Kolob is a web app for recording LDS temple work done for our ancestors.
First of all, this project is in no way sponsored by or is an official project of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's just me doing something fun and useful.
Ok, here's some background. Genealogy is huge. People love finding out about who their ancestors are, where they come from, and what stories accompany the people that ultimatley make up who they are. Many of these people have passed on without a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, they have the opportunity to learn about our Savior in the life after death and, if they so choose, accept Him. Part of that plan is making covenants (two-way promises) with God, where we can commit to Him that we are willing to keep certain commandments and, in turn, He promises us certain blessings, and ultimately those blessings lead to living with Him and with our families for ever. Many of these covenants are made within special buildings called temples, and the events where we make those convenants are called ordinances. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we seek out our ancestors so that we can perform these ordinances in place of those who died without having a chance to do it for themselves. God loves all his children, and it only makes sense that He would provide a way for everyone to benefit from these blessings.
Many of them are on the other side waiting. It's up to us to get to work and help them.
See http://lds.org and http://familysearch.org for the bigger picture.
Once the temple ordinances are done for your ancestors, the ordinances are recorded and eventually show up in your family tree on http://familysearch.org. While it is a policy not to keep track of who attends the temple, our ward (LDS church group) thought it would be a good idea to keep track of what ancestors had what work done. It's interesting for us to look at that group of people as sort of a sister ward of ours here. This is certainly not church doctrine, but it's fun for us, and even motivational, to see the people that we, as a group, have provided these opportunities for. That's what Kolob does. It allows you, as a ward, to track the "celestial ward" that you are building.
- There is a branch that allows an entire stake (collection of wards) to contribute, and it keeps track per-ward. Currently there's no migration from the ward-only database to the stake database. I need to look into that.