Stuffleufagus

Geni is a new Flash-based Genealogy application.  I tried it and like it enough I added all my brothers, and about 20 other family members.  Right now we have 49 people in our tree - not bad for a day’s worth of work.

But some of my family members got frustrated quickly.  Geni was beat up today - their site was so busy I often got this image of a clueless plumber, explaining to me that the site was just broke.  I expect butt-crack-showing plumbers everywhere will file suit shortly.

 

 I like the site - and I rarely like Flash-based sites.  I like the GUI - it’s friendly, and I never even thought of looking for help.  That may or may not be good for Geni - if your customers don’t think of (or don’t know where to) looking for help, you’ll probably end up with more support email.

I do wish there was a trash can on the site though - a place I could drag a relative and delete them.  Nothing personal against any relatives - we just have a couple in our tree that are bogus.  They were either mistakes, or caused by the severe traffic issues Geni suffered today.  But we can’t delete them.  There may be a way.  I haven’t looked at the help files yet.  I shouldn’t have to - not in a GUI based app like this.  Give me drag and drop, and give me a trash can.

I do like the site though - it has a lot of potential.  I have never seen another interface that would let me connect 49 people in a half of a day the way Geni does - and that’s ingenious on their part.  They should ramp up rapidly to a serious amount of page views.

But they really need to get the infrastructure issues fixed.  And the bugs in the code.  The interface is GUI and it’s fun - until it breaks.  Then all the glitz doesn’t mean much anymore.  Broken is broken.

Rob

written by rob

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