Someone asked when MyHeritage.com is available for use. You can go there right now!

1. Go to http://www.myheritage.com.
2. Click the Beta button. (This means they are still tweaking the software.)
3. You'll be on the Face Recognition page. Click Research to access the fields where you input your ancestor information.

If this isn't working like I say, you can get the technical support email address by selecting the Contact Us link at the bottom on the page.

~Mary Kaye

MyHeritage.com Reveals Startling Celebrity Look-Alikes!

Remember MyHeritage.com? I wrote about it in this post. I never could get the face recognition feature to work, but they recently contacted me and asked me to try it again. This time it everything went smoothly:

1. Upload a digital photograph of your face, preferably a front-facing picture.
2. The celebrity database option is already selected, so just click “Run Face Recognition!” (In the future, you’ll be able to compare your photo to other family photos on their database).

Guess who I look the most like? Britney Spears!

All right!

But ... I also got a match with Julio Iglesias:

Okay, let’s forget about that one.

Actually, I’m not trying to make fun of MyHeritage.com. I can see the resemblance in the big fat smile on all of our faces.

While you’re at MyHeritage.com, make sure to select the Research link at the top of the page. This is the meat of MyHeritage. You can enter an ancestor name and receive search results from over 500 databases. It’s amazingly easy to use. You can quickly jump from MyHeritage to each Web site database where a match was found.

Very soon, the MyHeritage meta-search tool will enable you to:

- Save searches.
- Annotate searches.
- Find out who else is researching the same names as you.

And later on …

- Schedule searches to recur automatically (What a timesaver this one is!)
- Search for places

I hope you have some fabulous discoveries using this tool!

~Mary Kaye

You Are What You Write: Handwriting Analysis and Genealogy

For some reason, perhaps it was a newspaper article, I remembered that I once had an interest in graphology (i.e., analyzing handwriting to determine psychological traits). However, that was back when I was a teenager, and I was really only interested in interpreting my own handwriting – self-absorbed, but also self-seeking.

Today I broke away from some mundane chores and spent two blissful hours in the library. Did I mention I love the library? (Oh, right … the last blog.) I didn’t go there for a purpose; it’s a true luxury for me to just hang out and go where my current interest takes me.

I decided to look up the available resources on graphology, and a mention of ancestry signatures took me by surprise. Of course – my interest in handwriting analysis could certainly be useful when researching my ancestors. It’s not a required skill, but think how much better you could know a person if you had their photograph and handwriting sample!

Later on, I googled the words “graphology” and “genealogy.” Cyndi’s List was the third search result. The link I found the most helpful (under Signatures and Autographs) was the Graphology Information Centre. Lots of information for anyone who wants to pursue this interest as a career or a hobby.

I’ll wrap this up by including a link that lists places where you might find your ancestors signatures or handwriting: In Their Own Hand, by Michael John Neill.

Makes you think about your own handwriting a little bit differently, doesn’t it?

Smiles …
~Mary Kaye