I’ll be giving two presentations at the upcoming South Davis Family History Fair on March 6th in Bountiful, Utah. One will be an updated version of a talk I gave at last year’s SDFHF: “Twitter: Can It Really Help Me With My Genealogy?” The other will be a newly-developed introduction to Genlighten for potential lookup providers: “Genealogy Lookups 101“.

I just uploaded a draft of the “Genealogy Lookups 101″ slides to our account on Slideshare.net. I’d be grateful if you’d take a look and offer any feedback you might have so I can improve it prior to the Fair.

Lots of Slides, But Very Little Text

Please don’t be put off by the number of slides — 137 in all. There’s almost no text on the pages… they’re basically just simple images with brief captions, for the most part — so you can page through it quite quickly.

I’m particularly interested in your impressions of how the talk flows, and if the images I chose seem like a good match to the headline text. But I also hope the presentation piques your interest in becoming one of our lookup providers, and any feedback along those lines would be very welcome too. Thanks for your help!

In a previous post, I mentioned meeting Harper Reed at the last Chicago Hacker News meetup. He asked if I could help him find out about the ancestor he had always heard he was named after: a distant uncle who had supposedly died in a car crash in Colorado.

The Search Begins

With no dates or specific localities to go on, I searched Ancestry for Harper Reeds who had died after the invention of the automobile. Hits in the 1920 and 1930 censuses looked promising, though they were for John Harper Reed (rather than just Harper Reed) and he lived in two different places with different wives in each census. A USGenWeb site listed a date of burial for a John Harper Reed in a Colorado Springs cemetery, matching the 1920 census residence info.

But nothing I found easily on Ancestry or elsewhere online could document the unique “death by car accident” connection that I was looking for. Finding an obituary seemed like the obvious next step. Too bad Genlighten didn’t yet have a Colorado provider that could help me. I advised Harper of my progress and decided to let the project drop for a while.

Finding a “Hidden” Provider

Then this last Friday, as I was going through all our registered users counting those who’d created profiles and offered lookups, I discovered a bunch of “hidden” lookup providers — people who had signed up for Genlighten, who listed their credentials in their profiles, but who didn’t yet offer specific lookups on the site. One of them was Linda Vixie, who goes by the username elfie. To my surprise and delight, I noticed that her research specialities included “Colorado, especially El Paso and Teller Counties.” Colorado Springs is in El Paso County. Hooray! Maybe we did have a provider who could get the obituary for me!

Asking the Provider a Question

Now what I needed to know was, was Elfie willing to track down an obituary (or a cemetery photo) for me? And could she perhaps also visit Lincoln County, where John Harper Reed was enumerated in the 1930 Census? So I went to the “Ask the Provider a Question” box on Elfie’s profile, and submitted my question to her.

Later that same day, an email arrived in my inbox, automatically generated by Genlighten, indicating that Elfie had responded to my question. Her reply was concise, confident, and constrained. She could definitely tackle El Paso County, and the obituary was likely indexed. But Lincoln County was too long a drive.

In a few short sentences, Elfie had managed to convey credibility and demonstrate a willingness to help. I instantly knew I’d found a great lookup provider.

Submitting a Custom Lookup Request

Elfie didn’t yet offer an “off-the-shelf” obituary lookup for El Paso County, so I posted a custom lookup request. I gave Elfie all the info I’d discovered on Ancestry, plus the supposition that Harper Reed had died in a car crash, and my desire to confirm that possibility. I set my target price at $10 and set a deadline three weeks away.

Heck Yes, Accept!

I posted again to Elfie’s profile, indicating I’d posted a custom request. She promptly submitted a quote, and outlined in detail how she’d go about fulfilling my request. Her price was half what I was more than willing to pay! I quickly clicked the “Accept” button.

Wow… That Was Fast!

Two days before the date she had promised to look for the obituary, a notification message from Genlighten appeared in my inbox. “Provider elfie has completed your custom request… They were successful in retrieving the document(s) you requested.” Cool!

Happy Dance Time!

I clicked on the link in the email and logged in so I could see the Manage Quotes Received results page. There was the scanned image of the obituary that Elfie had uploaded. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect headline: “J. Harper Reed Dies at Empire After Accident.”

I gave Elfie a five-star rating and started composing my email to Harper. My day had officially been made.

Surprised and Delighted

As a Genlighten customer, I’d been “surprised and delighted” by how quickly, conveniently and affordably I had gotten exactly the document I needed to move my Reed Family research forward. I’m fully aware that the process won’t always go anywhere near this smoothly. But it was gratifying… so gratifying… to see the vision we’ve had for Genlighten start to be realized. Dogfood never tasted so good.

Build Something For Yourself

Jason Fried had said at the Chicago Tech Meetup two weeks before, “Build Something For Yourself.” Of course, though that was part of our initial motivation, we also want to build something that can become hugely useful to the rest of the genealogy community. A new tool in the holster of genealogy researchers, both amateur and professional. It feels like we’re getting closer to that becoming reality.

On pretty much any page on Genlighten, over along the far right edge of your browser window, there’s a bright red tab that says “Feedback”. You’ve probably noticed it before. What’s this tab do, and why should you use it? Read on to find out!

You Like Us! You Really, Really Like Us! (We Hope)

Ever wondered what keeps people who run web startups up at night? Besides the usual stuff, it’s questions like these: “Do people like our site? What do they like? What don’t they like? What can we change so they’ll come back more often (and order the occasional lookup while they’re at it!) What’s frustrating them so they don’t come back? What’s broken, and what works well?” The Feedback tab is designed to help us get answers to these questions.

When Should I Click on the Feedback Tab?

It’s designed to handle four basic situations:

1. Ideas. In the course of using Genlighten, you say to yourself, “Boy, it’d sure be nice if they’d just add _______.” In other words, you have an idea for how we can improve the site.
2. Questions. You try to use the site to perform a particular task, and it’s not obvious what to do next. You’ve got a question, and you’d like a quick answer to it.
3. Problems. Something goes wrong on the site. An error message pops up, or something clearly doesn’t work the way you expected. Basically, there’s a problem we need to fix.
4. Praise. You have a really satisfying experience with Genlighten and you’d like to tell us about it.

Note that the feedback tab isn’t designed for you to rate our lookup providers or give specific feedback to them. You do that on the Genlighten page associated with your lookup once the provider has uploaded your documents.

If you click on the Feedback tab, you’ll see the pop-up window shown here. This window is generated by a service called Get Satisfaction. They basically exist to help websites offer a simple, useful form of customer support to their users.

How Does the Feedback Process Work?

Notice the four links at the top left of the pop-up window: Idea, Question, Problem, and Praise. Depending on what kind of feedback you want to offer, click on the link and enter your message into the box provided. Sum it up with a short title, then add more details if you want. Click on the “Continue” button when you’re ready to submit your post.

Has Anyone Else Left Similar Feedback Already?

Just in case, Get Satisfaction checks to make sure someone else hasn’t already left feedback similar to yours. If so, you can add your voice to theirs. If not, just click on “None of these fit, post my idea”.

But First, Please Let Get Satisfaction Know Who You Are

Even though you may already be logged in to Genlighten when you click on the Feedback tab, the Get Satisfaction site doesn’t know who you are, so it asks you to log in or create a separate account. There’s no charge for this and you won’t get any unwanted email from them by registering.

To make things quick, you can just register using your Facebook or Twitter credentials. Get Satisfaction won’t spam your friends or your followers, but it will ask you to connect with the service you choose. If you’d rather not go that route, go ahead and create a Get Satisfaction account. You’ll just need to enter your name/Email and choose a password. That’s it!

Once you complete Get Satisfaction’s login or registration process, your feedback is posted for us to see. By default, your feedback is visible to the public as well, though you can keep it private (just between you and us) if you’d prefer.

Thanks for the Feedback!

We hope you’ll use the Feedback tab to share ideas, ask questions, report problems, or give praise to the team here at Genlighten. We sincerely want to make the site better and better. With your help, we’ll be able do just that.

Feel Free to Contact Us Directly, Too

If you’re more comfortable emailing us or speaking to us over the phone instead of using the Feedback tab, that’s just fine. Feel free to email us at support@genlighten.com, or call us between 8 am and 8 pm Monday-Saturday at 888-845-9990. Thanks!

You ordered a death certificate lookup on Genlighten a few days back, and the email just arrived letting you know that the provider completed your lookup successfully. You click on the link, log in, and there’s your document. It’s clear, it’s readable, and YES — it’s got the information you were hoping for. It’s almost happy dance time! But first, you need to save your document on your computer and print out a copy. In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll show you how.

So How Do I Download and Print My Document?

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to save and print your document(s) if you use Microsoft Vista. [If you use Windows XP, try this Printing Help Page instead.]

1) Navigate to the Lookup Status Detail / Document Delivery page from your Genlighten account.

2) Click on the image thumbnail. A new window should open and you’ll see a full-size version of your document displayed.

3) Right-click on the full-size document image and select “Save Image As”.

4) A dialog box will appear. Browse to the directory where you’d like to save the image file, give it a descriptive name, and click Save.

5) Locate your image on your hard drive by browsing to the directory into which you saved the image.

6) Right click on the image and select “Preview”.

7) A Windows application called “Windows Photo Gallery” should open with a large version of your image. Click on the “Print” menu at the top of the window and select the “Print” option.

8 ) This should bring up the “Print Pictures” option box. Select the printer you want to use and adjust any printing parameters as needed (size, quality, paper type, orientation, etc.) Then click “Print”. You may need to experiment with different orientations to get the best fit on the page. Depending on the image resolution your provider used when they scanned your document, printing may take several minutes.

9) That’s it… you did it! Woo-hoo!

Further Questions?

If after trying to print your documents you still have questions, just e-mail us at support@genlighten.com. Thanks!