Free software and ebooks from MyHeritage

My Heritage (www.myheritage.com) has announced a couple of major developments worthy of note.

The first is that for those looking for an alternative to the soon to be culled Family Tree Maker software programme, which allows you to sync a tree held on your PC with that on a tablet, My Heritage's Family Tree Builder software actually does the same thing. Until today, it was possible to use the software for free, but only to upload a maximum of 250 people - now they have removed the limit, which effectively means you now have a package for free which does exactly the same thing that FTM did. As FTM's ability to sync with my iPad was the only reason I switched from Family Historian, this is worthy of some serious consideration, not least because it is actually a great programme, I've reviewed it a few times in the past and always liked it. Dick Eastman has the full story at http://blog.eogn.com/2015/12/11/a-special-offer-for-family-tree-maker-users-myheritage-is-offering-the-family-tree-builder-genealogy-program-for-windows-and-macintosh-plus-an-unlimited-size-family-site-for-free/. Dick fully admits that as MyHeritage sponsors his blog, he is biased on this - I'm not, but would totally support his comments, it really is a good programme!

Secondly, MyHeritage has launched a new free digitised book collection of some 150,000 out of copyright books, in a collection it calls Compilation of Published Sources. From what I can see, some of these are available from the Internet Archive and Google Books, but there does seem to be offerings there from other repositories also, so worth bookmarking. You will find the collection at https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-90100/compilation-of-published-sources, and also a short piece on the launch from the US based Family Tree magazine at http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/2015/12/11/MyHeritageLaunchesNewFreeCollectionOfOldBooks.aspx.

(With thanks to Dick Eastman and US Family Tree magazine)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.