IainB:

Thank you very much for the excellent mini-review of Qiqqa, which is a very exciting product. However, I'd like to raise an issue that has made me wary - perhaps unduly so - of using Qiqqa. This relates to one of the terms and conditions to which Quantisle wants to bind its users. When I began installing Qiqqa this afternoon I noticed the following clause in their License Agreement:

"By adding Content to Qiqqa and/or syncing your Content with a Web Library, you grant
Quantisle Ltd. a world-wide license to use this Content for the provision of PERSONALISED
services to you (not limited to parsing, indexing, transmission and storage) and for the
provision of anonymized AGGREGATED services to other users of Qiqqa (not limited to
aggregated crowd-sourced metadata and group recommendations).  The rights to the
ownership of the Content remain entirely yours."

After cancelling the installation I looked to see whether this clause had raised concerns from others. The only one I found was one posted on the Qiqqa forum about four months ago, at: https://getsatisfaction.com/qiqqa/topics/terms_and_conditions_and_content

The drafting of the clause itself seems to me to make its meaning ambiguous: does it apply to merely adding content to Qiqqa, or only to syncing the added content to a web library? I also found the answers by Qiqqa, to be unsatisfactory: in essence, "Trust me I'm a well-intentioned software designer."

First, the answer fails to address the potential user's question directly: can he or she use the software in the way desired?

Second, it does not explain why indexing locally held pdf documents should trigger the possibility of legal action against Quantisle.  After all, there are a great many other software programs - for example indexed search programs - that seem untroubled by these apparent risks. Is the notional risk because Qiqqa seeks to gain access via the internet to users' computers in order to index their pdf files?

Third, those who employ the pdf file format - e.g., for their own use; to circulate within a closed group, such as a research team or as part of the pre-publication editorial process; or for any number of other professional reasons - are unlikely to be persuaded to use Qiqqa if there is any chance of such documents being circulated or becoming accessible to outside persons. These are not only privacy issues but also security ones since potential users could include lawyers, law enforcement agencies, criminologists, medical researchers, etc. The rights to such intellectual property may "remain entirely yours", as Quantisle says, but is this assurance enough?

My apologies in advance if this sounds somewhat paranoid, nit-picking, scare-mongering, misleading, and so on...

DBC

You might like to try LivingTime. Here are some screenshots:
http://www.livingtime.com/screenshots/index.html

The software was - I think - originally designed for the Mac, but there is a Windows version as well that I use. It uses Filemaker. To be honest, I haven't come upon anything nearly as well-designed as it is for the tasks you have in mind. That said there are some hokey aspects to it, and on a PC it shows its Mac origins a bit too obtrusively in the somewhat clunky and cutesy interface. Don't let these put you off trying it out...

My only reservation (apart from the above) is that its development seems to have been languishing for some time. I think this is because it is such a specialized piece of software. OTOH, I would have thought that genealogists would have seen its potential for recording their own lives in detail and the lives of their immediate relatives for their descendants.

Derek