Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Check out AGES-Online

I received an email from Family Tree Magazine describing AGES-Online (AGES Stands for Advanced Genealogical Exploration Services) as a service that is "Saving Your Family History for the Ages" and offers "Fully Loaded For Your Genealogical Needs," listing the capabilities as:


* Build Your Family Tree Online
* User Friendly
* Easy Navigation
* Load Nothing on Your PC
* Access Anywhere, Anytime!
* Collaborate with Family and Friends
* Import Your GEDCOM
* Security (It's YOUR Data!)
* Unlimited Numbers of Individuals
* Extensive Events & Details
* Source / Citation Templates
* Reports
* Free Enhancements


The site claims:

"It's Your Data! AGES believes your family data is your data and not public domain. All AGES accounts are password protected and are only visible to you and your guests.

"Data Center Backups. Enjoy genealogy without the worries. Your records are backed up in multiple data center locations.

"Standard Templates. Enjoy our extensive templates for entering Events, Details, Sources and Citations. Templates created using Industry Standards."

After a brief look around the web site, it appears that this is a commercial web site designed so that a user can enter and store their genealogy data online. It is not a true social network site, although you can share information with other researchers of your choice.

In short, it is a substitute for genealogy software residing on your computer and genealogy data stored in a database on your computer. It would be available to the user any place you could access the Internet.

This site offers an Economy subscription as a 30 day Free Trial. The Economy subscription ($39.95 for an Annual subscription) includes full Family Tree Edit capabilities, Unlimited number of individuals, and numerous reports and charts.

There will be Standard, Enhanced and Deluxe subscriptions available later with more capabilities (no prices given). You can see all of the Features for each subscription type at http://www.ages-online.com/features.cfm.

You can click on the plus (+) sign next to each Feature type to see what each subscription offers. A drop-down list will appear when you click the (+) sign and you can see check marks to describe what each subscription level offers.

For example, the Economy subscription will offer only Family Group Sheet, Outline Descendant and Descendant Genealogy Reports in the Reports category. If you want a Custom Report, Source Usage report, a Citation Usage report and several other reporting capabilities, they will only be available in the more expensive subscription.

You can upload a GEDCOM file for all subscription levels. There is no indication about what will happen to User Notes or Facts uploaded in a GEDCOM. There is no Ahnentafel List or Ancestor Report offered at any level - these are standard reports with almost all genealogy software.

They offer a personalized web site in the Standard, Enhanced and Deluxe levels with an upload of a single picture for each individual.

There are many more features - go visit the site and read all of the information. I recommend using the Free Trial to see what information is uploaded and what report capabilities are provided.

For $39.95, I can make a one-time purchase of new FamilyTreeMaker 2008 software that will do nearly everything (and probably more) that this web site will provide. The obvious exception is the database would be online and accessible to the user anywhere they had access to the Internet.

This is an initial review of this web site, and I may have missed some valuable features. I have not signed up for the free trial yet, but will in a week or so. If someone has more comments, please write your own blog post or comment on this post.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Randy, before you buy Family Tree Maker 2008, you might want to first read the twenty-nine comments about it at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/09/28/welcome-to-the-new-family-tree-maker-blog/ (http://tinyurl.com/28dp4d).

Joy