September T-shirt Winners

Today's the last day to upload photos for a September t-shirt. Here are this month's winners:

• Ddwertman
• lmwillett
• Sophie
• mlmckenzie
• smflatness
• Gayle
• sadie63
• Jeremyeguzman
• waynedaz
• Simini
• WizardAlex
• J_and_K
• marnweeks
• lisabug

If you've crossed the 1,000 threshold (for either GPS-tagged photos or transcriptions) and you have received an email from me, send me a note at kristy.stewart @ billiongraves.com. If you have received an email from me, make sure you've sent me your t-shirt size and address so I can get your shirt to you.

August’s Winners and September’s Contest

August has been a photo-, map-, and transcription-filled month, and you all have been amazing in the process. Every one of you contributing to BillionGraves has contributed to the awesome growth we’ve seen and to the growing number of complete cemetery records and photos that are now available.

Looking Back at August

There have been thousands of photos uploaded, and there have been many thousands of records transcribed. In fact, there have been so many transcriptions from dedicated individuals that even though we said this month’s promotion would only give t-shirts to those who uploaded photos from the app that we’re sending t-shirts to individuals who transcribed over 1,000 images in August. (If you’re one of these great people, check your email and please get your t-shirt size and shipping information to me as soon as possible.)

Here are this month’s winners and their totals (as of around 10:00 p.m. GMT):

Photo collectors:

• Dswillet (10504)
• Gableboy (2327)
• Mitchowl (8087)
• PapaMoose (1014)
• ValerieC84 (1088)
• GeneologyMaster (1151)
• Hokie374 (9016)
• tjalbrecht (5269)
• ladyr0wan (1210)
• DdraigGoch (1618)
• crex (1159)
• Anne Ryan (1998)
• Bmathis (1452)
• Rbemis01 (4127)
• MichaelMcCormick
• Chynna67 (1433)
• Vickytb (1120)
• TaraDuncan (1078)
• waterfreak2009 (1925)
• Chrisser (2115)
• Joe&Murphy (1572)
• huntingsage (1137)
• grave_hopper (1169)
• shelter (1737)
• masters001 (1047)
• dvdmovieking (1006)
• Catirrel (1089)

Transcribers (if a transcriber already earned a t-shirt from uploading photos, he or she doesn’t get another one):

• trishkovach (11536)
• DdraigGoch (10961)
• RWhisnant (10197)
• EAC61 (6577)
• Rbemis01 (5181)
• SouthPawPhilly (5080)
• Anne Ryan (3222)
• Finnsh (3140)
• Chynna67 (3115)
• juicyjaffa (2429)
• dvdmovieking (2141)
• MollyM (2042)
• Russell808 (1834)
• tjalbrecht (1729)
• grave_hopper (1425)
• cemeteryschlep (1365)
• foxhunt (1298)
• sls1966 (1268)
• deacent (1151)
• Bmathis (1059)
• delmonic1970 (1019)

To everyone, even those who didn’t make it into the over-1,000 club, thank you so much for your contributions to the BillionGraves project!

Looking Forward to September

Now that August is over, what are we going to do for September? For starters, we’re going to duplicate last month’s t-shirt contest: If you upload 1,000 GPS-verified* photos OR transcribe 1,000 photos, you will earn a BillionGraves t-shirt. For those of you who have already won your t-shirt, you won’t get another one if you cross the 1,000-photo threshold, but I hope you won’t let your cemetery-mapping habits falter.

Also, even if you’ve already won your t-shirt, don’t stop there! Let your spouses, friends, children, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors—even complete strangers—know about BillionGraves. The more people we have working on the project, the more cemeteries we can get mapped out, and the more ancestors we can help each other find.

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*GPS-verified photos are headstone photos that come through the free BillionGraves app for iPhone and Android.

The T-shirt Deadline Approaches

August is nearly over, so if you’re anywhere near collecting 1,000 GPS-tagged photos, hurry and collect the last few you need to earn your BillionGraves t-shirt. We’ve had a few new winners since the last time I announced the list, so I’ll post it again here with the added names. (If you think you’ve uploaded 1,000 photos from the app, but you haven’t received an email from me asking for your shipping address and shirt size, email me at kristy.stewart @ billiongraves.com and let me know.)

• dswillet
• Gableboy
• Mitchowl
• PapaMoose
• ValerieC84
• GeneologyMaster
• Hokie374
• tjalbrecht
• lady0rowan
• DdraigGoch
• crex
• Anne Ryan
• Bmathis
• Rbemis01
• MichaelMcCormick
• Chynna67
• Vickytb
• TaraDuncan
• Chrisser
• Joe&Murphy
• waterfreak2009
• huntingsage
• grave_hopper
• shetler

If you have a smartphone with true GPS, you still have time to collect 1,000 headstone photos. Upload your photos by 11:59 p.m. UTC and you’ll have won yourself a BillionGraves t-shirt.

More Graves, More Winners

The number of graves you have all mapped out and transcribed is climbing faster than ever—even slow upload days are higher than the average we had before August. You have all really stepped up to the plate on this, and the number of individuals who have earned their t-shirt is growing apace. We have 19 t-shirt winners, and there’s still more than a week left! Here’s a list of our current winners:

• dswillet
• Gableboy
• Mitchowl
• PapaMoose
• ValerieC84
• GeneologyMaster
• Hokie374
• tjalbrecht
• lady0rowan
• DdraigGoch
• crex
• Anne Ryan
• Bmathis
• Rbemis01
• MichaelMcCormick
• Chynna67
• Vickytb
• TaraDuncan

The Leaderboard gives us a glimpse of all the transcribers who are taking the uploaded photos and making them searchable. Right now the lowest number of transcriptions on the Leaderboard (which now extends to 25 instead of 10) is 325; the highest is a whopping 10,170 transcriptions from RWhisnant! And even with RWhisnant’s astounding numbers, we’ve had so many uploads that there are still over 5800 images available to transcribe. This is an amazing month for cemetery record collection.

Top-Notch Transcribers

Yesterday was a landmark day for the transcribers: there were more records transcribed yesterday than ever before (and the gap between yesterday and every other day was sizeable). Those transcriptions put us over a major milestone: 100,000 records. Each of those records belongs to someone’s family member, and now they’re easy to find for anyone who’s looking for them.

We’ve had some more photo collectors cross the 1,000-photo finish line as well: tjalbrecht, Hokie374, GeneologyMaster, ValeriC84, and PapaMoose (though PapaMoose assures me that his nephew was actually taking many of the photos while he was clearing off the stones, so he’s going to give his t-shirt to Helpful Nephew). These collectors have been a part of a huge spike in photo uploads.

Those photos have been uploaded from all over, and here’s a sample of the areas we’ve gotten photos from in the past two days, divided by continent.

North America

• Alabama, USA 
• California, USA 
• Idaho, USA 
• Louisiana, USA 
• Michigan, USA 
• New York, USA 
• Ohio, USA 
• Ontario, Canada 
• Pennsylvania, USA 
• South Carolina, USA 
• Texas, USA 
• West Virginia, USA 

Europe 

• Wales, UK 
• Stockholm, Sweden

Australia 

• Canterbury, New Zealand

Many of these areas have even had more than one of their cemeteries updated in the past two days, so we’ve had a lot of additions. Thanks, everyone!

Free App & First Winners

Yesterday version 1.2 of the iPhone app was released, so the app is now free. I’ll talk more about the new features in the app in a bit; first I want to talk about some amazing people.

First, a big thank you to everyone who uploaded photos over the weekend. We’ve had our strongest four days ever, with thousands of photos uploaded every day.

Second, an equally big thank you to our expertly efficient transcribers, who seem to keep up just fine with the increase in uploads.

Third, a thank you and congratulations to our first t-shirt winners, DSWillett, Gableboy, and Mitchowl. All three of them have crossed the 1,000-photo threshold and have earned their BillionGraves t-shirt for the August promotion. (They’re also sitting quite comfortably at the top of the Leaderboard.) Awesome job, you three. I’m amazed at what you were able to do in only eight days.

Now that we’ve taken a moment to acknowledge everyone who keeps new information pouring in to BillionGraves, we have a chance to talk about the update for the iPhone app.

Version 1.2 has several enhancements, but there are a few you’ll notice more than the others:

• Faster photo taking
• Ability to add a cemetery using an address (in case you can’t get to the cemetery and add it using your current location)
• The dashboard displays your transcription count along with your other counts
• A link to the User Guide from the Settings view (in case you have any questions while you’re using the app)

The last, most drastic improvement to the app is the optional feature expansion available for a $2.99 in-app purchase (if you’re updating to version 1.2 from an earlier version you get the expansion automatically). This expansion bundle is called Records View. I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you missed the explanation, Records View unlocks three main options:

• Search records that have already been transcribed from within the app (searching on the website is still, of course, free).
• View a list of transcribed records whose GPS tags are near your current location.
• View an already transcribed photo on the map along with your current location (this makes it easy to navigate to a headstone in an unfamiliar cemetery).

Records View allows you to access and utilize the information, photos, and records on the BillionGraves database in new and useful ways. I hope all of you who unlocked it automatically by updating enjoy the new feature bundle, and that those of you who are new to BillionGraves will consider adding this tool to your research toolbox.

August Uploads and Solar Storms

Thanks to so many of you, yesterday was the second largest uploading day BillionGraves has ever seen (the biggest uploading day coincided with our first cemetery event). We saw photos from all over pour into the database, and we appreciate every one of them.

One person who significantly contributed to the uploading spike was user DSWILLET (he or she doesn’t capitalize the username; I do that because whoever this is deserves more than all lowercase letters). This morning DSWILLET tops the Leaderboard with 1,014 images uploaded since August 1. A small portion of those photos—about 250—were uploaded using the new uploading feature we’re testing, so they don’t have GPS tags on them. But DSWILLET is only 239 images away from the 1,000-photo threshold, and it’s only August 5.

There are other users who are well on their way to the 1,000-image mark, and we haven’t even hit a weekend yet. Thank you all for mapping out your local cemeteries.

In not-as-fun news, there is a possibility that GPS systems will be a bit glitchy this weekend. There have been three large solar flares recently, and the resulting coronal mass ejection (CME) could toy with radio traffic, power grids, and satellites. That isn’t to say everything related to GPS will break down for a few days, but if your GPS isn’t working the way it should, blame the sun, wait it out a day or two, and try again. If you’re close enough to the poles to see the auroras, enjoy the light show. I wish it could come as far south as Utah.

Earn a BillionGraves T-shirt

This month we want to give you a t-shirt. We’ll send a free BillionGraves t-shirt to anyone who collects and uploads 1,000 GPS-verified* photos before August 31 (anything uploaded from August 1 onward counts).

Collecting 1,000 photos may sound a bit daunting, but it really isn’t. Though your photo-collection rate will vary depending on the types of headstones you’re mapping and environmental factors, about 3 hours spent mapping should get you 1,000 photos. There are dozens of ways to fit those 3 hours into your month.

• Spend 45 minutes each week collecting photos: use your Saturday mornings or spend a lunch break in the fresh air.
• Add 10–15 to your daily commute and collect a small batch of photos every weekday.
• Plan a single, 3-hour weekend morning in the cemetery (be sure to bring a charger for your phone).

Click on the shirts to see a larger photo.

1,000 photos is an achievable goal for any of you who have the app: I hope we end up sending out a whole lot of t-shirts when August comes to a close.

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*GPS-verified photos are collected and uploaded with the app, not the web-based uploader we’re currently testing.