Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
Geni: Your family tree, ajax style
Category: Showcase
Geni is going social with the family tree. It must have a long way to get as much information as the LDS church, but they did a good job with the interface.
It looks to be using Prototype/Script.aculo.us and YUI components with a major sprinkling of Flash for good measure.
You can zoom in and out of the tree using sliders and drag and drop.
3 rating from 24 votes
This is fun as a toy to use with friends/family, but if you actually care about genealogy then it is pointless (doesn’t support GEDCOM).
Performance is ridiculous, first thing they ask is your email (yeah sure, no spam) and worst of all the interface can’t understand any other keyboard layout than US…
Not fun as an Ajax app, useless as a genealogy soft, what else?
The seem to use the same plumber as Bloglines:
http://www.befree.it/plumbers.jpg
Site down, take a look at Alexa for an explanation:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=geni.com
A crappy flash login didn’t allow me to type in “José”. Then it expects me to enter my email without telling me why it needs it…
Ctrl + w
Great Tools. I like it.Will recommend to all my friends to draw their family tree :P
What if your family tree resembles a wreath?
This looks like the exact same concept as one of the Railsday projects.
http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/railsday/familybook_2.png
I might actually enjoy this if it didn’t take 10 seconds each time to add someone’s information. Adding someone’s first and last name really should take that long.
Their method of recruiting new members is to have your family sign you up – a new twist on spam.
The interface, the security and the privacy is lousy:
– you can’t even remove yourself once another ‘kind’ family member has signed you up.
– you can edit pretty much any information in your family’s tree
This works for me because, unlike the other sites online, it is easy (really easy) to use, it is free, and you can get other family members to help. This is what the other paid-for sites should aspire to.
That said, it is not perfect, and could use some refinements for sure. But it beats the pants off of any other product I have seen yet.