Member Blogs

Looking at almost any advertisement or Webpage for a genealogy program and somewhere it will mention the product's"features." Generally, these features are functions of the programs thatare highlighted by the promotional materials. For one example, if youlook at the Family Tree Maker Website,you will see a link to product features. Often, the features of aprogram are used to differentiate it from similar competing programs.Like all advertised products, product differentiation is big issue.There is always an attempt to correlate more features with a betterproduct.

Going back to my long use of the Personal Ancestral File (PAF)program, I realize that there were a lot of the "features" of theprogram that I never used. A example would be the ability to input anaddress for anyone in the file. I can imagine ways to use this feature,but I can't remember ever using it. I think most genealogists wouldconsider PAFto a be a fairly basic program but even as a basic program it has a fewfeatures that probably almost never get used. A feature PAF had thatgave it an advantage; it was and is free. One way subsequent programshave differentiated themselves in the marketplace from PAF is to addfeatures.
Read more...