I just found out about two wonderful browser helpers for 23andme that work only in Chrome and installed them both. So far I am absolutely delighted with them.

• 23++  totally redoes the 23andme inbox so you can search by name or subject. Since I have a few hundred messages by now this is essential. I had been continuing many conversations via email partly because the inbox at 23andme was so limited. This addon also adds functionality to the relative finder, as well as other features

• 529andyou collects data in your local chrome mySQLlite database every time you look at the table comparison in the ancestry lab Family Inheritance Advanced and puts an icon on the far right side of the url box at the top that you can click to see this data

So my first effort with 529 was to look at my three 5th cousins that are all descended from Isaak and Sara Steinhardt:

So I put each of them in the first box on Family Inheritance Advanced me and the other two on the right. Plus I did myself. Looked at all of them in table view and then clicked the icon and this is what I saw ( I changed their names):

What conclusions can I draw from this chart? That we all inherited different bits from our gggg-grandparents except for a spot on chromosome 18 where we all may have gotten the some of the same stuff. Since the Steinhardts and descendants for a few more generations were ashkenazi, some of the DNA we each share with each other may also have come from further back along some other line. My cousins may know of other common relatives with each other but for myself I know of no others with these three.  Matches that are over 10 cm or have alot of SNPs are considered more recent and more significant. So I would think that the 11.8 cm match that I have with TR is from the Steinhardts. Also the larger matches with FH.

So basically this app is doing the collecting work for me. What I prefer is to go through and do each person and keep a spreadsheet for each individual and then make notes and check if my matches with overlapping segments match each other and then see if I can figure out which line it is likely from based on the other matches. I discussed that in detail in my post about making spreadsheets of DNA matches. Great fun and very time consuming!