Behold keeps getting better.

Biggest Pro: Reads all GEDCOM files.
Biggest Con: Reader only at this stage

Excellent! Simple to use, flexible and user-friendly.

Biggest Pro: Simplicity and flexibility
Biggest Con: Vanishing file - it didn’t happen to me, but I was careful to save the file at every stage.

I is very easy to use and to work with.

Geni collects private data and the original contibutor then loses authority to control it.

I’ve been doing genealogy since before there were PCs, and my first software was the DOS version of family tree maker. We now have over 30,000+ individuals with lots of pictures, stories and facts - a big, complex family so we need a good program. This year, I finally upgraded from FTM 16 to FTM 2012 - what a treat! After a few weeks to get used to the differences, I found it to be stable, accurate and very easy to use. The modern database design makes it much more efficient than the old version (e.g., one picture can be linked to multiple individuals instead of saving a copy for each person), the tie to Ancestry.com makes searching data easy and merging both data and sources almost automatic (yes, I am a paying member of Ancestry). And, the 2012 FTM version has a “Sync” feature that keeps my uploaded (to Ancestry) tree identical to the tree (database) on my home computer. The user interface is simple and powerful and outputs are everything I would ever need. If you were a user of FTM 16 or previous, FTM 2012 is definitely better - it is different and takes some getting used to, but you should definitely upgrade. If you subscribe to Ancestry.com, this is your best user interface to the web site. If you don’t meet either of these criteria, then there may be equally good software choices.

Biggest Pro: User Interface - powerful and intuitive
Biggest Con: Marginal support for any significant technical issues

I tried several different programs and this is by far the best. I had a question using the free version and got a response within hours. That was even more impressive when you consider I was in the states and he’s in the UK.

Biggest Pro: You can print out a list of all the people you are related to and how.
Biggest Con: After using the program for two weeks with hundreds of names, NONE.

I suppose however good a piece of software is someone will always complain but the one or two who give TNG a low score are far outweighed by those of us who find it history research contains relatively does everything it says on the tin. My family history study is relatively small but it is presented beautifully thanks to TNG. Loading a gedcom and adding media and other data is easy even for people like me who have no knowledge of MySql or PHP. All I need is a platform on which to display my research and TNG delivers that in spades. Support is fantastic. Whenever I have e mailed Darrin with a problem he has responded quickly. There is really nothing like this around and if there was it would have to be better than excellent to outperform TNG. Ignore the odd moaner on this forum, they obviously don’t use this superb software properly.

Biggest Pro: Does exactly want it says it does
Biggest Con: None

It’s good, but once the tree grows it will ask you to pay !

Biggest Pro: Nice Tree Building and Social Interactivity
Biggest Con: Have to be a Pro User to access all the features.

Have used BK since the early DOS versions and have compared it with most commercial packages. BK remains the most flexible, modifiable and useful genealogy software you can find anywhere, at any price. It’s simply the best.

Biggest Pro: Easy to manipulate and produce desired output
Biggest Con: Lack of internet portals for temporary exits and returns

A great package with unbeleivable support

Biggest Pro: Support and ease of use
Biggest Con: none known

Doesn’t allow collaborating as now they ask money even if I want to HELP my relatives to build the tree.

I gave up and left my more active relatives alone with their task

Biggest Pro: seems to be intuitive but it’s missing addressess for Estonia
Biggest Con: pay if you want to collaborate, good luck with that

TNG Software is outstanding. I’ve been using it 3 years now and just when I think it can’t get better an update or addition is released that adds even more capability. The Author, his staff and some very dedicated volunteers are quick to answer any questions and there is extensive instruction on the WIKI.. It is highly customizable particularly if you know some PHP but even the novice can make a good looking and useful website with minimum effort and very low cost. More advanced users have teamed the software with joomla or wordpress. I have yet to figure out the benefit of that but quite a few apparently find it advantageous.

The data sorting, search and display are exceptional and there are limitless options for ways to present your genealogy information. There are great security measures for those that want to keep their data within the family. . My compliments to Darrin Lythgoe. He has done a lot of work and in my opinion has under priced his software in comparison with the prices charged for software that doesn’t do a fraction what TNG does. Darrin’s and his TNG software have my highest recommendation.

Biggest Pro: Low Cost, Highly Configurable, software with great support.
Biggest Con: PHP is intimidating for the computer challenged.

Can someone help me out on the christopher and Bridget Bracken line?
I have never tried it yet. I am trying to locate Christopher Bracken …

—

Moderator’s Note: GenSoftReviews is for user reviews of genealogy programs they’ve used. It is not for questions about a program or for research questions.

Louis

Used to be good.
Impossible for non-paying members to merge their own profile with a pro- paying member and visa versa.
Now duplicates cannot be resolved.

1. Seems to me that Geni wants to now build a “false world tree”, a tree of duplicate & triplicate profiles because there is no way to merge the duplicate profiles.
2. Have not had my question regarding merging answered in months. Wonder why?
3. Time to pay my membership for another year But I don’t see the point anymore.

Biggest Pro: Collaborating
Biggest Con: Non-paying members cannot resolve duplicate profiles including their own - how pathetic

I’m a seasoned professional software engineer with over 25 years in the industry. I’m not related to the creator of The Next Generation in any way other than being a satisfied customer.

The Next Generation is a superb piece of software. Putting genealogy on the web is no small challenge, and Darrin and his team have done an excellent job of creating a piece of software that is extensible, flexible and highly configurable. My tree has over 2000 people in it and I’ve yet to bump into some sort of limitation that I couldn’t work through.

TNG means that I have my family tree accessible to me anywhere I have an internet connection. No more furiously scribbling notes at the archives or registrar’s office, only to get home and wonder exactly what I meant. No more trying to do clumsy HTML extracts for family and friends. No more wondering if my tree will be visible on someone’s such-and-such computer. The Next Generation takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s well worth the effort.

Biggest Pro: Web availability, security settings
Biggest Con: Setting up a web app for people who have never done it before can be challenging. TNG is no more difficult than WordPress.

I am the webmaster for two genealogical websites. One has over 360,000 individuals (The Sprague Project)
http://www.sprague-database.org/
which is based on the work of Dick Weber, and one is a personal website with only 7,500 individuals.
With TNG, we can easily provide a wonderful way to present all of our genealogical data. I would never go back to the “bad old days” of not using TNG. We began to use TNG on 26 August 2005. A landmark day for us.
As for support, there is a TNG Forum and a TNG listserve. Both are highly active and highly helpful. Further, Darrin is responsive to requests for help.
We started using TNG after reading a glowing 2005 review of TNG by Dick Eastman. Thank you, Dick Eastman, and thank you, Darrin Lythgoe.

Biggest Pro: TNG provides a wonderful way to display our genealogical work on the Internet.
Biggest Con: One has to print out and read and *follow* the installation instructions very, very, very carefully. This is *not* really a con, but merely reflects that care must be taken.

I have been using TNG since version 6, and have been very pleased with this package, and the support provided by Darrin.

Darrin is not only active within the forums and mailing lists, but is very responsive to individual emails. Every time I have contacted Darrin, I have received a prompt, courteous, and helpful reply.

I have also been very impressed with the upgrade policy. I purchased version 7 about five months before version 8 came out, so I ended up getting a free upgrade to version 8!

Biggest Pro: Excellent Support! Darrin goes the extra mile to make sure everyone is happy!
Biggest Con: none

TNG is great for displaying a family tree. If like me, you record your research in a desktop computer genealogy package and then want to publish your results then you’re usually limited to ancestry.com etc and only in their format/layout. And then you lose control over your research.

TNG allows me to restrict who can see what. Handy for folks concerned with privacy.
By including references to images, documents & videos in my GEDCOM export from Reunion, and uploading those same files to my site, I can share my research with my extended family, and keep complete control over my research.

The TNG forums are a great support network, and Darrin (the author of TNG) provides quick and friendly support.

But where TNG really excels, is in it’s ability to talk to MySql and create almost any report you can imagine. As long as you’ve got the raw data then the sky is the limit.

No PHP or MySql experience is needed to get started, but if you care to learn just a bit of both, then you can really extend TNG.

Pete B

Biggest Pro: Fully extendable & excellent support.
Biggest Con: None to speak of.

I couldn’t be more pleased with this software. It can be used straight out of the box, but gives you so much more in the ability to fully customize it to your needs. Basic customization requires little to no programming knowledge due to various included templates. Support for this software is superb and includes a forum, wikipages, a user mailinglist, and even prompt personal support from the creator of the software. Yes it may be a little daunting to the non-programmer to begin with, but if you follow all directions when installing or upgrading you should have no problems. It is an excellent way to share research with family members and others and to be fully in control of how you do it.

Biggest Pro: Fully customizable, Excellent support. You can’t beat the price.
Biggest Con: A manual would be nice, although most of the information is already available but sometimes difficult to find.

I am a complete novice. I know nothing about programming. Before I bought the TNG package, the developer, Darrin Lythgoe, answered untold questions from me via email. His support did not stop after I bought the software. My host installed the software for me, and I had a working website within minutes. I find TNG to be extremely user friendly. I was able to upload my gedcom - and within minutes I was busy adding my media. Customizing my website has been a bit tricker since I’m not a programer; however, Darrin excels in customer service. I always hear from him within hours of sending an email. Additionally, the TNG community (via the forum/mail list) has been very helpful to me. Many of the topics discussed go right over my head but they are responsive and patient even with the most rank novice - and that would be ME! I have been successful in changing my website color schemes, changing out stock photos, adding extra user pages, creating drop down menus, etc. - all without any knowledge of programing - all with the help of the user list. I have to say - if I can do this - anyone should be able to. See for yourself: http://www.curbowfamily.com.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use - can launch a website out of the box within minutes; customer support; forum support
Biggest Con: Learning curve - if you are NOT a programer and you wish to customize extensively you will have to be patient and use the resources of the forum/mail list. It won’t be an instantaneous process but it will be well worth it

I’m in England and trying to find anything that even comes close to TNG is impossible! I’ve been a TNG’er now for several years and I must admit that my first venture into the world of managing my own web site, was a bit daunting. I didn’t need to worry though because there are a couple of TNG friendly hosting companies that will even completely install the package for you, leaving you with a fully working site within minutes!

Once the site is running, all that’s needed is install your data. This can be done from within the comprehensive admin section or it can be as simple as uploading your own gedcom file from almost any desktop program. Once done, its a simple matter of uploading photos and documents that support your data, also through the admin sections.

TNG has a whole host of features which can be easily managed through admin including the ability to completely change the entire look of your site by switching templates. Again, this is achieved through the admin section and can literally be done in seconds.

Once familiar with the program and how it works, the user can delve deeper into the works and make changes to how the software looks and behaves. In other words, customise it to suit yourself. If you break something, fear not because there is plenty of help on hand, both from the writer, Darrin and through the highly active forums.

The reviewer that said “half the questions never get answered” is totally and utterly wrong. In fact, many questions start a debate in which differing views of the issue get explored and several resolutions are put forward. As for the reviewer who said “My career has been based on building and using sql databases yet I have lost my established blog and cannot get this piece of software to work.” I would suggest that if you, as a programmer cant get this to work, you seriously need to change your career!

All in all, there is nothing that even comes close to the quality of this package, or the support provided by the write and the users.

Biggest Pro: Works straight out of the box!
Biggest Con: Not really a con but if you should want to be “different”, then get the reference books out.

Have been around the geni world since 1982 and have tried every geni program from the days when we used to use large floppies in Dos and there were no hard drives. TNG has been by far the most efficient and user friendly program I have used over these 30 years. In recent years has allowed me to present all my research online in an environment that is easy to use by the website visitor and accounts greatly for the fact that I have nearly 22000 persons and 3000 photos online. Even though my site is closed to the public I have 1800 registered users and Google still ranks my site number one (and two and three) when searching ‘Castellorizo’. My website is ethnic based and has drawn a lot of positive international attention in the media both in Australia and Greece.

The site is at: http://www.castellorizo.org

Even though I have been around for many years I am still not all that computer literate. The support from Darrin and others within the TNG family is so reassuring.

I cannot provide one negative aspect to this program as an online presentation of your genealogical research. Go for it!

Biggest Pro: Lots of online support if you neen it
Biggest Con: None

Not just the best…The ABSOLUTE BEST!!

Best support, Best on-line Community and the best as a replacement for my desktop Genealogy Program.

Add to that, the new MODS (add-ons) that the user community is constantly designing, and I am not sure this program has much competition!

Kudos to Darrin for his work to date, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

Biggest Pro: Google maps, Geocoding of places, Branches, Privacy and help buttons that HELP!
Biggest Con: No single button to captures all the add-ons and then re-install them after upgrade…but mod-manager is still better than having each add-on auther create their own interface

I started using TNG a few years ago having never seen a line of code before in my life. The installation was easy and I had my site up and running in no time.

When I decided I wanted to do more customization, I asked questions on the forum and the email users list and got great help and advice.

I have now gotten to the point where I am answering questions for others and have helped several people with their websites. One site I upgraded recently took about 3 minutes to complete an upgrade.

For anyone who wants to share their genealogy online, I highly recommend TNG.

Biggest Pro: You have FULL control of your data and you can customize it however you want
Biggest Con: There are so many features that it can take some time to fully realize the potential of TNG

Mac version is awful, ridiculously difficult to enter the most basic of info. Help buttons don’t work

Biggest Pro: Instantly awful so little time wasted before dumping it
Biggest Con: Takes user friendliness to new lows

I am not getting any response from GenoPro about my PASSWORD.

I never had a chance to register on the FamilyTrees.GenPro.Com and I can not log in.

I requested my password, but never get a reply……………..

Biggest Con: No response to password requests, cannot use FamilyTrees site……..

Used to be good until the pricing issue restricted users to 100 members. It’s now simply too expensive to pay for and does not encourage collaborative editing as it used to. As a result, users who don’t want to pay the ridiculous fee to continue editing are barred from making any further additions.

Another thing to be noted is that the management of the software is too US-centric. Being in Australia, I used to get daily birthday alerts after the day had passed but that seemed to have been fixed after numerous complaints. Also, adding places that are not in the US was difficult. The system didn’t have mechanisms to display towns in many countries across the world.

Biggest Pro: Simplicity, collaboration
Biggest Con: Pricing policy $$$

RootsMagic successfully combines an easy, friendly user interface with a robust set of tools. Continuous upgrades further improve ease of use and add new tools. Customer service is responsive.

Biggest Pro: Ease of Use
Biggest Con: No Mac version

It seems like a great product, but I purchaqsed it, downloaded it, but every time I try to go into it, a picture comes onto the screen for a split second and it vanishes. Hence, I have no idea of the reality of the product beyond that.

Biggest Pro: The hope of what it offers.
Biggest Con: I can’t enter it, so it is useless.

Very good program. I have used haza data (dos version), progen and the last 10 years gdpro.
Additional documentation in Dutch available

Biggest Pro: living program….
Biggest Con: legacy program

Using the website for a school project with multiple students depending on it working and now it is not loaded. All of their work is gone. Not good, no warning.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use
Biggest Con: shut down suddenly

CON!!!!!!!!!!!!! STAY AWAY!!!!

PUT ALL MY INFO ON AND NOW HAVE NO ACCESS TO THE SITE..COMING UP ‘PAGE BROKEN’ …SAYS IT ALL!

Biggest Pro: NONE!
Biggest Con: ONE BIG CON, BEWARE!

the worst of all the programs available

Have tried most ancestrial programs, this is the best

I signed up for this free very appealing geneology site a few years ago and have worked at it of and on during those years. During this time every other login attempt was unsuccessful. The server was either down or the site had collapsed. I paid for an ancestry.com site that has been reliable since then. I have now lost all my hard work and my latest login did not show a single relative or family name. What a big disappointment. I will advise anyone interested in compiling a family tree to stay far away from this site. By the way, numerous emails to the help desk resulted in no response. Why is this site even up???

Biggest Pro: Free
Biggest Con: Unreliable

Why is Personal Ancestral File (PAF) the Best Program http://pafbest.blogspot.com. You cannot compare PAF with any other program because PAF is not like any other program. PAF is not alone it is not by it self. Some say PAF they do not update PAF any more that is not true. Every time they update FamilySearch, Ancestral Quest and FamilyInsight PAF is updated. Not only is PAF updated but example if you use the merge option in FamilyInsight it adds that feature or results in Ancestral Quest and even Legacy because Legacy will open and import PAF records including multimedia files. PAF is by far the very best in to many ways to mention http://pafbest.blogspot.com

Biggest Pro: Other programs read PAF data and some even save data back to PAF
Biggest Con: None if PAF has a con you open you PAF data in FamilyInsight, Ancestral Quest, PAF Companion or Legacy.

I use Geni for almost 2 years. I like the idea of one big tree with a lot of pictures and sources. It’s very 2.0 while most software programs are more 1.0. It’s also user friendly.
But since the recent changes (100 profile limit…) cause a lot of problems. Almost all of my invited family members have left the building. I believe it would be better to create a Premium membership (like Geocaching.com did).

Biggest Pro: Collaboration, user friendly
Biggest Con: Limitations (basic users)

When I started using geni.com in 2008 I was impressed with the ease of use and ability to link in so many family members.

However, with the recent changes, particular the 100 profile limit for unpaid users, I can’t even add my new born son? I’d now find it hard to recommend Geni.com, and guilty that I convinced to many family members to create accounts there.

If you want to create your own stand-alone Genealogy website, this software is great. I’ve been using it for over 2 years and it works beautifully out of the box. Although I know php and mysql, I didn’t need any knowledge to install it. All I did was upload the files via FireFTP and follow the detailed instructions. I’ve kept up with the updates, and each time there were no problems when following instructions. I now have a full-featured site that includes information, pictures, and stories for over 4000 relatives and I didn’t have to change one line of code. I especially like the mapping feature, a real plus for genealogists.

Biggest Pro: All admin features can be done through a control panel, including backups.
Biggest Con: Care needs to be taken when Importing ged files which could have duplicates

I am not a techie and yes, that means there is a bit of a learning curve but no insurmountable; especially with a responsive developer and support community. Well worth the ‘work’ considering the output (especially when I learned enough to customize it the way I want).

I’ve been doing genealogy for 12 years and always looked for a program with the capabilities of TNG without success - that’s still the case. All the folks who complain and compare to RootsMagic, FM etc - ask them to show you their websites and then compare (as a user) to a TNG site. ‘nuf said. And, what about value to price? It was only with the latest v.9 that the price went from $29+ to $32+ - I mean what do you want?!

Most folks who use TNG don’t use it as their main genealogy program though you could. It is for a web presence that excels far beyond the capabilities of anything like it anywhere on the web. Even so called techies end up building sites so complicated that a user cannot find information they are looking for; I personally give up on those sites after 30 seconds if I have to drill-down endlessly and trying to follow the hoops built into so-called sophisticated web sites.

Say what you want, but I’ll let my visitors’ comment be the definitive guide- they love it or so they say 2-3x each and every week it’s been online in the last year.

Biggest Pro: No competition in presenting genealogy data; ready to go out-of-the box.
Biggest Con: You have to learn how some minor programming if you want to customize to you likes - but then, what’s new about that?

FTM 2012 is absolutely (so far) the worst since Version 2008. The TreeSync feature actually corrupted data. Whilst subsequent updates may have lessened the worst, it is an open question as to how reliable it is in its intended form. Without the TreeSync feature, they have only (7 months later) - managed to get it to operate like FTM 2011. What a waste of time this version was !! And Ancestry’s reply to all the complaints : its a user problem.

Biggest Pro: It was finally updated to get back to being at last like FTM 2011
Biggest Con: The whole TreeSync feature was a disaster and really showed Ancestry’s true colors.

Now everything is paid. In 2007-2009 it was great site, now NOT.

This is an over hyped piece of software. My career has been based on building and using sql databases yet I have lost my established blog and cannot get this piece of software to work. DO NOT BUY THIS, despite the ‘easy to install’ and ‘works with wordpress and joomla’ it simply doesn’t.. I can only imagine that the people who praise this are friends and relatives of the provider.

Don’t waste your money and more importantly, your valuable time!!!

Biggest Pro: none
Biggest Con: terrible piece of software, poorly written, poorly documented, poorly executed

—

Received from the author, Darrin Lythgoe: “TNG offered to help this person install the software, but he refused any assistance and a refund was granted. All of the reviews posted here and on the TNG web site were submitted voluntarily by actual users.”

A solid program, that I return to, despite the fact that I have tried most of the software on the market.
After including the private function, I’ve decided to use TNG online only.

Biggest Pro: All in all the best program today
Biggest Con: I lack the possibility to produce a book form in pdf format

TNG is little more than a niche piece of software. Unless you have programming experience, you’ll be easily lost. Trying to locate a website administrator with knowledge of TNG is difficult. The support is nothing more than a TNG forum in which half the questions never get answered. Good luck.

Biggest Con: Will never be user friendly.

—

Received from the author, Darrin Lythgoe: “Support options include not only a forum, but also a wiki, a user discussion mailing list, and online help. In addition, users are always welcome to contact the author directly.”

I like that there is not a monthly membership fee and that I can easily collaborate with others. I do not like the limited editing function. I have a pro account (for now) and I have found a mistake entered by a collaborator, but I can not correct it. Also, when I click “research” I am directed to “archives site where i am prompted to purchase an additional membership. The research should be included in the price of a pro account.

Biggest Pro: Collaboration
Biggest Con: extra research costs and editing limitations.

Geni seems to have added fake testimonials between Mar 14th and Mar 19th

Geni Review by rstebbing, Mar 14, 2012 - five stars.
Geni Review by R Schoenberg, Mar 14, 2012
Geni Review by Christopher Lee Empey, Mar 15, 2012 - four stars. rly?
Geni Review by Maria Edmonds-Zediker, Mar 15, 2012 - five stars
Geni Review by Terry, Mar 16, 2012 - four stars? srsly?
Geni Review by Justin Swanstrom, Mar 17, 2012 - five stars.
Geni Review by Herbert Edmonds, Mar 18, 2012 - five stars.
Geni Review by Leslie Ballou, Mar 19, 2012 - five stars.
Geni Review by Gwyneth McNeil, Mar 19, 2012 - five stars
Geni Review by Kevin Hanit, Mar 19, 2012 - you guessed it: five stars

that’s between 10 reviews in just a single week. That leaves just 16 other reviews for the first quarter of 2012, averaging 1.2 reviews per week.

The ratings of the other 16 reviews this year were:
one reviewer did not give a rating
13 reviewers gave a single star
one reviewer gave two stars
one reviewer gave three stars (today)
two reviewers gave four stars (the “possibly genuine” reviews above)
eight reviewers gave five stars. all between Mar 14th and 19th.

Thats a total of 26 reviews this site is showing for 2012. Just to emphasise it: Not a single reviewer had even given three stars this year before the fake review spam started.

———————
Moderator’s note: No, I do not agree. I think your comment is unfair.

Louis Kessler

Great software and easy to use.

The person who creates the tree does not have control! If another person is invited, he/she can add others and ruin what you have done. Other invited person can add Bat Man, Super Man, etc as part of your family and you can’t remove them or prevent the other person from adding bogus entries.

Biggest Pro: works better than others
Biggest Con: read review!

I’d like to have this program on my computer.

Rubyann’s review is worth reading. It speaks for me. I spent a “lifetime” in the computing biz including teaching relational database at the college level. Writing the Fox Pro “underwear” is not hard.
I would have bought this long ago if they had just tightened the code instead of IMPROVING it so that giddy amateurs will buy it.
Decide on your market and aim to own it. I’d advise aiming at the growing population of professionals and trying to gain their trust and keep it. If this system worked as marketed I’d pay real money for it.

Biggest Pro: Relational Database flexiblity
Biggest Con: Not ready for prime time

This does not produce “3-D” singing, dancing flower borders, but it is the gold standard for professional, airtight programming. It is clear that these guys care about the customers’ ultimate goals of reliability, clarity, and capacity. These program does exactly what it says it will do. I have yet to find another one that does.
Others have more decoration on the screens and reports, but I’m more entertained by something I can trust my 4,800 family records to.
After 20 years of family history research, this is the one I trust.

Biggest Pro: Conservative, airtight programming
Biggest Con: None

The first thing that greeted me when I ran the free trial version was incorrect dates in the index panel. I translated a PAF file and the dates were correct in the individual records but not in the index panel. In the “born” column I find the christening date instead of the “born” date for individuals who have both dates recorded.
I also find it inconvenient and inconsistent that I cannot change the primary person in the pedigree view without first showing him in the family view then switching to pedigree view.
Maybe these are two flaws in the trial version, but the trial version should be perfect if they want me to risk buying something that may be even more unreliable.

Biggest Pro: easy to use, fast, and pleasing appearance
Biggest Con: possible structrual flaws

This wonderful program is not working 64bit Office ?

Full Review of GedScape 2.6.02 (January 2012 Release):

http://www.macgenealogy.org/gedscape-review/

It does what the developers claim it does - it’s a GEDCOM browsing/navigation and manipulation utility, very useful for those who deal with a lot of GEDCOM files generated or download from a variety of sources (the internet, relatives, etc.) that were created by a variety of different genealogy apps.

I was impressed that the website that can be created mirrors exactly what you see inside the software as far as the style and navigation/menus.

The only problems I encountered may have been due to my particular setup or to the trial version, and I haven’t had a chance to do further testing, but I was unable to print individual reports to PDF, and I could not generate HTML files from individual reports. I had no problems generating a full HTML/website from a GEDCOM.

Biggest Pro: Very fast and efficient for browsing GEDCOM files.
Biggest Con: The issues I listed above.

Very easy to use and the “smart matches” that popped up were fun to look at (although a lot were “private” since I was not a paying member and only using the freebie). It took me a little bit but I figured out how to go back and correct/make additions to lineage.
The biggest let down was that when I was just beginning to really move along with entering data, I got the dreaded pop up; “Sorry, you’ve reached your limit”.
Even though, this is a great site!

Biggest Pro: Easty to use
Biggest Con: Limits number of family you can add to the tree

Having used the most of earlier versions of FTM, I thought that it FTM 2011 would be faster - it is not. Look better - it does not. Easier to use - not by any stretch of the imagination. It is a disappointment of the first order.
The amount of time I have spent trying to add new entries and correct errors has become WAY too long.
Give me the earlier version, anytime. I will use FTM 16 again on an older (32 bit machine) and be grateful that I did not erase the data from my external hard drive. I can’t help but wonder, what were they thinking when some one was tasked to produce the new version. It is one sorry time consuming program, and I just can’t get used to it.

Biggest Pro: Much smaller files - because the pictures and other image data are not embedded in the file.
Biggest Con: Way too hard to use for most amateur genealogists.

I have used almost every version of Family Tree Maker up to the latest, FTM 2011. In all honesty, the latest versions are almost unusable. The learning curve is steep, not friendly at all and not what I had expected. If I have my druthers, I am going back to version 16 and use it on a Vista machine. 32 bits is fine .
My biggest regret with the later versions is that they are labor intensive to get to a specific bit of information, and then transferring that information is no longer in the ‘cut and paste’ mode. If the folks at FTM want to keep me as a customer, and many others too, I can only hope that they return to the simpler systems, and the sooner the better.

Biggest Pro: Easy to use, and you see an entire family at one time
Biggest Con: Gets slower as you add people, and the storage file is huge, esp with pictures.

OOPS..SORRY. I just read than even LDS’s software’s support is/has been stopped! Who’d of thunk?

Great program that I’m STUCK with and struggling to keep working. No provision was made in the software to export ALL of your data and research notes. So… if you have a large database you’ve accumulated for YEARS it becomes totally impractical to manually copy data to new software. But keeping the program running has now become a techie’s nightmare. It will neither load or copy/run in Windows 7. I’m trying now to see if I can get it to go in a Virtual XP environment. If anyone has tried this I’ll appreciate all pointers..
I’d strongly advise any newbie in genealogy to go ONLY with the software that’s non-profit supplied and supported and you know will still be out there 50 years from now. It may not be the best, but there’s only one that really meets the criteria and it’s free from the LDS Church. Bells & whistles don’t compensate for lost data.

Biggest Pro: Good software - only a 3 because of it’s technical limitations
Biggest Con: Support, support, support.

The site is very, very slow and crashes a lot.

Plus I don’t see it advertised as part of ancestry on ancestry., I thought it was designed to help living relatives connect with other living relatives but I don’t see how it helps do that.

This site offers everything I could ever want to preserve my living history and for telling the stories of my ancestors. I highly recommend it in every way.

Biggest Pro: Talking photos feature
Biggest Con: Video could be better but I understand there are upgrades ahead.

Easy to use and can add infinite number of ancestors

Biggest Pro: ease of use and can share it with other family members
Biggest Con: none as of yet

I’ve been a member since very late 2008 and have been able to expand my tree at least 50 times. I have a friend who has been able to expand his tree by over 10,000 cousins. I use Geni almost every day for about 3-4 hours. I have been able to locate some famous cousins as well as not so famous ones. I have found cousins in places that I did not know I had any. It is easier to find them on Geni than on Ancestry.com. It takes some time to get used to using Geni.

I really enjoy using it.

Biggest Pro: Projects and the ability to merge with others
Biggest Con: None that I know of

I’ve been an active user of Geni.com since 2008. I’ve witnessed some of it’s growing pains, and compared it to a number of other online genealogical sites - some of which have sprung up using Geni.com obviously as a model. In the main, my opinion is that Geni still seems to come out ahead in the game.

That said, as with all things there are pros and cons to using Geni.com as an online genealogical site. In this review, I give a few examples, I hope they will help another in making a workable choice for themselves.

One of the things I love about Geni: The fact that I can add a profile, and the algorithms show that there are more profiles that might be like it. Then, In looking at possible similarities, I’ve found countless new connections with genealogical family lines going into the past that I was totally unaware of. How thrilling to find an entire new set of ‘family’ and benefit from knowing that I connect with those people too.

Another thing I love about Geni: I can explore how other people (whose names I find many places on the site) connect with me through ‘family lines’. I have found such a deep appreciation in becoming acquainted with ‘the living’, as well as ‘the long dead’. There is such a satisfaction in coming to know people across the world, learning a little about them and their lives, just because of a piece of online software called Geni.com.

And one more thing I love about Geni.com: Because it invites the participants to put up profiles about themselves, it allows us to get to know each other better, and to communicate with each other in a way we may not have before. Thoughts and feelings and interests are shared, and commonalities of ‘the larger family’, of which we all are a part. Because of Geni, I’ve gained so much more appreciation for that larger family, and an unmistakable sense of ‘we all are One’ - really, without argument. That fact has added to making me feel more ‘whole’ myself, being part of that much larger family unit. And getting to know some of the individuals of that larger family unit has certainly been ‘frosting on the cake’ for me.

For all the aforementioned pros, I must mention a few cons that I’ve found using Geni.com. (And I’m still using it, so they must not be ‘deal breakers’ for me at this point.)

One con is: From a user’s point of view (Pro - paid- status), I’ve watched as Free users have had access stripped from them (as Geni has made policy changes), to the point that they are unable to even access profiles they have put up themselves - and sometimes that means MANY. Geni put a cap on some things, and requirements on others, restricting access to ‘Free’ users, pushing their ‘Pro’ (paid) status - not through marketing and selling, but through pressure, limitations and requirments. Makes me wonder where Geni’s priorities are, and suspicious - and growly at the unfairness perpetuated.

Another con: Also from a user’s point of view (non-Curator), I’ve watched as more and more new Curators have been added, with a Curator’s special tools and abilities, without what seems to be a certain basic inability to maintain the high standards and focus required of one holding the status and position of Curator. It used to be that a Curator had more experience, and had ‘earned’ the right to ‘mess with’ other people’s profiles. Now, that seems not to be as true. Along with my high regard for some Curators, I have developed a disrespect for others, who’s motives seem to be other than ’supporting the best good of the whole community’, rather than for just themselves.

And one more point (Just to make the pros and cons even): Since accuracy is important to me, when I find a source that has verified facts, I often look up the matching profile on Geni to make sure the facts match. Many times they do, but sometimes they don’t. My problem is that often the profiles that have innacurate facts are ‘locked’ and unavailable for making any change. Usually my attempts to communicate with those profile makers have gone unanswered, and sometimes I’ve received ‘nasty replies’ of ‘ownership’. Yes, I do understand that many changes can be/are made without consiousness of accuracy, but I don’t understand how a family line can be ‘owned’ by someone. When a profile is curated, then at least there’s someone responsible to talk to about the concern. I’m talking about when that isn’t the case.

So the final review for me is that the Geni.com people (and all those hardworking ‘others’ - usually the early Curators) who’ve worked so hard at putting this site together, have indeed delivered a powerful and useful tool. Of course there are some bugs. And with ‘bugs’, I mean less about the software, than I mean some the company policies, and some of the ways people use the system provided. Despite the ‘cons’ mentioned, I’m rating Geni.com a 5 out of 5, in comparison with all I’ve seen of their online competition. In that category, they’re the best.

Biggest Pro: The collaborative ability to participate in creating ‘One Family’ of which we all are a part, is marvelous.
Biggest Con: There’s some ‘growing’ that is needed by the company and it’s policies, and how the different levels of usage are handled (Free user, Pro, and Curator).

I find this an excellent program for reporting on data stored in TMG. The web output is very good and externel data can also be linked.

Biggest Pro: Easy of use and level of support
Biggest Con: None

Geni is the best family tree site for collaboration. I have made wonderful discoveries here, as well as helped to end, or at least bring attention to long running errors and assumptions.

I love the projects. They have awakened me to aspects of my ancestors lives that I was unaware of - priceless.

If you don’t like to collaborate or share, this isn’t the place for you. The goal here is for one big ACURATE collaborative family tree.

However, I would like to be able to download just portions of the tree.

Biggest Pro: Collaboration
Biggest Con: Not being able to pay for a pro account on a monthly basis.

Easy to use, good connection speed, clear and informative. Much better than a competitor I sue, My Heritage, which is cumbersome and slow to respond. However, please can Geni compete with Mt Heritage and produce a free app for IPhone and Ipad.

Biggest Pro: Easy to use and informative.
Biggest Con: None that I can think of that really matters!

Geni is the best tool out there for collaborative genealogy. Their vision is to create a single world family tree. One person, one profile. Users don’t have to waste time going over old ground. If you find your ancestor, you just connect your tree. If necessary, you can add to (or correct) the information already there, or move on to work somewhere else. If Geni doesn’t already have your ancestors and relatives, you add them.

Instead of thousands of users copying each others’ mistakes, Geni has thousands of users working to build and improve a shared database.

There are dedicated users working to clean up and improve almost every period of history. I can focus on my interest in medieval genealogy, knowing that my American and Canadian colonial ancestors are being tended by people who know what they’re doing. If I decide to spend time on my Palatine Germans, I know that my forest of Mormon pioneer ancestors is being expanded and improved.

These are some of the advantages that matter most to me:

1. Because Geni is collaborative, my tree is growing. I don’t have to waste time trying to scoop up information about every ancestor. I can focus my research in the areas that interest me.

2. Because Geni is collaborative, the information improves over time. If someone finds a new connection, or disproves an old connection, every user who shares that profile benefits immediately.

3. Because Geni is collaborative, I get the expertise of users who specialize in different areas.

4. Because Geni has an international reach, I’ve connected with dozens of new Swedish and Norwegian cousins.

5. Because Geni makes it easy to calculate very distant relationships, it’s the first place I look when I have DNA matches on 23andme or Family Tree DNA.

6. Because Geni’s historical profiles often come up near the top of Google searches, the information on Geni often becomes a popular source for users working on other sites. That means my personal research finds a wider audience.

The users who struggle with Geni fall into three broad categories. First, those who want to have a free online platform to build out large trees unconnected to anyone else. These are the people who want Geni to be a free version of Ancestry. They want to be the only manager of the 700th copy of Charlemagne. While Geni offers a free platform for small unconnected trees, users who want to have a large private tree have to pay for the privilege.

The second group of users who struggle with Geni are those defending genealogical fantasies in the face of contrary evidence. They are not interested in proof. They don’t want new information if it disproves their claims. They complain that other users are destroying their “research”. In Geni’s collaborative environment, poorly researched and inaccurate trees take a pounding.

The third group of users who struggle with Geni are those who are unable to work collaboratively. These are the users who want to own the information they have collected. They believe their ancestors belong uniquely to them, and not to any other descendants. They don’t want to share their immigrant ancestor with dozens of other users. In Geni’s collaborative environment, the cousins who share information have to be able to work together.

In short, Geni offers a collaborative environment, but it’s not the right place for everyone. It works best for professional and amateur genealogists who are serious about creating an accurate and well-sourced family tree.

Biggest Pro: Collaboration
Biggest Con: Date formats need improvement, No built-in ability to handle DNA information

I was a free version user for many years. I wrongly thought purchasing the Deluxe version would overcome many of the frustrations I encountered. After 2+ years of using it, I am more aggravated with the software and its support.

Biggest Pro: Supposedly has FamilySearch interaction built in.
Biggest Con: Many features don’t work as advertized. Non-Critical software problems a rarely fixed. Focus seems to be on developing new features before fixing errors and omissions. Charting capabilities are very basic unless add-on purchased. To-do list feature lacks report design flexibility resulting in many wasted pages printed. There are several inconsistencies between features.

This is terrible software. I purchased the App for my IPad2. The family editor keep closing out my program. I have tried rebulding my data and so far in the the program the problem will reoccur. Tried contacting the support team and they will not reply to my email. Save your money, tme and frustration and don’t buy this app. It is bad to have a product that does not work. It is evenally bad when your support team will not respond or even make an attempt to fix the problem.

Although there is room for improvement and they have made some changes without sufficient warning or consideration to their users overall I love Geni. It’s a great site for storing your familly tree and extending it. If you are protective of your family tree and wouldn’t want anyone else’s information added to it (even if it is more complete than your own) then Geni is not for you and surprisingly there are so many people like this out there that Geni have had to hold back on their true ideal of the world family tree. This is a great shame. People being protective of their trees and the privacy of 4 x great grandparents means there are blocks to making the world tree a thing of beauty and a truely useful historical resource. Despite limitations most people on Geni do collaborate and work towards this goal and the rounded view of the historic profiles when combined with various projects. You really get a feel for what a person’s life was like when you discover other things that were going on at the same time and that they were involved with. Bringing Geni into the realms of a ‘History’ site rather than just a genealogical site. There are plans afoot to add features to Geni which will make it in my opinion a truly wonderful and unique site. It is really hard to believe it is run but such a small number of people. There lies some of their problems I suspect. They are tripping up on their giant shoes like a child trying on it’s dad’s shoes, but soon they will grow into those shoes and then …. !

Biggest Pro: 1.Collaboration2.merging trees3. historic tree 4.future plans
Biggest Con: 1. Private & protective blockers 2. It’s not big enough to do everything as well as they would like as quickly as they’d like

It’s the collaborative portion of this program that keeps it a #1 program for me. My tree is huge because I have been able to merge my family’s profiles with profiles added by many other Geni members. Merging saves me work. I’m not reinventing the wheel. I’m not re-entering people who are already in the program. I’m not looking for facts that someone else has already found and shared.

The ability to discuss data and share resources enables the hobby genealogist to work with serious genealogists at a cost effective rate. I have met cousins from all over the world through Geni and have been able to trace my roots back to pre-Magna Carta England without leaving the comfort of my living room. I have made life-long friends through collaborating on areas of the tree with others who have similar history. The fact that my entire tree and most of my resources are available online means that no matter where I go, I can log in and work on my tree.

I started with a “free” basic membership in 2009 but within a couple of months, I knew that this was the right program for me and upgraded to a paid Pro membership. It is worth every penny to me.

Biggest Pro: Collaborative genealogy
Biggest Con: People start trees and abandon them, causing roadblocks in the tree.

I enjoy using Geni. There are other sites you may use, to build your Pedigree, however the features within Geni make their site unique.
All the joy of discovering new Ancestors is very rewarding, but using geni, allows you to see the Profile, in a new perspective, add Documents, Photographs and you have help from Curators too!
I would recommend Geni to anyone.

Biggest Pro: New perspective of looking at your family profiles.
Biggest Con: I would not call this area a Con, but read Terms of use carefully and understand what Tier you desire to work in, within your Budget.

I love this site! It has moved all of my data online from PAF so that I can share it easily with my family and friends. It has so many great features where you can network with family and friends. It helps to organize your work so that no work is being duplicated. I am excited that I use this site because I found out that I am related (4th or 5th cousins) to one of my good friends from high school. I highly recommend this site for ALL your genealogy needs!!

Biggest Pro: Networking, Organization, and Media Storage online!

Geni is by far the best collaborative genealogy tool. None of the other major players allows the same type of crowd-sourced collaboration. As a result, only on Geni can you work with others on building an extensive network of interrelated trees. For me, working on Geni is like working on a giant, never-ending jigsaw puzzle. I wake up in the morning and check the news feed to see what others have been working on while I slept, and if I can add some pieces to the puzzle, I do. If I see mistakes, I correct them. And others do the same for me. See for example, the projects we have put together with Jewish families from Prague and Vienna. http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-from-Prague and http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-of-Vienna Because the historical trees are mostly public, and searchable on Google, nearly every week I am contacted by someone who is beginning his/her family research and locates an ancestor among the 80,000+ profiles I have entered on Geni (which are themselves just a small part of the 60+ million connected profiles in the Big Tree). Rather than repeat all of the data entry, new users can join in and link up to benefit from all of the work that has been done, and then make corrections or additions to the tree. This type of collaborative genealogy project is simply not practical on any other platform.

Biggest Pro: Collaborative genealogy platform
Biggest Con: Privacy restrictions limit access to portions of the tree

I bought Family tree around christmas of 2011. it cost & 99.00 dollars I sent it back. i don’t like what they did to the old programs made by genealogty.com and original Brudbund. I want a progran with husband on the left, wife on the right, birth ,death and that under name. under both is marriage date and where, then down a lbelow are the children. I don’t want to do my family tree like a chart is done. I don’t know where to get a program like tthe old one anymore. I lost my hard drive and have nothing left . Just a few things i got on disc’s but not my ancestors and my old programs won’yt load onto vista, that was installed on my machine.

I am complaining about a new version of my famolt tree that came out thr enr of 2011. IT totally stinkd. I have been using : My Family Maker for abt 15 years and i loved it. My hard-drive crashes- died dead . They put Vision
Ultimate in. My old programs won’y losd. So i paid $ 99.00 for a new family tree but ancestry.com bought it out
their version stinks. It is like a family chart. i sent it back. I wany my old “My Family Tree: back

Biggest Pro: It’s not a your family. It is a family chart. It’s just is no good

Biggest Con: The price

I’ve used geni for several years. Geni currently has three tiers of membership 1) basic, 2) plus and 3) pro levels. Each level gives you different access to geni features and the paid membership allows you a larger number of profiles that you can add to the site. Pro users have an unlimited number of profiles that they can add. Plus members can add 1,000 profiles and basic free members can add 100 profiles. Though not widely supported geni also offers a program where public libraries can enable “Pro” privileges to their patrons. If you are on a budget and want all the features listed below you should find out how your public library can participate.

This review is from the standpoint of a pro user. Several of the most powerful features of geni, some of which are described in this review, are only available to paid “pro” users. Basic or free users will not have as many options available to them.

HOME PAGE:

Each user has a home page where you’ll find a “Recent Activity” news stream. It will show you activity and recent updates affecting your immediate family, discussion updates, posted documents, projects, profiles and more.

The homepage also gives notifications on “new messages” that you may have received from other geni users. “Merge Issues” relating to people in your family tree and notifications on new possible tree matches.

The homepage also includes statistics on how many family members are connected to you, the number of blood relatives you have and the number of ancestors and descendants that you have on the site.

The homepage also includes a list of people that you are related to, as well as those that you “follow” that have recently been on the site. This is helpful so that you know who in your family is actively doing family research.

On the bottom of your home page are also links to the terms of use, the geni blog, an the online help page. The geni web site has also been user interface has also been translated into over 70 languages and the home page has links that allow you to view the page in other languages.

TREE VIEW:
Included is a flash based pedigree tree that displays your family connections. The tree shows both ancestors and descendants. If your family has uploaded pictures then each person will on your tree will have a picture next to their name and birth and death dates. People in your close family tree are be default private. Although you can view the tree for extended family if you navigate to areas that are private the icons will be gray and the details of the private profiles will be hidden from you. For pro users there are additional icons on the tree that link you to “hot matches”. Hot matches are profiles that geni.com believes might be duplicate profiles to the person on your tree. Pro users have the ability to merge duplicate profiles. With the tree interface you can zoom in and out of the tree to frame the view to the amount of detail that you currently want to view. Options on the tree allow the user to customize their view to see just their direct ancestors or additionally the extended family. If the user pans the view to see other areas of the tree there is a button that will return the user to the “home person” for the current view. This is very handy feature. Additional icons overlaid on the tree give visual feedback on if the profile is deceased, recently updated or public or private. Browsing the tree is fairly strait forward and tree redraw has acceptable speeds for fairly interactive responses. Users can set up their tree so that if they hover their mouse over a profile an enlarged data box will animate or “flip” to show details for that individual. Shortcuts allow individuals to add spouses, siblings, children and photos directly from the tree view.

Pro users also get a handy “move” tool from the tree view. If a profile is not currently connected to a different area of the tree but should be, you can “move” the profile and easily connect it to where it belongs. Pro users can also disconnect profiles from erroneous parents or spouses to fix mistakes.

One handy feature of the tree is that you can copy the URL or web address of the tree that you are viewing and share it with another user. Realize though that viewers that are outside your family group or who are not pro users may not be able to view all the profile on your area of the tree unless they upgrade.

Since the tree view is currently flash based it is not viewable on devices that don’t support flash like iPhones or the IPad. Geni is actively developing an HTML5 version of the tree that will make it so that users of these devices can also view the tree on non flash devices.

SEARCH:
Search for pros is pretty good. For basic users geni has purposely withheld the best features so that they are reserved for paying customers. Pro users can search by first, middle and last names. They can also search by approximate event dates. Other search fields include gender, living or deceased, location, parent, children or partner names. The search results show the birth and death dates, a picture of the person, family relationships, and a link to the person that is the primary manager of the profile. Clicking on a search hit will take you to the profile or the profiles tree view. You can also filter the search results to view just profiles managed by you or profile connected to you. New profiles added to the geni.com website are indexed each day and available to be searched for by other users a few hours after having been added to the site.

SIZE OF TREE:
There are both public and semi-private trees on geni. Trees get connected together when duplicate profiles are merged together. As a results of merging the size of the connected parts of the tree increases overtime. Likewise when mistakes are found and a relationship is removed then the size of the tree can decrease by that disconnected profile and that profile’s descendants. The largest connected tree on geni which is unofficially called the “Big Tree” contains 61 million connected profiles (as of March 2012). Officially this tree is called “Geni’s World Family Tree”. It currently grows by about 17,000 people per day in size with about 2,000 merges completed so there is an actual increase of this one tree by 15,000 profiles per day.

RECORD SEARCH:
Geni has partnered with Archives.com, ancestry.com and findagrave.com to give you quick links to the current profile to potential matches on their partners sites. You will need a paid subscription to Archives.com or Ancestry.com to view these potential matches. geni plans on extending their offsite partner search to additional partners in the future.

RELATIONSHIPS:
Geni’s shared family tree includes profiles from all over the world that have been interconnected by marriage. People naturally have an interest to famous people that they might be distantly related to. Numerous celebrates, authors, artists, musicians, scientists, and historical figures are now part of the “big tree” and all pro users that are themselves connected can find out how they are connected to others in the big tree. Pro users can navigate to any public profile, including famous ones, and by clicking on a button have geni figure out how they are related. It takes geni about 30 seconds to calculate most relationships. When the calculation is complete it not only tells you how you are related but also displays the path, generation by generation so that you can see exactly how the connection takes place. The relationship information is of course only as accurate as the user contributed information is. You should examine the returned info and see if the connected profiles make genealogical sense and if the information is sourced and documented. Also realize that the relationships displayed can change over time. As the tree develops, grows and is edited your relationship to to others on the tree might take different connections

PROFILES:
One way to look at geni is that its goal is to have one profile for every person that has ever been documented to have existed. You can think of geni as a Wikpedia of people. Each profile can include a profile picture along with an arbitrary amount of additionally linked in pictures and even video. Profiles have an “About” section where you can input formatted notes, biographies, web links, research notes and source documentation. Profiles can be “followed”. When you follow a profile any future changes to that profile will show up as notifications on your homepage. You don’t have to be related to a profile to “follow” it. Profiles contain the basic genealogical info for a person including standard genealogical vital info like birth, baptism, marriage and death dates and places. Pro users can edit any public profiles that are connected to the “big tree”. The profile page contains statistics on the number of descendants of the person, blood relatives, and a list of other people that are following the profile. The profile page is a tabbed user interface. The user can click on the tabs to see the Media, Timeline, Discussion Topics, Attached Sources, and Revision History of each profile.
The timeline shows the important events in each person’s life. Additionally users can add other events to the timeline to present a chronological view a person’s life. Pictures and documents can be tied to the timeline also. The discussion tab allows you to post research info on the profile, dispute wrong information and start a discussion to collaborate on that profile. Each profile has a revision history where you can look at and even revert edits that have wrongly been done to a profile. Not all information can be reverted but a surprisingly large core amount of the info is fully under revision control. This is important in collaborative genealogy because it allows you to revert info that might be wrongly added to a profile. One of the more powerful features related to profiles is in the “Immediate Family” section of the page. Here you can have geni display a list of all the descendants of a profile. You can then contact the descendants to collaborate on research. In addition to the other features mentioned profiles also can optionally contain employment, religion, ethnicity and nicknames.

PROJECTS:
Geni has thousands of projects. Users can start projects on their family name. There are numerous projects based on regions of the world, politics, celebrate relationships, and historic events. Public profiles can be included in any project. There are projects on Mormon Pioneers, the Academy Awards, the Civil War and British Monarchy just to name a few. With almost 10,000 projects on geni there is bound to be several that a user will find of interest. Projects can have both followers and collaborators. It is not uncommon for geni users to band together on a project for a few months of collaborative research. For example there is a project to find all the passengers on the Titanic and have profiles for each one. Over the course of a couple of months 100’s of Titanic passenger profiles have been researched, documented, added to geni and included in the “Titanic” project.

STATISTICS and CHARTS:
Users have the ability to display stats about their families average life expectancy, oldest and youngest family members, number of children distribution, gender distribution, languages spoken and most common surnames.

CALENDARS:
Users can display a calendar populated with birthdays and anniversaries for their extended family.

MAP:
Users can display a Google world map that shows either the birth or current location of each person in your family group.

SHARING YOUR TREE:
You can invite people to join your family tree. Each person that joins as a free, basic user can add up to 100 profiles to geni free of charge. To add additonal profiles users will need to subscribe as “plus” or “pro” users. You can also share a link to your tree and embed that link in your own website or Facebook. Pro users can also export their family tree in Gedcom format for use on their own computers. Gedcom import is not currently supported. The Geni engineers decided that the integrity of the tree and efforts to merge duplicates was more important than people dumping poorly researched trees up on the site. A few years ago geni allowed gedcom imports but they are currently disabled. It is a feature that will likely return when there are better tools for merging the massive amounts of duplication that sometimes results with gedcom imports.

MERGING:
Geni scans your tree if you are a pro user and suggests likely matches based on names, dates, locations and relationships. Users can examine these proposed matches and evaluate two, side by side, to determine if they are indeed matches. In the side by side display exact data matches are displayed in green. If the user detrmins that the two profiles are indeed a match after comparing the information geni will merge them into one profile. Conflicting information is retained until further review. For example suppose profile A says that the person was born in 1848 and profile B says that the person was born in 1849. After merging both conflicting dates are retained in the database and either you or a different user can then resolve the conflicting dates when better information becomes available.

CURATORS:
Geni has a dedicated group of volunteer curators that help other users in research, site use, merging and project management. Curators are located throughout the world and many of them speak multiple languages and all are experienced geni users, family history researchers and enthusiasts. The are there to help. If you come across a research roadblock or just don’t know how to accomplish something on geni just ask and a curator will try and help you by pointing you in the right direction. Curators can also optionally “lock” a “Master Profile” to protect it from malicious editing or can also “lock” selected data fields. Locking of profiles is pretty rare and if you come across one that is locked just shoot off a message to the curator who works on that profile and the’ll be happy to unlock it after you introduce yourself and briefly explain what you intend to edit.

CELL PHONE USE;
This reviewer can do anything on his Android cell phone that he can do on the full site. It may be clunky to work on a small device but the site is light weight and responsive enough to allow use on a mobile device. Most areas of the site are regular web pages that are displayable on all devices. The tree view itself is flash based and will not work on non Flash devices like Apple. Geni is working on developing a HTML5 version of the tree to address this.

SOCIAL MEDIA and COLLABORATION:
Geni can help you keep in contact with you relatives. An online forum exists within the site to ask questions, rally support for a new feature request, interact with others interested in family history and coordinate research. You can also privately instant message other users. You can leave postings in their online guestbook. You can follow them and be notified of their activity on the site. You can post Facebook posts after you add new profiles. You can follow geni.com on Twitter. You can connect your family into the world family tree and as a pro user find out how you are related to any of the other 60 million public profiles. You can get involved with any of the geni 10,000 projects. You can read the geni blog which has posts weekly. As a basic users you can add up to 100 profiles free of charge. As you invite family members to your tree and as they then invite via email additional family members to the tree your tree will grow. After about a year on geni there were about 1,000 people in my 4 generation tree. The tree included both cousins and their families, my immediate ancestors and lots of their descendants. Eventually after about a year, our little, but flourishing family tree, got connected to the “Big Tree” and then we had several million cousins. Our profiles of living people all remained private profiles to protect privacy but we chose to share our ancestors by making them public so that other more distant cousins could connect into our tree.

CONS:
1) There is currently (March 2012) not the ability to undo a merge. Pro users have to undo a merge manually and in some cases will need to recreate a the parent profiles if an erroneous merge has happened. Bad merges will happen as that is the nature of collaborative genealogy but pro users can fix bad areas of the tree by disconnecting wrongly added profiles. Overall the benefits of collaboration far outweigh the negatives but if you view your historic tree as “yours” and don’t want anyone else ever adding to “your data” then geni, or other collaborative sites, is not for you.
2) Occasional Service Outages: geni attempts to be up and running 24/7 but occasionally will experience down time as new features are added, equipment fails or bugs are encountered. Planned downtime is broadcast to the user community beforehand so that users know when it will occur.
Unplanned outages occur a few times each year but in most cases the site is back up and running withing the hour. The worst downtime occurred in 2011 and geni was offline for a couple of days. Thankfully all data is backed up and the system was fully restored after the problem was identified. Paid users were given an extension to their contract to compensate for that particular service outage. Overall the service is pretty reliable.

PROS:
By far the best feature of Geni is that it enables collaboration. The user interface is attractive and easy to use. Geni’s use of volunteer, peer nominated curators ensures that the quality of the tree is improving in a unified way. Curators also can assist basic users who do not qualify for geni support calls. Pro users can find how they are related to any profile on the site that is connected to the “Big Tree. Family news and activity feeds help keep each user notified of family events, birthdays and coordinating research interests. Geni’s goal of one profile per person and its collaborative nature allow it to be a central location for coordinating research and displaying research results. Basic and Plus users can experiment with a reduced feature set to test if the geni.com service is right for them. Pro users will find geni a full featured collaborative environment for researching and sharing their family tree. Based on my use as a “Pro” user I’ve given geni 5 stars.

Biggest Pro: 1) Projects. 2) Pro Users can find relationships between any public profiles. 3) Ability to merge profiles and collaborate on research interests. 4) Ease of Use
Biggest Con: 1) Inability to automatically revert a bad relationship merge. 2) Tree view is flash based so that part of geni doesn’t work for some tablets or cell phones.

Best genealogy web site program I’ve ever used. It would have taken me 10 years to code it and would only have looked half as good! Thank you Darrin!

Biggest Pro: Super professional site, 11 templates to choose from, affordable at 10X’s the cost!
Biggest Con: none… just Pro’s!

user since v6, and the program is getting worse.

Yes, v8 now officially runs on win7, even 64 bit. the trade off is more random crashed and lock ups than even v7 had. (actually, v7 has fewer crashes for me on 64 bit win7, imagine that). And this is not a Costco special pc: Specs include: i5 Quad core, 12 GB DDR3, Hardware raid o/s drive (1 TB) with 64 bit win 7 Pro, GTX-460 card, supplemental 2TB Storage (2x 1TB 10k rpm drives, SATA). Windows scores a 7.5 in it’s own “performance” tests (not counting disk access).

I can triple box online MMO’s, listen to music, surf the web/youtube.netflix, and vpn into work, all at one time with no issue. Run TMG v8, all alone, and it still hangs.

Fox Pro, still? really? The more I do with it, and the more data I store, the more unstable it becomes.

I like the granular access to my data, and some of the editing tools (which can destroy your data if not careful), but this is one of only 2 time sin my life, I have regretted buying any software.

heck, I started using PHPGedView as is is more robust (and accessible anywhere).

TMG, as soon as I test and find a suitable replacement, auf nimmer Weidersehen. hmmm, maybe time for some postgresql, or even NoSQL.

Biggest Pro: Granular control over data.
Biggest Con: FoxPro, really? Y2k called and wants it’s RAMBUS back. Slow. Prone to crashing, alot.

I would recommend this to anyone. It is totally self-contained and could be run from a USB memory stick. It has no fancy add-ons and does not do internet searches for you. It is very easy to use also. I like the notes section for each person; it also has a private notes section, which I use to add my research/search notes. It has a search facility which incorporates searching your notes also. You can also do many family trees from this one program. You can also import and export gedcom files.

Biggest Pro: A very good free version - but buy the full version!
Biggest Con: None found.

Overview

Family Tree Maker for Mac (FTMM), released in late 2010, was the first Mac version of the best-selling genealogy software released by Ancestry.com (hereafter referred to as Ancestry). The only previous version for Mac was Family Tree Maker Deluxe Edition II for Macintosh, released by Brøderbund in 1997. There have been reviews of FTMM (see, for example, http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/software/3293954/family-tree-maker-for-mac-2011- review/), but this is the first detailed look at version 2.

TreeSync*

Prior to the release of FTMM2, the feature I wanted most but didn’t get from FTMM was the ability to sync with my family tree at Ancestry, so when Ancestry announced they would include this feature in FTM 2012 and FTMM2, I was very excited. In an online post at Genealogytools.com, I said, “if the Mac version includes this, it will be worth buying, although it would be nice if FTM adopted price parity as well as feature parity.” Now that I’ve used FTMM2 for two months, I’ve been able to evaluate whether the TreeSync feature meets my expectations. I’ve also compiled a detailed list of the pros and cons of the product. Bottom line: TreeSync is great in concept but lacking in implementation.

To start with, not all data sync between FTM (both Mac & Windows) and Ancestry, and Ancestry even says so in their help pages (search for “differences between the Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com trees when using TreeSync). Here’s a summary of the most important things that don’t sync:

▪ Audio and video items
▪ Research, fact, relationship, media, and source citation notes
▪ Shortened display names for locations or custom GPS coordinates
▪ Media items attached to sources (but media items attached to source citations will)
▪ Comments, weblinks and the contents of your shoebox 

In addition to the items that Ancestry warns you about, tree hints, tasks, and member connections are also not synced. To me, one of the biggest drawbacks to FTMM2 is that hints do not sync with Ancestry. Even if you accept or reject hints in FTM, they will still show up on Ancestry, or vice versa. Essentially this means you should choose whether to review hints on Ancestry or FTM and ignore the other hints, but don’t use both. Otherwise, you will end up with duplicate facts, sources, and even people.

However, as much as I would like hints to sync, what I would really like is for TreeSync to work consistently. All too often I receive a sync error while uploading changes to Ancestry. Ancestry even offers a whole help page devoted to TreeSync troubleshooting steps for FTMM2. I have tried all of them, spending days to re-upload and link my tree to Ancestry, and usually can get sync working again for a few days, until the sync error starts popping up again. Furthermore, because of the things that don’t sync to begin with, some of Ancestry’s troubleshooting suggestions are not viable. For example, they suggest uploading your tree to Ancestry without linking and then downloading the tree from Ancestry with linking. If you do this, however, you will lose everything that doesn’t sync. You could try to merge the tree with your existing FTMM2 tree, but my experience is that FTMM2 will crash when trying to merge a lot of records (I have over 22,000 people in my tree).

I reached a point where my tree would no longer sync, so I had to unlink it from Ancestry and re-upload it. When I did, all the media items I had added from other trees lost their connections to those trees–i.e., I could no longer tell where the items came from. The source was lost. This is poor documentation practice. But there’s no way I can track down where I got every media item now.

People Workspace

OK, enough about TreeSync. What about the other features of FTMM2? Starting with the basics, adding or editing data in the People workspace is fairly easy, and I like how FTM lets you set preferred facts, if you have more than one date of birth, for example. Copying and pasting source citations from one fact to another is also very easy. Fastfields for names, sources, and places are good; these can autocomplete names that have already been entered as you type the first few letters. Another nice feature: if you type a title or AKA in the name find, you can set FTM to move them to the appropriate title or AKA field, which saves you from having to manually add those fields.

However, adding people who don’t have a last name or whose last name you don’t know can be problematic if you don’t use “NN”, “unknown”, “???”, etc. If you leave the surname blank, FTM will automatically put the first name in the surname field when you first enter it. Then you have to edit the name and put two backslashes (\\) after it; this will move the first name back into the first name field and leave the surname field blank.

Places Workspace

FTM includes a place names database called the place authority to help ensure place names are spelled correctly and consistently. It covers the entire world, so it must be quite large and obviously can’t include every place name, including historical names. But there are some place names that show up in the accompanying Bing Map but are not in the place authority. Perhaps Ancestry should look into getting their place authority from Bing Maps? It also doesn’t initially use words like “township” or “county”, although you can add them as you add new place names. If you include the administrative division, like “county,” you will probably get the ? icon indicating you need to resolve the place name. You can either replace the place name with the one in the place authority or ignore the warning, in which case the warning will go away. In addition, if you add people by accepting hints on Ancestry, all the place names will be added to the database, even if they already exist, resulting in numerous duplicates. For example, I have “Baltimore County, Maryland, USA,” listed seven times in my places database. It is possibly to merge them, but it’s an arduous process of going through and merging two places at a time, with each merge requiring the click of a confirmation button and then a long spinning of the beach ball, sometimes followed by a program crash. And doing so is not error free. I have numerous people where the place name got completely deleted from their events when I merged the names. I still don’t know what happened, although it’s possible FTM crashed in the middle of a merge (that happened a lot). In addition, sometimes when I click on one name to resolve a place, FTM changes it to something else entirely. Fortunately you can undo these errors, if you catch them in time. There are also some outright errors in the places authority, which is not surprising; for example, Iowa City, Iowa, is listed in Wright County, when it should be Johnson County.

Media Workspace

Adding a media item to FTM is easy, but finding and using it again is not so easy. You can add a media item to a person, a fact, or a source either from the People, Media, or Sources workspace. Finding a specific media item is not easy. There’s no way to search for it from the media workspace. You can’t even press a key to be taken to that letter. You can only scroll through the items, which means you have to remember what you named or captioned it. When you have a lot of media, that can be difficult. A workaround is to filter the list of individuals from the Family tab by words that might be in the name of the media item. Then you just have to find a fact the media item is attached to. Ancestry needs to add a way to search for media from the media tab or when linking to existing media. The Media viewer in FTM is fine for photos but is not ideal for book or document images. The default zoom is too low and the default window size is too small, so I have to click several extra times to view these images. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to click on the filename from the media tab or viewer and open images from the viewer of your choice, but Ancestry needs to work on a better viewer that automatically zooms according to the resolution of the image.

Sources Workspace

Sources and citations are easy to enter. Unfortunately, sometimes the citations that Ancestry adds when accepting hints are garbage, inconsistent, incomplete, or redundant. For example, here are two different source citations, one for the 1900 US census, and one for the 1910:

Ancestry.com, 1900 United States Federal Census (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 18), Database online. Year: 1900; Census Place: Amity, Livingston, Illinois; Roll: T623_318; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 91. Record for Ebenezer Perry.

Ancestry.com, 1910 United States Federal Census (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com
Operations Inc, 2006.Original data - Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (NARA microfilm publication
T624, 1,178 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Was), Year: 1910;
Census Place: Hunter, Choctaw, Oklahoma; Roll: ; Page: ; Enumeration District: ; Image:.
Birth date: 1895
Birth place: Arkansas
Residence date: 1910
Residence place: Hunter, Choctaw, Oklahoma

How many times does “Ancestry.com” need to be included? Or that it’s an online database? Why are they in different formats? Why does 1900 include the Roll, Page, and Enumeration District numbers but 1910 does not?

Also, trying to link to a citation in the Find Source Citation window is impossible for long citations, like the ones Ancestry provides. The search box at the top does not work to find the one you need, there’s no slider bar at the bottom of the window to see the rest of the citations, and the window can’t be enlarged. The only viable option in these cases is to link from the source citation you want in the Source Workspace to the fact you want.

One thing I like is how, if a source citation came from Ancestry, you can click on a hyperlink in the Edit Source Citation window to be taken back to the source.

Publish Workspace

FTMM2 includes a good variety of pedigree and descendant charts & reports. Both can be customized, saved, printed, or exported to different formats. Notably, FTM lack the ability to create web pages for your family tree, probably because they want you to save your tree on Ancestry. In addition, FTMM2 is lacking some reports that are included in FTM 2012 for Windows: ancestor narrative, descendant narrative, index of individuals, and surname index. These would be really nice to have in FTMM2, and it’s a mystery to me why they are not. Lastly, FTMM2 lacks a nice feature of the Windows version called Smart Stories, which are the FTM 2012 equivalent of creating a story on Ancestry. In FTMM2 there is no way to create a story at all. You have to add a document file as a media item. On Ancestry you can either upload a file containing the story or type it in using a form. If you do the former, the file will simply be downloaded as a media item to FTM. If you do the latter, the story will be downloaded as an HTML page. So you should think about how you want to handle stories. It’s not trivial to edit an HTML page or a PDF, so it might be best to put all your stories in a .doc, .rtf, or .txt file. Personally, I think plain text is best, but of course there isn’t any formatting. I also think Ancestry should include a story entry form in FTM like there is on Ancestry so that entering and editing stories is seamless between the two.

Web Search Workspace

Searching Ancestry from FTM is pretty much like searching directly from the website. You can also search Rootsweb, Genealogy.com, Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other site you wish to add. You can merge results from Ancestry directly with your tree (more about that shortly). Other results you can copy and paste. One good thing about FTM is that you can get tree and record hints from Ancestry within it. Another good thing is that when you accept hints, you can control which fields have the hint added as a source; you can also accept the hint without actually changing the data in your tree, or you can add the hint as alternate information. One thing that does not work is if you accept a hint and decide to discard the existing fact; FTM gives you the option of keeping the existing sources, but if you discard the fact, in actuality, it also discards the sources. The only source listed is the new one from the merge. So my advice until Ancestry fixes this bug is to tick the “Make alternate” bubble, copy the original source citation to the fact you want to keep after the merge, and then delete the alternate fact that you no longer need. Another drawback of accepting hints in FTM is that you must review hints one at a time, unlike Ancestry, which allows you to review all tree hints at once. This isn’t always a bad thing, since there’s a lower chance of introducing garbage into your tree if there’s a lot of conflicting information, but if there’s lot’s of agreement, it can be very time-consuming.

One nice feature of accepting hints in FTM is that you can either add the source media, if there are any, or not. This is in contrast to Ancestry where if you accept hints, it always adds the source media, whether you want them or not. Furthermore, when accepting hints from family trees on Ancestry, a source citation is added only to the name field, whereas in FTM you can add source citations for all facts that you add or change.

Occasionally I will click on a result from Ancestry in the upper window but the details refuse to load in the lower window. Sometimes this is because the tree has been removed from Ancestry but is still in the index; at other times the tree is private; and then again, sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a reason, but if I close and restart FTM, the results will show. Then there are the totally bogus matches. Let’s say I’m searching for John Doe, an American male born in 1800. Often times one of the hints I get is totally off base, like Gertruitha Steinbeck, a German female born in 1500. Why is Ancestry giving me this as a potential match? Usually the hints are pretty good, though. Sometimes all I have to do is type in the name, and as long as there is a relationship to another person, Ancestry will immediately find valid matches for that person.

Tools

One of the most important requirements of genealogy software is ability to find information. However, searching within FTMM2 is limited compared to, for example, Reunion 9 for Macintosh. From the Edit | Find & Replace menu, you can search in Facts, Notes, Sources, Media, Tasks, and Places, but unlike Reunion, you can’t drill down to a specific type of fact, like Name, Date of Birth, Research Note, etc. If I need to do a search of all people who where born in Illinois between certain dates, I need to export my file to a GEDCOM, import it into Reunion, and do the search there. You can do wildcard searches in FTM, but you can’t search for blank (null or empty) fields like you can in Reunion.

You can also search for a person, place, or source from their respective workspaces, but this type of search is not as robust as it could be. You must type at least the first few letters of the name (first or last, depending on how you’ve sorted them), place, or source to find them. If your spelling is off, you will not find them that way (you’ll have to use the Find and Replace feature from the Edit menu, or do a filtered search from the Index, described below). On Ancestry, at least finding a person in my tree is incredibly easy; I only have to type any part of the name, and all the names that match it will pop up in a list, along with birth and death dates, allowing me to select the one I want. Why can’t FTM have this feature?

A third way of searching that I’ve found is using the Filter feature from the index on the Family tab of the People workspace. Using the Filter In or Filter Out, you can search on almost any field in your tree (but not notes), to include searching for blank fields. While this is better than the simple search from the Index or Find & Replace, it’s still not as powerful as a search you can do in Reunion because, for one thing, you can filter only one condition at a time. You can add more filter conditions, and depending on whether you filter in or filter out, they are treated as AND or OR conditions in boolean terms. So, for example, you can filter in people born in Illinois and then filter out people born after 1900, assuming you want to look at only those born before. While you can do this for as many fact types as there are (except notes), it’s awkward and time consuming, and you really have to think about whether you should filter in or out. Furthermore, in Reunion, you can save lists of your found people in either rich text or tab-delimited plain text format. The latter you could then import into a spreadsheet for additional analysis, if you wanted to. In FTMM2, you can do this only from certain reports where you can filter individuals in or out, such as the Custom Report and the Data Errors Report.

FTMM2 has basic error checking tools like warnings for unlikely dates or double dates and a duplicate person finder; there’s even a Data Errors report that can find basic errors, like children with birth dates before their parents. There’s a tool for merging two people and another one for merging two files. The people merge works fine, and the file merge worked for merging a small GEDCOM into my main file, but when I tried to merge my Ancestry tree with my FTM tree (because TreeSync failed), well, the merge failed, also. It progressed to a certain point and then FTM crashed (more about that momentarily). Otherwise, FTMM2 is lacking in management tools. For example, Reunion comes with several preset reports, such as people without parents, spouses, or children. FTMM2 provides only the Data Errors report mentioned above.

A final tool in Reunion that I find invaluable is the ability to mark people based on almost any criterion that exists in your tree, like fact fields, relationships, or other attributes, like duplicate fields. There is no easy way to flag, tag, or otherwise mark people in FTMM2, and certainly no way to do it based on conditions. You could create a custom fact labeled “Mark,” for example, but you would have to update it manually. This would not be very feasible or useful.

GEDCOM Issues

As Nigel Bufton Software states, “GEDCOM compliance is not important for users who are comfortable with being ‘locked-in’ to the methodology and non-standard data capabilities of a particular genealogy program, but it is very important for those users who require the ability to transfer data freely between different genealogy products, websites, and utility programs, with maximum reliability and data integrity” (http://www.tcgr.bufton.org/tcgpgedc.htm). There is absolutely no reason to include the ability to export a family tree to GEDCOM if the resulting file is not compliant with the latest standard (5.5.1). If the file doesn’t use tags properly, then wherever it’s used, data will be misinterpreted or, more likely, ignored. I found that a GEDCOM file exported from FTMM2 has some compliance issues; out of 33,000 records, 5,000 of them produced an error or warning when I ran it through a GEDCOM validator (http://ged-inline.elasticbeanstalk.com/validate). These are the major problems I found. Not all GEDCOM 5.5 or 5.5.1 tags are included in FTMM2, and there is no option to add them. User defined facts are lumped into the EVEN tag, whether there is a standard GEDCOM tag for them or not. The ALIA tag is used incorrectly; it’s used in place of the NICK tag, but it should contain a link referring to another individual, who may be the same person. It allows data in description fields for facts like birth and death that should only have a “Y”, which means the event occurred. While some other genealogy programs, including Reunion, will import the contents of the description field into a memo or note field, not all will, so this information will be lost. Sometimes data is simply missing from the GEDCOM; I found this especially to be true with notes.

General Issues

This is a message you would probably see a lot when using FTMM2: “Family Tree Maker 2 quit unexpectedly,” especially when doing something resource intensive, like trying to merge two large files or generate a report of all people in a large file. I don’t know what constitutes a large file, but I have over 22,000 people in my file, and FTM hangs and crashes a lot. I try not to run too many apps at once when using FTMM2, because it always uses the most resources of any of my apps. For example, right now it’s just sitting open not doing anything but is still using 500MB of real memory and another 500MB of virtual memory. If I do something like run a report with everyone in it, that goes up to 1GB and 2GB, respectively, and I’ve seen FTMM2 use over 100% of CPU. In any case, if FTMM2 crashes on you, be sure to compact your file from the Tools menu to try to fix any errors.

FTM is also just downright buggy. Sometimes I click on a person and it doesn’t show his or her parents, even though they connected. I know they’re attached to each other, because if I try to attach them again, I get an error message that the individuals already have a relationship with each other. The only way I can get the parents to show up is to disconnect and reconnect them.

Features in FTM 2012 for Windows Missing in FTM for Mac 2

Would you pay more for one version of an app that has fewer features than another version? That’s what Ancestry expects Mac users to do. The Windows download version retails for $39.99 from the Ancestry online shop, while the Mac version retails for $69.99. According to Ben Sayer of the website GenealogyTools.com, the following features are in the Windows version but not the Mac version: Unicode support; ancestor narrative, descendant narrative, index of individuals, and surname reports; and online data import (http://genealogytools.com/family-tree-maker-for-mac-2/#macgenealogysoftwarefeaturecomparison). As I noted above, the Mac version also lacks the Smart Story and hint sync features. The Windows version also exports media to GEDCOM files, while the Mac version still does not. In addition to feature inequality, the FTMM2 and FTM 2012 file formats are incompatible with each other. That is, FTM for Mac cannot open FTM for Windows files, and vice versa. To me, this is inexcusable. The FTMM2 installation CD does come with a FTM Migration Utility that enables you to transfer files between Windows and Mac versions, but the utility runs only in Windows. So if I want to send my FTM file to my dad, a Windows user, I also have to send him the conversion utility.

Summary

Pros:

• Tight integration with Ancestry, to include searching and merging hints
• Ability to set preferred facts
• Ease of copying and pasting source citations
• Fastfields for names, sources, and places
• Hyperlinks to Ancestry source citations in the source citation window
• Good variety of pedigree and descendant charts & reports

Cons:

• Frequent hangs and crashes; buggy
• TreeSync does not work consistently, nor does it sync hints, member connections, or tasks
• Loss of media sources that originated from Ancestry member trees when re-uploading a tree to Ancestry
• Adding people without a last name is problematic if you don’t use “unknown”, etc.
• Place authority is limited and doesn’t recognize place names with administrative division words like “county” in them
• Search functions and management tools aren’t as robust as other apps
• Missing features that FTM 2012 has, especially Stories, hint syncing, and export of media to GEDCOM files
• Costs 75% more than the Windows version

Final Verdict: Not ready for prime time, and certainly not worth paying 75% more than the Windows version. It’s ridiculous that Mac users must pay such a premium for an inferior product. Granted, the Mac user base is much smaller, and normally they would be willing to pay a premium, but only for superior products (like the Mac, iPad, or iPhone). Until Ancestry fixes the bugs, especially with TreeSync, and provides the same feature set as the Windows version, I cannot recommend FTMM2.

[Note: I provided a draft of this article to Ancestry.com for a fact check, and they did not dispute anything I said. To see a version of this article with screenshots, go to http://familytreemakerformacreview.blogspot.com/2012/03/family-tree-maker-for-mac-2-review.html

*TreeSync is trademarked

Biggest Pro: Integration with Ancestry, to include searching and merging hints
Biggest Con: Has fewer features than Windows version but costs 75% more

Sacks and Braverman and your Geni.com staff are a bunch of unethical hypocrites.I cancelled my US$59.95 subscription on account of your breach of privacy security and I’m still waiting for my pro-rata refund. My family name was plastered up on GOOGLE search URL, later was removed after numerous complaints to you Geni people and GOOGLE, Sydney. After I cancelled my subscription they had the hide and temerity to put it back up on GOOGLE search, using my profile for advertising purposes.I have requested it to be removed but I AM IGNORED. I will be filing a lawsuit against Geni.com for violation of privacy and dishonesty.

WARNING : S T E E R C L E A R OF T H I S S I T E

Biggest Pro: They have no scruples
Biggest Con: By Default their web pages are engineered by deception. CHECK IT OUT

A very difficult system.

Biggest Pro: Gets things a bit more organised.
Biggest Con: Poor help pages.

I recently bought FTM 2012 - version 21 - (for $59.95) and imported the data from the 1999 version (version 7). Well, I have never had the misfortune to come across such a crappy piece of software as this latest version. Here are just a few of the main problems:

The pages look crap and navigation is practically impossible. If an ancestor had more than one spouse, this is not shown. You have to go to the personal information, then go back to the list, find that person and select them. The old version showed an icon with two heads. You clicked on it, selected the other spouse and OK, and bingo, you then had the family page with the other spouse. By selecting tabs down the right-hand side, you could go to a child’s home page and then navigate further from there. By selecting “Parents of…” you could then go to that person’s parents and get their home page. Navigation was a breeze. If something works brilliantly, why change it?

It says I have 14 days free access to ancestry.com, but when I click on the link, it says I have to register the software first. However, I HAVE registered the software. I then clicked on some other link to obtain information on the net, and it says that there is no internet connection. Okay, so how come I can go to Mozilla Firefox, then Google, then type in something which I had never typed in Google before and, before I have even finished typing, Google has already suggested a number of links.

The program runs slow, takes a long time to load, and is constantly crashing. If it doesn’t crash, then it freezes and I have to go to the Task Manager and cancel it. Several links just don’t seem to work.

If you ask it to check data, then it says that there is no such place as that entered for my maternal grandfather’s place of birth (yes, the spelling is correct). So where does it think he was born: in some underwater cave out in the middle of the bloody ocean?

It won’t install at all unless it is connected to the internet. I deliberately left the internet disconnected to check that it would still install correctly, but it failed this test.

BTW, I am not computer-illiterate; on the contrary, I make my living from computers, and have been for a long time.

Without a word of exaggeration, I would say the 1999 version produced by Broderbund is a VASTLY SUPERIOR product. This latest version is just another example of technology going backwards. $59.95 is not a lot of money, but I regret spending it anyway. I could not recommend this software to anyone: on the contrary, I would strongly recommend anyone to NOT buy it.

Biggest Pro: Nothing, zero, zilch, rien, nichts!
Biggest Con: The online advertising of its features, ease of use, etc. All lies!

I have been using FTM mainly because they offered free software for a limited number of entries. I have an online membership of over fifty interested relatives and fellow genealogists.
I love the feature of the online site that it communicates with members on points of particular interest. These can be individual ancestor histories in narrative formed by myself, news items of current family events or new collections of photos rcently uploaded. The amount of files has become enormous.
The trouble with FTM’s software architecture is that it is way too flakey for the premium subscription I now pay.
I currently have two large problems. The software has duplicated just about every single family tree member’s entry and the FIX that FTM offers for deleting duplicate entries has ‘a bug’ in it to quote the help line for FTM.
Not only do FTM management say the bug prevents the fix from working, but that I’d have to delete duplicate entries manually, one at a time. Get this! There are thousands of duplicates! Mmmmmm! That’s a huge time loss for me. Also FTM say ‘hopefully the bug will be fixed when the new version comes out’, but I will have to wait until then for the quicker fix.
The other thing is FTM online has reproduced hundreds of copies of painstakenly uploaded photos, given the different titles, and even created new ‘albums’ for them. Incidentally, I’ve always had issues dragging photos from mismatched albums into the rightful ones. If you try to do so, it merely pastes what you are dragging into the rightful folder as copies of the originals that stay in their original folders. Then there is no obvious facility for deleting the photos that stay where you are trying to shift them from! Bloody awful!
I’ve spent heaps of time creating my family trees in FTM & in My Heritage online, but I DO NOT wish to spend the same amount of time trying to fix entries that have become corrupted by weak software and bugs.

Biggest Pro: Open membership of online family trees and communication with members.
Biggest Con: The integrity of the software corrupts data when subscribers have Premium Sites or very large data banks.

I have just started on this new adventure of collecting family tree data and enjoy using this program. Technical support is just an e-mail away and very friendly.

Cant find a phone number to contact them.

Biggest Con: No contact information

Do not trust this site, if you DO NOT USE OR SELDOM USE THIS HE WILL CANCEL YOU OUT AND TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MATERIAL

Biggest Con: VERY UNTRUST WORTHY

This website uses History Sniffing to invade your privacy.

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: This website uses History Sniffing to invade your privacy.

I started using FTM when it was still part of Broderbund and far as I’m concerned it is garbage. With each new edition there are more propblems and it seems that there answer to the problem is come out with a new version with new features but no fixes to the existing problems. The most recent version 2012 with it sync feature has managed to screw up my files, when trying to locate a file it states that it no longer exists and FTM can’t find it. Why?

On top of that it seems that with each new version it runs slower and the time stamp failures are annoying. If one reads their site, they give you ways to work around the failures but it seems there is no effort to correct the problem.

Every time they come up with an update I know immediately that whatever they are trying to fix is going to be worse. When looking at census records for instance you used to be able to look at the record, scroll through it side to side, up and down with some ease then download it. When 2012 came out they changed it and obviously people didn’t like it so they attempted to go back to the original system but some one in their infinite wisdom managed to screw up if it doesn’t freeze up first it won’t move at all. Then when you get to a point that it can be downloaded you have time stamp error and have to start all over again.

I was away from genealogy for a few years and when finally getting the time to spend on it and to be able to take advantage of everything that is currently on the net I went back to Family Tree Maker. If I had to do it over I would choose some other program, Family Tree Maker has been a big disappointment. I have hundred if not thousands of hours invested in my tree and to convert it would be difficult so I live with the system.

I have tried working within Ancestry but it also creates issues within my files.

Biggest Pro: Ancestry
Biggest Con: A system that isn’t ready for the market and I get the impression they don’t have a clue how to fix it.

I am so disappointed with Geni.com, a site with which I’ve had a paid membership for two years. For my almost $100 per year, the only advantage I receive is a wider variety of pretty lame icons to add when sending a family member a greeting. I have since joined MyHeritage.com and am happy to send them my money because they constantly update and upgrade their site.

I am even more disappointed wtih Geni.com because although I sent an email explaining why I wasn’t planning to renew my membership, they still took money from my credit card and renewed it anyway.

This site is outdated and clunky and I have seen very few improvements over the past several years of my association with them.

Biggest Pro: I’ve been with them for a long time.
Biggest Con: outdated with no records of improvements

I have not used any other tools (apart from manual or computer graphic programmes) to collect family tree data, so I was pleased to find the free version of this tool, and have used it to collect data on both strands of the families I am documenting.
The tool is pretty intuitive and economically designed in terms of memory and resource usage.
I am using it for North European names so an ability to type accented letters would be useful.
I had a technical question and got an immediate and helpful response.

Biggest Pro: Value for money! Small and efficient.
Biggest Con: Would be nice if the ’see ancestors’ view would go both ways and show layers of older & younger

Was pretty good, but they have been continuously reducing what a free user can do, so much so, that it is now unusable for me.

Biggest Pro: nice graphics
Biggest Con: limit to 100 people in your tree

More of the old gedcom crap, when dey gonna use the new format….
everyone talkin’ ’bout it now… get in on de act NOW, or miss de boat kiddersmank

I have been using TNG for my personal progeny web site since version 5 (six years). I have tried many different utilitites and programs to post my genealogy research to the Web since 1996. TNG is the only one that allows you to share maintaning your research, link documents, cite your work, link histories, manage cemeteries, and customize the layout.

Recently, I started testing TNG for use as a way to consolidate indexes and online records for the genealogical society for which I am webmaster. I have been able to bulk load and index 20,000 death certificate images and 35,000 obituary index entries in just a matter of days. The society board of managers was so impressed with how quickly I was able to do the load and how well TNG worked for the purpose, that they cannot wait until it replaces our outdated Joomla CMS site.

Biggest Pro: Sharing the workload, layout possibilities, and scalability
Biggest Con: cannot reuse existing citations, but I have the same complaint with most other software.

I never used any 14 day free trial nor ordered any 2 year subscription. I WANT CONFIRMATION OF THIS CANCELLATION AND A FULL REFUND OF MY MONEY STRAIGHT AWAY. THANK YOU,Barry Vale

Biggest Con: I dont want to call this a con unless it proves to be one…

Anyone can enter information on this site, and it need not be accurate or factual. A distant cousins husband without any of our permission put my living family and our full names fully visible by not including birth dates and myself, my siblings my cousins and our children (a lot of whom are under 13) are all still fully Google searchable today and visible via the Wikitree site pages despite my many e-mails to Chris Whitten and messages on the Wikitree facebook page to get us removed.
We are not the only ones that this has happened to.
There is so much identity theft and fraud about, that there should be an advanced system in place, such as the one that Ancestry use, to make sure that living peoples details are not shown, as Ancestry explained to me that they themselves have to abide by the US Privacy 75 year law. This has caused our family immense grief and distress. I would personally use a far more professional website for my family tree, as anyone can add or alter information, it does not have to be correct, and I suspect that this website will be ideal for those who only wish to ‘collect relatives’ and are not concerned with the accuracy or ethics.

Biggest Pro: Ideal for those who wish instant quantity of relatives and are not concerned with accuracy.
Biggest Con: Privacy is easily bypassed and breached without recourse for correction and removal.

This site seems to allow anybody who pays to do anything they like with information which they have not checked out and may not even be their.
This site also offers no recourse for correction.
This site is more often up than down.
This site refuses to remove people who are named as managers of profiles who have died.
In 20 years of family research using the web it is the worst managed site I have ever come across.
Unless you pay money it is useless.
Conclusion it is a money making machine with lousy management which values privacy very little. Ethics mean nothing it seems

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: Everything