Traces of the Past 1.0 Released for iPhone

There is a new genealogy-related App out for the iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, called Traces of the Past. It’s in the vein of Ancestry.com Tree-to-Go or MobileTree. It differs from those two applications in that unlike Tree-to-Go it’s not limited to Ancestry.com, and unlike MobileTree, it’s not confined to a membership-only website/database. It also doesn’t have family tree functionality, similar to say GedView.

Basically it acts as a front-end to genealogy databases/collections. It’s something you would use “on the go” if you needed to do a quick lookup or if you had some time to spare and wanted to be productive.

This puts it in its own class and I hesitate to lump it in with the other genealogy applications. I’m hoping to find the time to test it out at some point, as I think it does have a place on your iPhone, assuming you have memberships for the genealogy databases that it accesses, that require it. The fact that it’s not tied to any specific websites is a huge bonus in my view. Ancestry.com Tree-to-Go and MobileTree are both useful if you qualify or are paid up for their respective services, but if you don’t qualify or don’t pay for a membership, they are useless, and that’s where Traces to Go has the potential to shine.

Traces of the Past supports the following databases/collections (some may require payment/registration) and it looks like it can be updated to access other databases in the future:
* FamilySearch
* Footnote.com
* Findmypast.com
* EllisIsland.org
* Others

Screenshots can be found on the Traces of the Past page here at MobileGenealogy.com.

From a comment on their website, it looks like they are working on native iPad support, rather than just the 2x upscaling currently available.

It’s available for $3.99 in the Apple iTunes Store