At the recent annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, I had a chance to view a new web site. While it is new, it was also strangely familiar. In fact, after viewing it, I wondered, "Why didn't someone think of this before?" Indeed, it seems to be a great idea.
GenealoGee.com is a new bookmarking site for genealogists and hobbyists to share genealogy blog posts, articles, news, and other information with each other. In fact, it is similar to the very popular Digg.com web site. If you have ever used Digg.com, you already know how to use GenealoGee.com. The primary difference is that GenealoGee.com is focused exclusively on family history and genealogy.
GenealoGee.com simplifies the process of finding helpful genealogy-specific articles. Read what you choose: top-ranking articles or all the current news.
This is not a database site for looking up your ancestors. It rarely mentions deceased people by name. Instead, GenealoGee.com lists "how to" articles, tutorials, news about new online databases, news about upcoming conferences, and similar materials. Many of the articles will come from RSS feeds of genealogy blogs. At the same time, users are strongly encouraged to add additional genealogy-related materials from any other web sites, as appropriate.
Any time you see an article that you would like to share with others, such as an article in this newsletter, you can "submit" new articles to GenealoGee.com or "vote" on articles that have already been submitted by other genealogists. You can also add comments. As articles are submitted, users can see them and vote for the stories they like best. Every time someone votes for an article, that article will move higher in the ratings on GenealoGee.com. Stories with the most votes are moved from “Upcoming News” to “Published News” on the home page.
To read the posts that are popular in the genealogy world, visit the home page at http://www.GenealoGee.com to see the stories with the most votes. In effect, this one web page will display the most popular genealogy articles from all over the World Wide Web, as selected by the users of GenealoGee.com.
All submitted articles are also categorized. If you are looking for Genealogy News, Help for Beginners, Genealogy Blog Posts, Information About Conferences, or other topics, you can select your desired category from the home page to read relevant information.
You can also post any of the stories mentioned on GenealoGee.com to Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Technorati, Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Windows Live, Squidoo, Yahoo, Google, or Ask.com, assuming you have a user account on the selected service(s).
You can submit new articles or vote on previously-submitted articles to move them further up the list of popular stories. To submit a new article for consideration on GenealoGee.com, you have to complete a free registration and then respond to a message sent to your email address. In short, the registration process is similar to that used by a few thousand other web sites. There is no obligation.
NOTE #1: When the registration confirmation message was sent to my email address, my email provider placed it in my spam folder. I didn't see it there until several hours later. That problem was caused by my email provider, not by GenealoGee.com.
NOTE #2: I would suggest you might want to vote for your favorite articles published in this newsletter. I believe that the newsletter stories are already submitted automatically by an RSS feed but you can vote to move them higher up the list of popular stories if you feel that other genealogists would like to read them. All you need to do is to vote for the articles you prefer.
You can sort the articles listed on GenealoGee.com in several ways, including: most recently-added articles (which I found to be rather ineffective at finding relevant articles), most popular articles in the past day (which I found to be very effective at finding relevant articles), most popular in the previous day, most effective in the past week, past month, and past year. I was especially pleased to see that the most popular article in the past year was my article on "Genealogy Research in the Year 2060," a story I especially enjoyed writing.
NOTE #3: The site has not been online and collecting information for the past 365 days so I assume that, at this point, the "past year" really means "since the web site went online."
GenealoGee.com was created simply because the topic of genealogy is so popular online. Various studies claim that genealogy is the third or fourth or fifth most popular topic online. There are thousands of blogs and web sites dedicated to genealogy. The sheer volume can be overwhelming for most people. GenealoGee.com simplifies the process of finding helpful articles. When you visit the site, you can read what you choose: scan the top-ranking articles (as voted on by other genealogy enthusiasts), or read all the current news. You can also search for any specific words or phrases in genealogy-related articles already stored on the web site.
GenealoGee.com was created by OneGreatFamily.com, the same company that provides the huge genealogy database at http://www.OneGreatFamily.com.
GenealoGee.com is entirely free for users.
For more information, or to see what is popular now, go to http://www.GenealoGee.com
