Aug 31 2008
Genealogy Site Enhancements
This morning I started to play with some of the untapped features of the Tobin Genealogy Website. I currently use a great program that my friend “Mr Papa” recommended to me last year, called The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding, or TNG. I use TNG to display our genealogy data on the Internet, and use Legacy Family Tree on my desktop for entering/editing the family tree. The thing I like about TNG is that it makes use of a database to display my genealogy information on the fly, when queried (as opposed to having to have a bunch of pre-created pages). I particularly like the look and feel of the program, as it is very professionally done.
The key feature that I set up this morning is the use of Google Maps to display relevant genealogy information on a map. For example, for a given person’s genealogy record, I can now display all of the locations associated with events of that person (i.e., birth, death, residence, etc.) on a google map nested within the display of their record. As an example, you can view my genealogical record at the site and scroll down to the map. On the map graphic, there will be pushpins that correlate with the “events” from my life (as annotated in my genealogy record). To the right of the graphic will be a listing of the events associated with each pushpin. Click on one of these pushpins (the one on the right, not the one on the map graphic), and a separate window will open with a Google map of that location! From here, you have a lot of interesting options. You can zoom in/out, move around the map, change the view from map to satellite to terrain data, overlay photos of the area, and even show street views (if/when available). It is a pretty neat feature that makes the genalogy information that much more fun to view. So far, I have only geolocated a relative few of the places in my genealogy database….but over time, I will geolocate all of the records in my database.
I continue to enjoy working on our genealogy. I need to ask my parents to provide me with some more information about their lives that I can capture in the genealogy site. In fact, I need to expand that to a wider audience of my extended family. The Legacy software provides data forms on which I can use to survey/collect this type of information. So far, I have largely collected factual information such as names, dates, and locations. I would also like to gather more historical information about occupations and other interesting anecdotes. It is a fun hobbyto work on (when hockey season is over!).
