Family Tree Applications

I’ve mentioned before that my brother has an interest in genealogy, and is doing his best to trace our family tree. I’ve recently come across a couple of software applications that aid in visualising genealogical data.

 

First up is Family.Show – a rather jazzy application written for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) software that is present in Windows Vista. Actually, it’s more of a concept than a full-blown application. It was expressly created to show off the capabilities of WPF, which is does to quite a striking effect. The source code of the application is freely available, if you want to have a go at extending it.

 

Next is a web-based application, available at www.geni.com. The interesting thing about this is that is it a collaborative application. Both my brother and myself (or indeed anyone else we explicitly invite to join us) can work on the same family tree. This collaboration feature is a terrific plus point. It’s meant that we can each work on building up different branches of the family, as well as correcting errors or adding details to each others’ work. Geni is still in beta, but is definitely usable at the moment. The development team have a blog, and there are discussion forums devoted to the application. Worth checking out if you have an interest in drawing up your family tree.