Out of Town, Out of Mind

I am sorry for the delay in posting. I took the wife and kids to Disney World for ten days. When I got back, I had to go on two service calls for work. Needless to say I have been pretty busy and posting to the blog has not been really high on my list of things to do lately. I have to cut grass, help my wife wash clothes; all of the things associated with coming back after a long trip.

I tried to go to the archives today but I just could not make myself do it. I was within a mile of the building and turned the other way. I am still in a bit of a funk when it comes to genealogy. I have been like this for the past few months. Family Tree Maker 2008 has a lot to do with my losing interest in the hobby. I am at a crossroads and just do not know how to proceed yet. I am not sure if I want to keep going with 2008 or go back to FTM 16.

I have also been thinking a lot lately about how to make money online. That would be a great thing to do, in theory, but it is much harder than it sounds. It would be nice to quit work and stay home, just to play on the Internet for a few hours a day. I have been studying all of the methods of making money on the net, for about the past two years, and all I have done is waste money and time. I have spent probably $4,000 in the past twenty-four months and gotten very little return.

I used to run Google ads on this site and made around $20.00 per month. That is hardly worth the trouble and not even enough to cover my expenses. I have tried doing other things. I have a genealogy auction site www.usafamilytree.com but it is not exactly a big hit. Genealogy is not a big money topic anyway so I was probably doomed from the start. I have spent a lot of money advertising that venture and also received very little in return.

I know I am getting a little off topic but this is what has been on my mind lately. Some days I feel good about genealogy and the prospects of making money with it. Other days I wonder why I even bother. I like to share what I find yet I would love to get paid to do so. The idea is to be able to give my readers the info for free and make advertisers, like eBay, pay me a commission for sending people their way. Everyone wins in that situation.

That sounds easy but trust me, nothing about it is easy! No one clicks on ads anymore. Everyone knows they are ads and totally ignore them. The only way to get someone to click an ad is to trick them but what good does that do? You might make a few pennies but you piss off your viewers. It is a vicious circle.

In short, I am still less than interested in genealogy and I want to make more money than I make now. This sounds like a recipe for depression. Hopefully I will be back to me usual, productive self in a few days.

Family Tree Maker 2008 is breaking my heart – a little

Family Tree Maker 2008 is breaking my heart – a little. I want to use it and I even volunteered to be a beta tester. The program should be great but I just cannot get into it. I cannot get excited about the new format for a few reasons, none of which have to do with bugs or errors with the program. I think the software engineers have ironed out most of the problems but I cannot get over the feel of it. I just do not feel comfortable with the program yet and do not know if I will ever feel good about it.

When I used to sit down with Family Tree Maker 16, I could burn through a stack of documents to enter within an hour or two. Family Tree Maker 2008 is so complicated, or maybe detailed is a better word, that it takes five times as long to get anything done. I find myself spending more time entering data than I actually spent at the archives looking for the stuff!

There are so many screens to enter data, sometimes the same information in more than one spot. I feel like I have to be diligent and enter everything but there is so much stuff! If you scan and document the source, the repository, the actual data and maybe a media item, you just spent an hour. That would take only a few minutes in FTM 16.

With FTM 16, things went faster because the layout was simple. I could use the tab and alt keys to jump all over the screen with little effort. It is as if FTM 2008 gives you too many options and I am overwhelmed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love FTM 2008. I think it is a great program, and it is probably the future of genealogy, but it is dense. I am a young guy – only 30 – and I consider myself to be pretty computer savvy. I know that older, less computer-literate individuals have got to be having a hard time with it.

I have honestly lost interest in genealogy over the past few months, largely because of FTM 2008. It is so bulky and slow, I dread sitting down and spending hours with it. I probably have not touched it in over a month. I hate to go back to FTM 16 because I have made changed to my file in FTM 2008 that will not go backward. I am almost stuck with 2008 now and that is somewhat depressing.

I think I am going to try and give it another shot in the next few days. One evening, after the wife and kids go to bed, I will pull out a few documents and maybe time myself on how long they take to enter. I am honesty in a funk right now and have almost no interest in even trying. I wish I could find a document that I have been looking for a long time, something to stimulate my interest again...Does anyone out there have a copy of Francis Lett’s will from Brunswick or Mecklenburg County, Virginia? As far as I know, it does not exist, but that might re-spark my interest enough to give FTM 2008 another try.

My note to the maker of Family Tree Maker 2008

I sent a short note to The Generations Network, markers of Family Tree Maker 2008. I did not want to completely rag them out but I was not happy with their product. Here is what I wrote:

“Disappointment with FTM2008:

The program is too slow and there are too many features (reports, etc.) missing that made version 16 great. I understand this is a new direction for the product but you have lost the simplicity that made the FTM brand great. I have tried to use 2008 since the BETA and feel that the release version was no better than the BETA. I work in quality assurance and FTM2008 smells like a BETA labeled as a release to me, just to get the product to market sooner.

I have to say that I am a long-time fan but I will probably revert to FTM16 and not buy additional upgrades, unless some of the old features come back and overall stability returns. If I were you I would refund everyone their money, take the loss and fix the product before releasing it again. There are clearly too many problems with 2008 for you to stand behind it fully.

Kevin Lett”

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