ProStamm: A Great, Cloud-Based App for Genealogists and Family Historians
Biff Barnes
Every genealogist I know is always looking for a better way to organize family information, photos, documents and stories, and for easy ways to use them to create genealogy presentations.
We’re at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Philipp Mayer of Group National Publishing is launching a new cloud-based product, ProStamm, which does just that.
Your first thought might be ProStamm, strange name? What’s that? Stammbaum is the German word for family tree. You might have guessed that Philipp is a German-American.
Mayer gave me a tour of the ProStamm, demonstrating how a genealogist can quickly and easily import the products of a lifetime of research and create galleries of family information, photos, documents, events, notes, observations, and stories. From any of the galleries the user can generate and print presentation ready pages of pedigree charts, family trees, documents, photos, and narrative. For those who want to go further, it’s easy to generate slide shows and even the pages of a book.
A feature I found particularly interesting is the emphasis on promoting collaboration among family members while allowing the initial subscriber to maintain control of what is uploaded.
When a person subscribes they become the PRO (primary record owner). The Pro can invite other family members to join as:
Family Circle Full (FCF) members who can see the entire family record, make changes, and add new information, upload and modify profile photographs, create family event folders, and upload and modify event documents and photographs. The FCF cannot upload GEDCOM files.
OR
Family Circle Limited (FCL) members who can view the family record but have no rights to its development. Participation in the family record is not mandatory. If desired, the FCL can upgrade to an FCF user status.
I haven’t seen anything like this among genealogy programs currently on the market. Check it out at ProStamm.com.