What I Do – Technology for Genealogy Research

Thomas MacEntee over at GeneaBloggers has a meme called What I Do. Thomas says:

you basically list what you use in terms of technology to either run your genealogy business or pursue your family history as a hobby.

Here’s my list:

* Hardware:  Dell Inspiron I1720 laptop

* External storage: a couple of 4mg flash drives – these are really just for portability & backup.

* Online storage:  Mozy (paid version with unlimited backup – love Mozy)

* Backup:  Mozy | flash drives | plus quarterly I back up to CD, which I take to my work location.

*Firewall – I’m not crazy about my current firewall and don’t want to give them any publicity.

* Virus protection: AVG (free)

* Spyware: Spybot (free)

* File cleaner: AML Registry Cleaner (free)

* Printer: HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-one – printer, copier, scanner

* Phone:  Blackberry

* Mobile media: Ipod Nano (3rd gen)

* Music player: Ipod Nano

* Car audio – Rockford Fosgate, I think – whatever came with the vehicle.  I mention it only because I listen to genealogy podcasts in the car.

* eBook Reader: Kindle (love my Kindle)

* Browser: Firefox (default) | IE8 for a few sites that don’t play well with Firefox | Chrome, occasionally

* Blog: WordPress (self-hosted)

* RSS: Google Reader

* FTP: Smart FTP

* Text editor: Microsoft Word | Notepad++ (free and highly recommended if you do any kind of web development)

* Graphics:  Photoshop Elements 6.0 | Picasa (free) | just starting to use Irfanview (free)

* Screen capture: Snipping Tool

* Social media: Twitter (via Hootsuite & Twitter for Blackberry) | Facebook

* Social bookmarking: Del.icio.us

* URL shortener:  ow.ly | tinyurl

* Office suite:  Office 97 (I know, it’s old, but for home use, I really don’t need anything else)

* E-mail:  Gmail | Windows Mail

* Calendar:  Groupwise

* Accounting:  Quicken

* PDF generator: Cute PDF (free)

* Genealogy database: The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding | RootsMagic 4 | Legacy 7

* Genealogy tools: GenSmarts | CensusMate | Ancestry.com | Footnote.com

* Other tech stuff:  Firefox add-ons & extensions:  Firebug, Web Developer, Colorzilla | Evernote (online, for PC, & for Blackberry | Excel for tracking just about anything | numerous WordPress plug-ins

What techie tools do you use to help you in your research?

Thanks to Geneabloggers for generating this meme.  I’ve seen several things already that I want to add to my toolbox.  To see other posts on this topic, click here.

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Tagged as: Geneabloggers