Todd Powell Goes Mobile at #RootsTech

Todd Powell, senior product manager at FamilySearch, presented “Family History on the Go! –FamilySearch Mobile Applications” at the RootsTech 2017 conference.

Todd is used to presenting to youth. He challenges everyone to learn and then go teach someone else.

Everyone has a story and they want it told. What makes a story? Their vital information, their relationships, their jobs, military, immigration, etc. A simplified definition of family history is to discover events about ancestors, and to document and tell their life story.

There are five simple things that you can do each week. Todd calls them microtasks. They only take a couple of minutes at a time. The five microtasks are

• Add persons and relationships
• view and upload memories
• find and attach sources
• update life events or add new sources
• share and teach others

The mobile app is the best way to share and teach others. It is difficult to get people to gather around a computer, but easy to pull out a phone.

As of January 2017:

• 2.1 million people have installed the app.
• Each week 100 K people use the app.
• 4.3 million persons have been added through the app.

In the year 2016:

• 2.2 million persons were added.
• 4 million sources were attached.
• 1,800 new accounts were created.
• 2.1 million hints were reviewed.
• 1.1 million photos were added.
• 5.1 million photos were viewed.
• 600 K stories were read.
• 45,000 audio files were added.

Why is this important? Because FamilySearch Family Tree has been around for quite a while, but most people don’t know that there is a mobile app. Or they aren’t aware how much can be done with the mobile app. Can you use only the mobile app? Yes, for most things you do each week. FamilySearch does a release every two weeks and are adding new features and fixing bugs all the time. Last Tuesday (31 January 2017) they finished a development cycle and will release this week the ability to view PDF documents. Using the app you can do 95% of everything you can do on the web. There are several things you can’t do:

• There is no source box.
• There is no change log. They will be adding that in a couple of weeks.
• You can’t have a large monitor.
• You can’t have multiple tabs open like you do on a browser, although that is coming this year.

You can merge. That was released two or three weeks before RootsTech. To keep up on new features, look for a what’s new message that pops up each time you start the app. Do that every two weeks to see what new features were released during that development cycle.

The app does not look like the web, but using it should be similar enough that you don’t have much effort moving from one to the other.

Use your phone as a scanner. It takes a little practice to get the lighting right. We encourage people to use their phone as a scanner. If you see a photo and grandma’s wall, get the lighting right and take a photograph of it. [TAI here: I have problems with this cavalier attitude towards digitization. A cell phone does not do as well as a flat-bed scanner. It is better than nothing, so it has its place.]

As an assignment, Todd told us if we didn’t yet have our photograph in the tree, take one right now.

The photographs and stories you attach to yourself become visible when you are deceased. If you are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, someone will have to contact support after you die to have your record in the tree made public.

The app allows attachment of photos that you already have on FamilySearch, or that you have on your camera roll, or you can take a new photograph.

To add people, use the + buttons on the tree. Alternatively, go to a person and add a spouse, parent, or child.

One features not available on the web is the Ancestors with Tasks list. The app makes a list of persons, starting with you, going up five generations, and adding children and spouses. This is called your scope of interest. Then it looks for hints or research opportunities pertaining to each of those persons and indicates it with icons.

Three little dots on the person page indicate there are more options. One option is to show descendants with tasks. The sweet spot is ancestors about 1800-1850.

Task #2. Find some tasks to do, such as attach a hint. Get with someone; don’t do it alone. That allows you to teach and share.

When you are connected to the Internet, when you make changes, they are automatically updated online. Photographs are the only thing you can do while you are not connected. If you are not connected, you can take photographs and they will upload the next time you are connected.

Todd showed us a prototype of a feature that may never happen. The feature is called “Are We Related.” Several people logged into the prototype and the app showed how they were related.

AncestryDNA Zips Past 3 Million Samples

Three million. It’s staggering, really. AncestryDNA has exceeded three million samples in its DNA database!

It took AncestryDNA three years to get the first million samples. (See “AncestryDNA Exceeds Million Mark” on my blog on 22 July 2015.)

It took them 11 months to get the next million. (See “AncestryDNA Database Reaches Two Million” on 28 June 2016.)

They have grown another million in just seven months. (See “AncestryDNA Surpasses 3 Million Customers in DNA Database” on the Ancestry blog from 10 January 2017.) That’s astonishing. Every day the AncestryDNA database gets more and more valuable.

• AncestryDNA has found 15 million close cousins (3rd cousin or closer).
• Ancestry has identified 6 million DNA circles. (For an explanation of DNA circles, see “Aaron Orr Talks Ancestry DNA at BYU Conference – #BYUFHGC” on my blog.)
• AncestryDNA is available in 37 countries (although I’m not certain collaterals have been translated into all those languages).
• Ancestry.com (parent company of AncestryDNA) has 80 million trees.
• Ancestry.com has 19 billion records (including the persons in the 80 million trees).

For more information, visit https://www.ancestry.com/dna/lp/genetic-testing-news.

Somewhere along the line, AncestryDNA gave their home page a facelift, which I hadn’t noticed:

Perhaps it was to make the page adaptable to small devices. On a smartphone, the three boxes neatly stack on top of each other.

Speaking of smartphones, have I written before about the AncestryDNA App? Have I heard of the AncestryDNA App before? I’m really losing it. Well, regardless, Ancestry released the AncestryDNA app back on 28 September 2016. Since then they have mostly made bug fixes. The app lacks many features, so perhaps they haven’t said much about it and I’m not losing it.

One thing it can do is map your ethnicity (below, left).

 

And it can share your ethnicity (above, right). That’s useful marketing for Ancestry.

But it can’t do any serious genealogy, like review your DNA matches. The matches icon at the bottom leads straight to a browser link (below left). (Gosh, I have 18,200 matches! I’m related in a measurable, DNA way, to almost 1% of the 3 million people in the Ancestry database. My Viking ancestors really got around!)

The final navigation icon, Settings, leads to the screen above right.

Perhaps we’ll hear more about this app when it comes a littler further along. The app is free and is available now in the iTunes app store and the Google Play app store.

News Ketchup for 4 November 2016

I’m way behind. Time for Insider Ketchup.

FamilySearch has announced the class schedule for the Family History Library for November. Click here for the schedule. Most webinars are recorded and posted on the Family History Library Classes and Webinars Wiki page a few days after presentation, so you can access past webinars and handouts.

FamilySearch has released its monthly wrap up of new features and changes on FamilySearch.org. They include:

• A simplified help center experience. I mostly like it. They’ve obviously copied the Google search experience, placing the text entry box in the middle of a mostly blank page. However, I don’t like the elimination of a separate Learning Center search experience. It appears there is no way to filter by language, format, or ability level. Unlike Google, there seems to be no search tools or advanced search page. Hopefully they’ll find a way to work those features back into the mix.
• FamilySearch has added 141 million new record hints into Family Tree. For more information, see the article “141 Million New Ancestor Hints Added to FamilySearch Family Tree” on the FamilySearch blog.
• You can read and send message in the mobile app.
• You can open a map in the mobile app.
• Names of contributors appear in the Memories gallery.
• You can upload a photograph while entering a story.
• On 26 October 2016 FamilySearch published a bunch of new obituaries in the U.S. GenealogyBank obituary collection. Along with the new publication is the ability to see and navigate to others listed on the page. In the collection, 23 of the 31 million records were indexed by computer. If you view one of those records, a message will indicate it was indexed by a computer and you will be given the opportunity to request a correction. (That correction request feature is available only for this collection. If you want to make corrections to any other records, you are DOA.)

I’ve received new reports that portions of RootsWeb—mailing lists in particular—are broken. An anonymous reader commented on 23 October 2016:

I am unable to post messages to either of the mail lists I administer. Nor can I subscribe to Listowners-L. I took a look at various list archives, it appears the mailing lists have not not been working since Oct 7 2016.

Andy Micklethwaite sent me this message on 21 October 2016:

I received this as a reply to a post on a Facebook group:

“Morning, as you are probably aware they upgraded the servers recently. At the same time they upgraded Mailman, the lists software, to the latest version which was long overdue. It’s the latter that has caused the problem, I believe. The lists have been down since the 7th October. Hopefully they will be back in due course but no date is known.”

Ancestry employees recently spent a week building a home for Habitat for Humanity. Employees from their Lehi, Orem, and Salt Lake City offices helped build a new home for a local American Fork family. “We want our employees to get personally involved in the community,” said Ancestry’s Camille Penrod. “[We] offer our employees time to volunteer on the clock so they’re able to participate in meaningful charities.” For more information, see “Ancestry Employees Give Back” on the Ancestry Tech Blog.

FamilySearch is gradually rolling out a new homepage design. I’ve written about it before. Regular users have probably all started seeing it. The left side contains inspiring videos, tree-specific resources, and recently added photos, recordings, stories, and documents about your ancestors and their families (and advertisements, I might add). The right side contains a list of recently seen ancestors, recommended tasks, and a to-do list. For more information, see “New FamilySearch Design: Log In to Try It Out” on the FamilySearch Blog.

“Ancestry recently announced the creation of a Tech and Product User Group in Utah with the goal of encouraging collaboration between companies across the Wasatch Front to solve difficult and interesting technology and science problems.” For more information, see “Ancestry Hosts First Tech/Product Meetup in New Lehi HQ” on the Ancestry Tech Blog.

Ancestry.com Releases We’re Related App

Ancestry.com has released a new smartphone app: “We’re Related.” The app appears squarely aimed at capitalizing on social media to spread interest in genealogy in general and Ancestry in particular. Ancestry has tried to do this before. Somehow, sharing census documents hasn’t proven to be a big draw. But they’ve always understood that people are jazzed to find they are related to some big celebrity. Enter: We’re Related.

The We’re Related app will tell you what celebrities you are related to and show if and how you are related to your friends. You don’t need an Ancestry account or tree to sign up. But you will need a Facebook account. This is a social media app, after all. Someone has said (s)he was able to sign in with just an Ancestry account. Either that option has since been eliminated, or (s)he didn’t realize the phone was already signed into Facebook. Mine was already logged in, all I had to do was tap “Continue as Anthony.” Before doing so, however, you can tap “Edit This” and withhold some of your Facebook profile from Ancestry: friends, email address, relationships, or birthdate.

     

After logging in you can enable notifications of new relatives.

I don’t think it asked me to log into my Ancestry account. Perhaps it was able to piggy-back on my Ancestry app login. Regardless, I could continue with that account or switch to another. The app then invited me to select one or more trees containing relatives. I chose one in which I appear. Despite my having identified myself in that tree, the app double checked my identity.

   

At this point Ancestry had enough information to search for relatives. There has been conjecture on how Ancestry does this. The app indicates it searches its 70 million public member trees.

However, swinging from tree to tree like some kind of digital Tarzan trying to find connections between you and people hidden in the jungle would be slow and expensive. Surely they have combined all their member trees into a single shadow tree. Long time Ancestry followers know about One World Tree which they created by combining user trees. You may have seen Ancestry Shaky Leaf hints which Ancestry combined from multiple trees. They obviously have the ability to combine multiple trees.

After a short time Ancestry showed my first relative:

That was a shock. Obviously the app gives erroneous results. I scrolled down and my next result was more believable:

I can’t wait to call my ol’ cousin Bill! I’m showing up unannounced for Thanksgiving and I’ve added him to my Christmas card list. And after he passes on, I’ll be contesting the will because my omission will totally be an oversight.

Maybe I’ll invite him to use the app too. In the upper-right corner of the screen you can tap and “Invite” all your Facebook friends to download the app. If each person were to convince five other persons to get the app within 24 hours, then in no more than two weeks there would be 30 billion app users.

In the upper-left you can tap to select categories of famous relatives. I’m guessing Ancestry is still loading more of these or I would have gotten hits in more categories. The categories are: all, favorites, actors, business people, artists, writers, criminals, educators, entertainers, explorers, historical figures, journalists, crime fighters, Medal of Honor recipients, military figures, musicians, rich people, politicians, religious figures, royalty, scientists, reformers, sports figures, presidents and wives, and supreme court justices.

Beneath each relative are three icons: a pedigree, a heart, and the standard share icon. Tap the pedigree icon to see your common relative. In the case of Bill Gates, our common ancestor is, according to his picture, a rock. Tap the generational number to see the chain of descent. At the bottom of the chain are thumbs up and down to allow you to indicate if the path looks correct.

   

I’ve seen reviews by a couple of popular bloggers who have immediately discovered erroneous lines. Randy Seaver discovered the pedigrees of some well-researched living and deceased famous people are wrong. (See “Fact-Checking My WJB Clinton Relationship - WRONG!”). Judy Russell wrote in “No, Actually, We’re Not Related” that Ancestry found several ancestors who were wrong or dubious. Errors can be introduced when a machine combines trees. More likely, the errors existed in the member trees before combining. After years of encouraging users to willy-nilly add dubious shaky leaves to their trees, Ancestry now reaps the results. But for marketing purposes, growing trees has made new Ancestry.com users happy and finding famous relatives is going to make We’re Related users happy too. For Ancestry, it’s win-win.

Adjacent to the pedigree icon is a heart. Use it to indicate a relative is a favorite. Adjacent to it is the standard sharing icon, allowing you to share your new found famous relative via email, texting, and whatever social media apps you have installed.

After scrolling through all my results, Ancestry dedicated an entire screen to convince me to invite all my friends. One of the goals of social marketing is, after all, to “go viral.” Inviting a circle of friends also allows you to see if and how you are related.

There are four icons along the bottom of the screen. The first, “Insights,” is the page on which I’ve been viewing all my relatives. The second is “Tree.” Here I can edit or extend my Ancestry Member Tree. Ancestry can’t do its magic until my tree goes back far enough to connect to the shadow tree. I can also invite relatives to get the app and edit my Ancestry Member Tree. I imagine if a user doesn’t have an Ancestry tree, We’re Related prompts them through creation of one.

The third icon is “Nearby.” According to the app:

We’re Related Nearby lets you find relatives who are literally close to you. We use your location to check if there are others using this feature within 500 yards of you. If so, we’ll tell you if you’re related. If you don’t want to know, go to “settings” and turn off your location.

The remaining icon accesses sharing and settings. To maximize their viral possibilities, Ancestry allows sharing via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, texting, and more.

If you don’t mind helping Ancestry’s marketing efforts, and if you don’t mind sharing personal details from your Facebook profile, and if you want a little gratification at the expense of accuracy, Ancestry’s We’re Related app is a fun bit of entertainment. Download it at www.wererelated.com.

News Ketchup for 17 September 2015

I’ve got a zillion article ideas I don’t have time to act upon. Time to ketchup.

FamilySearch recently announced a partnership with the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records to digitize their 5,000 genealogy book collection. Like other books on the books.FamilySearch.org website, they will be available for use 24 x 7. Scanning is expected to take six months. For more information, see “State Library, FamilySearch Partner to Make Genealogy Records Accessible” on the FamilySearch Blog.

RootsTech has announced that the prize package for the 2016 RootsTech Innovator Showdown will total $100,000! “Innovator Showdown seeks to support, foster, and inspire innovation within the family history marketplace,” said the press release. For more information, see “2016 RootsTech Innovator Showdown Offering $100,000 in Prizes!” on the FamilySearch Blog.

As an aside, I was amused that Gmail warned me that the Innovator Showdown press release might be a phishing scheme. They thought someone might be trying to scam me with an offer of $100,000. <smile>

A reader alerted me that she received an email from a sender named “big foot pilot” concerning the FamilySearch Pilot indexing tool. You’ll recall Jake Gehring introduced the FamilySearch Pilot indexing tool at the 2015 BYU conference. (See “FamilySearch Should Increase Indexing Efficiency and Utilize Partnerships” on my blog.) This email invited the reader to share information about the tool with anyone, so I’m sharing with you. A new update has added the following features to the tool:

• Search – the Family Search Pilot tool database
  
• Instant publication – of data entered into the Family Search Pilot tool database
  
• Download – your own data
  
• User Edits – on the individual record page
  
• Direct link – to the Family Search Records Search webpage

It will be exciting to see where this pilot goes, if anywhere. That’s the nature of pilots, afterall.

This next feature really deserves an article all its own, but I just don’t have time. It just kills me. FamilySearch has released a feature allowing you to send messages to those scoundrels who are changing your ancestors! Prior to this feature, you could discuss changes only with persons who disclosed their email addresses. Now, you can send a message to anyone who changes anything. To read more about this new feature, see “FamilySearch Messaging on FamilySearch.org” on the FamilySearch blog.

FamilySearch recently published a list of the new features released in August. They are:

• Added 300,000 places to the list of places known by Family Tree.
  
• Updated the Family Members section of the person page.
  
• Added ability to add a child from the Landscape Pedigree view of Family Tree.
  
• Added some features previously missing from the mobile app.
  
• Added ability in mobile app to “receive notifications from FamilySearch.org when a photo, story, or audio file is uploaded or updated for people in your scope of interest. (The scope of interest is 4 generations of ancestors and 1 generation of their descendants.)”
  
• Updated the Memories Person page (not to be confused with the Tree Person page).
  
• Added true thumbnails for historical record images.
  
• Created a web page containing some of the functionality available at FamilySearch Discovery Centers, such as meaning of surname, and so forth. (See https://familysearch.org/campaign/discover.)

For more information, see “What’s New on FamilySearch—August, 2015” on the FamilySearch blog.

Ancestry.com shared a little more information about Cathy Petti, their new Chief Health Officer (CHO) and posted a link to a Fortune article about her. See the short posting, “Cathy Petti Joins Ancestry Leadership,” on the Ancestry Tech Roots Blog and “Meet the Woman Leading Ancestry.com Into the World of Personal Genetics” on the Fortune website. There are clues in the article, for sure, about what Ancestry may have up its DNA sleeve.

AncestryDNA has released a new feature that lets you “See Your DNA Matches in a Whole New Way.” It is a tool called “Shared Matches.” I don’t have much time to research or write about it, but here’s what I know thus far. I checked out my list of matches and picked out one, PPatricia…, who hasn’t linked her results to a tree. Consequently, I don’t know how we are related. I selected the Shared Matches feature and AncestryDNA listed all the people who exist in both her list of matches and my list. One of them, cooperjh, had a shaky leaf, so I checked it out and found a probable common ancestor between cooperjh and myself. That ancestor was surnamed Pitcher. That common ancestor may or may not be a common ancestor between PPatricia… and myself. It’s an important clue. Even without a shaky leaf, standard triangulation techniques using surnames, locales, and time frames can help identify common ancestors.

I next utilized another feature I hadn’t noticed before. While PPatricia… had not linked her results to a tree, AncestryDNA showed that she has a tree. She just hasn’t linked to it. Guess what the name of the tree is? Yup, “Pitcher-something-or-another.”

AncestryDNA is utilizing the same technology to provide an additional filter for your match list: father/mother. If one or both of your parents have been tested, then AncestryDNA can filter your results according to the matches shared between your parent and yourself. (Here’s a private message for Ancestry: you provide both father and mother filters only if both have been tested. If only my mother has been tested, can you provide a “Not Your Mother” filter? Hmmm. Now that I think about it, it would be useful even if both parents have been tested.)

For more information, see “See Your DNA Matches in a Whole New Way” on the Ancestry Blog.

If you’ve ever considered working for Ancestry, you may be interested in a post by Ancestry’s Jeremy Johnson. He first joined Ancestry as a  software engineer in 2006. After leaving briefly, he came back in 2008. “Like many of my colleagues at Ancestry who pursue work elsewhere, I came back.” I know a couple of people that fall into that category. Jeremy’s post has an unabashed agenda. But if you’re thinking about it, check out “Insights on Culture and Events at Ancestry” on the Ancestry Tech Roots blog.

FamilySearch announced the results of their “Fuel the Find” campaign. There were 82,039 people who contributed at least one batch during the weeklong event. There were 12,251,870 records indexed and 2,307,876 records arbitrated. There were 221 volunteers on the African continent. south America rang in with an amazing 12,571 volunteers. Polish language batches drew out 64 volunteers. English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French were the top four languages.

For more information, see “Thank You for Helping to Fuel the Find!” on the FamilySearch blog.

When NARA was preparing to renew its partnership with Ancestry it solicited comments. The partnership agreement has several key changes:

• The five year embargo period—that’s the period that NARA has to wait before publishing its records for free to the public—is effectively shortened by 12-24 months. NARA accomplishes this by starting the clock when Ancestry digitizes the records rather than publishes them. This incents Ancestry to publish quickly, perhaps not waiting for an entire collection to be digitized.
  
• This makes it easier for NARA to know when it can publish. It doesn’t have to wait for Ancestry to say when the publication occurred.
  
• NARA is given the ability to recover costs associated with supporting Ancestry, while allowing them the choice of not recovering costs.
  
• Outlines procedures for protecting personably identifiable information.

There were 52 comments to a NARA blog post on the topic. You may find them interesting reading. See “Ancestry.com Partnership Agreement for Public Comment” on the NARAtions blog.

I’ve noticed that FamilySearch URLs of records and images all contain “/ark:/61903/”. Wikipedia contains some information about this form of URL. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_Resource_Key. FamilySearch seems to be switching from PAL (persistent archival links) to ARK (archival resource key) URLs. I’ve tried a few old PAL URLs and they still work.

FamilySearch announced last month that they had opened a second discovery center. Its Seattle Discovery Center is located in Bellevue, Washington. At RootsTech earlier this year, Dennis Brimhall called discovery centers “a museum of you.” According to the announcement,

The Seattle Family Discovery Center is a free community attraction funded entirely by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which FamilySearch International is a nonprofit subsidiary.  “We believe our precious family relationships and experiences in this life do not end with death,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch International and managing director of the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

For more information, read the press release on the Church’s news website.

Jason Chaffetz is a congressman from Utah. Every year or two he introduces a bill to kill or damage the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). I think there is no doubt that there are more genealogists in Chaffetz’s district than in any other congressional district in the nation, per capita if not outright.

It’s late, I’m tired. I better go to bed.

FamilySearch App Gallery Highlighted at #RootsTech (#RTATEAM)

FamilySearch recently released an App Gallery. They really want you to know about it. They’ve explained it in three of the FamilySearch sessions I’ve attended and mentioned it in two others. One speaker hearkened back to Blackberry. Not very long ago, Blackberry had a huge share of the smart phone market, but no 3rd party apps. Along came Apple iPhones, which allow 3rd party apps. It wasn’t long before there were more than a million apps extending the basic capability of iPhones. Along the way, Apple had decidedly displaced Blackberry.

FamilySearch also allows extension by 3rd party apps. Over 60 applications have been certified. There are three new ones added every month and this is expected to rise to two a week. Just recently they certified their first game apps.

The FamilySearch App Gallery showcases all the FamilySearch apps. However, it works a little differently than the Apple and Google app stores. Visit the App Gallery to learn about apps. Visit vendors’ websites to obtain apps. Go to the App Gallery directly at FamilySearch.org/apps. Currently, you can also go to the FamilySearch home page, scroll to the bottom, and click the link in the box highlighting the App Gallery. I don’t know if that will be there long term, as those boxes seem to change. Maybe FamilySearch will fix the link in the site map.

FamilySearch has built the App Gallery in such a way that vendors can upload their own content. They control what is displayed in a framework defined by FamilySearch.

In the App Gallery, browse apps by category. Filter apps by platform, price, language, and FamilySearch compatibility. Just this week FamilySearch added user ratings.

Insider Ketchup–-Ancestry.com

I was on the road last weekend. I had little time. There were several news items about Ancestry.com that I wanted to write about. Time to ketchup…

AncestryDNA Available

AncestryDNA testing is now available in the United Kingdom and Ireland. One of the advantages this brings to American researchers is the possibility of jumping the pond. Since autosomal DNA matching is only effective for recent generations, this works if you have dead ends that occur in the mid- to late-1800s. As the pool of testers increases in the UK and Ireland, your chances of finding a cousin that didn’t immigrate gets better and better. The current size of the American pool has grown to more than 700,000. For more information, read “Get Ready To Meet Your European Cousins with AncestryDNA” on the Ancestry.com blog or read the press release on the Ancestry.com corporate website.

Ancestry YouTube Channel

FamilySearch isn’t the only publisher with an extensive set of learning videos. The Ancestry YouTube Channel contains many. According to Ancestry.com,

t Ancestry, we work hard to provide you with the best educational tools available through our Learning Center and our Social Media networks. One of our most popular destinations is our YouTube channel where there are hundreds of videos available to view free, on demand.

For a five minute introduction, view “Exploring the Ancestry YouTube Channel” on the Ancestry YouTube Channel.

Ancestry.com Announces New Corporate Headquarters

Last week, Ancestry.com announced that they will build a new corporate headquarters in Lehi, Utah. The area in Lehi has become very popular among local businesses. It is situated at the far north end of Utah Valley, which makes it easier to draw employees from both the Salt Lake and Utah valleys. It is closer to the freeway than Ancestry.com’s current office. And it cuts travel time to the Salt Lake City International Airport by 15 minutes. MyHeritage, who used to have an office across the street from Ancestry.com’s Provo headquarters, previously made the move to Lehi.

For more information, see the press release on the Ancestry.com corporate website.

Ancestry iOS App Upgrade

The latest update to the Ancestry iOS App, version 6.3, offers some improvements to the process of attaching records to your tree. Titled “Smart Matching,” the App now uses the same algorithms as the web version when searching for possible matches. When attaching a record to a person in your tree, new facts are automatically selected for copying into your tree. Conflicting facts do not replace the values in the tree, although you can make that happen. New people are not automatically added to your tree, although you can make that happen, also. The record comparison screen shows the information side-by-side and highlights differences. Tap a record icon to see the full record. Tap a person’s name to see full information from the tree.

For more information, read “Better Tools on Ancestry iOS App for Saving Records” on the Ancestry.com Blog.