This week, I took a fresh look at this and several other gems from my family history with help from a company that has led the charge in online genealogy for 15 years: Ancestry.com. Thanks to mobile apps, other users and a new ability to synchronize content between the Web and desktop software, Ancestry has grown into a robust tool.

The World War I draft card for the author’s great grandfather.

Since I last tested Ancestry in 2006, the company has revamped its desktop software program, Family Tree Maker, so the program can synchronize with Web-based data on Ancestry.com. It’s now available as a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad and Android phones. And the site holds over eight billion records, including content from a partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The addition of mobile apps plus the syncing feature make Ancestry.com more useful and will bring me back to the site more often. I found several new things on Ancestry this time around, including more census data, ship manifests for two cruises an aunt took, and more suggested family-tree data from other users.

I tested Ancestry.com, its iPhone and iPad apps and the Family Tree Maker desktop software on a Mac. I found a computer to be the best tool for inputting family information like names, birth dates, death dates and locations using Ancestry.com and the Family Tree Maker software. The iPad app was the most enjoyable way of exploring my family-tree records. The site’s pricing can be confusing given the various membership and access levels.

A simple right-to-left swipe on the iPad screen shifted my view of the tree from one branch to the next. In four swipes, I dove back in time to read about my mother’s father’s mother’s mother, Florence Antonia Ford, and her family in the 1910 Census record. Using the iPad on my lap, related records from Ancestry felt more personal than seeing them on a computer. A pinch-to-zoom gesture let me clearly read names and details in each record. (Records can be magnified on a computer screen as well, which is helpful when studying small cursive writing or type, like a 1935 passenger list for a cruise to Bermuda that included my Great Aunt Romayne’s name.)

I was delighted to find data I entered on Ancestry.com six years ago was still in my account, which saved me the trouble of inputting everything again. A new feature called TreeSync let me synchronize all of my family-tree information over to my Family Tree Maker desktop software, and vice versa. After using the Ancestry app on my iPad and adding records to my family tree, I easily synced that data with my desktop software by clicking a top-right button when I next opened the Family Tree Maker.

Users who have spent years on Family Tree Maker software, which has been around for 23 years, will be able to sync data from their PCs to the Web version of their family trees. They can now opt to make their trees public for all Ancestry users to access, thus growing the online database.

I found the desktop software to be more heavy-duty than the website and mobile apps, but its interface is a bit antiquated in comparison.

Winston Churchill’s family tree seen via Ancestry.com’s app on the iPad.

Whenever Ancestry.com has a “hint” to show you about a name you entered on your tree, a green leaf appears beside that name. Selecting that leaf lets you see anything in the Ancestry database that may be associated with that name. These could include paper records scanned in by Ancestry.com or content entered by other people. You can view these hints and, if applicable, merge that data with your own after viewing a side-by-side comparison of your information and the new information.

You can share your findings with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email. When I saw my grandfather’s signature on his World War I draft card, I clicked one button and shared this digitized memento from 1917 with friends and family on Facebook. Content shared from Ancestry.com can be seen by other people, even if they don’t have an account, for up to 14 days. You also can keep everything private.

I know quite a bit about my family history, thanks to work my grandfather did years ago, and this helped me with entering names and knowing which hints were relevant or not. For example, an Ancestry-suggested hint that a record for Florence Ladley was for Florence Antonia Ford in my tree wasn’t accurate. I made the most progress when I called my parents for more names and dates.

Ancestry.com offers a free 14-day trial, after which fees range from $13 to $35 a month, depending on six-month or monthly memberships and whether a person is paying for U.S. Discovery (all records in the U.S.) or World Explorer (unlimited access, including records from other countries) access. The Family Tree Maker software, which starts at around $32, can be downloaded to Macs or Windows PCs or bought in stores. Combined pricing for the desktop software and access to the website starts around $40.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.

For a demonstration go to www.myfamily.com/demo

This week, I tested one of the many Web sites created specifically to target families: myfamily.com. Myfamily is a free site that serves as a place where invited members can upload photos, videos, news, recipes, family-tree entries and other data in a few steps. Naturally, this idea of helping families stay in touch through a Web site is one which many companies are anxious to monopolize. Sites vying for the spotlight include the likes of Famster, The Family Post and MyGreatBigFamily.com. Some of these charge monthly or annual fees and offer features like online chatting within the site or ritzy background music while the site is being viewed, neither of which are currently included in myfamily.

Myfamily’s ace in the hole is its popular relative, Ancestry.com. Both sites are owned by parent company, Generations Network Inc., which means that Ancestry’s wealth of digitally scanned data and genealogy research can be linked to myfamily.com, enriching the site. Another big plus for myfamily is that it gives users the chance to add voice recordings to photos. These can be used to narrate a slide show (called SnapGenies) or when commenting on a shared image. Voice comments are added by following on-screen instructions and calling a 1-800 number.

I enlisted help from seven of my family members to test our own myfamily.com site. With a little coaching, my 82-year-old grandfather added a digital photo and an accompanying audio comment to our site. My Mom supplied images, voice comments and text comments. And my Dad needed only a little time during a busy week to add his voice comments to photos I posted of last year’s Thanksgiving.

But myfamily.com isn’t without its flaws. The site has been around by name for 10 years; however, I tested the newest version of this site, myfamily.com 2.0, which is still in its beta, or test, stages and is definitely still working out some of its bugs.

For example, a “What’s New” list on the home page should display recent site changes yet unseen by the user, but a video that I posted didn’t show up here, nor did new comments about photos. Also, two of my relatives received error messages when first trying to access the site with my invitation. And when a friend of mine added a 96-person family tree to her own site, the tree disappeared upon her next visit. (Luckily, she found it via an emailed link from the company.)

Myfamily cleverly starts new users on a page where they can create a site, rather than first asking for a username and password, as is done by many sites. It works on Macs and PCs, and on all three major browsers, though Apple’s Safari browser has a few hiccups.

For now, myfamily.com doesn’t offer unique URLs like www.boehretfamily.com; instead, users go to myfamily.com and sign in with a username and password. The site automatically remembers you when you return, so regularly accessing it from the same computer is a cinch.

The family member who creates the site (in this case, me) is designated the administrator and can invite anyone to become a site member. Invitees are labeled as either members or guests; the former can add content to the Web site while the latter can only view and comment on the site’s contents.

Administrators can choose from four themes with different colors and patterns, and each site is laid out in the same way: members listed on the left, three advertisements, a centered photo and lists of What’s New and Upcoming Events. Myfamily will introduce themes with more variety in the next few weeks.

Simple tabs running across the top ridge of the page organize the site’s content into Photos, Videos, Discussions, SnapGenies, Trees (as in family trees), Events, Files and People. I got started by dragging and dropping batches of digital photos from my hard drive onto the site using a fast uploading tool. Photos can be listed alone or in virtual albums, which organize them a bit better. I also added videos to the site, and though these took a little longer to load, they were as easy to post as my digital photos.

Myfamily.com’s integration with voice comments is a huge plus for the site. I smiled listening to my Mom’s emotional tone in a heartfelt comment that she left with a photo of my cousin’s 21st birthday. On another photo of two relatives asleep in chairs after Thanksgiving dinner, my Dad left a voice comment in which he joked about how exciting the dinner must have been. These comments could easily have been left in text form, but by following on-screen instructions to call a number, enter a PIN and leave a message, my own family site suddenly became much more personal.

I also used the phone to create narrated slide shows called SnapGenies. I spoke into the phone to describe each photo and then skipped to the next image on my computer screen before talking about the next shot. When finished, I hung up the phone, and the result was a simple slide show that anyone in my family could play back with ease. The instructions for ending these SnapGenies could stand to be a bit clearer, but myfamily says it is working on this.

Family trees can be created on the site or uploaded from existing family-tree files. Photos, audio and video can be uploaded from your computer to the tree, and these trees are shared with family members who can also contribute to them. With an Ancestry.com subscription (annual U.S. searching cost is $13 a month), users can attach historical census, immigration and military records to their trees, as well as hints about other people. Before the end of the year, myfamily.com users will be able to upload content from a family site directly to the tree.

My sister posted a couple of items under the Discussions tab: a recipe for Skillet Tamale Pie in Recipes, and Web sites related to our next family vacation in the News section. She asked our whole family to take a look at a list of midvacation excursions to decide which ones we wanted to go on, evoking a few responses from the younger members.

In its current state, myfamily doesn’t limit the amount of data uploaded to a site, though individual file sizes are technically limited (videos can’t exceed 100 megabytes each and photos can’t exceed around 10 megabytes each). Myfamily plans to offer an ad-free subscription model at the start of 2008 that will offer more storage; the company estimates that this paid model will cost about $30 annually.

Email updates are sent to site members daily or weekly to inform them about the site’s latest developments. Improvements are on the horizon for myfamily.com, including person-to-person chatting through the site, simple photo editing and the ability to create hyperlinks in posts.

The myfamily.com name has 10 years behind it — staying power that resonates with families who worry about their tediously entered data disappearing should a Web site go belly-up. To placate old and new site members, this 2.0 version of the site needs to make sure it’s dependably usable at all times. The new version of myfamily.com is off to a good start, and family members of all ages will feel comfortable here whether browsing the site or adding content of their own.

-Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com