Finding Family

Posted February 8, 2007 by Geni | 24 Comments

Here’s a tip from a highly active member, Philip L. who has over 2,000 family members on his tree  “I find that an easy way to locate younger family members is to use social networking sites like Myspace.  I take tidbits about someone in my genealogy and I find matches. I then shoot them email messages informing them that I’d like to give them access to our family site.  I’ve been able to re-connect with lost cousins up to 4 generations removed”

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  • http://mytechieself.blogspot.com Mskadu

    Hi,
    I have a help request. I have a family tree and i am trying to add a distant relative. He too already happens to be a member of Geni and has his own tree.
    When i try to put in his email, Geni says that this email is already taken (thats a weird thing to say, i am not trying to claim his email id!).
    What i would like to see is that i add this email and he gets sent an email that says i am requesting access to see his tree or add him to mine. If he accepts, then we connect.
    Does something like this already happen? I cant seem to find mention in the help.
    Please help. The number of relatives who have a similar problem is growing rapidly.
    thanks
    - Mskadu

  • Michal Chaniewski

    Hello,
    one thing that I think is missing from geni.com is globalization. I don’t see any way to set or change language of the UI. Do you plan to add such functionality? I’d really want to invite some people from my family, but I know that they don’t know English.

  • Jörgen Björkman

    Where do you submit feature requests?
    I have tried Geni for a while and I miss some features that I think would make Geni even better but haven’t found a way to submit these feature requests. Could someone direct me to the correct forum for this?

  • Jörgen Björkman

    I have tried Geni for a couple of days now
    and have 90 persons in my family tree in collaboration with my uncle
    Product suggestions:
    - When displaying a persons family tree
    have an option that limits the view to
    immediate relatives (ie parents,
    siblings, spouses and children).
    - A Print Function that
    - Prints the entire family tree to the
    printer on so many pages that are
    neccessary
    - Prints the immediate relatives family
    tree (see above) on a single A4 page
    - Prints the entire family list
    - Prints the immediate family list
    - Prints one persons profile
    - Prints immediate familys persons
    profiles
    - Prints entire family persons profiles
    - Save as PDF
    - Entire family tree on one big page
    - Entire family tree on several pages
    (A4 or A3 format) for later printouts.
    - Entire family list (as many A4 pages as
    needed)
    - Immediate family list (as many A4 pages
    as needed)
    - One persons profile
    - Entire familys persons profiles
    - Immediate familys persons profiles
    - Save as .jpg
    - Entire family tree on one big jpg
    - Immediate family list on one jpg
    - Save as .doc/.rtf/.txt
    - One persons profile
    - Immediate familys persons profiles
    - Entire familys persons profiles
    When I’m done collecting all relatives in Geni I would like use the above mentioned functions to export ihe information about my family and make a “my family book” containing something like:
    - My grandfathers immediate family tree
    (jpg)
    - My grandfathers immediate family list
    (rtf)
    - My grandfathers immediate family persons
    profiles (rtf).
    - My oldest uncles immediate family tree
    (jpg)
    - My oldest uncles immediate family list
    (rtf)
    - My oldest uncles family persons
    profiles (rtf).
    - My second oldest uncles …
    - my oldest aunts (grandfathers 3rd
    child) …
    - Cousin 1 …
    - Cousin 2 …
    I would then take all these peaces and combine them into one big doc/rtf document
    (JPGs and RTFs) and add additional information then create a PDF and print out and give a copy to all my relatives.
    Is it possible to add these functions to Geni? Would anyone else like to have them?
    when can they be implemented?

  • Syd Carter

    Agree.. I am interested in printing and exporting functions too. Especially so that I can expand the tree to contain whatever branch I want to include in the print out, and have the ability for the print-out to go to large format printers.

  • http://360.yahoo.com/nickhoh Nick

    One feature request I’d like to make is to have a timeline view so that you can see all the people who have entered or left the family tree as time goes on. It would be even better if the timeline could be annotated with other info such as wedding date, family reunions, etc.

  • Pär

    I have used Geni.com (its amazing!!!) for a couple of weeks now (286 persons and growing). And here are a few functions that I miss:
    1. A geographical map so you can see where in the world different members of the family is located.
    2. A messageboard or guestbook for all the members of the tree where you can ad messages to the whole family. Not the personal guestbook there is today.
    3. Settings where you can decide which personal information you want to see directly in the tree. Like:
    Dan Brown
    B: 1945.
    Current location: New York
    4. Print or PDF options
    5. Backupoptions if the geni.com servers would crash and delete all the information. (would be a disaster)
    Keep up the good work! I love this site.
    //Pär

  • http://jeffchan.org Jeff

    Hey guys, nice job on this site.
    I have a few suggestions:
    I’m using Firefox 2.0, and everytime I add something, it’s always loading loading loading. Any way to speed things up?
    Another suggestion would be a way to print my family tree.
    Thanks.

  • pam mckelvey

    Any way to add a family pet to our profile?

  • Farrel Buchinsky

    In response to the original post. Can the poster elaborate upon
    “I take tidbits about someone in my genealogy and I find matches”
    I do not understand

  • Farrel Buchinsky

    Can the original poster elaborate upon
    “I take tidbits about someone in my genealogy and I find matches”
    I do not know what he or she means.

  • Anthony Pantekoek

    I have a brief suggestion for a new feature. I would like the ability to more tightly integrate individuals, and groups, with services like Flickr and YouTube. Specifically, the ability to associate images and video to family members via tags, sets, groups, channels, etc. It would be nice if there were a way to mash together or integrate these services.

  • http://www.peutetreunereponse.net Peut-êtreUneRéponse

    First, sorry, my english is bad! :)
    Second, I have used Geni since 17th january and I find this service “gigantesque”!!! Now I have 211 persons on my tree that continue growing.
    Here, some things not important but usefull I think missing:
    1. the URLs in form “contact” must be clickable on “profile” (blog, Personal Website, Flickr, FaceBook…)
    2. Oups I forget. :D
    Bonne contiuation.

  • http://keldine.ca/phpGedView/pedigree.php?rootid=I0801 Curtis Bard

    Congratulations and thanks for an awesome Web site that will surely attract many genealogy newbies who will see that genealogy, family history, and collaborative research & record keeping, can be EASY and FUN!
    Please keep it FREE! Generate income via sponsors, sales of various genealogy products such as colorful wall charts, CDs, print on-demand books, etc.
    Geni staff can find many useful features and helpful hints for your site from a review of these Web sites that show various types of collaborative software.:
    http://www.dna-pat.com/
    http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php
    http://keldine.ca/phpGedView/pedigree.php?rootid=I0801

  • http://fanau.wordpress.com myles

    hey great site!
    i appreciate you are working on features. could i encourage you to work on features to improve the online site (like RSS feeds) and de-prioritise integrating with other family tree tools that I see people write about.
    your strength is your ‘online’ ‘social networking’ ‘user generated content’ so prioritise things that accentuate this: like RSS feeds.
    RSS feeds are for the online savvy people and you will find are VERY viral to get repeat visitors.
    Let other tools handle the people who want to print their whole family tree or export it to some offline format like txt or pdf.
    just my $0.02 worth.

  • barca

    I dont understand the filter “blood relatives” in List View. When I use this filter I see also persons, that are not my blood relatives ….wife of my uncle, wife of my brother. What kind of blood relatives are in this filtered view? I am interested of view with my real blood relatives.

  • http://profile.typekey.com/geniblog/ Geni Team

    You are correct that when you select ‘View My Family List’ then use the drop down menu ‘blood relatives’ — you may see some folks that are not blood relatives. We’re reported this to our tech team–thanks for bringing this to our attention.

  • Eddie Hornick

    When entering wives do you use their married last names and put their maiden names in the maiden name field or do you use their maiden name as last name? I usually see it done on older hand drawn charts with maiden names. Any tips on this before I get too far into it?
    Thanks!

  • Oscar Eklund

    Hey, great site!
    Since my family tree is growing, I also have some suggetions:
    - Personal backup-file
    - Printable tree and list
    - Settings what to see in the tree; Name, date of birth, date of death, location etc
    - Remove the grey photo-button until photo is added on a person.

  • Fredrik

    Hi
    I have a problem with drawing up my family tree that is based on having several interlocking ties:
    My grandfather on my father’s side had two children with my grandfather (i.e. his wife), one of them obviously my father. After my grandmother died, my grandfather remarried to my mother’s sister and they had two children. My father then married my mother and gave birth to me and my mother.
    This means that two of my cousins are also my half-uncles, i.e. half-brothers to my father.
    I know it probably sounds like incest, but it isn’t if you think about it: father marries one sister and his son the other.
    Anyway, back to my problem: I do not seem to make geni/the tree understand these links and I am forced to put in my grandfather and my mothers-sister twice in the tree.
    Is there a way to get around this problem?
    My particular problem might seem a little odd, but I am quite sure that similar problems will become rather common as trees grow bigger and families constellations change – not to mention in cultures where marriages between cousins is more common…

  • Elliot

    Hi Guys
    Love the site.
    My Mother’s cousin’s brother-in-law is Married to my Dad’s sister. (Honestly, it’s not insestuious – work it out!).
    Anyway, he appears twice on my tree – on my fathers side and on my mothers but there is no way for Geni to recognise that he is the same person. Could you add the option to search existing tree members when adding a relative? (Again its not insest I promise).
    Thanks

  • Sama Malik

    I love this site! We’ve been trying to create a family tree as a family project for quite a few years now, but have not found as creative and easy a solution as this! Thank you so much for making this available to everyone.
    Suggestions/help requests:
    1. Somebody else also mentioned this above, but if I have a relative who already has an account created with Geni, how can I add them to my tree?
    2. If I have a relative who is related to me in multiple ways, how can I include the same person twice as different relations?
    Thanks,
    Sama

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