FamilySearch News

FamilySearch has announced two features that have me excited.

First up is ‘Hinting’.

Yep, just what it sounds like.  They are working on their own version of the shaky leaf that Ancestry uses.  If this sounds intriguing to you, you will need to participate in Family Tree on FamilySearch in order to use this feature.  It hasn’t been launched yet but is scheduled for ‘soon’.  You can read more here.

Second up are some tools new to the Descendancy View – ‘Data Problems’ and ‘Research Suggestion’.

In Family Tree you can change the view to Descendancy View for one of your ancestors and then click your way through their posterity in list format by expanding and closing things.  It gives you the ability to take a top down approach from one of your ancestors and see if all of their descendants are accounted for.  Off to the side there are now little icons that will indicate if the system believes there is a ‘Data Problem’ or if it has ‘Research Suggestions’ for you.  I have seen several that say things like, ‘Possible data problem, this individual lived for more than 120 years.’  Then I can go right to the person and check it out.  Either I have really awesome genes or someone made a little typo and I need to fix it.  You can read more about these new tools here.

Those FamilySearch folks have been working hard to make their website a powerful, free tool for genealogists.  Have you tried out Family Tree?  What do you think of it?