Google Chrome vs. Firefox -- a genealogist's perspective

With a few stellar exceptions, most of the genealogists I know are far more interested in genealogy than they are in technology per se. Since both avocations take a great deal of time, it is not surprising that they would make decisions more in favor of doing genealogy than tinkering around with the newest technological whiz bang. Some times I think my brain is going explode trying to keep up even partially to both areas. There is a major area of overlap. Genealogy is rapidly becoming more and more technology based.

Among genealogists, even those who are comfortable using newer technology, there is a tendency to be very cautiously conservative. I know a significant number of genealogists who are still using Windows 95 or perhaps Windows 98. It is not unusual for me to discuss genealogy with someone who is running PAF 5.2 on a Pentium 2 computer. So when I get into a discussion about web browsers, the majority of people I talk to are not even aware that there is a choice. They use Internet Explorer because it came with their computer. Without getting into the argument about Microsoft's bundling of software, chances are, that the average genealogist is using Explorer.

In discussing this with many of my compatriots, I almost universally get the reaction that they didn't even know that there was an alternative and they are not much interested in changing. But here it goes anyway. You will immediately notice that I do not compare either Firefox or Chrome to Internet Explorer. Mainly for the reason that I do not use Internet Explorer at all on personal computers. I do however, use it almost every day at work, at the Mesa Regional Family History Center and on almost everyone else's computers.

This is an interesting fact because some statistics show Firefox with almost 50% of the web use. While other statistics show Explorer use at over 50%. If you look around for a while you find that the most believable statistics show Internet Explorer with about 60% of the web browser use and Firefox a distant second at about 24%. The only other major web browsers with a significant market penetration are Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari.

I have used Firefox for many years for a long list of reasons, most of which have to do with reliability and the fact that it is more resistant to malware and viruses. I routinely use Safari on my iMacs, because until Apple converted to Intel chips, Firefox did not run as well on the Mac computers. Chrome, introduced in 2008, has steadily increased its market share, apparently mostly at Explorer's expense.

Recently Chrome was updated to version 5. With this recent upgrade, I have been comparing Chrome to Firefox. It is hard to say which of the two browsers is really better. Both have a ton of add-on apps and special features. When configured with iGoogle, both look almost the same and operate in a very similar fashion. On my computer, using a cable Internet provider, there is almost no appreciable difference in speed between the two, although Chrome load slightly quicker. Both are to the point that they appear to blink into existence. However, if you load up iGoogle with lots of slow apps, Firefox really starts to slow down. Whereas, Google knows Google and they have apparently taken pains too optimize the use of Google apps, as could only be expected.

I see very little difference in the online experience. If you go online to look for reviews, you might want to check the date. Even a review six months ago is not going to reflect the current versions of either browser. For example, a review of Chrome written in February of this year refers to version 4 not the current version 5. It is also very difficult to separate real reviews from Microsoft or Google bashers.

What it seems to me to boil down to is that most technologically savvy people switch from using Internet Explorer (unless they work for Microsoft). Presently, the choice becomes one of personal preference. The present version of Chrome is a huge improvement over the first releases. If it continues to get better at the a similar rate, it will like become more appealing than Firefox. Since both are free, it is anyone's guess how the usage ratings will come out. It is a sure thing however, that both will continue to take market share from Microsoft, unless Microsoft does something really spectacular.

Now, what about the genealogists who are running Windows 98 on a 486 or Pentium 2? Don't bother changing. One of the reasons I switched back to Mac from my PC was the fact that iGoogle would not run at all on my slower older machine. It was taking anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to load my standard page. Now with my iMac, the same page takes less time than I can efficiently measure. It is up in blink of an eye. If you do have a newer very fast computer, then by all means download Firefox and Chrome and have a look at both. Both will import all of your existing bookmarks so you don't lose anything by trying them out.

Remobo -- another way to connect with your family

Alan E. Mann, manager of Genealogical Community Services, told a session at BYU's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy on April 26, 2010 about a new web service called Remobo. Quoting from the article, "Mann gave a scenario where his cousin runs a different type of genealogy software on his computer. Through remobo.com, Mann can access that program on his cousin's computer (although there might be some licensing questions...)."

I use a PC program called Remote Desktop Connection to connect from my home computer to my work computer. I can log into our PC network both from a PC laptop or from my iMac and instantly, it is like I am sitting at my desk at work. I have all the same programs, access to my E-mail, and even access to my billing program. I can use the Internet either from my home computer or use the network from the office computer. Because we have a cable access to the Internet, there a negligible slowdown either way. I can literally work from home. Now, this is nothing particularly new, I have been doing this for some years now. So, I guess I am wondering how an online file or computer sharing program will somehow become an impact on family history's future.

First of all, both the home machine and the remote machine have to be running some type of compatible software. In the case of Remote Desktop Connection, our network techs have to set me up with an account and I have to login and use a password to gain access to the network. Do I really want to have one of my "social" friends logging into my work computer? Not at all. Imagine the liability issues for a law firm! Look at it this way, do I even want one of my own children logging into my computer? Not really. So let's look at what Remobo and other similar programs are supposed to do.

Here is the list from Remobo's website.

Just login, add users to your buddy list, and Remobo will create a secure network for you to:

Remote control your home computer and access files while at work or traveling.

Privately share large files like photos & docs between computers or with friends & family.

Replace your existing, costly and difficult to use VPN software.

Run games, video conferencing, streaming media, secure instant messaging & more!

The first question that arises is whether or not I want to leave town while my home computer is left running and with access to the Internet. There are lots of ways to gain access to my unattended computer while I am away and almost all of them are bad to really bad. Not to mention power failures, lightning storms, and other problems. If I really need anything from my home computer while I am away, I carry a laptop with all the same programs and a backup copy of my files. As for E-mail, I can access my E-mail from anywhere even from my iPhone. By the way, I see no reason at all to play computer games.

What about video conferencing? We do that all the time. We use Google Talk or iChat or AIM. So why do I need another file sharing program? I don't.

Will file sharing, video conferencing, and remote access change the way we do family history? It already has for me for some time. Will it change it for everyone? Perhaps, some time in the not too distant future when some of the activities become a lot less technical and a lot more common. Will I try Remobo? Maybe, if I can convince one of my technology overloaded children to try yet another program.

Bing vs. Google revisited for genealogists

In working with the computers at the Mesa Regional Family History Center in Mesa, Arizona, I frequently find that the Microsoft Bing search engine has been activated on different computers. Bing was unveiled by Microsoft on May 28, 2009 and went online on June 3, 2009, so it is almost one year old. In one year, Bing has risen to become the third largest search engine on the web by query volume. Wikipedia. However, being third largest is somewhat of an illusion. Google has something over 85% of all web queries, while the second largest, Yahoo has just over 6%. In July of 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! entered into an agreement for Bing to power the Yahoo! Search.

The real question for genealogists is whether Bing has made any progress in finding genealogical resources on the web? So, I decided to re-run several searches I had used some time ago to compare the two search engines.

The first search is for my Great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner. I use his name for search comparisons because I know that I have written several blog posts about him and so have many of my relatives. In addition, because he has a huge number of descendants, his name appears in many online family tree programs, like Ancestry.com and many others. In addition, he is mentioned in several histories of Arizona. OK, so that said, how do two search engines match up?

In both cases I searched for "Henry Martin Tanner" including the quotation marks to get an exact search. Here are the results:

Google --- 4,840 results in .32 seconds

Bing --- 12 results (didn't mention the time)

Why the huge disparity? Looking carefully at the results for Bing (since there are only twelve to look at) five of the returns are for the same collection of documents in the Northern Arizona University Library. None of the returns found any of my blog posts using my Great-grandfather's name, although one or two are sites that quote my posts. In short, searching for my Great-grandfather is a waste of time on Bing.

Let's try another name. How about my Great-great-grandfather, Henry's father, Sidney Tanner? In the first try

Google --- 3,960

Bing --- 8,330,000

OK, so did Bing win this one? Not. Google's returns are once again exactly on point. Many referring to his pioneer company that crossed the Plains to Utah. Bing has only four returns that even refer to my ancestor. The rest, despite the quotation marks, refer randomly to Tanners and Sidneys. Bing also included a picture of his brother John Joshua Tanner identified as Sidney. However, clicking on the picture, in the original source, the picture is identified correctly as John Joshua Tanner. So some of the information is just incorrect and well as incomplete.

I then added the word "Beaver" to both searches since Sidney Tanner lived in Beaver, Utah. Adding the word to the Bing search reduced the returns to 40 almost all of which referred to the word beaver and only four of which actually referred to Sidney Tanner in Beaver, Utah. So what happened with Google? Adding the term Beaver to "Sidney Tanner" returned 549 results. I didn't look at them all but pages and pages of the returns were specific to Sidney Tanner, my Great-great-grandfather, in his home in Beaver, Utah. The returns included a copy of his obituary in the Deseret News of December 10, 1895, reproduced above.

I'll try again in another year or so, but for the time being, I'll stick to Google.

Doing genealogy in the cloud

Cloud computing is buzz word with so general a definition to allow the term to be used for almost any Internet related activity. It is not so much a specific activity as it is a general description of how work is being and will be done using the Internet. I see the term pop up repeatedly in genealogy blogs used for almost all types of computer/software activities. Nevertheless, the buzz word has some validity in describing the movement of various activities from being localized to being web based. For example, if I take a picture with my digital camera and upload the image using Google's Picasa program on my computer to Picasa's Web Albums, I am using cloud computing. By definition I am using software (the Picasa Web Album) which is out there on the Internet rather than on my local computer. There are thousands (perhaps now millions) of other examples.

If you use New FamilySearch or Ancestry.com or any of dozens of other online programs to store all of your genealogical information (or any other web based service) you are involved in cloud computing. To quote Alan E. Mann, manager of Genealogical Community Services, told a session at BYU's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy on April 26, 2010, "Instead of people working on data in their computer and keeping a safety backup of on the Internet, people will work on their data on the Internet and keep a safety backup on their computer."

My experience with the Internet goes back to the text-based days of using University computers to access various LISTSERV accounts and accessing databases via the NSFNet (later the ANSNET). In those days we used Gopher, WAIS and FTP Archive to access data and transfer information. My first introduction to the World Wide Web came in 1993 at Scottsdale Community College. We heard of a new development called the Mosaic web browser. At that time we logged in and found all of six web sites that we could access. There are few times in my life when I know I have seen the future and that was one of them. I instantly recognized that this was it, the whole world was going to change and change quickly. Within a few months, Mosaic was replaced by Netscape Navigator and the number of web sites began to increase exponentially.

So why would I be surprised by a cloud computing concept. The truth is, I am not. It is the inevitable development of the integration of all of our computing functions. The name may presently have some advertising appeal or novelty, but the concept of providing both hardware and software functions from a remote location has been implicit in the development of the Internet from the very beginning.

The real challenge is to those of us in the genealogical community to even grasp the potential of being able to have your information accessible anytime, anywhere by anyone. If you want to read more about Cloud Computing as a concept start with Wikipedia.

Graphics in Genealogy Programs -- a review

One of the attractive features of genealogy programs since Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 5.2, is the ability to attach specific graphic files to a source. For example, attaching a digitized copy of a death certificate to the source for the death date and place. The advantage of attaching copies of the original documents is manifest. You can refer to the copy without going to some external file either digital or paper. Because I have such a huge number of graphic source files, I am really interested in how any particular program handles these files. Below is a comparison of some of the programs I have access to. I have limited my comments to those programs for which I have current updated copies. I realize that there are many more programs out there that may have different functions. I would appreciate comments, particularly about other programs that may handle media items in very useful way.

Because of the large accumulation of graphic files on my computers, one of first things I look at in any genealogy program is the way it handles graphics. Going back to the venerable PAF program, graphics were, at the time, a recent innovation. PAF 5.2 has not been updated since 2002 and even though it is still a widely used program, it obviously lacks many features of the newer, more supported programs. The most pervasive problem with PAF 5.2 was that any time a graphic file was moved to a different file location on the host computer or a data file was moved or a copy made for sharing, the operating system path to the media items was lost and you had to re-establish a new path. Adding media files or reestablishing connections was (and is) tedious. Each file had to be added separately and only certain fields could have sources at all. For example, if you had one source for a birth date and another source for the birth place, there is still only one place in PAF to record a source for the birth place and there is no option to add a specific source for the date. Also to attach a media file, you had to click through about five different levels of menus. There is also no comprehensive list of media or any way to tell which records are using which media items. Of course, none of these problems existed at the time PAF 5.2 was released. However, since PAF has not changed for about eight years, there have been a lot of innovations in the use of media files with genealogy programs.

Some of the programs I have used since PAF have about the same level of development for media. Because of the relationship between PAF and Ancestral Quest (AQ) AQ uses a very similar system. AQ does allow you to specify an additional location in the file structure if items are moved or need to be updated. AQ also adds the ability to update all of the links to scrapbook objects at the same time, thereby hopefully avoiding the process of linking each item separately. There are some improvements over the old PAF program, but the process is essentially the same.

RootsMagic expands on the scrapbook idea by having a Media Album that can add items from a Media Gallery that is essentially thumbnails of everything you have in your Windows' file folder. In addition, RootsMagic also allows you to have a specific media item for any event. Graphic items need to be attached individually to each event, which can be a slow process if you have multiple graphics for any one event. RootMagic's Media Gallery is a big improvement over PAF's scrapbook. If you have a lot of media items, such as hundreds of photographs, it would be advisable to have a very fast computer as the Media Gallery could take a long time to load. The program does a good job of finding all of the media files, but if you have moved the files around on your computer, you may have to find them manually. You can also search and replace to make mass changes to your database, including links to multimedia items.

One of the reasons I have used Legacy Family Tree in the past is because of the graphics capability. Legacy has its Picture Center, which lists all the pictures in your selected file and then allows you to attach a picture by simply highlighting an individual and then highlighting the picture and clicking an attach button. There is also an attached pictures list which allows an individual image to be attached to more than one individual. While you are clicking on the photos in the file, there is a thumbnail view of the picture.

Family Tree Maker has a well developed media center also. One of the major problems is that the program will not add media items in a group. Each item must be added individually. In my case, when first using the program, I had to search for and identify each media item, even though they all resided in the same file on my computer. This can be very discouraging with hundreds of media items. On the other hand, Family Tree Maker has an integrated method to capture images and even whole web pages from the Internet, automatically linking them to a specific fact or individual.

It isn't really fair to compare the Mac programs to the PC programs. Both MacFamilyTree and Reunion allow drag and drop addition of media to their files. MacFamilyTree also supports direct import from iPhoto. All you have to do to add a photo or other media file to either program is find the file on your computer and drag the item into the media folder for any source for any event for any person in the file.

As media becomes more pervasive in genealogy, it is not difficult to see that future developments in genealogy software will have to be more and more media friendly. Although there are a lot of different criteria for choosing a genealogy program, one of my most important ones, is the programs ability to use media items effectively and easily. As you can probably tell, my Macintosh background unavoidably prejudices me to Mac based programs. But I use PC programs because, as of yet, the Mac programs lag behind in some areas, like sources. Maybe with the entry of Family Tree Maker into the Mac market, there will be additional competition and the programs will begin developing in competitive ways, like they have on the PC platform.

As I said above, I certainly invite comments. I do not pretend to have a lock on any of the programs mentioned here and I am always open to learn about new ones or old ones that I haven't tried out.

New Web services may impact finding your family history

In an article reported in Mormon Times by Michael De Groote, Alan E. Mann, manager of Genealogical Community Services told an audience at BYU's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy about ten new web services that are changing the ways we share information. His opinions were that the developments may be disruptive of the normal ways of sharing information.

I decided to discuss the items on his list and see if I could tell how disruptive any of the new technologies might become.

First on his list were QR Codes. Quoting from Wikipedia, "A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are common in Japan, where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. Moreover, most current Japanese mobile phones can read this code with their camera." Mann gave the example of putting a QR Code on a gravemarker, allowing anyone to scan the code with a smartphone and be taken to a website for biographical information about the deceased, a family organization or other information. QR Reader Apps are already available for many phones including the iPhone.

My own experience with using the iPhone to read bar codes and UPC codes is very spotty. It seems very hard to hold the cell phone still enough to register the code properly. It may be that the technology can be made even more rapid than it already is, and in that case, QR Codes might become ubiquitous. Quoting from a cnet news article, "It's likely to gain ground quickly in the U.S. now that Google has sent out a QR code to 100,000 of the most popular companies in its Local Business Center. When those companies display the QR code, customers can use code-scanning applications on their iPhones and other devices to retrieve the firm's individual Google listing."

I think QR Codes are likely to intensify the Web as a means of communication. Businesses and organizations that have no Web presence will become literally invisible to the rest of the world.

How will this affect genealogy and family history? It will probably increase the trend towards Web based communications for families and likely facilitate setting up family history sites. It may well come to the day when your holiday greeting cards will contain a QR Code link to your own website, rather than any other message.

Next, comments on Cloud Computing

The Ancestry.com Wiki

Ancestry.com announced the Beta version of its Ancestry.com Wiki. Quoting from the press release:

The Ancestry.com Wiki is a new section on Ancestry.com available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. It offers detailed and useful information about family history records, research, and places pulled from The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy and Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.

As explained by Ancestry.com, a wiki is a collaborative website that can be edited by anyone who registers. From the recent changes page, it is evident that the editing process has already begun. Because the Wiki already includes the contents of both useful reference books, it has a substantial amount of useful material already. However, consistent with its newness, the Wiki is lacking in both links and references to any other outside material. For example, a link to Arizona's Online Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates was broken, although Google was able to suggest the site. But because the site is a wiki, I was able to fix the broken link in about a minute.

I really like wiki sites, I think they are the essence of what is good and useful about the Web. I applaud Ancestry.com for adding a major new wiki site to our genealogy community.