Summary: Ancestry Behind the Scenes – Mobile Apps

The Behind the scenes chat with Crista Cowan and the Ancestry.com Mobile Apps Product Manager Branden Neish took place just a few hours after originally planned earlier today. It was short in my opinion (I would love to hear their mobile plans expanded upon!), but interesting. Below is a brief summary of the chat. Any errors in transcription or understanding of what was being said are mine – Branden and Crista kept it clear and to the point, but I was typing as I was listening, so errors are bound to creep in.

Android version of the Ancestry App
Kindle Fire. This is something I did not know and that could grow the market for both the Ancestry app and those e-Book readers.

Note: Originally it was the Nook Touch that was mentioned, but Ancestry.com got back to me and clarified it was the Nook Tablet instead.

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Evernote 4.1.9, Kindle 3.0 Take Advantage of New iPad

Last week, Apple announced the higher resolution iPAd. It has a resolution of 2048×1536. While no genealogy applications have yet to take advantage of it (although I believe I know of one in the works), other applications that genealogists use are starting to take the new iPad into account, starting with Evernote and Amazon’s Kindle software being updated today. Do keep in mind that some of the changes apply to the iPad and iPad 2 as well as iPhones and iPod Touch.

Evernote is a note-taking/journal app (it’s much more than that, really), that a lot of us use because it’s quick and simple and very much cross platform – Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, web, Windows Phone as well I believe. There’s just a lot of really great things about Evernote, and there have been plenty of genealogy presentations and podcasts focused on Evernote.

To give you an idea of the changes and clarity the new iPad brings, the Evernote developers posted an entry on their blog where they illustrate the high resolution changes in store for those Evernote users who are early adapters of the new iPad.

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Your Family Tree 1.2 for iOS

Your Family Tree has been updated to version 1.2, to fix some Newsstand issues with Apple’s Newsstand software/folder. Newsstand is a feature of newer versions of iOS that allow you to easily manage your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Your Family Tree is a genealogy magazine (one that I frequently purchase) … Read more

nook Software Update Version 1.5

I know a lot of genealogists have been using ebook readers to keep track of a lot of reading and even documents, and today the Barnes & Noble nook received a major update. The first major feature added – staying in sync across multiple nooks or the nook app installed … Read more

iWork and ePub, Assorted App Updates

Apple has released iWork 09 version 9.0.4. This is of interest to mobile genealogy fans as Pages version 4.0.4 can now export to the standard ePub file format. That means that iBooks users on iPhones, iPod touch, and iPad, as well as owners of Barnes & Noble’s nook, Sony’s Reader … Read more