“Every non researching person in the world is allowed to view, copy, and track my tree even though it is marked private and the box checked for removal from the search engine and why should the removal from the search engine take more than a week?”

–It used to be that trees were reindexed weekly, but it’s been a lot less often in the last year. Until the re-indexing is done, your Tree entries will be clickable — but the would-be viewer will not be able actually to view what they clicked on since the servers ~have~ made the change that you made in your Tree settings. Indexing is a separate process from the saving/rewriting done by the real-time servers.

“Also on these social buttons we are being forced to put up with. Is there money involved for Ancestry?” Uncounted hordes of commercial ventures are using the so-called “social networking” sites for business purposes. Just keep your mouse away from the links.

Cookies for them and for trackers can be placed on your computer by any website’s javaparticles as well as upon your use of or visit to any of these. It would be difficult to determine what site’s bots actually installed them. When you discover them you can block them if you use Firefox browser with blocking plug-in programs. This will usually prevent your using the programs/sites. I am sure that MS gets money from the major sites to not allow blocking ads and cookies in IE within the latter program, although there are many freestanding software blockers. Since the Ancestry Toolbar and the searching browser from within FTM are based on IE as well, I assume there are similar financial arrangements. Tracking your internet activity and selling that information are the main purposes of the many specialty toolbars, including google’s and yahoo’s, although they don’t tell you that when you adopt them for supposedly useful functions. Fine print within a “privacy” document may spell out that the software provider has the right to collect and sell all this data, and that you agree to this by installing and using the software.

I did noticed your prior blog postings suggesting Ancestry.com not using Facebook as an extension of the webinar, but I thought I would give them the opportunity to show they had thought through the approach and had developed a good plan to make it value added. Unfortunately, at least for me, how they used Facebook was not value added (… as you predicted – but I was optimistically hoping otherwise).

If my count is accurate, there were a total of 13 questions answered on the Facebook continuation session.

I contended all along that Facebook was inappropriate for such an activity. If they were only going to do an additional half hour, why not just add that to the webinar Q&A period of the webinar itself??

All in all a very weird experience – although the Webinar itself was pretty good- I didn’t want to cuss at my computer once!

It is up to each indiviual genealogist/family historian to research and document their own work. Period!

Yes, in a way it is OWT combined with wiki-wars.

The major difference is that individuals are merged by people rather than by computer program.

As AI pointed out in the course of his writings about newFamilySearch Tree, its essence is the horrorshow databases: IGI, AncestralFile, PedigreeResourceFile. At present Temple Records are integrated with (or being integrated with) the Tree, but there was a hint a while back that this may not long be so. Which is weird because supposedly it is the Temple Records that are ‘verified’. I have no concrete information on this score.

You are so right! I thought it was me! Couldn’t find the submit button, so I gave up.

Also I went to my canvas they are afforded the “privilege” of keeping their work private till they are ready to publish. Why is it my Family Tree which is destined for a book is not afforded the same privilege? Every non researching person in the world is allowed to view, copy, and track my tree even though it is marked private and the box checked for removal from the search engine and why should the removal from the search engine take more than a week?

Also on these social buttons we are being forced to put up with. Is there money involved for Ancestry?

I recently discovered that Ancestry also has two deeply embedded cookies to tack us, Google Analytics, Omniture, and today I found the third TweetMeme. The first two are tracking cookies that send information to Ancestry. Are our payments not enough or is this company so money hungry they will do anything?

TweetMeme

How they describe themselves:
“

A service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme categorises these links into Categories, Subcategories and Channels, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what users are interested in.

Omniture

How they describe themselves:
“

Omniture SiteCatalyst® provides marketers with actionable, real-time intelligence about online strategies and marketing initiatives. SiteCatalyst helps marketers quickly identify the most profitable paths through their Web site, determine where visitors are navigating away from their site, and identify critical success metrics for online marketing campaigns. SiteCatalyst is part of the Omniture Online Business Optimization Suite.

Google Analytics

How they describe themselves:
“

Enterprise-class web analytics made smarter, friendlier and free. Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites. Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. With this information, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web.

Have you seen the latest Ancestry Insider and the overall plan for their future “enhancements”. It sounds like they are planning OneWorldTree Version II !!!

All combined into ONE tree with only ONE “conclusion.

Shudder!!!!!!!!!!!

The vast majority of family group sheets, genealogical accounts in newsletters, etc., that were sent to LDS and/or this company were compiled without benefit of research in records. These databases (such as Millenium File) worthless for research.