US Census index online for free (forever!), making us the first commercial provider in history to ever do this.Search the United States Federal Census Now. The next few months are going to be incredibly exciting as we bring together two companies with enormous resources, content, and technology to bring you more of what you love. I’ll also note that nothing on either site will be going away – just getting better (and quickly!). Lastly, we could not have done this without the support of our loyal community members. We appreciate your dedication and patience, and we look forward to helping you discover even more of your family’s story. Best regards, Cliff Shaw, Founder

Just in case you were wondering... Is Mocavo’s Free Forever movement going away? Not remotely. It’s only getting better. As part of our commitment, we’re now putting the US Census index online for free. No commercial provider has ever done that in the history of this industry, and we’re just getting started. What will change about Mocavo? Mocavo and Findmypast will only get better as we merge an enormous amount of technology with vast amounts of content (and great people on both teams).

Celebrate Mother's Day with a Free Access Weekend

The following is from Mocavo.

Mother’s Day is right around the corner and what better way to celebrate your mom than to help discover and share her story. From now until Monday at midnight, we are opening up our universal search to all members of the Mocavo community. Usually you need to be a Mocavo Gold member to search all of our databases at once, but for this weekend only, all Mocavo members have the ability to search more than 340,000 databases to their heart’s content. In honor of Mother’s Day, spend some time discovering the stories of the important women in your life.

Many of you have signed up for Mocavo Gold in support of our cause, and enjoy searching more than 340,000 databases at the same time. As always, Mocavo Basic users can search these databases individually for free. Mocavo Gold offers you automated discoveries, the ability to run universal searches across all of our databases, and a number of other great features. Join our revolution and upgrade to Mocavo Gold. We wish all of you a very happy Mother's Day and hope you enjoy your free access weekend. Best regards, Cliff Shaw, Founder P.S. Having problems accessing universal search? Here are some helpful tips.

Mocavo Summer Genealogy Research Guide

The following is from Mocavo.

As summer arrives, we enter one of the biggest times for genealogy travel. If you are lucky enough to get away, read the Mocavo Summer Research Guide to discover some key tips and tricks to help you have a stress-free research trip. 

Can’t get away this summer? No problem! There are many ways you can still “travel” from the comfort of your home. Download the Mocavo Summer Research Guide to find out how you can still take a genealogy research “trip” of your own this summer.
 

Download your Mocavo Summer Research Guide Now

Preserving Your Story is Now Easier than Ever

The following is from Mocavo.

In October, we announced the Free Forever Revolution and committed to bringing 1,000 databases online for free, every single day. We’ve kept that promise every day since.

In January, we added 10,000 databases in a single day to put our total count at more than 200,000 databases available online for the world to enjoy.

In March, we reached a major milestone when we hit 300,000 databases and we are still going strong.

Along the way, we’ve been improving our product and launching new features designed to help you make more discoveries, faster.

As exciting as the last six months have been, believe me, we’re just getting started.

Preserving Your Story is Now Easier than Ever

The next frontier for Mocavo is to make it as easy as possible for every one of you to bring your family’s historical content online and available to share with the world. Every family history book, photo, letter, pamphlet, brochure, or directory you’ve ever gotten your hands on; we want to help you bring it online for your relatives to discover, near or far, close or distant. Let’s get every single piece of it online for free.

But how?

Early last year, we announced our Free Scanning program that allows you to mail us all of your books, documents, and photos. We scan in the materials, provide you with a digital copy, and add it to our index. To date, through the Free Scanning program, the Mocavo community has added more than 40,000 historical documents to our search index. That’s 40,000 documents packed with family history that will be free, forever.

But what about the content you’ve already scanned in yourself? How can you get that added to our index? We wanted to make it even easier for you to contribute content to Mocavo, so we’ve completely redesigned the Contribute section of our site.

Now, all it takes is a few simple clicks to upload your documents to Mocavo! We will process your content, add it to our index so that all of the text within your documents is completely searchable, and then you can show off your hard work to your loved ones and collaborate with family members to make even more discoveries!

Wouldn’t it be nice if your ancestors had left more of a paper trail? Upload your documents now and gain the peace of mind knowing that when you share your content on Mocavo, your story will be securely preserved forever.

Upload my documents now

Best regards,
Cliff Shaw, Founder

20,000 New Databases Added to Mocavo

The following is from Mocavo.

In October 2013, we announced our Free Forever Revolution and made a commitment to launch 1,000 new databases every day. With the support of the Mocavo Community, we've kept our promise by adding more than 150,000 databases to our existing collection in less than four months. Today, as a thank you to the entire Mocavo community, we are stepping it up and adding more than 20,000 new databases in one day, bringing our total count to all time high – more than 250,000 databases! Staying true to our mission, you can now enjoy free access to more than a billion of records that will help you discover your story and pass it on. Start Making Discoveries Now Search the 20,000 databases we added today Search all 250,000 databases

Search over 12,000 BMD Databases Birth Marriage, Divorce, Obituary & Cemetery Indexes, and more

Search over 993 Databases from Australia BMD, Immigrant Registers, Criminal Indexes, Probate & Estate Record Indexes

Search over 36,000 Yearbooks Elementary, High School & College Yearbooks

Search over 23,000 Databases from Massachusetts  BMD, Directories, Letters, Newspapers, Personal Histories

Search over 4,500 Military Databases Casualties, Draft, Enlistment, Pensions, Service Awards & Honorable Mentions

Many of you have signed up for Mocavo Gold in support of our cause, and enjoy searching 250,000 databases at the same time. As always, Mocavo Basic users can search these databases individually for free. Mocavo Gold offers you automated searching, the ability to run global searches across all of our databases, and a number of other great features. You can try Mocavo Gold risk free for 7 days. Get Started with Mocavo Gold We hope you enjoy a weekend full of discoveries!   Best regards, Cliff Shaw Founder

Open Access to Mocavo Global Search Until Sunday at Midnight

The following is from Mocavo.

In October 2013, we announced our Free Forever Revolution and made a commitment to launch 1,000 new databases every day. And we've kept that promise every single day since. There are now more than 212,000 databases on Mocavo – more than any other genealogy service – and in fact, more than 80% of what's available on Mocavo isn't available anywhere else.   We've received a ton of amazing feedback and to thank you for all the support, we want to do a couple special things for the Mocavo community.   Instead of just the 1,000 databases we've promised, today we're launching more than 10,000 new databases online for free. Browse all new databases now   We're also opening up Global Search to all of our Mocavo Basic members untilmidnight on Sunday! All of our content is available for free, but to search it all at the same time using Global Search we normally ask you to upgrade to Mocavo Gold. This weekend, as another way to say "Thank You", Global Search is available to everyone. Now is the time to find your family! Try a few searches on Mocavo today

Win a Professional Illustration of a Family Photograph  As you browse the millions of records on Mocavo, it's hard not to notice the beautiful artwork that graces our pages. Last year, I came across the whimsical work of professional illustrator, Jessica Lanan. Her enchanting watercolors breathe life and beauty into the stories of our ancestors. Blending the past and present, Jessica transforms historical moments into elaborate works of art that captivate the Mocavo Community.

In honor of your support of our Free Forever mission, we would like to share Jessica's talents with the Mocavo community by offering to bring your family story to life in watercolor. Perform a search on Mocavo this weekend and you will be automatically entered to win an original painting of a family photograph by our professional illustrator, Jessica Lanan. Our winner will be notified by email by Wednesday, January 22.   Start Searching Now We hope you have a wonderful weekend full of discoveries. Best regards, Cliff Shaw Founder

Mocavo Fireside Chats Now Open to Everyone

The following is from Mocavo.

Over the last few months, we've received overwhelmingly positive feedback surrounding our Mocavo Gold Fireside Chat series. As we start the New Year, we want to thank you for your continued support of our Free Forever mission. Today, in appreciation, we are excited to offer our Fireside Chats to the entire genealogy community for free, forever! Every other week Chief Genealogist Michael J. Leclerc interviews leading genealogists to discuss all aspects of family history. Tune in to get free advice and helpful research tips that will take your research to the next level. You will also have the opportunity to get your very own family history questions answered by these expert genealogists during the chat. Some of our past Mocavo Fireside Chat guests and topics have included: Using photographs and images for research with Maureen Taylor; Exploring the world of railroad workers with Paula Stuart-Warren; Tracking down your ancestors with locality experts such as Dr. Michael Lacopo (Pennsylvania and Germany); Kris Rzepczynski (Michigan), and Diane Gravel (New Hampshire). Watch previously recorded Fireside Chats Now

Next Wednesday, January 15, 2014, at 1:00 PM EDT join Michael and his special guest, Thomas MacEntee from GeneaBloggers.com for the first Mocavo Fireside Chat of 2014. Thomas MacEntee is a genealogy professional specializing in the use of technology and social media to improve genealogy research as a way to connect with others in the family history community. Michael and Thomas will discuss what the future may hold for technology and genealogy as well as how to start your own genealogy blog. Don't forget to submit your burning genealogy questions to fireside@mocavo.com before Thursday January 9th, at 9:00AM EDT. To view this event, simply click on the following link at 1:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, January 15th.

Mocavo's Handwriting Recognition Breakthrough

The following is from Mocavo.

A little something we’ve been working on…

A little over a year ago, Mocavo acquired ReadyMicro and the incredible mind known as Matt Garner. One of Matt’s lifelong passions and curiosities is to enable computers to read historical handwritten documents to bring genealogy search to the next level. It’s well known in the genealogy industry that historical handwriting recognition is the Holy Grail – the single largest technological advancement that would enable more content to become accessible online (except for maybe the invention of the Web). For the past year, we’ve joined with Matt to tackle this very hard problem, and have finally made enough progress that we can begin to report on it.

Let me start by explaining the problem. Ask a computer to read the page below and it will stumble all over place.

OCR (optical character recognition) technology could read some of the typewritten text – but would be confused by the handwriting (and invent typewritten letters that it thinks it sees inside handwritten text). To make matters worse, this page has multiple typewritten font types, including one that looks like cursive handwriting.

The first process we had to develop was a way to perfectly separate handwriting from typewritten text. If we could do this, the OCR could read the typewritten text, and Matt’s code could attempt to read the handwritten text. We call this process Handwriting Detection, and we figured that if the system couldn’t detect the presence of handwriting, how on Earth would we hope to decipher the marks into words? In the example below, you can see how our system marks typewritten text in green and handwritten text in red – with blue to denote what it believes are graphics or images. It’s not 100% perfect, but hopefully you agree that it’s headed in the right direction.

Now that we’ve detected where the handwriting is, we can start having some fun. Let’s go back 130 years and change the ink from black to blue.

Now, this is just handwriting detection (where we don’t understand what’s written – we just know that handwriting is there).

Let’s talk recognition.

Historical handwriting recognition is one of the toughest technical challenges to solve. First, penmanship is entirely unique to the individual. Second, because it’s historical handwriting, it’s in cursive. All the letters run together, adding another layer of complexity. Third, the way we wrote cursive in the 1700′s is different than the cursive we write now. There are even variations between decades. Our mind has an incredible capability of seeing through incomplete sets of data (a missing character stroke, poor handwriting, an A that sort of looks like an O, etc). Our brains do all of this for us and we don’t even notice it. When you think about how to describe this to a computer, you begin to lose your mind! I believe some of the greatest problems mankind can solve are those that someone would never have started if they had known how hard the challenge was ahead of time. Matt fooled himself just enough to start on the problem and now he’s making real progress from which we are all going to benefit.

Here’s the exciting part: Our recognition technology is starting to work. With limited vocabularies (potential answers), we’re achieving 90-95% accuracy. Sometimes, the technology is able to read things we’re convinced are unreadable (but after getting the answer back from the computer, you realize what was actually written). We grow closer to the Holy Grail every day and can’t wait until we can use the technology to bring more content online, free forever.

Matt and I will keep you updated on our progress over the coming weeks and months, which should hopefully make for some exciting news in genealogy.

Mocavo Announces Genealogy Karma

The following is from Mocavo.

Mocavo Announces Genealogy Karma

Back in 1999, a fantastic resource was established to bring together members of the genealogy community all around the world. The brainchild of Bridgett and Doc Schneider, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) was created to help genealogists collaborate with the genealogy community to document their research, while also offering genealogists a way to give back to a community that had helped them in the past. RAOGK quickly turned into a global organization. The group’s volunteers were able to help thousands of genealogists make progress in their family history research.

Bridgett Schneider courtesy of RAOGK Wiki

The ROAGK website went offline in 2011 because of a computer disaster. Sadly, Bridgett Schneider passed away later that year, and the website was never able to come back online. In tribute to Bridgett and Doc Schneider and all of the participants in RAOGK, many volunteers have created programs similar to ROAGK to help bring together the expertise of the genealogy community. Doc and Bridgett’s legacy and the efforts of thousands of volunteers inspired us to create a place for researchers to come together and collaborate to help other members of the genealogical community.   

Today, at Mocavo, we are excited to announce the launch of Genealogy Karma. Modeled after Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, we hope to empower the Mocavo community and connect researchers all around the country. If you’re looking for documents, records, or photos from an ancestor who lived far away, we will connect you with family history volunteers who can do this research for you in other cities. Likewise, if you’d like to give back to the Mocavo community and have a little time to donate, you can sign up as a volunteer.

To begin visit www.mocavo.com/karma

To request help:

1. Simply click on “I need to request help.”

2. Select the county for your request.

3. Create a short title and add a detailed explanation of your request so that others can help find what you’re looking for.

4. Tag your request to help others discover it. For example, you can tag your request as “photo”, “birth record”, or “tombstone”.

5. You can also select to be notified if someone replies to your request.

6. Post your query.

To Volunteer:

1. Simply click on “I want to be a volunteer.”

2. Select the counties that you can help with.

3. Submit your information.

4. We will then let you know when there are opportunities to help other genealogists in your area.

Similar to surname groups, genealogy karma has a new twist that allows the most valuable content to float to the top of the page.

You can vote positively or negatively on each question and answer.  As a result, the most popular questions and most relevant answers rise to the top so that you don’t have to dig through heaps of information to find the good stuff. Next to each question or answer within a Surname Group, you will see arrows.  If you find a request you are interested in or response that is particularly helpful, you can “vote it up” so that more people will see it. If you find a request to be wildly off topic or unhelpful or if you think an answer is inaccurate, you can “vote it down” so that it will migrate to the bottom of the page. The topics at the top of the page will be the ones with the highest number of “up” votes so that you can quickly see the most valuable questions and answers.

Check out Genealogy Karma and take advantage of the vast network of Mocavo community members spread far and wide. Let us know what you think by emailing us at support@mocavo.com.