word!

I’m disappointed in Geni.com. They have all the makings of a neat, Web 2.0 company that just happens to focus on genealogy.

But I can’t get behind it. I realize it’s in beta, but there is one small thing that irks me and I’m sure it’s a deal breaker. As I have played around extensively with genealogy software like Legacy here and PHPGedView here, I’ve tried and test drove most genealogy software out there.

The one and only thing that has me not investing more time/effort into Geni is the fact that when you add women it does nothing about maiden names. It assumes whomever you add them off is their name. I for one recognize women by their maiden names and don’t appreciate typing/ retyping in every maiden name because of a software shortfall.

Geni is promising. But I’m waiting for them to work out all their beta features. Maybe then I dip my toes back in.

I know this is a quite pointed post to those out there hold the Piotter name.

Having previously mentioned the availability of Google hosted (thru Gmail) email addresses ending in either Piotter.us or Piotter.org, I guess now is the appropriate time to also mention I’ve thrown in Piotter.info into the mix as well.

So if you’re looking for a cool name related email address that Gmail hosts and I could never hack into, give me a shout out.

It’s been a while since I’ve registered some really cool TLD domains, namely Piotter.org and Piotter.us. While I am still struggling to find something compelling and exciting to put up on these pages, I did do something neat which I’d like to offer to the masses or at least those people out there they be named ‘Piotter’ and have a strong desire to be: awesomename@piotter.org or awesomename@piotter.us.

That’s right, I’m opening up email registration on the two Piotter domains to any individual with the last name Piotter. Clever huh? How’s it work you ask. Well, since Google is nice and gracious with their Gmail account service, they’ve also offered to start hosting email from domain names like my two for FREE !! So you get your name @piotter.org or @piotter.us which is hosted through Google’s Gmail Service.

You don’t have to worry me administering your email either. Accounts are setup with desired user name and a random password that can be changed at anytime. All I do is set them up and bask in the glory of being such a nice guy 🙂

So if you like Gmail and/or want a cool,new email address, check this offer out. To sign up, just email me!

Guess I should have had this revelation somewhat sooner, but now everything I’ve done with the family Genealogy is listed under the subsite www.gen.michaelpiotter.com. Catchy name I know, but I hope it makes more sense to everyone than the way things were organized around here before. ***Site is now Piotter.org*** (as of Oct 2007)

The major shift(s) were the movement of the PHPgedview program now located here and movement of various data to a ‘data’ section within the website.

I am currently wishing to upload more photos and possibly digitize some of the ‘dead tree’ versions of family books I have copies of. I would need more space for storing the photos, so that where Flickr or possibly a my Blogspot blog might come in. I would like to have everything located in one easy accessible place as well. They somewhat limit what you can post and the formatting isn’t quite up to what I want, but I suppose I have to play by there rules if I’m going to have ‘free’ hosting. Shall see, because photos are fun.

As for digitizing books, I am starting to get the feeling that I could run into some trouble with that as well. It’s easy enough to scan in document to digital form, but finding a machine to do that on the cheap is gonna be somewhat difficult. Anything around Gaylord that has copy machines has the functionality, but not the addon to make digital files of said books. Then comes the copy shops, I’m sure that a Kinkos could do it, but they might be charging an arm and/or leg to do so. I have yet to try Kinkos per se, as Officemax couldn’t do it for a decent price either. I shall prevail.

Lots of thing to possibly due, I should maybe

Been fiddling around with the website again. Couple updates various parts. Updated Genealogy portion of site, with some more current information and information from the few emails I’ve received about incorrect information. Also tweaked the layout of main page to include genealogy photos on Flickr and information on PHPGedview viewing of my genealogy data. I suppose I should update the gedcom behind that one too! Along with that, changed linkage to Extra Genealogy stuff I had. I don’t know, but maybe I’d like to post somethings to a Blogger hosted Blogspot address, but Flickr kinda does that for me, but doesn’t have all the convergence with blogs that Google seems to enjoy with Blogger and Picasa’s Hello. Hm… I’ll just maintain the status quo I suppose.

The other change of mild interest may be the use of Movabletype to convert/make a website based solely on that software as a cms. It’s interesting that it actually works fairly decent. I’m not sure I’m gonna convert whole site to that though. It’s fairly labor intensive to get everythign to look/act just right and then if it all turned out, who would really be interested in the changes I’d make to the site?

I think it’s neat that you could see the whole site changes in a feedreader like say Bloglines, but then again would anyone other than myself really notice? I think I’d be willing to do it a new totally new website though, as it is kinda cool and whatnot.

So yeah. This site ain’t as stale as it used to be, which is good.