This New Year’s episode is packed with fresh energy and perspective! 
We welcome the Legal Genealogist Judy Russell to the podcast. Judy takes on a Genealogy Gems listener’s fantastic question about the bounty land his War of 1812 ancestor never claimed.
Also:

The latest on life after Family Tree Maker software;
A fresh look at why family history software is still relevant today;
New strategies for using Google to answer your genealogical research questions;
The new Genealogy Gems Book Club title;
Why I’m so excited about RootsTech 2016, which is coming right up;
New records online and up-to-the-moment emails with questions, tips and inspiring successes.

NEWS: Family Tree Maker Software Discontinued
Here’s the announcement and my initial comments that reached nearly 30,000 people on Facebook (at press time):
What Ancestry’s Retirement of Family Tree Maker Software Means for You
 
NEWS: New Records Online
AUSTRALIA CIVIL REGISTRATIONS. A new browse-only collection of Tasmanian civil registrations (1839-1938) is now online at FamilySearch.org. It includes district registers, counterfoils of marriage certificates and some church records.
ENGLAND PARISH AND ELECTORAL. Significantly-updated indexes of Kent parish registers and registers of electors (both dating to the 1500s!) are now online at FamilySearch, as Lancashire parish records to 1538 and another collection of parish registers back to 1603 that include Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.
ITALY CIVIL REGISTRATIONS: More indexed images continue to be added regularly to the free collection at FamilySearch.org! Click here for the current list.
PHILIPPINES (MANILA) CIVIL REGISTRATIONS: More than 400,000 indexed records for the city of Manila have been added to an existing collection of Philippines civil registrations at FamilySearch.org.
WALES ELECTORAL REGISTERS. Over 1.6 million indexed names from electoral registers for Glamorgan and West Glamorgan, Wales (1839-1935) are now searchable at FamilySearch.org.
BONUS AUDIO ON THE APP:
BRITISH IN INDIA. Findmypast has published new record collections relating to British overseas travelers, workers and expatriates. The first includes “British people who either lived, worked or travelled in India from as early as 1664 up to 1961 with an index of births, marriages, divorces and deaths compiled by the Society of Genealogists.” There are also new collections from the India Office: births and baptisms and wills and probates.
DIGITAL BOOKS. A new FREE collection of 150,000 digitized books is searchable at MyHeritage.com. Among the titles are family, local and military histories; city and county directories; school and university yearbooks and church and congregational minutes.

 
GEMS NEWS: RootsTech 2016: February 3-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah
RootsTech 2016: What’s Happening!
Here’s the schedule for my official RootsTech lectures and those of our regular Gems contributors:
Wednesday: 3:00 YDNA Testing for Every Surname in Your Pedigree, Diahan Southard
Thursday: 4:30 Proven Methodology for Using Google for Genealogy, Lisa Louise Cooke
Friday:
11:00 Soothe Your Tech Tummy Ache with These 10 Tools, Lisa Louise Cooke 1:30 Proven Methodology for Using Google for Genealogy, Lisa Louise Cooke
Saturday: 11:00 Soothe Your Tech Tummy Ache with These 10 Tools, Lisa Louise Cooke 1:30 What’s Special About US Special Census Schedules? Sunny Morton
If you’ve been to my booth at a major conference in the past few years, you already know about the “Outside the Box” mini-sessions I’ve presented along with some of my partners in the past. These sessions have been SO popular that people end up lining the walkways around our booth, several deep, crowding the exhibit hall aisles in to listen and sign up for the free handouts.
This year, I’m planning an even richer class experience at the Genealogy Gems booth. There will be 20 sessions, some of them shorter and some longer, taught by myself and my dynamic partners at Genealogy Gems and Family Tree Magazine.