A couple of weeks ago I came across Family Wheel, Buck DeFore’s ActionScript-based genealogy app:

You can read more about it on the project page. Quite an interesting visualization technique (meaning, as the main “pedigree” of the app; circle charts have been around for ages, but they’ve always been something you printed, not something you worked on directly). The app is fairly simple, too, which is nice.

Technorati Tags: genealogy, family history, Family Wheel

Alrighty, here’s a proof-of-concept for the linker I mentioned in my last post. After I’d used Flickr for a while, the drag-and-drop organizing became addicting, and I realized that it’d be perfect (I think) for organizing the people in your database. Here’s the Flickr layout:

You find your photos in the strip at the bottom, then drag them into the set you want them in. It’s that easy. So, taking the same idea and applying it to genealogy, I came up with this:

It’s quite rough, I’ll admit, but the gist of it should come across. The software would be smart enough to re-order the children in birth order, I’d imagine. The “Family” text in the upper left would create a new family. (It should be labeled “New Family” instead, on second thought.) “Other” would create other kinds of relationships — friends, employers, neighbors, etc.

So, instead of starting with the pedigree and filling in the blanks, you would enter people instead — without caring (at first) who goes in what families. After you’ve entered the people you’re interested in, then you’d go to the linker, find the people you just added, and drag-and-drop them into families.

Since it’s still just an idea, I don’t know if this is better/easier/faster than the traditional methods. Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: genealogy, family history, Flickr

The e-mails and comments I’ve gotten over the past week or so have resurrected my resolve to make Beyond a reality. After all, I do have free time; it’s just a matter of deciding how I spend it. And while making books is all well and good, I think Beyond probably deserves a higher priority.

That said, I’m now trying to figure out just what Beyond will be. There are a few problems that need solving, particularly collaboration, visualization, and user interfaces. I think I’ll focus on those. Stretching myself too thin — like butter on too much bread — will be bad.

What do I expect to come out of this? I do hope that my work here will result in a usable web app that I can use to do my genealogy, but I still see myself more as an R&D lab. If developers want to take these ideas and run with them, I’d be ecstatic. (Assuming the ideas are good, that is. :)) And yet I’m rather interested in writing a minimalist genealogy app as well. So we’ll see what happens.

I have an idea for a way to link families together, in a more user-friendly way, but it’s still in the works and I’m at my parents’ home so I don’t have access to Photoshop right now (and I won’t use MS Paint!), so suffice it to say that it’s kind of like organizing Flickr sets — people at the bottom, drag and drop into families or whatever kinds of relationships you want. (I’m still a firm believer that the new generation of genealogy apps needs to handle non-family relationships — friends, employers, debtors, whatever.)

I feel kind of tacky asking for continued comments and e-mails, but they really do make a difference. It’s probably part of being human. :)

Technorati Tags: genealogy, family history

Looking at how things are going right now, it’s probably unlikely that Beyond will materialize into any real app in the near future. Next semester is my last and will be jam-packed with classes I need to graduate, so I doubt I’ll have much free time to work on it. But maybe I will. We’ll see. I really do hope I can come up with something soon, so I can have a place to work on my genealogy without resorting to PCs, but it may have to wait till after I graduate in April.

For those who are interested in seeing this progress, though, keep the e-mails and comments coming. It helps me stay motivated. :)