MyBlood - A Genealogy Program for Windows and Macintosh

MyBlood is a brand new genealogy program from Belgium. It is so new that it is not even in beta test yet. The latest available version is referred to as Alpha 2.1.

The program has several unique features. First of all, it is available in two versions: Windows and Macintosh. There aren't many genealogy programs that can make that statement! Next, it is multi-lingual. English, French, and Dutch versions are available today and the program includes a Translator Tool to help you translate everything in the application. You can modify the program to create a new language if your preferred language is not yet available. All reports are also translatable. MyBlood encourages people to share their language files, and will put them on the MyBlood web-site and forum for further use.

MyBlood is a visual program: almost everything is oriented around pictures, graphs and historical timelines. The program's advertising states, "MyBlood visually represents information to help you discover incorrect information. Therefore there are several ways to look at data. e.g. Ancestors, TimeMaps, Chronology... From each view you can easily navigate to the information and modify it. For example, the Ancestors View - on the left - also shows the Timeline of 5 generations, and highlights the Person the cursor is moving over."

MyBlood also has a very powerful FIND feature. The Find window can show you specific information or everything MyBlood can find. You don’t need to do a search on a specific field like “date of birth.” With Find Distance and Time, you can find all data that is found in a circle around a place, and even in a specific time range. Double-clicking on any item will take you to the item, person, place, note, or other object.

Many of today's genealogy programs support timelines, as does MyBlood. However, this program also contains Time Maps: it displays the locations of a person's ancestors on a computer-generated map, up to four generations.

MyBlood also can import GEDCOM files so that you do not have to re-enter all your data into this new program.

MyBlood is developed for both Windows and Macintosh systems. It uses 99% the same code for PC and Mac, and runs on Mac OS X 10.5 for Intel and PowerPC as well as Windows XP and Vista. Other requirements include:

Memory          512 megabytes minimum, (1 gigabyte recommended)
Disk Space      150 megabytes
Screen size     1024 x 786 pixels (minimum)

MyBlood is produced by Vertical Horizon, a small company in Belgium that is owned by Geert Jadoul.

The Alpha version of MyBlood is free, but to be able to save changes, you need to register for a free license key. The program will be a commercial product once the regular version is released. Pricing has not yet been announced.

This certainly looks like an interesting program that is still under development. I wouldn't trust the only copy of my genealogy data to this program while it is still in alpha. However, if you would like to experiment with the program, either on Windows or Macintosh, you might like to look at all the details at http://myblood-line.com.

Comments

[Marcel Mertens]

Dick,

Tamura Jones called attention to this program and had at look at it a month ago already.

http://www.tamurajones.net/MyBlood1.0Alpha1.xhtml

[Kay]

This one looks interesting - like the idea of being able to look for info using the place as opposed to the name - I have a couple of names that I'm unsure of as they were transcribed from handwritten documents.

[Jeanne Belford]

Thanks for this information Dick. Looks interesting particularly in view of Keith Wilson's recent death and the possible end of iFamily software for MAC Users.

[Deb Skoff]

It's good to see a genealogy software package that works on both the Mac and PC. It would be nice to see more of the current genealogy software brands become available in both Mac and PC versions - in particular the new version of Rootsmagic.