Are you involved in a group genealogy research effort? Perhaps you and some of your distant cousins are collaborating together? Or your genealogy society is indexing local tombstone records? You may want to keep one master database that everyone can share. Until now, such databases were difficult to find, complex, expensive, and required a systems administrator to set them up for everyone’s use. Now Intuit, the producer of Quicken, has a new online offering that may change all that. Depending upon what features you want and how many databases are required, the service may be free or it may require a small expenditure.

QuickBase was released a few weeks ago. The company’s Web site says:

You don't need to be a technologist or engineer to use QuickBase. In minutes, not days, you can create a QuickBase to meet your business needs. Wizards walk you through the steps to input, organize, and then share your information with whomever you choose.

You can even import information from other files or paste from common word-processing and spreadsheet desktop applications. And QuickBase is completely Web-based, so it requires no software to install.

QuickBase also is sharable with anyone who has an e-mail address plus access to the World Wide Web. Information can be shared among users of Windows, Macintosh, Linux, UNIX and more. Best of all, the creator of the database controls access to the QuickBase by specifying who can view, modify or create records. The creator can grant "view only" permission to some users while giving full "modify and create" access to others. You can grant access to everyone in the world, even strangers to you, or you can limit access to only the individuals you specify.

QuickBase is a rather simple database program. It isn't as powerful as a genealogy program, nor is it as powerful as FileMaker or Access or other professional database packages. Yet it is simple to use, and someone else has the headaches of making backups (QuickBase lives on an Intuit server farm in San Diego). Sharing of information in QuickBase is much easier than in most other database products.

I looked through the sample templates supplied on the site. While I could not find any for genealogy, I did see templates for Little League team schedules and standings, non-profit fund raising tracking, and other templates of interest to non-profits. You will have to create your own genealogy template for your project, a task that seems to be simple and straightforward.

One of QuickBase's most powerful features is the ability it gives you to import a spreadsheet or other file into it. QuickBase then builds a database from a spreadsheet table. I decided to build a small database as an example. I created a tab-delimited list of some of the people in my database, which is stored in The Master Genealogist. Then I went to QuickBase’s Web site, created a database and imported the tab-delimited file into it. You can see my sample database at: https://www.quickbase.com/db/6x5sy9ri?act=ListAll. It isn’t very sophisticated, but keep in mind that it took me less than ten minutes to create the original file in The Master Genealogist, create a new QuickBase database, import the file into the database, and make the results visible to everyone on the World Wide Web. While simplistic, that’s still not bad for ten minutes’ work using a free service! The sample database that I created is visible to everyone on the Web, but only people that I designate are allowed to add or modify records.

QuickBase has several options. One that I liked is that the creator of the database can be notified by e-mail anytime someone else adds or modifies records.

One thing that might concern you is security. My sample database is visible to everyone on the Web, but you can limit access as you please on your databases. The data is encrypted when it's on the Internet between you and the server and is "lightly" encrypted on the server itself. This is probably more than sufficient for most genealogy purposes, but I wouldn’t recommend keeping your checkbook information or credit card information online.

QuickBase offers three levels of accounts:

1. FREE Starter Plan–A user may create up to three databases with a total of no more than 3 megabytes of data storage.
2. Basic Plan for $14.95 a month–The user may create up to 15 databases with a total of no more than 20 megabytes of data storage. The first 90 days’ use is free.
3. Premium Plan for $49.95 a month–The user may create up to 50 databases with a total of no more than 100 megabytes of data storage. The first 90 days’ use is free.

All three levels allow for the controlled sharing of information among multiple users. On the two higher-level plans, only the database creator has to pay. People who access shared data–even to add records–do so for free.

The trend of the future in software appears to be going to Web-based applications that users can access from anywhere. QuickBase is an excellent example of a Web-based application as the software is all installed at Intuit. The user simply opens a Web browser to access the application. The people who provide this kind of service are called Application Service Providers (or ASPs), and I believe that within a very few years an entire small business could be run from a Web browser. There will be no need for separate word processing, spreadsheet, database or e-mail programs. Everything will be done from your Web browser by accessing those applications online at someone else’s facility. In the 1970s we called this "timesharing." The computers have now come full circle back to that model.

QuickBase is not the first ASP database product that I have seen, but it certainly is the lowest-cost service. Free is hard to beat! Not everyone will be able to use the free service, but I suspect that many can.

For more information, or to create your own free, online database, go to: https://www.quickbase.com