This is provided for your information only. It is NOT an endorsement. I don't use Family Tree Legends and have no connection to them. I gather the charter price will only be available in May. The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2004 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com <http://www.eogn.com/>. This is late-breaking news. I do not yet have all the details but do want to include a quick mention in this week’s newsletter. Just as I was about to send this newsletter (at 4:00 AM from a London hotel room), I was informed that Pearl Street Software a few minutes ago announced a new commercial online genealogy service. You may know Pearl Street Software that produces the Family Tree Legends genealogy program that I have reviewed in the past. I consider it to be an excellent program; easy to use and yet it has a long list of features that serious genealogists demand. Now Pearl Street Software has announced the Family Tree Legends Records Collection. It's a collection of more than 400 million records that will become available in June 2004. Please note that the new service does not require the Family Tree Legends software for use. According to Cliff Shaw, President and CEO of Pearl Street Software, "The competition is really what got us into this market. Subscription prices have continued to rise for several years now. Personally, I don't feel like the existing services have improved enough to justify their increase in cost. So many of our customers have expressed frustration about the rising cost of genealogy data on the Internet. Some even say that they just can't afford to do genealogy any more, especially some of our users on fixed incomes. In my mind, the genealogy subscription market has become inflated because there's no competition to the existing services. We plan to restore some healthy competition to the subscription market and FAST!" The collection reportedly will contain birth, marriage, and death indexes from most states, military records, land records, court and probate records, biographies, cemetery transcriptions, and hundreds of books. Cliff Shaw reports, "We're going to be investing in our service heavily and adding new databases frequently. 400 million is only a starting point. We'll be adding new collections and features to enhance the value of our service. Our main goal is to make our service as user friendly and powerful as possible, while remaining very affordable." For a limited time, Pearl Street Software is offering a special pre-order price of $19.95 per year to become a charter member. The regular price will be $29.95. You can find more information about this new service at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.668 / Virus Database: 430 - Release Date: 4/24/2004