Genealogy Docs
One of my friends mentioned today that she’d like a Google Docs for genealogy — you know, like a spreadsheet or a document but instead it would be a pedigree. And I thought of Beyond. And I thought, “Gee, I wish I had time and energy to do it.” Because still, nobody’s done it — not done right, at any rate. And when it is done right, it’ll be big. Huge. Phenomenal. Genealogy is one of the most popular hobbies out there.
I don’t think I’ll be the one to pull it off, though. I’m still rather burned out from programming and I don’t see myself starting a massive project like this anytime soon. But I do plan to continue writing on here occasionally, and I hope with all my heart that someone will take the cream of the crop of these ideas here and create something truly beautiful — the Google Docs or Flickr of the genealogy world. I want to be wowed. I want to be thunderstruck. I want to be moved to tears. (Well, perhaps I’m overdramatizing a bit here, but we’ve still got a long way to go.)
Posted in Beyond, Genealogy
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Hi there. Stumbled across your blog while Googling “Convert GEDCOM to Wordpress”
To be honest… I’m on the exact same wavelength as you in regards to your “Beyond” project.
I’m amazed that someone isn’t already doing it. I’d toyed with the idea of developing the software as a commercial venture but I honestly believe there MUST be something like “Beyond” secretly in the works already somewhere. It’s just to good of an idea and such a natural evolution of the science for it not to be.
Do you program or are you more of the Producer/Project Manager type?
Well, I’ve been more of the programmer type, but I’m finding myself migrating more to the design end of things. I just don’t have the time to actually build something like Beyond — too much else on my plate, I’m afraid. And I agree that someone somewhere has got to be working on something like this. It’s like an elephant wandering around on the grasslands, a ripe target just waiting for someone to bring it down. If only they’d show themselves… :)
Update: I just saw Geni for the first time. Almost perfect except for the closed source factor and the lack of any import or export functions.
I’d have to suggest that the Family Tree capabilities added to werelate.org fit the bill quite nicely for this sort of collaborative idea. You get the flexibility and group-editibility of a wiki, as well as the structured fields (name, birthdate, etc) of a genealogy app.
Good things are happening over there.
I’d like to post again to plug my own genealogy website program. It does the collaboration work of Google Docs, a wiki, etc, but at the same time it is specifically a genealogy database. It is not open source as I am the only developer, but I am constantly updating it for it to do more and more, and am open to suggestions. A full feature list and more descrption is online here:
http://www.gurganus.org/ourfamily/help.cfm?mode=contents&help_id=35