Monday 24 November 2014

FamilyHistorian to integrate My Heritage search technology

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com), news of a collaboration with the Family Historian (www.family-historian.co.uk) software programme:

TEL AVIV, Israel & LONDON, UK – November 24, 2014: MyHeritage, the popular family history network, and Calico Pie Limited, London-based publishers of genealogy software, today jointly announced that MyHeritage’s Smart Matching™ and Record Matching technologies will be integrated into Family Historian, Calico Pie’s popular desktop genealogy program. This will enable users to benefit from automated discoveries sourced from millions of family trees and billions of global historical records on MyHeritage.
Family Historian incorporates comprehensive features designed to make family history friendly for beginners and experts alike. The new version 6 of Family Historian, scheduled for release on December 9th 2014, will feature MyHeritage matching. Some matches will be free to view while others will require a MyHeritage subscription.

MyHeritage helps millions of families worldwide discover and preserve their unique history effortlessly on its services across Web, mobile and desktop. Its flagship technologies Smart Matching™ and Record Matching match family trees with other family trees and relevant historical records. This allows users to discover new stories about their ancestors, discover relatives and connect with family members they have not known before. With a high accuracy rate of 97%, these technologies make fascinating family history discoveries automatically.

“We’re delighted to enhance the latest release of Family Historian with the best matching technologies in the industry,” said Simon Orde, Managing Director of Calico Pie. “With the seamless integration of MyHeritage technologies, Family Historian is set to deliver unprecedented value to users interested in exploring their past.”

“We’re excited to provide our matching technologies to a top-notch product like Family Historian”, said MyHeritage’s Founder & CEO Gilad Japhet. “Our technologies have been used successfully on MyHeritage by millions of people. They have helped people make life-changing discoveries and have enriched their lives. We are now proud to make these technologies available also to partners, and Family Historian will be among the first to include them, to be followed by many more.”

MyHeritage matching technologies are also being integrated by leading Dutch genealogy software Aldfaer and the online genealogy services of Coret Genealogie in the Netherlands.

COMMENT: This is an understandably good move for MyHeritage, but to me, the thing I actually want to see from FamilyHistorian is an easy sync facility with a tree hosted on both a PC and an iPad. FamilyHistorian was by far my favourite software programme until Family Tree Maker created a facility to sync its tree online to the Ancestry website and via its app on iPad, with one simple click, making it considerably more useful, and trumping FamilyHistorian in the process.

One feature I don't like or use on FTM, however, is its integration with Ancestry for searches, something I still prefer to do manually. I suspect I will feel the same about this MyHeritage collaboration, if it is attempting to do the same thing with its site. As long as it remains an option that can be ignored or used as a user decides, then what harm? But if it becomes a facility that tries to force me to use MyHeritage, I would have an issue. Online records sites provide data, and on that basis I am happy to go to them as and when I need to - but I never want to be in a position where they start telling me how to do my research and trying to control my research experience. I suspect I understand my needs and aims on that front considerably better than any online supplier ever will!

(With thanks to Laurence Harris)

Chris

Stuck for a Christmas gift?! I have a series of genealogy books available in the UK, Australia and Canada, on Scottish, Irish and British based subject areas. Further details at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. Santa approves!

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