Article: Sharing Roots With an iPhone App

Maurine Pool of the Orange County Register has written a nice article about genealogy and iPhones titled “Sharing Roots With an iPhone App.” She happened to Google “iPad genealogy app” and came across GedView, which she purchased. In fact, GedView is what got her to purchase an iPhone 4. She was not going to purchase an iPhone until she had a genealogy application.

She spoke with David Knight who develops GedView, and he mentioned that there is interest in other platforms such as Google’s Android and HP Palm webOS:

The iPhone 4’s features were tempting enough, but the GedView app got me into the Apple store.

The guy who developed GedView, David Knight, says more than 7,000 have been sold through Apple’s iTunes.

This app’s a reader really, not a full-blown program and is only available for iOS devices. Knight says he has received inquiries and is considering making GedView avalilable for other platforms such as Android or WebOS-based (Palm Pre) phones.

She mentions the major reason why so many of us like having genealogy apps on mobile devices such as iPhones:

I knew I wanted to share information with these cousins. I didn’t want to print out a lot of charts and sift through them when I could be socializing. I wanted to have ALL that information magically appear as I stood around sipping tea and listening to family tales.

She also discussed how important the higher-resolution camera on the iPhone 4 is, as well as loading 200+ photos into the iPhone’s photo app.

Maurine’s article is a good read if you’re curious about what typical genealogists are doing with their iPhones.

Full article: Orange County Register