FindmyPast and Mocavo to merge

As a subscriber to the US version of FindmyPast (www.findmypast.com), I've just received the following message:

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 and hundreds 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 Irish records and British Parish records, military records and the British Newspaper Archive, not to mention the 1939 Register. It currently has a plethora of US records 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.


COMMENT: There's no word yet from the UK end, but as all the FindmyPast sites are essentially the same thing now, with different regional accents, this looks like it will be a development across the whole platform, with Mocavo's records being added to the FindmyPast platform. Mocavo was acquired by FindmyPast in June 2014.

Further commentary on the development is available on Dick Eastman's US based blog at http://blog.eogn.com/2016/01/18/findmypast-and-sister-site-mocavo-come-together/#more-11624

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/.

FindmyPast purchases Mocavo

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has just announced that it has purchased American genealogy company Mocavo (www.mocavo.com), founded in 2011. From the press release:

Founded by Cliff Shaw in 2011, Mocavo is a technological innovator in the genealogy industry. Its highly sophisticated search engine brings together, in one place, a diverse range of sources, such as family history record indexes, school and college yearbooks, church records and biographies, which help millions of family history enthusiasts to fill in blanks in their family trees and add colour to their family stories.

This acquisition, coupled with the recent tender win of the 1939 Register for England and Wales and the purchase of Origins.net, forms an important part of the growth strategy set out by Annelies van den Belt, CEO of Findmypast, and her new team.

Together Findmypast and Mocavo will create one of the fastest growing global genealogy businesses. The two companies will provide customers with easier access and more relevant information to help add colour and depth to family history. Additionally, they both remain committed to delivering on Mocavo’s promise to provide free access to family history records on an individual database level forever. Toward that commitment, Findmypast is announcing today that the full indexes to the US Census from 1790 to 1940 are available for free at Mocavo.com.

COMMENT: It would be good if FindmyPast could reinstate the original census source information for its Scottish entries, amidst all the other disastrous errors awaiting correction on its new site. I think that might impress me more.

(With thanks to Annelies van den Belt)

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And FindmyPast - please reinstate the original Scottish census citations on your new site.

Mocavo attempts to create OCR for handwriting

The Mocavo genealogy search platform (www.mocavo.com) is attempting to create a system of optical character recognition that can interpret old forms of handwriting. Optical character recognition, or OCR, is a software programme that can allow a computer to read text included within a digitised image, something that allows us, for example, to search historic newspapers that have been digitised and placed online. It's an interesting challenge - some would say an impossible challenge! - but they seem to be making quite a bit of progress on it, with the team having already achieved the ability to differentiate between handwriting and printed text on the same page.

There's a progress report on its efforts via its latst nesletter at http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=952c099c101b4a6eb04bdc42a&id=8b01cc2a9e&e=65eb341d94 - definitely one to keep an eye on.

Chris

My latest book, Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, is now available from http://www.gould.com.au (print) and http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html (ebook), whilst Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet is available at http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/. My next Pharos Scottish course, Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the OPRs, starts Nov 13th - see http://pharostutors.com.

Mocavo community digitisation grant

From Mocavo (www.mocavo.com):

At Mocavo we are working with our online community to bring all of the world’s genealogical information online for free putting everyone’s family history within reach. Through ReadyMicro, Mocavo’s digitization group, we are pleased to make available a $25,000 grant to enable other stewards of genealogical content to share that information with the world.

Mocavo seeks proposals from organizations that care for genealogical content, archives, or historical records that they wish to make freely available online. Materials proposed for digitization and/or indexing should be unique and provide clear value to a broad number of genealogists. ReadyMicro will digitize these materials and, in collaboration with the grant recipient, extract associated metadata. Mocavo will create an online database from the collection which will be freely available at Mocavo.com as well as the grant recipient’s website.

The Mocavo Community Digitization Grant provides the grant recipient with $25,000 of digitization services including:

• Digital media organized into a searchable database
• Unlimited display and distribution rights for the resulting digital media
• An online version of the database which may be presented on the grant recipient’s website

More information on the program as well as the application submission form can be found at www.mocavo.com/grant.

Thank you for your time and we hope you will consider participating in this exciting program.

Chris

Pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, through Pen and Sword (30 April 2013), or purchase early at Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013 in London. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.