This past year has been very successful for our company, all thanks to our great users – you! Thank you for your wonderful support of our version 7 release and for your continued suggestions and comments. We learned a lot along the way — we confirmed that setting a deadline for a release of a new software upgrade just doesn't always work. So we will probably use the word "soon" a lot less in the future. 🙂
We also traveled a lot this past year (over 50,000 miles in fact) attending successful conferences, user groups, and seminars. Our 5th annual Legacy Genealogy Cruise to Europe was well-attended and one of our year's highlights.
In January 2008 we received DearMYRTLE's Best of the Internet for Genealogist's award. Sure was great having DearMYRTLE on our cruise to Europe. We're also glad that her suitcase finally arrived (1 month after she returned home). We hope you'll want to join us in 2009 for our 6th annual genealogy cruise – Mediterranean/Greece.
In March, The Gold Bug released AniMap 3.0. I still don't know how anyone can successfully do North American research without their wonderful software. Sadly, in September, one of AniMap's developers passed away. Art Lassagne was a good friend. I always looked forward to conferences where he would be in attendance. His contributions to the genealogy field and his friendship will be missed.
In June we finally released Legacy Family Tree 7.0, with the all-new SourceWriter, Mapping, and Wall Charting features. We were swamped trying to fulfill upgrade orders for quite some time. Again, thanks to all of you for making this release such a success.
In the summer we released two more international versions of Legacy – German and Swedish. Legacy is now available in Danish, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and four English editions. A special thanks to all our translators for the hard work.
In October, FamilySearch announced that they reached 100 million new indexed names this year through the FamilySearchIndexing.com project. Way to go! On a personal note, last year I set a goal to index 15,000 names. Until I re-read my goals this morning I was a bit disappointed because I thought I set the bar higher (25,000 names). I actually surpassed my goal with 20,142 indexed names so far this year. I guess I still have a couple of days to go though….This indexing project still continues to be the grandest genealogy project in existance. If you haven't yet signed up, take a look at FamilySearchIndexing.com. Thanks to the more than 150,000 volunteers, records are now available for free searching at the new FamilySearch Record Search.
In November, I personally survived my first computer crash, just weeks after writing about my new favorite online backup service. Sure am glad I signed up when I did.
In 2008 we formed partnerships with Genealogical Publishing Company and Footnote.com to publish and distribute popular genealogy resource books in electronic (PDF) format:
- The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy
- Finding Italian Roots
- In Search of Your German Roots
- Evidence Explained
Mark Lang's new e-book, The Legacy Family: Legacy v7 and Companion Software, also hit our e-shelves and continues to sell very well.
As 2008 comes to a close, we are happy with the progress we are making as a company. We've had successes, learning moments, and growing pains. We've also developed a great plan for 2009 and beyond. One more thanks to the entire genealogy community for all you do to help genealogy progress. Happy New Year to everyone!
You guys are too modest 😉
You did not even mention that Legacy Charting won the geneaward for best new program of 2008!