by WGS President Paul W. Hutchins
There are currently thousands of genealogy web pages on the internet. GenCircles.com is a popular one created by a young programmer in Colorado, Cliff Shaw.
GenCircles allows genealogists to upload their GEDCOM files containing their research. GEDCOM is a file exchange format that helps genealogists share their notes and information.
Within the GenCircles program, an entire GEDCOM file can be compared against their entire database of over 90 million ancestors.
GenCircles does not charge money for this, which is unusual. Also, GenCircles promises not to sell your information for money, which is also unusual.
Each time the system goes through a matching process, you will be notified if your tree has any matches against any other tree in the system. You can then contact the owner of the matching tree to discuss it further.
There are also forums in the system for most areas that are being researched, as well as many surnames.
Ask other Danish researchers about your questions on German roots, or chat with researchers on your surname to see if together you can get through a missing link.
Since signing up is free, it’s something every genealogist should look into!
Have you ever followed links and entered your family information to get SSDI (Social Security Death Index) information, only to find the site charges for access? I’m proud to announce that someone has made absolutely sure the SSDI is always available on the Internet for free. Plus, he has created a brand new SSDI search engine at:
www.familytreelegends.com/ssdi
It has all the features of EVERY other SSDI search engine, plus 4 entirely unique ones:
* Name Prefix Search – Enter from 3 to 5 characters for the last name and select the Prefix option… it will search on that last name prefix.
* Year Range Searches – For both the Death Year and Birth Year, you can select to search a range of years instead of the year needing to be exactly right.
* Age at Death Search – You can enter the age that the person died. This is really effective if you don’t have any idea what year they were born or died but you do know their age at death.
* You can click on the places that are returned in the results and get latitude and longitude, region information, aerial photos, maps, and more.
The creator, Cliff Shaw, say, “Enjoy! I want it to be known that this SSDI search engine will ALWAYS be free. I’m committed to providing genealogists with as much free genealogy data and tools as possible. The sales of Family Tree Legends at::
www.familytreelegends.com
helps pay for this. I’m not here to tell you to buy my program… I’m here to say that I do the best I can to bring genealogists as much as possible for free.”
Don’t take my word, check it out for yourself.
I have switched from using Family Tree Maker to using Family Tree Legends. Download a free trial copy and try it out. It will make a believer out of you!