StudentsOfDescent

Family Tree Legends....where are you?

I've been a long time, devoted, and happy user of Family Tree Legends (FTL) from Pearl Street Software. This post is not about what it can do, but about attempting to ansewer its future. The owner of this product, "Cliff Shaw", has perhaps moved its HQ to MD. This is what I found out at the Colorado's Sect. of States web site by doing a record search.

I also found out at Dick Eastman's site that it went up for sale last March. As far as I know it's still up for sale. I used to get automatic software updates almost monthly, haven't seen any since about then. Anyway, after some digging I found that Clif Shaw has formed another company, which is not a registered company in Colorado state...but shows its address of record their. His new venture is called "ProtectMyPhotos.com". Its almost needless to say that support for FTL has gone down hill, just go read some of the recent forum entries or Google it.

Its too bad, if I had the backing I would buy it in a snap, its the best I have ever used. Perhaps, if luck is with those that do use it, it will be purchased by someone. I wonder...how you might assess how much its worth? hmmmm....anyone?

PicTierra and Picasa

This has to be the sweetest integration of any two outstanding programs on the Planet (Google Earth). To start, because I am always looking for a deeper meaning in things. I think I have figured out where Picasa got is name. If you don't know Picasa its basically software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. I use it all the time to enhance photos and as a library of where they are on my computer. That being said here is what I came up with:

First of all "Pic" is an abbreviated way of say "picture". Whereas, "casa", in this case, probably was meant to be "house" or "Picture House". To stretch this a bit further, and have it lead into my post I could change it slightly by saying PicTierra (Pic Tierra= earth).

How does this apply to Genealogy and Google Earth...please allow me to elaborate...

GeoGed.com Revisited

Since, I wrote my last post on "Out Of The Earth Comes Gedcom" I received a response from GeoGed.com about this post. They mentioned that they are moving as quickly as possible to include US locations, which is great news!

Johann, of GeoGed.com, wants to collaborate about suggestions from my previous post/critique. This is also good news, and I am honored to be able to work with him on this. To make this collaboration as efficient as possible, I will solicit readers of my site in this effort. So, if anyone out there has any ideas or wishes, please post them here as comments, or you can email me, and I will still give you proper credit for them.

Next, I will list, and illustrate my ideas, as I mentioned I would do in my last post...

GeoGed.com Revisited - Part 2

To continue on with the my last related post...

Presentation of an imported Gedcom file in Google Earth.

I have to say what GeoGed.com has done with the colored circles is really good looking. What might also be good is to create a blue one for Paternal lines and a Pink for Maternal lines, with an option to choose another color(s) for non-direct lines.

Description Title: National ID #, Persons Name

Description "Bubble":

WeRelate

I just ran across this great new site called WeRelate. It's primary mission is "to make family history research easier, faster, and more rewarding". This might sound like a typical advertisement...but one point that really stands out are its Values:

• Basic access to information should be free.
• We're here to serve the needs to the genealogical community.
• Collaboration is encouraged by equality and equanimity.

Now where have you seen any real effort focused upon making access to Genealogical records FREE?

Gedcom (GED) Files & Google Earth

Well, some bad news, the person that said they were working on a script for this seems to have dissapeared. I have tried without success to reach him. It's to bad, as this would have probably been a very good application.

My apologies to all that were interested.

GED Files & Google Earth

I just received this very interesting email from a visitor. He, Brad Taylor, is a computer programmer and is working on a program that converts GEDCOM (GED) files to KML files (Google Earth files). I can't begin tell you how exciting this is. Here is quote from his email;

"I wrote a short Perl script which converts GED files to KML folders automatically. It still needs a lot of work and could benefit from a number of improvements, but I think it shows the potential of an
automated conversion. I'd like to add kml paths between parents and children, and I need to link it to a county database."