Every now and again you stumble upon something that becomes more than a little addictive. This time it's a really cool piece of software called Family.Show. It was basically written to show off the power of the new Windows Presentation Foundation technology and the skills of the developers, but it turns out to be much more than that. I've been looking around for genealogy software for a while, but it all seemed a little grey – glorified spreadsheets really. Family.Show uses the power of the new Windows technologies to provide a funky program that's fun to use. I've already spent several hours adding long lost uncles and aunts to my family tree. It's quick and easy to add family members, photos and biographies and I particularly like the way it zooms in and reconfigures itself around a person when you click on them, so you can see the relationships from their point of view. I've been meaning to investigate my family tree for ages. My brother has done some groundwork and there's a mystery about my paternal grandfather, who apparently won the Military Medal in the First World War, but no-one in the family knows what for. There's just an old photo of him with a scar across his cheek, which, so the family story goes, may have come from a German bayonet. Looks like me, my laptop and Family.Show will be doing some investigating...
Oh, by the way, I'm not related to Prince Charles! The screen shot above, which gives an idea of the slick interface, is of a demo family tree, The Windsors, bundled with the software.
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