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[Deane]

Dick - The new Forum is Great! It seems to me that it would be helpful to all forum readers to have an additional Topic on 'Other Supporting Software & Techniques' where Forum users could contribute suggestions that would be helpful to others in pursuing their genealogy interests. It might include atlases, town/county lookups (such as World Place Finder [Progeny software]), programs such as GenSmart to find 'holes' in their research, and possible places to look, etc. Other generic utilities are often well-adapted to genealogy (e.g. my note to Ben Sayer at MacGenealogist.com: Ben - Save the $20! PTH Pasteboard (http://pth.com/products/pthpasteboard/ ) works to complete this 'repeat' feature - always spelled the same - and is FREE! In my genealogy work, it actually functions better, since I can do 'on-the-fly' phrases as needed, rather than create a list beforehand. I often want a phrase like "alternate birth date: " or some such, just for that session, and with PTH in the lower right corner of the screen, I can just reach down and click it and it pops into my text box - not even drag & drop! is needed. And it holds the phrases from session to session, and upon reboot. The most recently used phrase pops to the top of the list, but you can scroll down to find any others. Give it a try!

There are other programs - say in editing our genealogy photos - that are well-adapted to what we are accomplishing in genealogy. Other folks have developed techniques that help them accomplish a particular genealogical task. It might be beyond the bounds of your Forum, but then good ideas are always welcome. See what you think. Thanks for listening.

[Dick_Eastman]

Interesting idea.

Any comments from others? I won't create a new section because of ONE request but if enough people want it, I can create it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 - Dick Eastman

[GarysTurn]

It makes sense to have a category under Technology for "Other Technology Solutions".  You have a section for "Other Web Sites" under the Web sites section.    And a section for "Other Conferences" in the Conferences section.  This would provide a place for any new technologies that develop and a place to discuss other uses of technology not covered by your other sections. (however most of those mentioned earlier should go under the software or web site areas). 

A couple of areas that don't seem to be covered elsewhere are Laptops, netbooks, home networks, routers, WIFI, net meetings, tablet pc's, desktop computers, flash drives, portable HDD's, SSD's (solid state drives), home servers, tabletop touch computers, integration of HDTV's and Computers, printers, DVD's, other Storage medium, backup devices, microfilm, microfiche, projectors, etc. All of these technologies can be used for Family History.

[lee]

Following this up, and thinking more broadly, I wonder if there is room for another major heading in this Forum. Right now most of the sub-forums are geographical. While there are Major headings for General, Marketplace, Tech, Websites, and Conferences, other "topical" subjects [vs Geographical ones] have no place [except under General]. For instance, one might be interested in One-name Studies, but the only place for one to post on that subject at present would be under "General." Another "topical" sub-grouping might be Reunion Planning & Announcements; another might be Society Management; another might be Reports. I don't know what the additional Major heading for all these sub-topics that I am musing about would be called--perhaps "Other Topics," under which you might add sub-topics as required, such as One-name Studies. Or, if you wish these to continue to appear under General, maybe the name could be changed to General & Miscellaneous. The sub-topics would be the logical equivalents to the present State and Country forums. Right now, one would probably not think of looking under "General" to find discussion of "One-name Studies." It is quite a specific topic. But at present, "General" seems to contain much of what I find of interest. BTW, I am a near-total newbie to this forum, having looked at it only a few times before as a guest.

[jgr]

Lee, there are limits to the number of sections a forum can hold without being unwieldy. But we're always looking into possible ways to make it more useful. If you were designing the structure, what would be most helpful to you?