FAQ Added, Note-Taking Software Updated

Over the past few days, I’ve done a large update/revision of the Mac note-taking and journal software page. There was very little there before and now there is hopefully an up-to-date guide of sorts that can point you in the right direction if you are looking for information on applications to help organize and manage genealogy research. I’ll be expanding it and doing full reviews of some of the software mentioned.

More importantly, I’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to the site, which you may have seen in the navigation menu above (“FAQ”):

Mac Genealogy FAQ

It’s going to cover a lot of the questions I receive in email and hopefully clear the air on some things. We don’t directly sell or develop genealogy software is one example of a question I get asked about a lot. The overall focus of the FAQ section is going to be on helping people who have migrated from Windows or older Macs and the genealogists migrating from Windows or older Macs section will be expanded greatly in the next few days.

There will also be FAQs for specific Mac genealogy applications and questions. Here are two examples:
* FAQ – Family Tree Maker for Mac
* FAQ – Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

I’ve got a lot left to do on it, but you can see the start of what it will be from the above links.

If there is anything you think that needs to be added or expanded, please contact us.

Apple to Launch iRoots, iRoots Pro Genealogy Applications in 2007?

Could Apple be getting into the genealogy software and DNA testing market?

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Metes and Bounds 1.4.1

Sandy Knoll Software’s Metes and Bounds 1.4.1 is now available. Metes and Bounds is a Mac OS X land mapping or plotting applications that turns metes and bounds data into a plot map. Genealogists might be able to us it for plotting cemeteries, homesteads, other locations or items of geographical interest, etc. Version 1.4.0 was released in January and for some reason we missed it.

Changes in 1.4.1:
* Added the decimal angle to degree converter.
* Improved manual data entry.
* New help system.

Changes in 1.4.0:
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Mac Friendly Genealogy Magazine: Your Family Tree

I came across an imported genealogy magazine (from the UK) that caught my eye (and my wallet). Depending on location, it is either called “Your Family History” or “Your Family Tree” – in the US it’s available through Amazon.com (link to Your Family Tree) however it’s a bit pricey – $93 for 13 issues (keep in mind it is an imported magazine with genealogy software and records), but in some of the chain book stores in the US it runs for $15 an issue, so $93 is not necessarily a high price (and like I said, it comes with software).

The thing that caught my eye (besides it being large with a bold cover) was that they made a very good attempt at being Mac-friendly, something that most genealogy magazines don’t try to do, at least those that come with genealogy software CDs/DVDs. This issue included Mac genealogy software and utilities, as well as records that could be searched on a Mac (of course the software and records vary from issue to issue – not every issue will have software or records you can use, and it benefits Windows genealogists more than Mac genealogists just because the majority of included software is Windows-based).

In the December issue, the Mac-compatible software/shareware (not all is free) and information included:
* Readiris Pro for Mac, a nice Optical Character Recognition (OCR) application
* Oxfordshire Parish Magazines and Trade Directory Sample Data
* Date Calculator
* Gene 4.3.4
* Heredis X
* MacFamilyTree 4.1.3
* SeeGEDCOMX
* Tree Tracker
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Birthday Grapher 1.1

Birthday Grapher 1.1 has been released. What is Birthday Grapher? It’s a tool designed to help explain and visualize the infamous “Birthday Paradox”. Version 1.1 improved accuracy and stability. It’s distributed freely and should run on G3 -> G5 Macs running Mac OS X 10.3 and above.

What’s the “Birthday Paradox”? From Wikipedia: The birthday paradox states that if there are 23 or more people in a room then there is a chance of more than 50% that at least two of them will have the same birthday. This means that in a typically-sized school class where the ‘paradox’ is often cited, an even higher probability often applies. For 60 or more people, the probability is already greater than 99%. This is not a paradox in the sense of leading to a logical contradiction; it is a paradox in the sense that it is a mathematical truth that contradicts common intuition. Most people estimate that the chance is much lower than 50%.

If you know of any children (or anybody in general) into math or birthdays, this might be an interesting way to introduce them to genealogy – have them estimate the probabilities of people in your family tree sharing a birthday, and then have them work through the tree to determine if it’s true or not. If they are not aware of the birthday paradox, they might be very surprised.

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