Genealogy 2017; news & trends provides an overview of the year in genealogy technology.
The GeneAwards 2017 are the twelfth GeneAwards.
No product won Best Genealogy Product of 2017, no organisation won Best New Genealogy Organisation of 2017
and Worst New Genealogy Organisation of 2017: wasn't awarded either.
This year, there's a Best New Genealogy Technology of 2017 instead of a Best New Genealogy Product of 2017.
Here, without further ado, are GeneAwards 2017.
Best Genealogy Product of 2017 has not been awarded.
Right now, the worst thing about Family Tree Maker 2017 is its user interface, which has hardly changed the introduction of Family Tree Maker 2008 back in 2007, a decade ago.
Family Tree Maker 2017 is the first major version of New Family Tree Maker released by Software MacKiev instead of Ancestry.com. Family Tree Maker 2017 boasts several new features, but the most important one, FamilySync, is essentially a replacement for TreeSync. Never mind that it was Ancestry.com's decision to discontinue TreeSync, that creating FamilySync took considerably development effort, or that FamilySync is better and more flexible than TreeSync, existing users still feel entitled to a TreeSync replacement, and do not consider FamilySync to be a truly new feature. MacKiev made a marketing mistake; although FamilySync is a new feature, it should have been marketed as an improvement
Some of the other major new features, although worthwhile, still fail to impress because they are me-too features; some competing products have been offering colour coding and FamilySearch matching for years now.
That Family Tree Maker 2017 includes the ability to match your tree against FamilySearch records is quite noteworthy because it probably wouldn't have been there if Ancestry.com still owned the product.
Another new feature, Photo Darkroom, may be handy for dealing with some hard to read faded documents, but seems largely superfluous for a genealogy application.
Software MacKiev has paid attention to fundamentals; Family Tree Maker 2017's stability and performance are better than ever before, they've once again improved the quality of the Family Tree Maker GEDCOM output.
Both aspect can and probably will be improved further in future releases, but both are way better than when Ancestry.com still owned the product.
It remains an embarrassment that RootsMagic 7 can import more old Family Tree Maker file formats than Family Tree Maker 2017 can.
That isn't Software MacKiev's fault, it is one of the many shortcomings they inherited from Ancestry.com, and they cannot fix everything at once.
Right now, the worst thing about Family Tree Maker 2017 is its user interface, which has hardly changed the introduction of Family Tree Maker 2008 back in 2007, a decade ago.
The ill-conceived, bothersome and awkwardly modal user interface was bad then, and is bad now;
just making it non-modal, as a Windows and Mac application user interface is supposed to be, would have many users breath a sigh of relief.
The GEDCOM support isn't the only thing that has improved considerably over the years, and Chronoplex My Family Tree is well worth checking out - but only if you have a small tree, and your computer has lots of memory.
My Family Tree is free genealogy application for Windows by Chronoplex Software.
The current version is 7.4.
When I wrote about Chronoplex My Family Tree 2.0 back in 2012, I noted that it had improved considerably since the 1.0 release, but also noted a serious issue with the GEDCOM import.
Chronoplex has continued to improve My Family Tree, and for almost every update, the release notes mentions improvements to the GEDCOM support.
For many years now, those improvements are not there because their GEDCOM support is so bad, but because they want it to the best it can be.
The GEDCOM support isn't the only thing that has improved considerably over the years, and Chronoplex My Family Tree is well worth checking out - but only if you have a small tree, and your computer has lots of memory.
A serious design mistake that makes that even the latest version of Chronoplex My Family Tree 7.4 is unable to handle large databases is that it defaults to a memory-inefficient graphical view that tries to show all individuals in your file;
when you try to import a large database, My Family Tree starts gobbling memory like crazy, and may even require a restart of Windows.
It hardly matters to Ancestry.com users that Ancestry.com moved its data to the cloud. It definitely matters to Ancestry Member Tree users that Ancestry.com turned of TreeSync before the replacement was ready, but it also matters that its still unnamed replacement is considerably more capable than its predecessor. It matters that the New Sync is good enough for Software MacKiev to offer a FamilySync that allows synchronising multiple Family Tree Maker databases against the same online tree, and a so-called Sync Weather Report as well. It matters that Ancestry.com opened up the New Sync to both Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic, and that you can sync the same online tree with both products. Last but certainly not least, it really matters that the New Sync seems to work well, that the many serious TreeSync problems are a thing of the past now.
RootsFinder is yet another online genealogy applications, but it isn't your average online genealogy app.
RootsFinder was created by Dallan Quass, who also created WeRelate.org en GenGophers,
which immediately explains why RootsFinder is one of those rare one-dot-zero genealogy products that produces valid GEDCOM files.
What makes RootsFinder interesting is that it offers a feature associated with desktop genealogy genealogy applications; RootsFinder provides free hints by matching against indexes for third-party collections.
RootsFinder currently provides hints based on FamilySearch, findmypast, Linkpendium and Newspaper Archive collections,
while hints based on AmericanAncestors (New England Historic Genealogical Society) collections, WikiTree and Geni.com are in the pipeline.
GedTree is an online chart printing service; their website lets you order a printed chart suitable for framing. GedTree isn't the only chart printing site, and probably not the cheapest either, and they only offer fan charts, but the straightforward web site, the good-looking designs to choose from, the simple process and clear FAQ make it worth checking out.
MyHeritage prolongs it title as Best Genealogy Organisation of the year. They continued to do what they should do; improve their website, desktop application, mobile app and DNA offering. A significant improvement to their online family tree is that it finally includes a Consistency Checker. Another long overdue addition is the Collection Catalog, which provides an overview of the collections on MyHeritage. They added the Ellis Island and other New York Passenger Lists, complete with an index for the supplemental manifest questions. Another noteworthy addition to their collections is the New York City Marriage License Index, obtained by Reclaim the Records. An important new feature is Do-It-Yourself Record Fixes (see below).
MyHeritage also bought Millennia, the makers of Legacy Family Tree, and that deal is good for everyone, especially Legacy users.
MyHeritage ensured that users of the aging Legacy Family Tree will not find themselves abandoned like the users of The Master Genealogist, and has promised at least one more major release of Legacy.
Millennia has finally come out and stated that they will not invest in a Unicode rebuild of their product, and that seals Legacy's fate,
but MyHeritage is likely to offer Legacy Family Tree users a reasonable migration path to MyHeritage Family Tree Builder, which will surely come to include some of Legacy's features.
When they bought Millennia, MyHeritage also acquired Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and they hope to expand the reach of these webinars.
When Ancestry.com broke TreeSync by turning it off, many Family Tree Maker users blamed Software MacKiev. Software MacKiev could have pointed out that Ancestry.com is to blame, but they didn't. Instead of putting the blame where it belongs, they simply continued to work with Ancestry.com to produce FamilySync, their TreeSync replacement.
Last year, Software MacKiev and RootsMagic quietly started a file format war.
RootsMagic would figure out the file format of Family Tree Maker, Software MacKiev would change the file format of Family Tree Maker, and RootsMagic would decode it again.
This year, RootsMagic & Software MacKiev got together, and decided to stop playing this game, and exchange file format information instead.
This benefits the users of both products.
Millennia has been well aware for many years now that their aging Legacy Family Tree cannot really compete with modern Unicode-based products, and that, for two decades, they failed to rebuild the product as they should. Millennia could have let their customer base dwindle and then close their business down, like Wholly Genes, the makers of The Master Genealogist (TMG) did. Instead, they decided to sell the business to MyHeritage while their customer base is still considerable, ensuring not only at least one more release of Legacy Family Tree, and continued jobs for all Millennia employees, but also that when Legacy is officially discontinued, there will be some kind of migration path to another product, MyHeritage Family Tree Builder.
Dirk Böttcher is the one-man organisation behind Ahnenblatt. When he restructured the Ahnenblatt internals to be even more GEDCOM compatible, this 32-bit Windows application was no longer memory-efficient enough to handle my database. I asked him to make Ahnenblatt Large Address Aware, and he did so.
Best New Genealogy Organisation of 2017 has not been awarded.
In November, MyHeritage introduced Do-It-Yourself Record Fixes; users can now add corrections to the MyHeritage indexes.
This isn't an innovation, many Dutch archives have been offering the ability to add corrections for years,
but it is a significant feature, that will help many users find records they otherwise wouldn't find,
and MyHeritage is the first of the big genealogy sites to offer this feature.
Folder Marker is a commercial product of ArcticLine Software for colour- and image-coding folder icons.
Among the add-ons they sell for their product they now include a set of Genealogy Folder icons.
Despite yet another infusion of taxpayer money, WieWasWie remains an embarrassingly poor site that seems to try hard to not provide access to a great collection of data. The user interface remains awkward, and not just because it is carelessly non-designed to be tab-unfriendly, irresponsibly forcing users into the limitations of a single browser tab. Defining a search query on WieWasWie is a vexing exercise in trying to use to what is quite possibly the worst way to select record categories ever, with unpleasantly inflexible drop-down boxes that actively obstruct your ability to make the choices you want. By the way, the basic search still does not allow searching by place name.
Defining a search query on WieWasWie is a vexing exercise in trying to use to what is quite possibly the worst way to select record categories ever, with unpleasantly inflexible drop-down boxes that actively obstruct your ability to make the choices you want.
The frustration provoked by the absurd interface is exacerbated by the fact that each choice of a search criterium triggers a slow search, during which you cannot even select another criterium,
or even see what choices you already made, because the browser tab becomes almost completely white for no reason whatsoever - and all these unnecessary searches slow down the already slow site even further...
The new WieWasWie interface is also offensively buggy; a click on a result line is supposed to expand that line into a section with full index details,
and this expansion is not only annoyingly slow to happen, but the clicked line often fails to expand fully, leaving half the information you were hoping to read hidden from view...
Further proof that this tragic excuse for a web site never underwent any serious testing is the troublesome fact that the last line of a result set does not expand at all, however often you click it.
Perhaps worse than when it is really down is when OpenArchives is half down, and erroneously claims that there are no results for your query...
When users complain about WieWasWie, Bob Coret is often quick to point them to OpenArchives, but OpenArchives is not without problems either.
Way too often, OpenArchives is unusable slow, timing out or even plain down.
Perhaps worse than when it is really down is when OpenArchives is half down, and erroneously claims that there are no results for your query...
The latest features aren't improvement at all, but seem to be features for features' sake.
Usability has been decreased, and users frustration increased by ostensibly helpful but often intelligence-insulting hints
popping up all the time, again and again, requiring you to click them away, again and again.
The very latest addition, automatic ancestries, is a deeply misguided idea.
The links to related records that OpenArchives presents can be very helpful, but you have to evaluate them, as they regularly lead to wrong records.
Automatically building trees on top of that isn't sensible.
All it really accomplishes, besides actively promoting errors, is slowing the site down even further.
Millenia's Legacy Family Tree remains a product stuck in a past millennium.
In April, Millennia introduced Legacy Family Tree version 9.0.
Some of its new features, such as online backup, are worth having, others, like the Family Tree Bingo Report, are just silly.
Such silly additions make me wonder about Millennia's priorities; why are they creating frivolous additions, instead of fixing bugs in features that actually matter to users?
Of course, the most embarrassing issue with version 9.0 is that it still does not let you enter any character you like; despite more than twenty years of customer complaints, Legacy Family Tree still isn't Unicode-based.
Even worse, upon selling the entire company to MyHeritage, with MyHeritage's resources and technology cited as one of the reasons for doing so,
and while MyHeritage has promised to release version 10, Millennia still stated that they will not do a Unicode rebuild of Legacy.
Millenia's Legacy Family Tree remains a product stuck in a past millennium.
Heredis would be a much better product if they finally took advantage of this quarter-century old technology.
BSD Concept introduced the Heredis Blue Suite in 2012.
It was a rewrite of the existing Heredis application as a multi-platform suite, a suite they completed this year by finally adding Heredis for Android.
According to their 2012 press release The Heredis Blue Suite is re-inventing genealogy
, using all the latest development technologies
...
The puzzling fact is that although they rewrote their product only five years ago, even the very latest version, Heredis 2017, still does not support Unicode.
In fact, in answer to a user's question about Heredis 2017, they even stated that Unicode is not even planned for the next version...
Heredis would be a much better product if they finally took advantage of this quarter-century old technology.
Lineage Archive is a commercial American company that offers to put your GEDCOM in arctic storage for 100 years ; after 100 years, your data will be made public.
Lineage Archive offers it service through bundles; each a bundle allows a GEDCOM file, images and PDF files, and each bundle has both number and size limits.
The service is pricey; US$ 169 for a bundle that allows small GEDCOM files up to 10.000 profiles, and up to 200 images; the GEDCOM file must be less than 7 MB, and the images must total less than 400 MB.
The bundle price for a medium size GEDCOM file (40.000 profiles, 28 MB), and up to 500 images (up to 1000 MB) is US$ 439.
Lower priced bundles are available for minuscule, tiny and small GEDCOM files.
These ready-made bundles clearly do not account for including all scans of all sources for all profiles.
Lineage Archive does not offer any ready-made bundle for large or huge GEDCOM files, or a small GEDCOM file with many images, but you can ask for a quote.
The high price is explained by the storage method and location; the data is stored on film in an arctic vault, takes up space for a 100 years, and must then be recovered from film,
as well as the fact that Lineage Archive is a middleman demanding a markup; they are a specialised reseller of storage services offered by Piql in Norway.
You can choose to have a public index for your data, but that index is of limited use, as the data itself remains inaccessible for 100 years.
You can allow people to contact you when they find something, but the index is likely to be insufficient to determine whether John Doe is the right John Doe, so why bother?
Lineage Archive is a expensivesolutionin search of a problem.
Lineage Archive is an expensive solution
in search of a problem.
At issue is not how useful a GEDCOM file will be a hundred years from now, the real question is why anyone would still care for your 100-year old genealogy database.
There are many genealogy hosting services that will gladly let you upload your GEDCOM file and images for free, and you will not only start getting emails, but even get matches with other trees.
Data uploaded to several big genealogy companies is not very likely to disappear, and when it does, humanity probably has bigger problems than retrieving GEDCOM files.
If mankind is still thriving a century from now, we'll probably have a world family tree tree, so your research will be both outdated and superfluous.
When you try to sync your desktop edits to your Ancestry Member Tree, the RootsMagic TreeShare interface gets in the way.
RootsMagic introduced TreeSync in RootsMagic 7.5, released on 2017 Jun 28.
I was appalled by the overly cumbersome TreeSync user interface, but the sync worked, and surely they'd improve the user experience soon, or so I thought.
More than half a year later, TreeShare has not improved at all.
Family Tree Maker FamilySync and RootsMagic TreeSync could both benefit from a bit of user interface streamlining,
but the RootsMagic TreeShare user interface suffers a very basic shortcoming which makes it practically unusable.
When you try to sync your desktop edits to your Ancestry Member Tree, the RootsMagic TreeShare interface gets in the way. Instead of merely displaying a progress box, it demands that you confirm each addition; TreeShare does not just demand that you confirm each new profile, it even demands that you confirm each individual edit within every modified profile. The feeling you get when trying to use it is that TreeShare is really ProfileShare, demanding you to make an individual connection for every profile in your database. This manually-confirm-every-change user interface makes some sense when you are syncing with (and mostly downloading from) some low quality shared tree site like Geni.com or FamilySearch Family Tree, but being forced to go through this rigmarole, being forced to manually reconfirm everything you just entered, item by item, every time you are merely uploading your own desktop changes to your own Ancestry Member Tree is worse than tedious, it is completely impractical.
The one truly fundamental problem with Centurial 1.0 is complete vendor lock-in; you can enter your data, but you cannot get it out again.
Centurial is evidence-based genealogy software, and that's a Good Thing. There are some conceptual mistakes and the first release is a bit awkward to use, but that both the concept and user interface need some polishing isn't surprising for a one-dot-zero release. The one truly fundamental problem with Centurial 1.0 is complete vendor lock-in; you can enter your data, but you cannot get it out again. Centurial 1.0 does not only lack GEDCOM import and export, it does not offer any import from or export to any other format at all.
Here's where ProStamm gets really greedy: everyone who wants to merely view your tree, which you are already paying for, must become a so-called Family Circle Limited member and pay US$ 9,95 per year for the privilege.
The brand new ProStamm boldly claims to be the best GENEALOGY PROGRAM on the internet
.
I seriously doubt that, but even if it is true, would you put down US US$ 19,95 per month or US$ 219,45 per year for online genealogy software?
Well, maybe you would, but for that US$ 219,45 per year, you still cannot share your tree with your family!
Here's where ProStamm gets really greedy: everyone who wants to merely view your tree, which you are already paying for, must become a so-called Family Circle Limited member and pay US$ 9,95 per year for the privilege.
One reason Ancestry.com is the Worst Genealogy Organisation of 2016 is that, while they claim to have suffered an DDoS attack in 2014, they still did not even bother to make adequate backups, and when RootsWeb went down (and stayed down for months!), still suffered significant user data loss...
Last year, Ancestry.com not only disdiscontinued Family Tree Maker by selling it to Software MacKiev, they also decided to replace TreeSync and share it with both Software MacKiev and RootsMagic.
The replacement was supposed to happen late last year, but Ancestry.com did not manage to make their own deadline,
and this year, Ancestry.com showed its disrespect for Ancestry Member Tree and Family Tree Maker users by bluntly turning off TreeSync before its replacement was operational.
Adding insult to injury, in October, large parts of RootsWeb stopped working, and Ancestry.com announced that most of its products and functionality are under review
.
Ancestry.com continues to push the dishonest We're Related app and right now, RootsWeb has been down, again, for about three weeks...
When they started bundling RootsMagic and MacBridge for RootsMagic, they called the combined product RootsMagic for Macintosh - but it isn't.
RootsMagic is a Windows application, which Mac users can run in a Windows virtual machine.
In September of 2014, RootsMagic introduced MacBridge for RootsMagic, which is a ready-made porting layer for running RootsMagic on Mac.
Their blog post about it unequivocally states that they are working on a true native RootsMagic for Mac,
and their MacBridge for RootsMagic FAQ page answered the question Will you ever have actual Mac versions of your software?
with We are busily working on them.
.
When they started bundling RootsMagic and MacBridge for RootsMagic, they called the combined product RootsMagic for Macintosh - but it isn't.
RootsMagic stated their intention to create RootsMagic for Mac as early as their January 2011 blog post Running RootsMagic on a Mac,
and their New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 teased by mentioning new platforms and new devices
.
They actually released RootsMagic for iDevices late in 2012, well before they released RootsMagic for Android early in 2014.
The MacBridge for RootsMagic FAQ page was renamed to RootsMagic for Mac FAQ and it currently states Yes, we are actively working on a pure native Mac version of RootsMagic.
.
I very much agree with RootsMagic's policy of not releasing products until they are done,
but that does not change the fact that they've been promising RootsMagic for Mac for many years now without delivering so much as one screenshot.
Heirloom Software will design, build and test the Universal Genealogy Transfer Tool for just US$ 9000 in just six weeks...
In November of 2017, Heirloom Software, developers of the yet to be released Heirloom Origins desktop genealogy software,
initiated a KickStarter project for another project, the Universal Genealogy Transfer Tool.
Heirloom Software describes the Universal Genealogy Transfer Tool as a free tool which will allow you to move all of your research from one supported genealogy software program to another with no [sic] loss of data,
no unlinked media or files, and no problems.
, and it will not only work on Windows but on Mac OS X as well.
That sounds even better than AncestorSync reborn, that sounds like AncestorSync for the Desktop, no web connection needed.
Best of all, Heirloom Software will design, build and test the Universal Genealogy Transfer Tool for just US$ 9000 in just six weeks...
The Universal Genealogy Transfer Tool Kickstarter did not reach its funding goal and has been cancelled.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.