For those of us with an unsatiable curiousity for what's coming next to the world of genealogy, beta sites such as FamilySearch Labs help fuel our passion. You can check out what the development teams at FamilySearch are working on next, and help test and comment on them in real-time. The current project - Pedigree Viewer - has advanced considerably in the past few months based on input from testers. There's also a Life Browser under development which serves as a visual gallery of information about a particular person - highlighting photos, videos, documents, and other artifacts. Check it out and see what's planned for the new and improved FamilySearch. You can even keep up with the latest additions and improvements in the FamilySearch Labs blog. Once new technologies are tweaked and considered to be a success, they are moved to FamilySearch.org for prime time release. The popular FamilySearchIndexing project grew out of FamilySearch Labs, which means that the final version works - and works well.

If you'd like to help contribute to the future of online genealogy, then head on over to FamilySearch Labs and check it out.