Livehistory App - Livehistory for iPad & Reviews

LiveHistory lets you register historic facts about yourself, other people and their environment, and browse the combined result in nice graphical formats. The App is made for recording biographical and genealogical data from the past and more recent times.
With sufficient facts filled in, LiveHistory can be used as a repository of structured research to eventually write a traditional biography/genealogy. However, since LiveHistory is designed to show the history “live” on the iPad screen, there should often be no need to write a static document.
The App is also an enjoyable tool for less ambitious tasks, such as keeping an overview of the places your children and their friends lived, and your grandchildren growing up. As you move LiveHistory’s “Time-Slider” you can see their portraits and other information change over time.

The design of the App is guided by a few principles that in some cases depart from a conventional approach, especially in genealogy. These ideas are also expected to guide future additions. The most important are:

• LiveHistory works with notions which are fairly universal, and of which the meaning does not depend much on culture or religion. For instance, the notion of “Family” is absent as basic concept and is replaced by “Household”. Likewise, “Marriage” is replaced by the more general “Life Partner” notion. Traditional genealogists should consider this before buying the App.

• Part of the browser navigating experience is a selectable view-date. The view date adjusts the displayed historic facts to reflect the state of affairs on that date. For instance, the displayed name, residence or portrait of a person may be different, depending on the view date.

• The App is tolerant of missing, inaccurate or even contradictory information, especially with entered dates of events. Since the research or (re-)collection of facts is often a process of stepwise refinement, the program allows all dates entered to be specified with a “confidence” tag, in which you can for instance specify that a date may be years off. For entirely missing dates, LiveHistory uses an internal calculated placeholder guess.

• The LiveHistory App is first and foremost a personal information research and refinement tool. The data you enter, which may be sensitive, is stored on your iPad and owned by you. LiveHistory does not contact sites or servers to share any data with other users or any companies, including AlgoCoil. Note that backups you may keep on your desktop computer via iTunes or backups on iCloud are still possible. Optional cooperation with other individual users may be supported in future releases.

• Browsing and editing are done in separate parts of the interface. This allows specialized high-density chart designs to take full advantage of the iPad’s high resolution screen, while editing data remains easy and efficient with familiar interaction elements.

Specific features of LiveHistory include:

• Gedcom import: Gedcom files (.ged or .GED) mailed to you can be imported and merged into LiveHistory.
• Standalone iPad App: does not a require a desktop companion product, works without a network connection.
• Supported data in this version: Person, Household, Life Partner, Adoption, Occupation, Venue,
Residence, Official Name, Portrait.
• Import and cropping of portrait photos from the standard iPad “Photos” App, or camera.
• Smart data entry for venues: places, residences, and premises.
• Freeform text notes attached to each event data item.
• Browser chart views: Person, Ancestry, Household.
• Browser navigation: Person index, browser taps.
• Editors: Person, Household, Venue, Date, Portrait, Notes.