Their site is frustrating to read as the text is crammed together and links are in text not links, but the information offered in their podcasts are jammed-filled with treasures and information you need to know about genealogy and family history research.

If you love podcasts, and want to learn more about genealogy, download and listen while you drive, walk, bike, ride, or just sit, and enjoy.

Do you have a favorite genealogy and family history podcast that you follow faithfully and enjoy? Share it, please.

Rather than exchanging photos, music and cellphone numbers, as many of the 100 million members of MySpace.com do, participants in Ms. Wong’s online community share Y-DNA markers and mtDNA Haplogroups.

The neuroscientist is president and chief executive officer of Genetrack Biolabs Inc., one of the country’s largest DNA testing labs. Recently the Vancouver company broadened its focus beyond paternity suits and other legal testing to capitalize on the emerging field of genetic genealogy.

With a swab of the mouth and access to Genetrack’s site DNAancestryproject.com, clients can trace their lineage for possible connections to famous figures of the past, such as Marie Antoinette, whose DNA has been preserved in a locket of her hair.

The farther back in time, the wider the family connections. For example, researchers have found that one in five men in the northwest of Ireland carry the DNA of the great Irish king Niall Noigiallach, who ruled in the early 5th century. And they estimate that 2 per cent of New York’s European males today also share the royal chromosome.

Turning back the clock to prehistoric times, the website lets participants track the migratory paths their distant ancestors took out of Africa and even connect with people of related groups today.

Amazing. We spend time researching our family history through our blogs and genealogy discussion groups, but imagine a social networking group whose sole purpose to to connect you with your DNA relatives.

The idea behind Genetrack and DNAancestryproject.com is to help those researching their family history through their DNA find common ground and make connections beyond the gene pool. According to the company president, Ms. Wong: “Everybody in the project is connected to everyone else.” Which makes this social networking project even more amazing and wide spread.

Genetrack’s DNA testing kit has been sold online, but just recently started appearing in a few retail sale in stores in Canada, the US, and other places in the world. According to Genetrack, it is most popular for the 47-54 year old age group, but many young people are starting to get into digging into their past. I’d love to walk into a store and buy a DNA testing kit, wouldn’t you?

What makes this new social networking trend fascinating is the new relationships that could form because of this. The concept of “family” has been changing for a long time in the United States and elsewhere as we move farther apart from our blood relatives and turn friends into “family members”.

DNA social networking groups could reverse that trend, turning strangers into blood relatives, allowing us to meet up with family members long separated by time and distance.

In my own family history research, I’ve been able to make connections with long lost family members through genealogy research and resources online, meeting in person family descendants from the 17th and 18th century. I’ve only recently started exploring my own DNA history and expect to make contact with family members separated even farther back.

Each person I connect with brings with them some history and information about their family’s lives as well as their own that helps me fill in the missing puzzle pieces of my own. Answers from the past often help answer questions in the present.

DNA social networking is destined to become a powerful Web 2.0 type force on the web. Would you participate? How would you use such a social networking service? How would it benefit you?

• Genealogical Records of the War of 1812
• War of 1812 Discharge Certificates
• Genealogical fallout from the War of 1812
• Records about impressed seamen, 1793-1814

The page also lists other off-site resources that may help you learn more about the War of 1912.

Highlights include:

• Multnomah County, Oregon (includes Portland)
• Baker County, Oregon
• Malheur County, Oregon
• Umatilla County, Oregon
• Oregon Biographies
• Oregon Cemeteries
• Eastern Oregon Photo Album
• Eastern Oregon Obituary Database
• Indian Tribes of Oregon
• Oregon Land/Maps
• Oregon Military
• Important Dates in Oregon History
• Oregon Firsts
• Oregon World War II Casualty List
• Vietnam War Casualty Database
• Oregon Trail & Native American Information
• Oregon Historical & Genealogical Resources

They are also looking for volunteers to help develop the many counties and resources available for those researching their family history in Oregon.

They produce fine quality prints from their library of several thousand photographs dating from about 1900 to 1930, depicting views of towns, villages, schools, churches etc. of England and Wales early negatives and prints. The photographs are digitally restored to remove unwanted marks, blemishes, and scratches etc., in a way as to not impact the photograph’s original quality.

The images are available for sale, which is great for adding to your print collection, displaying in gallery, museum, or educational exhibits, and for other displaying purposes.

The images are not for downloading, website use or hotlinking, though I can’t find any specific copyright or licensing explanations anywhere, an oversight on their part. Still, it’s a fascinating look back in time that may help you understand a little more about the lives of your ancestors.

As part of my exploration of the 1700s and 1800s, trying to learn more about the lifestyle of my family in the United States at that time, how they lived, why they moved around, and the news and politics of the time, I’m finding more wonderful websites and blogs like Bell’s which open up a new world for me.

Bell helps us not only understand how they lived and the news and politics of the time, but why. Here are some recent highlights:

• The Revolution in Boys’ Hair covers the issue of hair fashion trends among children and adults.
• George Washington Sat Here? about the chair in Washington’s headquarters for resting his hindquarters in going on the auction block.
• Shaving Heads and Faces for a Living is another hair piece on barbers and wig makers.
• What Wigs Said About Professions is another is his wonderful ongoing series on wigs and hair from the past.
• Dr. G’s Twelfth Night Plumb Cake shares stories and food from the Twelfth Night celebrations.
• Skimmington ride leads to death in 1764 about how justice was served, or not, in the early days of America.
• Farewell Ceremony features a description of General George Washington bidding farewell to his officer corp at the end of the Revolutionary War.
• Washington’s Asymmetric Generals is a wonderful look at some of our war heroes who came to their post disabled, disfigured, or physically impaired and imperfect, which would get them booted out of today’s military.

Enjoy the step back in time that Bell’s Boston 1775 offers and get a new perspective on what life was like during the early years of the United States.

Created by Jon Sayles, a computer technologies expert, as a hobby, Early Music is dedicated to reproducing and sharing music from the Baroque and English Renaissance time period, specifically the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, featuring composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and others.

The music on the site is free to download and listen, and even distribute, for free.

The music is played on the guitar and recorded by Jon Sayles. Much of the flavor of Renaissance music is the magic of duets, trios, and small groups playing intersecting melodies and accompaniments. To create these, Jon Sayles may work with other guitarists, but he also records each part by himself and then digitally blends them together to create the different parts in a single song.

There are hundreds of Early Music songs to choose from, though some highlights include:

• From England: The Witches Dance, See my own sweet jewel, Browning, Ricercare
• From France: Allon Gay Gay, Se je perdu, Si ascendero
• From Spain: Ignacio, Recercada, Riu Riu, Chu
• From Germany: Ich weiss nit, Ballet, Die Katzenpfote
• From Italy: Saltarello, O’ Rosetta, Cantate Domino

Sayles loves this style of early music so much, he wants to spread the word as well as encourage more people to return to this fabulous music style. Sayles offers sheet music to those who ask, and encourages distributing and sharing of his music.

If you want to step back in time to music of your ancestors past, download some wonderful ancient tunes from Early Music into your portable MP3 player, and take a walk through a historical garden.

Read books popular during your ancestor’s life. Explore the ways of thinking, living, and politics from your family’s past.

Some of these books are technical, but many are fiction and lifestyle books, helping you learn more about fashion trends, political and popular notions, as well as what books motivated a country or two. There are music books, sheet music, culture guides, religious text, hobby books, and plenty of how to books, in addition to fiction.

The books are scanned copies of the originals and require Adobe Acrobat Reader or an equivalent for reading. The files range from just under 1 megabyte to 15 megabytes in size, though most hover around 3-6 MB. The quality of the images are fairly good, allowing you to see the actual pages and read them.

Some popular books include:

• Varietie of Lute-Lessons
• First Set of English Madrigals, The
• Book of the ordre of chyualry, The
• Book of Dravving, Limning, VVashing, A
• Handbook of Wood Engraving
• Introduction to the Skill of Musick
• Needles Excellency, The
• English Dictionarie, The
• XII. Wonders of the World
• Booke of Secrets, A
• Sea-Mans Grammar and Dictionary
• Feminine Monarchie, The
• Strange Histories
• Gentlemans Academie, The (Book Three)
• Cobler Turned Courtier, The
• Sea-Gunner, The (excerpts)

These are the originals, so do not expect them to be easily readable by today’s English standards. Old style words and phrasing are to be expected, and welcome by many historians.

To use and read these books, do not read them on the site. Download the file to your computer and then double click them to read them. This saves the host’s bandwidth and allows you to take the time you want and may need to read through the ancient pages.

I couldn’t find a search function on the site, which is sad, but the books are sortable by title, author, subject, date, most recent, and most popular.

So when I wanted to go looking for topics related to handiwork and handcrafts, as I know my ancestors worked with their hands a lot, I clicked the Sort by Subject tab and found books on art, beekeeping, calligraphy, dance, needlework, recipes, and wood engraving.

This is a passion of the author, who admits that the original intension was to convert these books into searchable text files, but explains:

The Bookshelf started as an attempt to reclaim some space, by scanning filing cabinets full of old books and broadsides to electronic format. Once upon a time, I had high hopes of converting them all to searchable plain text, but as the archaic letters and ligatures gave my OCR software fits, and the idea of typing them all in by hand was hardly worth entertaining, I gave up and simply scanned the images into PDF files.

While not the same as holding these ancient books in your hands, this is the next best thing.

Genealogy information is segregated by region, such as Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia; by category such as Maps, Immigration, and Loyalists; and offers a variety of other resources and tools to help you trace your family history in Canada.

Recently, they just added an Internet Radio Show with podcasts to listen to more about genealogy and family history in Canada.

Footnote is an impressive resource which launched last week that allows users to access and annotate millions of historical documents online for the first time. Interested in the Civil War or perhaps the Bureau of Investigation? Just look it up on Footnote and within seconds view digitized copies of the original documents including photographs, signed documents, letters, case studies and more. Footnote has also established a partnership with the National Archives providing access to millions of historical documents for viewing online. Around 4.5 million documents have already been added to the site and apparently millions more to come. I’ll admit, I wasn’t one to raise my hand during history class, but it’s pretty neat being able to view transcripts that George Washington wrote back in 1775 for the Continental Congress and the signature of John Hancock. I’d imagine Footnote to be a prime attraction for genealogists, historians, public libraries, school systems and history buffs in general.

On top of viewing original documents online, Footnote encourages users to share their knowledge by uploading images, annotating documents and maintaining member pages. Users can also download any image on the site and add it to their account gallery.

Adobe Flash Player is required for viewing the images. The annual membership for looking around at the documents is free. Some images on the site can be viewed and downloaded for free, but member subscriptions are required for other areas and access ranging from USD $1.99 per image download to $99.99 a year.