RootsMagic 4 public beta

I am a little late in getting around to pointing this out but better late than never...

If you have ever wanted to try RootsMagic, now would be the time. They are offering the public a chance to beta test their latest version, RootsMagic 4. The offer is good until the end of March and is totally free. You just download the program, after filling out a brief form, and install it using a temporary registration code they provide to you in an e-mail. At the end of March, the program will stop working but you can use it until then. You can then provide feedback about any issues you find.

I downloaded the program and it was larger than I thought it would be. I think the program was +/- 33 MB and the optional maps were another +/- 68 MB. Compared to Family Tree Maker, 2008/2008 this is still tiny but I was under the impression that it was smaller than that. I would not recommend trying to download the program if you are using dial-up.

Yesterday I briefly played with RootsMagic 4 and, overall, I liked what I saw. I have never used any version of RootsMagic before so it was my first experience. It did look a lot like the Family Tree Maker 2008/2009 interface, which surprised me after all of the complaints. Maybe RootsMagic has looked like this for awhile and FTM copied them...someone will have to educate me on that point.

From what I saw, I was not overly impressed at first. It seems a little too stripped down visulally. I was however very interested with its website creation function. It is somewhat limited but very powerful at the same time. I am going to make a sample site and I will post a link to it, maybe later tonight if I can stay up late and get it done.

Anyway, download the program and let me know what you think. I really cannot give a review at this point because I just started to playing with it. I will weigh in on the subject once I give it more study.

Here is the link for the beta test: Click here for RootsMagic 4 beta

Getting rid of all of my paper copies

I have been a little slow in posting over the past week or two. I have been working on a personal genealogy project for the past few months and I have been rolling with it lately. I was looking around my office one day and noticed how many files I had. I literally have hundreds of file folders, filled with copies from deed books or census records. I am extremely neat and organized, everything has its place, but I started thinking about what happens to all of this stuffwhen I die?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized all of these files have a 99% chance of ending up in the trash. My kids might care less about them so I am running a huge risk of wasting all of my efforts...in the long run. I made a bold decision, one that I might regret later, but I am going through with it for better or worse. I am throwing everything away myself and not waiting for them to do it!

I decided to go through each file and scan everything into my computer, either as a JPEG or PDF. I am then sending copies to anybody I know researching that family. There is no sense in being stingy with what I have if it might advance research on that line. I am also making sure that I have entered everything into FTM2008 and that all of my entries are neat and uniform. My goal for years has been to put together a book of all my research and I am finally doing it!

I made the decision to stick with Family Tree Maker 2008 and/or 2009 because it does a great job handling media files and I am adding all of my scans into the program. It is actually quite neat to be able to pull up any document at any time, no matter where I am located. It is really getting me interested in genealogy all over again!

I also made another huge decision...I am dropping everyone except for direct ancestors from my family file. I did the math on it and I have about 350 direct ancestors in my family file. Compare that the around 2,500 people, including all aunts, uncles and cousins. There is no way to really focus on quality with that many people (and I could care less about quantity). I am focusing on the direct ancestors and moving information about their children to the notes section of each ancestor.

I want to focus on preserving the history of my ancestors as opposed to my relatives. This is counter to what most genealogists try to do but I want to actually finish the book project and cannot do it while trying to fit in 2,500 people. I want to go back and look for deeds and stuff from my ancestors that I have neglected to look for in the past. I want to fill in the blanks that I have been too preoccupied with aunts and cousins to do. I also only want to go back about six, maybe seven generations. Anything beyond that tends to get too sketchy for me. I do not operator on theory.

Now do not get me wrong, I am still looking for marriage, death and SS-5 info for aunts and uncles that may give me info on their parents, my ancestors. I just cannot focus on them any more. I am going to get out a first revision of my family history book, with my ancestors only, and then I might go back and do more detailed books on each family surname. I have enough info in my files to write ten books, easily. I just need to shrink my focus to make sure it gets done.

The last big decision I have made is to keep only original documents and photographs. I am then going to donate all of those to a local library or society. I have a lot of old, original documents that would make a great public collection. I would like to work a deal with William and Mary or the Library of Virginia to one day start the "Lett Collection." I have been a collector of old Virginia documents for some time and will have a rather nice collection by the time I retire from the game. I would like to see it go somewhere safe and enduring.

I know I am rambling a little it but I wanted to let you know what is going on in my genealogical world. The genealogy industry has been kinda slow in general this week so I have not had much to pass along either. Have a good weekend!

eBay comes to Ancestry... sorta

I got this press release today about a new top gun at Ancestry.com. It seems they are still shaking things up after the Family Tree Maker 2008 disaster. They have gone out and grabbed one of eBay's brightest. Hopefully Eric can help bring some of prestige back to the product line.

"Eric Shoup, Former General Manager for eBay Stores, Joins The Generations Network as Ancestry.com's Vice President of Product
Management Leader to Play Key Role in Bay Area Growth of Ancestry.com

PRNewswire
PROVO, Utah

PROVO, Utah, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Generations Network (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced the hiring of Eric Shoup as vice president of product for the Ancestry.com business unit. As a new management leader, Shoup will be responsible for the product strategy, product definition and design for the global platform of Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource. He will lead the product management and user interface design teams. Bringing more than 15 years of product marketing and general management experience, he will be based in the company's San Francisco office.

"We're thrilled to have Eric Shoup join Ancestry.com during this time of accelerated growth," said Andrew Wait, senior vice president and general manager of family history for Ancestry.com. "Eric is key to the continued expansion of Ancestry.com and to our company's increasing presence in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. His impressive background and strong leadership skills make him the best person to lead this effort while nicely complimenting our team in Utah."

Prior to joining TGN, Shoup was at eBay for five years, where he focused on growing several of eBay's growing businesses, most recently as the general manager for the eBay Stores and ProStores business units. In a previous position, Eric assembled and led eBay's first global mobile product team. During his eBay career, Shoup also played key product leadership roles over different areas such as eBay Stores, Shipping and Merchandising.

Prior to eBay, Shoup drove key product marketing and management initiatives at Commerce One, a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions for businesses. While at US Interactive, Shoup designed and managed consumer ecommerce and marketing Web sites for established companies such as Lexus and Wellcome Supermarkets (Hong Kong).

As a new member of the management team, Shoup will work closely with a strong team of professionals in Ancestry.com's new San Francisco office, including Cheyenne Richards, recently promoted to vice president of marketing and a former executive with Avenue A Razorfish, as well as co-workers recently hired from Yahoo, Apple, Organic, CNET, Zenith Optimedia and Expedia.

About the Ancestry Global Network

The Ancestry global network of family history Web sites is wholly owned by The Generations Network, Inc. It consists of nine Web sites -- http://www.ancestry.com/ in the U.S., http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ in the UK, http://www.ancestry.ca/ in Canada, http://www.ancestry.com.au/ in Australia, http://www.ancestry.de/ in Germany, http://www.ancestry.it/ in Italy, http://www.ancestry.fr/ in France, http://www.ancestry.se/ in Sweden and http://www.jiapu.cn/ in China. Ancestry members have access to 7 billion names contained in 26,000 historical record collections. Tree-building and photo upload are free on all Ancestry websites. To date, Ancestry.com users have created more than 7 million family trees containing 675 million profiles and 11 million photographs. Nearly 5.4 million unique visitors logged onto Ancestry.com in July 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

SOURCE: Ancestry.com

CONTACT: Sara Black of PainePR, +1-213-996-3812, sblack@painepr.com, for
Ancestry.com

Web site: http://www.ancestry.com/"

Family Tree Maker 2009 - Free Upgrade!

If you have a copy of Family Tree Maker 2008 and have not registered it...do so now. According to the Generations Network:

"...we’re giving our loyal Family Tree Maker 2008 customers a free upgrade to 2009. Last year around this time we released Family Tree Maker 2008. There was some initial customer dissatisfaction with the functionality in that release. We heard from customers who felt they didn’t receive what they were expecting. Over the past year, we’ve listened carefully to their feedback and have added many new features in the form of free patches which have been enthusiastically received. Family Tree Maker 2009 has even more features and functions that were not in previous patches...In the next few weeks, Family Tree Maker 2008 registrants will receive an email with a one-time-use coupon that can be redeemed for a free version of Family Tree Maker 2009..."

At least they are trying!

If you did not buy 2009, you can order it here...

Family Tree Maker 2008 SP3 Released

The Generations Network has released Service Pack 3 for Family Tree Maker 2008. The update can be downloaded here if your copy of the program did not update automatically. The current version is labeled 17.0.0.965.

Let's cross our fingers and hope that this dramatically improves the product. I have been Beta testing at version 17.0.0.948 for some time. There are a few issues in that version but nothing major. I have only experienced one crash in the past several months. The biggest problem that I saw was with the spell check function. It would allow you to check and make corrections but it would not save them. Run spell check again and the same errors were present.

According to their website, the release notes are as follows:

"Enhancements and New features:

• Major enhancements to performance, improvements including:
• Startup time
• File load time
• Report/Chart creation time
• General navigation
• Memory usage
• Major enhancements to stability throughout the program
• Book layout in charts for:
• Descendant Chart
• Hourglass Chart
• Vertical Pedigree Chart
• Ability to create saved versions for all charts and reports
• Ability to apply predefined templates for charts
• Ability to save user created templates for charts
• Enhancements to place interactions, including:
• New Change Place Name dialog allowing for easier changing of place name and description information
• Double-clicking and right clicking additions to the Places workspace
• New Find-and-Replace dialog with additional ability to search with wildcards and to specify where to search in and enhanced information showing where the item was found.
• Major enhancements to the Analyze/Compact file functionality
• Outline Descendant report has Items to Include options
• Inclusion of Married Name AKA and Titles in index
• Automatic simple backup at shutdown
• Ability to turn off place authority searching when entering place names
• Enhancements to the RTF export
• Ability to add boxes in charts to a “Marked Box” category and modify box settings for these boxes
• Preparer Information in the footer for charts
• Options to include spouses and children in filtering and exporting of people

Major enhancements to Sources including

People Workspace

• Copy and paste source-citations. After copying (from source-citation dialog or sources toolbar), you can paste a duplicate source-citation or a link to the existing one via the “New” source menu.
• Ability to copy source-citation at creation for pasting

Sources Workspace

• Double-clicking on a source title in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Source Title” dialog for easier editing of sources in this view.
• Double-clicking on a repository in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Repository” dialog for easier editing of repositories in this view.
• Right-mouse menus have been added to the left panel.

Repository Dialog

• The “Repository” dialog is resizable.

Source Title Dialog

• The “Source Title” dialog includes a usage button that displays usage for that source (This is redundant in the “Source” workspace, but useful elsewhere).
• The “Source Title” dialog is resizable.

Source-Citation Dialog

• The “Source-Citation” dialog is resizable
• The “Source-Citation” dialog includes a reference to the number of linked facts.
• Addition of a copy button (see copy and paste source-citations above).

Find Source-Citation Dialog

• The option to “Link To Existing Source-Citation” is changed to “Use Existing Source-Citation.” Then there are two buttons in the resulting “Find Source-Citation” dialog. After finding and selecting a source-citation the user can choose “Link To Citation” or “Copy New Citation”. The link option does the same as “OK” did before and the new copy option adds another easy way to create a duplicate source-citation.
• Performance when listing by people is greatly improved.
• The “View by” setting is remembered so that if you view by source title for example, it comes up that way the next time.
• Left and right panels are sized proportionally when the dialog is resized.

List of some of the higher priority bugs that have been fixed

Charts

• Made default settings more like FTM 16 default settings.
• Changes made in Box, Border, and Line Options don’t force a chart reload unless necessary.
• Export to image decreases the resolution (DPI) of the image if the image is very large.
• Charting uses less memory.
• Charting draws faster.
• Saved chart dates and times work for international dates.
• The User Interface recognizes metric regions and sizes are shown in centimeters or millimeters for Metric regions.
• Improved drawing and scaling of the “Advanced” layout for Standard Pedigree charts in Poster layout.
• Background colors stay in synchronization which background images changes and vice-versa.
• Facts that are description centric, such as AKA, now default to options that are meaningful.
• Miscellaneous UI changes such as hiding the “Advanced” button when in book layout or not in Standard Pedigree charts.
• Improved loading time for Box, Border, and Line Options dialog, Fonts Dialog, and Page Setup.
• Improved pedigree line drawing for special conditions such as parent box smaller than child box in a Standard Pedigree.
• Improved the restoring of box sizes on reload or opening a saved chart.
• File dialog restores to last directory used.
• Quick Print Dialog did not have the correct values in the header control.
• Selected boxes in charts have “more emphasis” to show that they are selected.
• Improved displaying of all Shared Facts.
• Improved drawing speed and memory usage for pedigree lines in the pedigree chart.
• Improved drawing of pedigree lines in the pedigree chart by calculating the overlap and thus finding a new “center” point.
• The “fact” or divider line can now be a different color and width than the pedigree line. This makes it possible to do some nice contrast inside of the person box.
• If a fact is changed it is picked up in the chart. The chart doesn’t reload and often the fact change is such that this doesn’t matter. If the chart does need to be regenerated there is now a generate button too.
• Saving of POSTER size images of all types of charts. (Export Image)
• Gradient box fill ability. Note that some printers can’t handle gradient and transparent at the same time.
• Throttle the chart size after 14 generations for Pedigree charts in poster layout. All other charts have a 99 generation limit now. Charts over 13 generations will set the spacing to collapsed.

Reports

• RTF output is not easily editable
• Photo album excludes non-image media items.
• Title includes primary person automatically for some reports
• Ahnentafel Report - blank lines between end notes
• Ahnentafel Report - disappears when checking Use short biographies
• Ahnentafel report - name and sex fact notes don’t display
• Export to RTF, data fields are underlined
• Individual Report - Name options don’t apply to all names
• Outline Descendant Report - export to RTF includes weird characters
• Outline Descendant Report - Items to include, include blank facts not working
• Outline Descendant Report - name of focus person not in title
• Place Usage Report - missing fact labels
• Register Report - Also Known As not displaying correctly
• Register Report - names in all caps
• Register Report - not seeing Name fact note
• Register Report and Ahnentafel Report - information repeating
• Report Titles not updating
• Spouse sorting in individual report is fixed
• Civil and Canon values in Kinship report is fixed
• Individual report sorting spouses incorrectly
• Notes do not appear correctly in reports
• Bold, Italic, & Underline in notes don’t appear in Individual Report
• Photo album report – images per row setting not working
• Documented Facts Report – non-preferred facts not appearing, their sources are
• Photo Album Report - blanks out with non-image media items
• Photo Album Report - sorting images (images are now sorted by caption and filename)
• Kinship Report - sorting individuals
• Register Report - crash saving report
• Research Note Report - not displaying bold, underline & italic in notes
• Relationship Report not working in People module
• Photo Album not working in People module
• Individual report displays preferred name for all name facts.
• Fixed numbering problem in Outline Descendant report

Find and Replace

• Clicking stop before results are found messes up what gets found and results in a crash
• Can’t find words with punctuation at the end
• Certain characters (<>) caused the found text to not be displayed
• Crash navigating to people collection after “Go To” from find and replace
• Change all place names dialog pops up even if there is only 1 fact associated with a place
• Can click find and replace when there is no tree loaded

Copy/Paste Sources

• Pasting Link/Copy to a source causes problems with the reference note
• Pasting a duplicate source doesn’t copy the source note
• Paste option not active on facts that have no data
• Ability to copy source from Manage Source view added

File Merge

• Marriage fact of preferred spouse was shown for all spouses in the host file
• Improved people matching
• File merge creates multiple relationships for the same person
• FTM crashes when merging creates a recursive relationship (i.e. child is his own father)
• Improved matching accuracy and performance when files are derivatives of each other

Web Merge

• Crash when changing a place name in web search and then merging
• Clicking on “Create Page Archive” before Web Search is completely loaded crashes FTM
• Source not added to sex fact if default merge settings were changed
• Added drop-down to select a different source title when editing source
• Web Merge Wizard dialog doesn’t display the correct instructions when merging images and notes (but no facts/people)
• Crash when editing a screen scraped place name and then trying to merge
• Multiple copies of the same media being saved to the media folder when merging the same Ancestry.com record multiple times

General

• People filter updated to be more correct
• Crash after compact then backing up fixed
• Gedcom export was doing certain fact types (description only, etc.)
• Export of living people no longer uses Living as their name. It keeps the name but hides all other facts.
• “Approximately” or “Approx.” should be recognized as “Abt. for dates
• Britain resolve place name selection of United Kingdom clears field
• If the history is empty it shows the same names as index
• Program crashes when you delete a person from the History panel
• Edit source dialog/Reference note doesn’t display citation text when is should
• Children sorting in family panel fixed
• Change place name issues resolved (crashes when adding just description and other problems)
• Modified reference notes correctly imported
• Scrolling problem in source list in person view
• “Approximately” or “Approx.” now recognized as “Abt. for dates
• Relationship information now showing up in English installs in non-English speaking countries
• Crash when merging two people together, sometimes
• Crash when changing person’s name due to Operating System audio driver crash
• Crash when adding sources – it may crash one more time, then on restart fix the problem
• Crash when adding media types .gif and .ICO
• Fixes to resolving place names without a city name
• Non-preferred facts show up in reports
• Problems importing sources from FTM 2005 files
• Marriage data not showing in hourglass chart
• Ahnentafel numbers are not correct
• Export not working when “Include private Facts” deselected.
• Exporting a subset of people still includes all places, sources, etc.
• Resolve All Dialog doesn’t append to description it replaces the existing descry
• Register Report shows same info for multiple spouses
• Alternate names do not appear in the Family Group Sheet
• Error importing v2005 file
• Pressing the ESC key clears the data in a date or description field
• AKA appears out of order in charts and reports
• Media Item Report Export to .PDF not working correctly
• Printing a Pedigree Chart from People isn’t working
• Moving a place to a description then moves the description to the place
• Pedigree, Descendant, Hourglass, & Vertical Pedigree Charts - settings not saved
• Import of media caption and description is lost via PAF import
• Source not always being added from Web Merge
• Unknown dates not exporting to Gedcom
• Can’t delete project after running media report - media item held open
• UNK should be recognized when entered as a date as Unknown
• Importing GEDCOM file with normal tags
• Duplicate people showing up in relationship view"

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.

Family Tree Maker 2008 Bug - All data from people tab missing and how to find it.

I am going to start listing any of the bugs and fixes that I find for Family Tree Maker 2008 on the site. Maybe they will help someone that has lost data.

I have come across a bug in 17.0.0.438. While in the people tab, scrolling through the index, the program crashed. All I did was scroll up with the up arrow key, from one name to the next. The program closed completely and without any warning or error message.

When I try to restart FTM, this message appears: “The tree is already open or invalid file type [path]”. This message can be dismissed and the program will start. After the first failure, the typical Microsoft error message pops up. If you click the button to send the error report, the process will start but it will never actually send.

After restarting FTM, even after restarting the computer, the “open or invalid file” message appears each time. When inside the program, everything runs normally except that you cannot see anything on the people tab screen. The places, sources, etc. tabs work fine but the people tab data is not there. The funny thing is that you can press F2 and the index will come up, populated with data.

I then tried to export the file and open the exported file/packet, saved with a different name. This process worked fine and nothing appears to be lost, all of the tabs function properly. Even stranger is that once I exported the original file and then opened it and saved the package as a new file, the original file now works properly again, people tab and all.

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”

If you would like to share your thoughts on the product with our readers, click the comment link below and let us know how you feel.

Family Tree Maker 2008 Beta Version Review

Family Tree Maker has a new version, FTM 2008, coming out in August 2007 and you can download a BETA version here: http://beta.familytreemaker.com/

This is a very large file and you should be reminded that this is a BETA test so there may be problems with it. This free, BETA version expires on August 24, 2007 so it is only a sample of what you will have to purchase. No word on the final price but hopefully an upgrade discount will be available for current customers. That has been the practice for past releases.

I have downloaded the BETA and did not like it at first. I am still on the fence but there are some items that are nice. The user interface is clean and modern and looks a little like The Master Genealogist - TMG. If you look closely, Wholly Genes Software, maker of TMG, provided the GenBridge file import technology. Perhaps the companies are working together on this one.

The screens are laid out so that everything you want to know about one individual is pretty much on that screen, at one time. However, I find it difficult to navigate between families and to see the bigger picture. They have added a place-name map integration feature using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. This is neat but I believe requires an active Internet connection. A lot of the features of this version require active Internet connections.

FTM 2008 handles media, i.e. photos, scans, sound and video files, much better than past versions. It also has stronger source citations but does not quite import from your old file perfectly. There is a problem where the old “source medium” field is entered now as a note and included when the source is printed. That is an annoyance and will require you to go back and manually delete that note from each source.

One of the coolest parts of the program is that it makes suggestions about possible connections with data on Ancestry’s pay web site. Although the matches are not spot-on, it is nice to have possible connections pointed out to you. The main downside is that you have to pay for the service separately.

My biggest gripe with FTM 2008 is the report function. As of right now, most of the reports are stock and cannot be changed much to really fit your needs. Also missing are the genealogy reports (register, NGS quarterly and ahnentafel). If those reports do not show up in the final version, I will not be very happy as the functionality of the program will be severely hampered. The books section is also unavailable at this time but at least has a placeholder that reads “coming soon.”

Ancestry will also offer a printing service at some point.

Overall, I am impressed with the effort on this one but I think there will be several release versions before this one is solidified. Users need to send the company feedback and let them know what is missing and what is not working. I will write another review when the final version is released. Hopefully some of the BETA flaws will be worked out by then.