I have received my copy of the new Family Tree Maker 2012.  I have been trying it out for the past couple of weeks and I really like the new software!  My favorite new feature and the main one that I use is the Tree Sync feature! 

Tree Sync

This is a great feature!  I love this!  This has been the feature I have been waiting on for years!!  I do most of my research on a computer at home but I also have a small netbook that I use when I am away from home.  Previously, I was never sure if I had the latest information on my netbook unless I copied the files just before I left and any changes I made on the files on the netbook had to be merged back into my main files when I returned home or I would lose the information.  Now, any changes I make on my online Ancestry tree on my netbook can be synced in just a few moments to my computer at home!! 

I can also invite my family to see my information and they are assured of seeing the latest information that I have available!  They can see my tree and add information (depending on the roles that I select for them).  I can also invite people to my tree who I am not sure of the relationship and exclude them from seeing living people’s data.  This is a great feature for me.  I am inviting those family members who are interested in adding info to our family information to email me and I will invite you to the tree! The account for the tree is free!

Also, my online tree is serving as a complete backup of my genealogy information.  I have the family tree maker software set to sync to the online tree every time I open or close my software as well as with frequent syncs that I do when I am researching! 

Also, the tree sync feature has freed me to be able to use the online ancestry family tree for the parts that I like better there (such as using the other online family tree hints to add to my tree) while using the family tree maker 2012 software for the parts that work best there – adding images and adding documents and other information I have obtained form offline sources as well as using the hints and searching other ancestry documents.

My Family History Information

I have been using The Master Genealogist (TMG) for many years now and it is a good software package with several companion products that I have purchased and that I really love.  However, TMG is based on an aging/obsolete platform.  I love John Cardinal’s companion software:  Second Site and I have used it for several years to present my genealogy information on this website.  Previously, I used the master genealogist to enter my information mainly because of the time-saving features of adding the information one time and then being able to add witnesses to that event.  With the second site, companion software, that event would then appear for all the witnesses as well.  The main events that I used for that were census enumerations, obituaries, and other newspaper articles and documents.  The census enumerations can be added by family tree maker to each person through the web search process (or the hints) so witnesses become unnecessary for this purpose.  I have determined that I can live with having to manually add in info to other people for obituaries and other documents for the major time-saving features of the hints and the auto-adding from the family tree maker software.  

These changes mean that I am going to be changing the information that I put on my website!  First, I am going to remove the separate section for the family history information.  If you are related to me and want to see the family history information, send me an email and I will send you an invitation to the ancestry family tree. 

That also means that I will be adding more frequent updates to this blog on the new discoveries I have made!  Since I won’t be spending the time to update the family history section, I will actually have time to add posts to this blog!

Kellie

I haven’t been updating my website much in the past couple of weeks!  I have been working hard for the past few weeks and I just haven’t had the time to do much with my genealogy.

I have been working on my genealogy some this weekend though and I have been enjoying the changes!  I am working on some new research methods and some new methods for communicating my genealogy to everyone else.  I am going to change and do things in a way that makes them more enjoyable for me!  I need to be able to do my genealogy in short time periods without having to get a lot of stuff out to work on my genealogy!  I am going to convert to a digital genealogy storage system and stop trying to have physical notebooks or folders!  I do have a few original items that I am going to put in some scrapbooks but everything else is going to be digital.  I just need to get a good backup system going!

Things are settling down in other areas of my life so that my life is becoming much less stressed!   I hope to have more time for my genealogy in the next few weeks!

Some of the changes that are coming are for the genealogy society that I belong to:  Washington County Genealogical Society.  I have updated the society website this weekend!

I will be updating my personal website by next weekend.  I changed the theme of the website this weekend to a Halloween theme for the month of October!  The content should be changed in the next few days.  After this week, I hope to get on a schedule where I post updates to the blog at least weekly and my family history content at least monthly.

More to come soon,

Kellie