>> So this got me to thinking: how come someone hasn't yet utilized
>> microformats with the genealogical sites?
It's much the same question as "why don't we have XML alternatives to
GEDCOM?". To make such ideas work, you need critical mass take-up by
genealogical sites and genealogical software. There isn't a lot of "first
mover advantage" here for any individual site or company as
interoperability
standards "take two to tango". If there was critical mass, then the
thinking
would change.
Having worked in international standards for many years, you learn quickly
that while users want interoperability standards, vendors are less
enthusiastic. Vendors want their users to be locked-into their product
(except of course for when users want to migrate from another product to
theirs). Vendors don't want the users easily able to go to another product
(unless it is their product), but the users do. So often the user groups
create the standards, which the vendors then fail to implement in their
products or do so half-heartedly. Look at the number of problems people
still have with im****t/ex****t of GEDCOM after so many years.
Although I haven't been following it, I understand there is a lot of work
happening between Ancestry and Family Tree Maker to make it easier to
transfer information from Ancestry into Family Tree Maker. If they make
the
details of how that exchange occurs open to third parties, it may well be
the basis for a more widely adopted solution (the de facto standards
approach so beloved by Microsoft) as clearly Ancestry and FTM are
"heavyweight players" in the genealogy industry. However, Ancestry and FTM
may see advantages in restricting such a capability to their own products
in
order to lock users into using Ancestry and FTM only and thus may be
reluctant to make the mechanism known (or may protect it through patent or
similar). It will be interesting to see how this will play out.
So, while microformats fall into the category of "a good idea" for the
user,
it is less clear to me if the vendors will see a compelling business case
for them.
Kerry
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