Rootsdb.com

[peter]

I received this email today:

Rootsdb.com is a new programme designed originally for members of the Guild Of One-Name Studies but available free to everyone. Not a "Family Tree" programme it only stores and sorts all the information for all the individuals in your records, in family groups or as single individuals. The lifetime events include BMD's Census, Education, Employment, Professional qualifications, Religious, Military Records etc even YDNA records and of course a history of the various home addresses everyone will have. It is an online programme which can be accessed from any computer capable of getting online. It will certainly be improved as more users come online, but the programme improvements will be automatically available to all users without any need to download or update anything.

Has anybody tried it out? I'm struggling to think what gap it's filling, but no doubt one of you will tell me!

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Nope seriously struggling to see the use of such a program. I'd have thought that almost all FHPs out there would record "BMD's Census, Education, Employment, Professional qualifications, Religious, Military Records etc" and some would record YDNA records. Its the way that FTM2012 works by default you create an individual and add a range of "facts" to that individual each fact is of a type "Birth", "Census", "Education" even more exotic ones like "Elected" etc. Plus you can add your own custom facts eg: "Lost Cousins" to tag people entered onto the website.

In addition to this programs like FTM allow you to add unrelated individuals so I really struggle to see where there is any benefit in an internet hosted solution. Indeed I can see several draw backs, eg: having to have an internet connection, having no control over backups. The export of data from the tree implies it is not GEDCOM compatible so difficult to use another program if the site stops being viable and is no longer supported etc.

 

[peter]

That confirms my suspicions - thanks.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

It's oddly expensive too. £76 then £60 a year for 2000-20000 people in tree. What are you getting for that? Well you are getting your data hosted online, no extra databases to search, no specific bonus features just covering their costs of hosting, no tangible benefits I can see. Compare this with spending the same sort of money on a subscription to Ancestry/FMP for 6 months and having a program on your own machine. So for the same price for 50% of the year (say the winter months) you would have access to massive databases of info to search and have your own database locally on your own machine. With the likes of Dropbox and Skydrive there are plenty of options to backup the data "off site" for free.

So precisely what are you paying for? Not a lot as far as I can see.

 

[Cathy]

Seems very expensive to me.

However, I think their claim is the greater ability to sort records - which is why the attractiveness to one name study people.
You can import from a Gedcom or a spreadsheet. It talks about export in your desired format - so probably you can export a gedcom or a csv.

I know that Legacy Family Tree includes the ability to export chosen data to csv so it can be sorted in a spreadsheet. I'm forever telling a very disorganised one name study person how to do it as she seems incapable of filing the directions where she can find them. Perhaps she's finally got the hang of it as she hasn't asked for a couple of months.

I find the internal sorting in Legacy sufficient in my small area based one name study to consider whether I have enough data to say that this John Cooper is the same person as that John Cooper.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

If its simply sorting that is required ask her what the requirements are and I'll ensure they are added to FTAnalyzer for free. I do a one name study myself and have around 2000 Bisset's in my tree almost all from NE Scotland so I am aware of some sorting issues. However there may be others as trees grow.