This week's news includes: Ancestry.com has renamed its self-publishing tool from AncestryPress to MyCanvas, and has also doubled its yearbook collection; ItsOurTree.com announced that its site (http://www.itsourtree.com/) can help predict male baldness through members' postings of family photographs; FamilyRelatives.com (http://familyrelatives.com/), a subscription website, has one of the largest collections of Irish records on the Internet, and they announced that they plan to add more than 10 million new records by the end of the year; Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has begun to publish digitized and indexed Civil War Widows' Pension Files; the University of Michigan has announced that it has digitized and indexed 428 titles in its Michigan County Histories and Atlases Digitization Project, and the search template is available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/; and Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/) has announced enhanced search facilities and improved privacy at its website. Finally, the Wall Street Journal published an article on 22 October 2008 about University of Texas El Paso, librarian Claudia Rivers, who has formed an aggressive program to identify 50,000 photographs taken bythe closed Cassola photography studio. Check the WSJ site for an article published on that date titled, "In Old El Paso, This Detective Story Is Written in Pictures."

George announces that Ancestry.com has just received copies of his new book, the new second edition of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com in its warehouse the end of this past week. Ancestry.com's online store will be listing the book and advertising it for sale very soon.

George interviews Gary M. Smith and Diana Crissman Smith, two of his fellow speakers on the recent RootsMagic Cruise.

Listener email this week includes: a thank you and report from Pat (Ms. DNA Manners) about communicating with people with potential genetic genealogy matches; a question from Pattie concerning obtaining SS-5 applications for deceased relatives whose deaths predate the SSDI database; Drew responds to Ann about the Harvey Girls, and provides a link to the Harvey Girl Historical Society (http://www.oerm.org/pages/Harveygirls.html); Robert Reeve of VideoJug has contacted us to say that their website has more than 43,000 free videos, including a number concerning genealogy (located at http://www.videojug.com/tag/genealogy); Michael tells us about his Dutch genealogical research, and asks about the benefits of seeking genealogical certification; and Sandra asked for advice about how to organize the many family letters and other documents she has in her possession.

This week's news includes:Art Lassagne, founder of The Gold Bug (producer of AniMap software), died on 29 September 2008 at his home after a long battle with lung cancer; Ancestry.ca has published the Canadian Passenger Lists (1865-1935); the Godfrey Library (www.godfrey.org) of Middletown, CT, announced that its product, the online American Genealogical Biographical Index (AGBI), will no longer be available at Ancestry.com after the end of this year, but it will be available at the Godfrey Library and at World Vital Records (www.worldvitalrecords.com) beginning in January 2009; Northern Hills Software (www.northernhillssoftware.com) announces Pocket Genealogist Version 3.3 for Windows Mobile devices which includes support for multimedia; Summit County Ohio Probate Court received a grant to digitize and index to birth, marriage, and death records, and those records will be available at their website and those of their partners, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, and the National Association of Government Archive and Records Administrators (NAGARA); the St. Petersburg Times in Florida has brought up it digital archives of more than 100 years of its newspapers (May 1901 through August 2007) and it is available at news.google.com/archivesearch (Users should type "St. Petersburg Times" before they enter their query terms.); Dick Eastman, of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (blog.eogn.com), has announced the addition of Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck to the writing team at the enormously popular online publication [George also writes a weekly column for Dick]; and the free 12th annual Central Florida Family History Conference will be held on 25 October 2009 in Orlando, and more details are available at www.familyhistoryconference.org.

Listener email includes: Gus added this podcast to his site at www.macapart.com/gen; Jon asked for more information about portability of Family Tree Make 2009 on a flash drive (and Drew will report back); Russ recounts his search for his grandfather in the 1900 census and discusses names; Kevin reminded The Guys to remind our listeners to celebrate October as Family History Month and as Hispanic Heritage Month; Tim asked for suggestions concerning the best national or regional conferences to consider attending for a relative beginner; and Dee found a great online out-of-copyright map site at commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_maps.

George interviews Bruce Buzbee, creator of the RootsMagic genealogical database software. Bruce discusses this year's great cruise to the Mexican Riviera and talks about the upcoming release of RootsMagic Version 4, a complete rewrite of the software with many exciting new features and improvements.

Because I had to delete episode #152 and then re-upload it (to fix the missing interview), it's possible that some users who automatically download episodes using iTunes may not immediately see the corrected episode #152.  You may need to delete the flawed episode from your iTunes, and then refresh the Podcast so that a new copy is downloaded.  If you run into any problems with this, let me know.

Drew