I'm fond of reminding anyone who'll listen that genealogy is the second-most-popular subject on the Internet, after sex. But, despite the booming online interest in genealogy, until recently, researching your family tree on the Web was a lot like sex on the Web — stimulating, perhaps, but ultimately not very satisfying.

You could connect with distant cousins, explore a bazillion links and search library catalogs. You could even download whole branches of your family tree — but nobody verifies these posted pedigrees, and most don't include sources. After a few downloads, these online GEDCOM files start to seem like, well, online pornography: You know they're not the real thing, so why bother?