Mapping Your Ancestors

Has anyone seen this; MapYourAncestors.com? It has to be the makings of a possible alternative to what I want to see in Google Earth. It will import data from Ancestry.com or Family Search.org. Now the source of this data is somewhat hazy, but if I am not mistaken it will take all the Surnames you searched on and Place them on Google Maps. Well, this may be its biggest shortcoming as there is no way to filter out what you don't want at the beginning. They need an advance search to do this. What they really need to be able to do is to allow you to upload your own Gedcom file, like GeoGed.com lets you do (see my post on this).

Now, its not that I want to compete with Google Maps, as really Google Maps, and Google Earth are like apples and oranges. They may both be a fruit, but apples (Google Earth) are sweeter than oranges. :)

Anyway, there appears to be multiple efforts afoot to come up with a way to import a Gedcom file into Google Earth. At this point GeoGed.com seems to be on the leading edge of this effort. But, it won't be fully appreciated unless there is a strong consideration in implementing my suggestions. Moreover, I am confident that someone will do this adequately, and sooner rather than later.

Back to MapYourAncestors...if you look at this screen print (click here for larger view) of their sites home page...

I have made some annotations on the image to help you navigate around. To assist with my explanation I have assigned numbers to those annotations.

Item 1., shows you the Ancestry.com feature. Now, it may be that I stumbled upon some Alpha/Beta test of this product? But, it appears that they, Google Maps, are partnering with Ancestry.com? But....if you look at Item 5., it indicates that you can map with data from FamilySearch.org. So, I might be wrong here, but part of my point is to acknowledge the confusion of this site. To see FamilySearch.org, and perhaps Ancestry.com teaming up on a similar endeavour could prove to be very interesting, especially when your talking about Google.

The question becomes how in the heck do you register?  I tried to register by clicking on the "Login" link, no help, then I went to the Contact link; this is just an email to GoogleMaps support. As a long shot I thought I'd go to the Blog link, again no help; with no comments on the few posts that are there, no way to register.

So, in all the confusion, and as I was looking around I clicked on the link for "Map Integration with Family Search.org"; actually the example one for Georg Washington. This will take you to a page that maps out Georg Washington's family history. Worth noting, is that Internet Explorer is reporting errors on the page, no kidding! :)

Anyway, it shows a Pedigree Chart, that is coming from Family Search.org, but nothing works, except the Download GEDCOM. Notice at the top of the page the words "To Map Your Family Tree Follow These 2 Easy Steps"; this might be worth investigating further...I may post about this soon.

To REGISTER!! Arghhh!!...found it!! It's hiding in the link that says "Search Over 3 Billion Ancestors on Map"...oops, that's not it either. Wait!! Aha!...what's this link that says Search MapYourAncestors"? This is it..."Register to Start", I have, and it seems pretty cool. But, I certainly would not want to start my family tree from scratch here. Importing a GEDCOM file!!, now that would be slick. Its still fun to play around with..but has much growth to do.

Comments

[Gary Hodges]

P.S.: If I don't hear from you within 7 days I will remove your comments from this site. Thanks, Gary

[Gary Hodges]

Pierre,

Perhaps the marketing efforts of your solution are exageratted. I did not want to pay the money to buy it without a trial. Someone who has posted on this would support this, and it seems that it is not what it has cracked up to be? Would you care to enlighten us on this? Would you consider allowing me to test your software? I did not want to pay the money to buy it without a trial. Many folks that have bought your software have commented on this and would support my findings. It seems your software is not what it has cracked up to be? Here is a comment from a James over at: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/08/map_my_family_t.html#comment-21356861 "Eastmans" blog.