February 2010

Are you related to Hernán Cortés de Pizarro? http://www.geni.com/people/Hernán-Cortés-de-Pizarro/6000000000267758472

Profile of the Day: Wilhelm Grimm http://www.geni.com/people/Wilhelm-Grimm/6000000006595371172

Profile of the Day: Douglas MacArthur http://www.geni.com/people/Douglas-MacArthur/6000000002789207311

UPDATE: And we're back. Sorry for the inconvenience. We're taking the site down for maintenance – should be just a few minutes. We'll let you all now when we're back.

We've recently rolled out some requested changed to profile photos. If you use the identify feature to indicate where a person is in a photo, we'll now use that part of the photo for their profile. If you use the resize photo option in the tree, we'll use this as well. This means you can now, for example, use one group photo as profile photos for everyone in the photo. We're converting existing identified photos… Read the full story

Posting a link is an easy way to add a link to any web page, such as a census record or grave image, to a relative’s profile. Today we’re making posted links better by making them part of our new documents feature. When you post a link, we’ll take a snapshot of the page you are posting and display it just like other documents on Geni. This means you can view the page without opening… Read the full story

http://www.geni.com/people/Benedict-Arnold-The-Traitor/6000000001691483953 Before he was known as a traitor, he was a general during the American Revolutionary War. Had he received a promotion to major general, he might have never betrayed his country. Today marks the anniversary of the day that Congress passed over him and promoted a few others instead. Are you related to Benedict Arnold? 

http://www.geni.com/profile/index/6000000000830497857 On this day in 1546, Martin Luther died. Is he in your tree?

http://www.geni.com/people/Thomas-Jefferson/6000000003849466047 On this day in 1801, Thomas Jefferson is elected the 3rd US President.

http://www.geni.com/people/Nebkheperre-Tutankhamun-Pharaoh-of-Egypt/6000000000112649355 On this day in 1923 Archaeologists open the tomb of King Tut. Are you related to the Pharaoh? 

http://www.geni.com/people/Bruce-Jenner/6000000000782076029 Tonight is the Vancouver 2010 Olympics Opening Ceremony on NBC. In honor of the Olympics, Bruce Jenner is the Profile of the Day.

The accuracy of the data on Geni is obviously very important. Sometimes bad data is added to a profile by mistake, for example missing a digit when entering a year of birth. Sometimes the bad data comes from a bad gedcom file. In any case, we've taken steps in the past to improve our error correction to prevent or eliminate bad data. For example, when you upload a gedcom, we automatically mark as deceased anyone… Read the full story

http://www.geni.com/profile/index/6000000002965606180 On this day in 1960, the Hollywood Walk of Fame was completed and Joanne Woodward became the first performer to receive her star. Are you related to her? What about her husband, Paul Newman? Joanne is today's highlighted profile

On this day in 1587 Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded : http://www.geni.com/people/Mary-I-Queen-of-Scots/6000000003234018546

One of the most important aspects of genealogy is documenting your research through sources and citations. Today we’ve taking an important step towards adding sources to Geni by adding support for documents. Documents are a great way to add census records, ship manifests, birth certificates, and more to your relative’s profiles. Just like photos and videos, you can add date and location information and tag documents to add them to related profiles. Supported file formats… Read the full story

Faster Navigation The next time you visit Geni you’ll notice that our navigation bar has a fresh new look. The old tabs have been replaced with a clean navigation strip. But beauty is more than skin deep, so we’ve also made some changes to help you get where you want to go faster. Inbox is now a top level link so you can see how many messages you have from every page and view them… Read the full story

Users who have experienced compatibility issues with our standard video uploader can try our new High Quality video uploader. Because this uploader encodes the video on our server rather than on your computer, it should be compatible with virtually any computer configuration. If you’ve had issues uploading photos in the past, please try the new uploader and let us know how it works. Upload a video with the high quality video uploader

Find person – When viewing a large tree it can be difficult to find the person you are looking for. Now you can type shift-f and enter the name of anyone in the tree you are viewing to jump directly to that person. Shift-F requires that the flash app have the keyboard focus, so with some browsers you'll find that you need to click somewhere on the tree (preferably the blank area between nodes) before… Read the full story

We've just released some nice merging and collaboration enhancements: Add manager – Use the "Add manager" action under the more menu on any profile you manage to add a manager. This will send a request to the user. If they accept, they will be added as an additional manager (you can choose to make them a primary or an alternate when you send the request). You will not lose management privileges. Relinquish management – When… Read the full story

http://www.geni.com/people/Frederick-Augustus-Washington-Bailey-Douglass/328239457930001157 Profile of the Day goes to writer and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. Are you related?

http://www.geni.com/people/Thomas-Woodrow-Wilson-28th-President-of-the-United-States-of-America/6000000002138844534 On this day in 1924, President Woodrow Wilson dies. He was the 28th President of the United States. Are you related?

Profile of the Day: Berry Gordy, Jr. http://www.geni.com/profile/index/3930096438320040565

One of Today’s Highlighted Profiles – Andie MacDowell: http://www.geni.com/people/Rosalie-MacDowell/6000000006592182188

Profile of the Day: Diana Ross http://www.geni.com/people/Diana-Ross/3930111310110051609

Guess who is cousins with President Barak Obama? That's right, Scott Brown: http://www.geni.com/people/Scott-Brown/6000000007550185496

http://www.geni.com/people/George-Washington-Carver/6000000004550009055 February is Black History Month in the United States. In honor of Black History month, we would like to highlight the scientist and inventor from Missouri named George Washington Carver.