Unlike last week’s Web Service Wednesday idea (Amazon Prime), this week’s suggestion is very easy to give.  This is a good gift for your family story-telling grandma, your underemployed niece, your slightly obsessive mother-in-law, and your history major son.

Ancestry.com is a web service that allows its users to build family trees.  What’s impressive about Ancestry.com is that it gives you access to billions of records (e.g., immigration, census, military records) + information inputted from its millions of users. It’s easy to use and incredibly addictive.

All you do is type in your name and a few more family members (parents + grandparents ideally) and the program helps with the rest.  It suggests family members for you and then you say whether or not you’re related given the data presented.

Now this doesn’t come cheap, and that’s why it could be a great gift for someone in your family.  The gift membership costs $155 for 12 months and $77 for 6 months.

But as someone who can attest to many hours spent on Ancestry.com, I can promise that it’ll make some history nerd if your family very happy.