Earlier today, CEO, Russ Wilding, sat down with Glenn Beck and talked about Footnote.com. Glenn Beck perfectly described what Footnote is enabling people to do with their personal histories:
“… all that history is, is just a collection of people and their stories, and this seems to be that connection.”
Listen to the segment here:
Or, you can also catch the interview on TV later tonight - don’t miss it.
The Footnote scanning team has been working in the vaults of The National Archives diligently scanning the complete WWII US Air Force photo collection (officially known as “Black and White and Color Photographs of U.S. Air Force and Predecessor Agencies Activities, Facilities, and Personnel - World War II”).
There are more than 80,000 photographs of aircraft, equipment, air races, bombing tests, and military personnel grouped by regional “war theater.”
The collection is searchable and unique because you can view the entire photograph - both front and back for additional caption information. Start exploring some interesting categories such as D-Day, Battles, Maps, Charts & Drawings, Rescue and thousands more.
It’s that time of year again where we pack up the Footnote booth and head out to the annual National Genealogical Society conference. This year the conference is being held in Kansas City, MO.
This is always a great opportunity for the Footnote team to rub shoulders with prominent figures in the genealogy world, friends from other genealogy companies, and best of all, the people that use Footnote. Every time we go to these events, we meet with great people that give us straight talk about Footnote.com; the good, the bad and the ugly.
In order to make sure we have time to listen to our members and potential members, we have reserved a room to hold a Footnote User Meeting. This meeting gives us a chance to talk about what is happening on Footnote and our future plans. We also welcome feedback, suggestions, needs, desires, whatever you want to say. Here is the information about these meetings:
When: Saturday, May 17 - 9:30am
Where: Pershing Room at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center
We invite anyone who would like to come and hope that we get a great turnout. Again, this is an opportunity to tell us what you like and what you don’t like about Footnote.com, what you would like to see on the site and anything else. If you are interested in attending, please email Elizabeth at elittle@footnote.com. If you can’t make it to this meeting, please stop by the booth and visit with us. We are in booth numbers #219 & 221.
Last week we made some updates to the site. In addition to fixing bugs and cleaning things up, we added a few new features that we hope will make the site easier to use. Here are some of our favorites:
Image Adjustment
We do all we can to get the best quality images on the site, but sometimes the condition of the source images we have (microfilm, microfiche, paper) leaves us with digital images that are hard to read. In some cases, there isn’t much that can be done, but with most of these images, inverting the image or adjusting the brightness or contrast can bring out details that make all the difference.
Here’s an extreme example of an image that is difficult to read:
Here’s the same image with some adjustment to the brightness and contrast:
Here it is again with the colors inverted and the brightness and contrast adjusted:
These image adjustments aren’t magic and can’t make every image readable, but they can make a big difference if you are having trouble making out a word or some other detail from a document. Invert is particularly handy when the original image is a negative, like this example from the Marine Corps Vietnam photos.
In addition to the image adjustment tools, we’ve improved the “Find” tools for searching text within an image and updated the filmstrip to make it clearer where one document ends and the next begins.
Improved Navigation One other change worth noting is the update we made to the headers across the site. The new design should make it easier to get around the site, use search and browse, access your account and profile items and remember the last 4 images you viewed (”Your Recent Activity”).
As always, we hope you’ll try these new features and let us know what you think.
Earlier today, CEO, Russ Wilding, sat down with Glenn Beck and talked about Footnote.com. Glenn Beck perfectly described what Footnote is enabling people to do with their personal histories:
