Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thursday, our users in the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving by gathering their families together for dinner and giving thanks. Thanksgiving is traditionally a time to visit family and share memories and family stories. If you have the opportunity to spend time with your family, especially those that you don't see as often, don't forget to invite them to add what they know about your family history on Geni. Often times these families gatherings bring out memories and stories that you may not hear otherwise.

And while your at it, why not prepare your family by sending them some gifts from our new selection of Thanksgiving gifts? I definitely recommend the pie!

Send your family a gift

New Feature - Find Your Family

Geni is a collaborative tool that you and your family can use to build a common family history. With the new Find Your Family feature, you can quickly get your family on Geni to help you build your tree and create a scrapbook of your lives, even if you aren’t sure exactly how they are related.

Find Your Family

The easiest way to find family members on Geni is to search your address book. You can import addresses from Outlook, Webmail (such as gmail or yahoo), or from your Address Book. We’ll select anyone that we think you are related to and let you choose your other relatives. You can also invite friends - unrelated people you want to share your photos, videos, events with.

Your relatives will receive an invitation to join Geni they can use to start building their tree. They will also appear in your tree’s sidebar; you can start building their tree for them, and merge it into yours when the trees overlap.

Keep in mind:

• Geni will not store your password or contact information
• Geni will never email anyone without your direct consent

Find Your Family now

Requests Inbox

The new Requests Inbox helps you manage requests you’ve sent and received on Geni. Now you can quickly view a history of Family, Tree, and Friend requests that you have sent and received. Right from the Requests Inbox, you can accept, decline, cancel, remind, and message users. You will find the Requests Inbox in the Inbox subtab of your Home tab.

Unknown Gender

A new ‘Unknown’ option for gender lets you add relatives of unknown gender. This is useful for adding ancestors with uncertain genders, such as children with unusual names. Profiles with unknown gender will appear as green in your tree.

Open Web Awards: Voting is now open

Thanks to everyone who nominated Geni for an Open Web Award, Geni is a finalist in the Social Networking Applications category. Voting for the awards is now open, and you can cast one vote per Category per E-mail Address Per Day.

2008 Crunchies

Last year Geni was chosen as a Crunchies finalist. Nominations are now being accepted for the 2008 Crunchies:

Readers are invited to nominate their favorite product or company in each of the fifteen award categories below. Readers can vote once a day until nominations end Friday, December 10, 2008 Midnight PST.

Five finalists will be selected for each award category and popular voting will run from December 15 – January 5, 2009 Midnight PST. The winners will be announced live at the award ceremony on January 9 in San Francisco.

Both start-ups and established technology companies are invited to submit themselves for consideration. Finalists will be selected by the Crunchies Committee based on their specific business accomplishments achieved during calendar year 2008.

Nominate Geni for the 2008 Crunchies

Site Maintenance

Update: Everything should be back to normal again.

We're performing some site maintenance, so Geni.com may be temporarily unavailable for the next few minutes. We'll keep this post updated.

New Gifts

We've added a selection of new gifts that you can send to your family, including special gifts for weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. Here are some of the new additions:

 
 

Send a gift now

Using Outside Sources to Help with Your Family Tree

Because many Geni users are just getting started with their family history research, occasionally we like to share helpful resources thay may assist you in your research.Today's guest blogger Lee Everton presents Everton's Genealogical Helper. Make sure you check out the special offer at the end for Geni users:

As you enter new family members on your family tree, you will arrive at a point where it becomes more difficult to add branches to your family tree. There are several ways to get past this stumbling block. One is using the internet for research. A great way to use the internet is outlined in the November 2008 issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper in the article, "Your Geni.com Tree - Plant it, Water it, and Watch it Grow!" You should read this article to see all that Geni.com has to offer to every member of the family. That being said, there is another way to get over the stumbling block that you may have forgotten ... using printed sources.

The internet has a wealth of information and makes it easy to contact and stay in contact with others who might be working on your family line. But, much new information can be found in magazines such as Everton's Genealogical Helper. This is a sampling of what you will find in the latest issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper:

• Your Geni.com Tree - Plant it, Water it, and Watch it Grow!
• The Hereditary Order of the First Families of the Presidents and First Ladies of America
• Finding My Father - Don't believe everything you hear.
• Improving Your Genealogical Success Rate
• The 2008 American Community Survey - Were you required to fill in the forms?
• The Beginners Corner - Ideas to help you get started.
• Computer Helper - Reviews of CD-ROMs and Software for genealogists.
• On The Bookshelf - New books reviewed in the world of family history.
• Net Family History - Over 50 pages of website reviews, computer how-to's, software reviews and articles about various website services (such as GENI.com).
• Bureau of Missing Ancestors - People are always looking for information on their families. After all, why are you using GENI.com? The BMA gives you another resource to contact people who might be looking for your ancestors.
• On The Horizon - An exhaustive calendar of genealogical events sponsored by local societies, libraries and national groups. Dates and locations are provided along with who to contact.

There is so much more that is impossible to list here. Every issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper has more than 170 pages that are packed with information to help you find your ancestors.

Perhaps, when you are using one of the "other" sources to help you discover more of your family history, you will find new information that can be added to your family tree right here at Geni.com.

Everton's Genealogical Helper magazine has made it possible for Geni.com users to get a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to the online version of The Helper ($12 value) and receive TWO FREE PEDIGREE CHARTS ($30 value) when you subscribe to Everton's Genealogical Helper magazine for only $29 for an entire year. This is only available to members of the Geni.com community through this link: Geni.com Special.

Geni is Getting a Tune-up

Update: We're back.

We should be back in just a few minutes.

Sending Gifts to your Family

 

Whether it is their birthday, anniversary, or "just because", sending a virtual gift is a great way to show someone that you care. We've given each user three free gift credits to try out our our new, enhanced virtual gifts:

• Expanded Gift Selection: We've completely revised our gifts, with higher quality graphics and a better selection than ever. We'll add more gifts in the future to help your family celebrate holidays and other special events.
• Birthday & Anniversary Gifts: Birthday and Anniversary greetings are one of the most popular features on Geni. Now you can enhance your greetings with a virtual gift, which will be delivered in the guestbook along with your message.
• Gift Greetings: Every gift now includes a 'greeting' field you can use to add a personalized message to the gift. This greeting will appear in the recipient's guestbook.
• Advanced Purchase Discount: When you purchase 10 or 20 gifts in advance, you get half-off the dollar per gift price - that's 20 gifts for $10! Note that all credit card and transaction pages use SSL for extra security.
• Three Free Gifts!: As a gift to our current users, we've given each of your three free gift credits you can use to send gifts to your family. Send a gift now.

Geni Will Be Right Back

Update: We're back.

Please bear with us as we fix some technical difficulties on the Geni website. We should be back momentarily.

GEDCOM Import/Export is Temporarily Disabled

Update: GEDCOM Import/Export is now working again.

The GEDCOM Import/Export feature is temporarily disabled this morning. We expect it to be back online later this morning, and will update this post when it has returned.

The Open Web Awards are coming...

Nominations for the second annual Open Web Awards are now being accepted:

Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. This year, we’re partnering with over 100 blog partners, Poll Daddy for extra security and ease of voting and extending the nominations period and voting rounds for greater participation.

Nominations will be held from November 5th till November 16th 2008. The first and final voting rounds will be held from November 19th till December 15th.

GenTips: The Next Best Thing to Being There - Virtual Family Reunions

In this post, Geni guest blogger and avid genealogist Lisa Alzo helps you plan a "virtual family reunion".

Family reunions have traditionally provided a way to build and strengthen family ties.  Getting together with favorite cousins, long-lost relatives, or newly discovered kin provides a fabulous opportunity to reminisce about favorite family memories or share newly discovered details about your family tree.  But if you’re finding that tough economic times combined with conflicting schedules prevents you from planning or attending an “in person” gathering, why not consider the concept of a virtual family reunion (VFR)?  Computers, the Internet and other “high tech tools” make it easier than ever to connect with loved ones as often as you’d like.  Here are a few simple steps to set up a free family reunion online.

1. Identify Invitees – First, make a list of all family members you would like to invite to your VFR.  If you’ve been the organizer of a traditional family reunion in the past, pull out the guest list from the last gathering; if not, contact the reunion’s organizer who should have everyone’s contact information.
2. Ask for E-mail Addresses – It’s pretty likely that most of your family members will have a computer and Internet access, and an e-mail address.  If you don’t have someone’s e-mail address, call or write to them to ask for it.  While it’s hard to believe that there are folks out there who don’t use e-mail, this could be a possibility with some older family members (I have some aunts and uncles who don’t use e-mail).  If this is the case, try to enlist the help of the individual’s children or grandchildren or perhaps another relative to possibly get them set up with an e-mail account so that they won’t be left out of the loop.
3. Set Your Reunion “Site” – Just as you reserve a physical venue (picnic area, rental hall, resort, etc.) for a real-life gathering, you will need to find a place in cyberspace to hold your virtual family reunion.  Geni.com offers a free site to help you connect with family members to build a collaborative family tree and share information.  If you haven’t set up an account with Geni, you can do so in minutes.  Simply go to www.geni.com to get started.
4. Plan Your Program – When you hold a traditional family reunion, activities are often planned in advance.  You can do this with your online meetings too.  Start by adding content to your Geni.com site:  build a basic family tree, post photographs, family news, calendar items, and more.  Perhaps you can post photographs or video clips of past family reunions, weddings, holiday gatherings, etc.  Share a piece of news or a favorite family story on the site—something to get others interested in posting their own content.
5. Send Out Invitations – Invite others to participate in your Geni.com site by sending them a customized invitation via e-mail.  Customize your invitation message to tell them about the fun things you have planned for the site, and encourage them to share news, photographs, and other information, or invite them to help fill in the missing blanks of the family tree. Use the “discussion” feature to gather family information, plan events, or share memories. (For more information on Geni’s features, click on the “help” link at the bottom of your main page). Adding new content or discussion topics each week or a few times a month, will help to keep everyone coming back on a regular basis to see what’s new.

Once you’ve invited your family members, you can interact with them as often as you’d like.  And just like with “real world” reunions, the more effort you put into connecting with family in the virtual world, the more you’ll likely to get out of the experience.  Of course, there’s always something to be said for arranging personal visits with family whenever possible. But, depending on your own circumstances, meeting in the virtual world can often be the next best thing to being there.

If you enjoyed this Genealogy Tip by Lisa please join us again in a couple weeks for more. In the meantime, get out there and interview your family members and preserve your family history on Geni.

Enhanced Privacy, Search, and Events

Finding and staying in touch with your family on Geni is easier than ever with these recent enhancements:

Privacy

Geni protects the privacy of your information by restricting who can see your profile. By default, only your Family Group and your Family’s Family can see your profile:

• Your Family Group: These are the people you actively follow on Geni -- in your Family Newsfeed, Family Photos and Videos, and Family Calendar. By default it consists of you and your spouse’s 5th cousins and closer. You can define this group by degrees of relationship, or by adding or removing people individually.
• Your Family’s Family: These are the people in your Family Group’s Family Group. In other words, you share a family member in common with them. These people can see your profile, but you do not follow each other. You can use Geni’s privacy settings to hide some or all of your profile information from them.

No one outside these groups can see your profile. If you want your profile to be publicly visible, you can change your search settings.

Search

Search results are now divided between profiles “Connected to You” and “Not Connected to You”:

• “Connected to You”: These profiles are in trees directly or indirectly connected to your tree. This makes finding relatives and inlaws much easier than previously.
• “Not Connected to You”: These profiles are in other Geni trees. You can use it to search for relatives in other trees and then seek to merge those trees. By default, only users and deceased people appear in these search results; living profiles who haven’t joined Geni yet are not searchable by the public. You can change these search settings for yourself and the profiles you’ve added.

Events

The distinction between participant, attendee, and fans of events has been removed. Each event now has a creator and associated people. This simplifies event creation and privacy. In addition, you can now edit your family's events to create a more complete timeline of your family history.

View your family timeline

More Enhancements

Family News Filter Select the types of stories you see in your Family News with the new story-type filter. Want to only see upcoming birthday and anniversaries? You can do it. Just photos, videos, and gifts? Yep, no problem!

Video Your family videos on Geni now have date, location, and description fields. Photos also get the new description field.

Tree Preferences Use the new "Open profiles in new window" to keep your tree in one window while viewing and editing profiles in another browser window.

GEDCOM Import You can now import GEDCOM files with up to 50,000 records. Profiles that are over 125 years old in your GEDCOM will automatically be marked as deceased when imported, and we now expose place names imported from your GEDCOM.