Bloggernacle Back Bench: New and upcoming around the Bloggernacle

I am so thrilled for two online endeavors coming soon: One is genealogy flavored, the other is a flood of Bible videos being released in connection with Easter. And both are just so exciting. Plus one new citizen of the United States sings a special anthem of his new country.

Do your eyes glaze over when you hear about genealogy? Or perhaps not even that, but you feel intimidated about even knowing where to begin? Well let me be the first to tell you about Kinfolio a free service from FamilySearch.org that I got the privilege of touring.

And while it is still in preview stage, I can tell you I like what I saw. It uses a “book” interface to help users easily organize, store and find their genealogy information. It is very clean and user-friendly, and utilizes many social media tools (like Facebook, Flickr, blogs, etc.) to upload information into these personalized books. The books saved on the site remind me of online versions of “blog books” that are popular to order online scrapbooking programs. Sound cool? It is. Watch this column for more information as Kinfolio gets closer to release.

March is a few days away and with it comes an exciting flurry of Bible videos, nine in all, to be released a few at a time each Friday starting March 9. These Easter-themed videos will cover:

The Savior’s entry into Jerusalem

The plotting of the priests and scribes to put Christ to death

The Last Supper

The Intercessory Prayer

Christ in Gethsemane

Peter’s denial

The Savior’s trial before Pilate

The scourging and Crucifixion

The laying of the Lord’s body in the tomb

The Savior’s Resurrection

What’s your job, besides enjoying and being inspired by these beautiful videos? The hope is that members and others will share them across the world. To help facilitate that there is a new e-card feature that allows you to easily click and send. It’s almost too easy. Check it out.

Finally, this man has sang the national anthem more than 100 times, but it hasn't been his national anthem. Until now. Watch as singer "Alex Boye performs the national anthem after becoming a U.S. citizen" right during the swearing in ceremony. Chills. And click on the "Show More" to get Boye's own feelings of the performance.

Now let me find other exciting blog posts from this past week in the Bloggernacle:

Power pick: Speaking of genealogy, this delightfully droll and yet beautifully remembered piece depicts the day the spark of genealogy entered this woman’s life. Here’s a snippet of this well-written post, in which she asks her family members if they have a family tree after seeing one for the royal family: “We haven’t got ‘one of these,’” explained Dad. ‘Only rich people have these. Nan’s mum and dad could hardly read or write, let alone write these things down. Unless Nan and Grandad can remember them, we don’t know what our family’s names or their dates of birth were. We don’t know where they came from. Any information has been lost. Doubtless their names are recorded in church books somewhere, but we don’t know where and we will never know. So yes, our family goes back to 1066 too, but because our family was poor we don’t have a family tree like this one. No one knows who they were, or where or when they lived.’” And this then-8-year-old gives the spunky answer of “I’ll find them” and has been finding them for 40 years. You really should just read the entire post, titled simply "The Lost."