While I’ve been enjoying time with my family I’ve also been working on a project for you. I’m ready on this special day (my birthday) to extend to my MacGenealogist friends, this invitation:
Please use the evidence driven genealogy application I’m building. I call it Lineascope. It’s an Internet application for recording, analyzing, and presenting chains of genealogical information and the lineages they document. It’s at www.lineascope.com and all you need to start is a free Google user account.
I’m extending this invitation to you as a special preview before I announce it more widely around the middle of April. I’m doing it this way because I love you guys and I trust and want your feedback. Please use Lineascope for a piece of research you’re currently working on or ready to start then let me know what you like and what you want added or changed. Feel free to ask questions too! The following text is taken from the about page. It will tell you more about why you need Lineascope, what it is, and the crucial role you can play in its creation.
Why Lineascope?
Lineascope exists because no one had solved this set of problems:
- How can I preserve entire lines of genealogy evidence?
- How can genealogists minimize duplicate research?
Since the beginning of the use of computers in genealogy, they have been used to capture conclusions about events, characteristics, and relationships and the sources used to draw them. That’s well and good as far as it goes. Unfortunately, there is more to a solid conclusion than a list of sources. To build a solid case you need to analyze sources, information, evidence, and the quality of each in context.
To prevent rework when you locate new information, you want to be able to revisit all the evidence you used to reach the previous conclusion. It’s usually unnecessary to re-consider all the assertions leading up to the evidence. You simply need to make an assertion about the new source, information, and quality of each. Then it’s a matter of resolving any conflicting evidence then considering what the set of assertions tells you about what conclusion to draw. Having past sources, evidence, and information preserved with the proof statement for every event, characteristic, and familial relationship is a great time-saver. Even bigger is the time saving opportunity for other researchers with whom you share your work.
There’s an incredible amount of poorly researched “facts” freely available on the Internet and it’s growing exponentially. Imagine finding a death date for an ancestor you’ve been looking for in someone else’s online tree. Without Lineascope, you’d look at the sources cited then do all the research and reach your own conclusion. Now imagine that the genealogist used Lineascope. You could have access to this event sheet. Take a look! It lists the citations and quality of all the sources, the information obtained from each source and its quality, the evidence the researcher asserted from the information and the quality of that evidence, and a proof statement addressing any conflicts and describing the rationale for the concluded birth date. Would you have to repeat the research? No, you’d be able to look at what was done and decide whether you agree or not. That’s my vision for your research, collaboration, and for Lineacope.
What is Lineascope?
Lineascope is an Internet application for recording, analyzing, and presenting chains of genealogical information and the lineages they document.
Lineascope is also a work in progress. It’s far from done, but it works and solves real genealogy problems. I’m releasing it this way so that you can benefit from using it as it’s developed instead of having to wait a year or two for the finished product. And, since you’ll have input on its development, the end result will be an amazing solution to your genealogy research needs!
You see, one of my principles in creating this tool is to build it with constant feedback from you. As a result, I’m working in short iterations, building functions, getting feedback, then adapting what’s built and future plans accordingly. So changes will be small and frequent.
The roadmap below will give you an idea where I think it’s going in the near term.
Roadmap
- Create a getting started tutorial screencast
- Make the table of events on the event sheet sort chronologically
- Implement characteristics
- Create a research sheet that lists uncompleted search tasks
- Implement family groups
So, there you have it! Check it out and let me know what you think.
Ben,
Happy Birthday! I don’t know how you do it all! You truly epitomize the expression “you are a scholar and a gentleman”! I have something to look forward to when I get home and will check out your new tool.
Take care,
Jon
Happy Birthday. Good to hear from you and that you are enjoying yourself. After the weekend, I ‘ll investigate Lineascope. Thanks for keeping in touch.
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a good one.
I can’t wait to see what you have created. I am sure it will be a very practical application.
If anyone was going to come up with an application which could do all you have said… it would be you…. I sure could have used one last year when I went to Salt Lake City Family History Library!
We have all missed your postings of late.
Happy birthday Ben.
I’m afraid that I don’t understand Lineascope. I opened my gmail and attempted to download Lineascope. I got something, but I’m not sure what. I put in my father’s nameand submitted it. What I got back was a form that is not editable.
Happy Birthday Ben!
Am curious to see how this app works– thanks for all you do!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Lineascope sounds exciting, but I don’t seem to get to it. Both hyperlinks send me to the about page. I will download it and work with it as soon as I can learn how.
Ben,
Happy birthday! Thanks and I promise to be back to check out Lineascope.
Happy birthday Ben,
I have looked at your application and we need a vehicle by which we can populate the fields automatically instead of manual entry. I entered my self along with my birth certificate and marriage license documents.
If this requires a manual population I will never get all of my relatives entered.
Just some initial thoughts.
Thank you
Jim Townsend
Happiest of birthdays. OH MY GOSH! This has got to be the answer I have been looking for to help me help my niece. She is new to genealogy, but not to researching and digging in archives, libraries and old records. What she lacks is the use of genealogy organization aside from a few spreadsheets and a young mind. Enthusiasm and youth goes just so far in sharing, and Lineascope seems a perfect blend of her experience, and the needs for genealogists to provide some reasonable way to share and prove. I cannot wait to learn more about Lineascope.
Thank you so MUCH!
Thank you all for the birthday wishes, support, and feedback regarding Lineascope. There are many things for us to discuss in order for the full potential of Lineascope and our research to be attained. I don’t want to make MacGenealogist.com the forum for the discussion, so I’ll set up something appropriate then post here to let you all know where to join the conversation. That way, MacGenealogist.com can return to it’s intended purpose.
—Ben
>@<
Ben,
Thanks for the invitation. I’m going to go use and “apply” right now and will let you know how it works for me.
Patti
Love your website, can’t wait to start. Not sure if I should go with Reunion 9 or wait for the new Family Tree Maker for Mac. Your thoughts? Do you have any idea when you think it will actually hit the market?
Ben,
What provisions have you made to preclude identity theft and other cyber-malicious practices of those research data, especially since you seem to be depending upon a notoriously dangerous medium (Google email)? I’d be really skeptical about posting all the source links and other data on the Internet without security and encryption, so I’m wondering whether you took those concerns into account. Great work, however, if you can make it secure or more so.