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.

MacGenealogy.Org – Site Update Part 2

Update: the first thing I’m doing is getting the Mac Genealogy Software listing in shape. From there I’ll be updating everything else.

Not quite two weeks ago, I mentioned MacGenealogy.org would be offline for a short time while I did some work on it.

As you can see, the work is done for the most part, at least on the website side of things. I’m still going to be tweaking the site layout and a few other things. I’ll be updating all of the older content as well as adding newer software in that’s missing from the database.

I’ve got quite a few things planned over the next few weeks, so you’ll see see a lot of new things, and if anything happens to look weird, just hit refresh/reload. These changes/updates have been in the works for over a month and I now have the time to implement them and will be doing so (and talking more about it later).

If you are curious about iPhone or iPad genealogy apps, as I mentioned last week, for the most part that will be covered with MobileGenealogy.com, however I have some plans for those apps as well – I’m waiting on my iPad and will be talking about them later on.

MacGenealogy.Org – Site Update

MacGenealogy.org will be offline for a short time later this evening as we do some work on it and start updating everything.

It’s going to have a similar layout to MobileGenealogy.com. If you are looking for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch genealogy apps and software, they are going to be on MobileGenealogy.com

Site News, Forums

I just discovered that our spam filter on our contact form worked a little too well. A lot of email was classified as spam, that shouldn’t have been. I’m working my way through the email manually and answering questions as fast as I can (I think I’m up to the beginning of June and have several months’ worth!).

I’d like to suggest that in the future, the best way to get a lot of questions answered about Mac genealogy software, and/or migrating to Macs is to register an account in the forums and post a question:

http://www.macgenealogy.org/forums/

That way it can be seen by more people, who can perhaps answer your questions better than I can, especially when it comes to Temple Ready, migrating from Windows, etc. Your email is hidden, and you are basically anonymous on there, in case you are worried about anything.

We are also finally working on two software areas that are interesting: Mapping software and notebook software. In the next few weeks we should be adding a lot of information about both.

Thanks,

- JD

MacGenealogy.org – Forums

We’ve just overhauled the MacGenealogy.org Forums, with upgraded software and better organization. It should be a lot faster, easier to search, etc. In the process, we deleted users that met certain criteria (logged on once six months ago, etc.) , so if your account does not work, simply create a new one. Some of you were having problems with your passwords – try again and if you cannot access your account through the forums after this, contact us and we’ll fix it right away. We have some work to do on the theme, but for now we wanted to get it cleaned up and get outstanding problems addressed.

We’ve added some new areas:
- Windows “Switchers” – Discussion for Windows users having problems migrating to Mac OS X, solutions, including virtualization (running Windows under Mac OS X, or Boot Camp), etc.
- Data management – there are several data management tools for Mac OS X, that don’t exactly fall into a genealogy application category, however they are useful for cataloging the documents, etc., we have.
- Hardware – discussion of hardware that genealogists use – Macs, printers, scanners, etc.
- Presentation and multimedia – photo editing, scanning, slideshows, etc.

Other features:
- Notifications – you can now easily have a notice sent to your email when a topic you created, replied to, or marked to Notify you, has responses.

Dealing with Spam
- We have active moderators and we have new safeguards in place
- If you find spam, you can click “Report to moderator” and two of us will get an email immediately with a link to the post.

Under consideration:
- seperate language discussions sub-forums (German, Spanish, etc.)
- Additional software-specific forums
- “Digest” mode where you can be sent an email summary of the week’s posts.

Thanks

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