While web-surfing the other day I came across FamilySearch Labs where familysearch.org is showcasing some new and interesting "future tools for digging up the past."

FamilySearch Labs showcases new family history technologies that aren't ready for prime time. Your feedback will help us refine new ideas and bring them to market sooner. Have fun playing with these innovations and send your feedback directly to our development teams.

Some of the items found at FamilySearch Labs...

Record Search - Record Search helps you identify your ancestors by letting you search millions of indexed records and by letting you browse images of records that have not yet been indexed. Requires registration, but is free. So far the indexed collections are rather sparse, but from what I hear it promises to provide a lot more in the future.

FamilySearch Indexing  - is a released product that allows "volunteers extract family history information from digital images of historical documents to create searchable indexes that assist everyone in finding their ancestors." You download and install the free software to your computer they feed you images which you transcribe and index into templates designed for the specific type of document that you are viewing. When completed you then submit the index back to FamilySearch.org through the software's interface. (see more at http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/index.jsp)

Family Tree - is a demo of a interactive pedigree viewer to see and navigate a tree and drill down on individuals. This ties-in with the New FamilySearch (NFS) which is a new Internet service which allows members of the LDS Church to collaberate on their family history.  It is being rolled out over the course of about a year to members of the Church throughout the world.

Articles of interest regarding NFS:

PAF is only mostly-dead
http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2008/03/paf-is-only-mostly-dead.html

Software and New FamilySearch
http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2007/09/software-and-new-familysearch.html
"Genealogists who are not members of the LDS faith will eventually have access to the New FamilySearch"

Interfacing with NFS - Part One (http://rzamor1.blogspot.com/2007/09/interfacing-with-nfs-part-one.html)
discusses which software products will interface with NFS

Official Word on NFS Delay - http://rzamor1.blogspot.com/2008/03/official-word-on-nfs-delay.html

Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilySearch#New_FamilySearch 

Interesting feature of NFS is described as follows:
Very comprehensive source citations, including links to source images. This promised linking service may not be available in earlier versions. Documents scanned from the Church's 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed vital records, from around the world, will eventually be linked to individuals in the system. These films are currently being scanned and indexed, for more details see the Church's FamilySearchIndexing web site.