March 2011

Profile of the Day: Eli Whitney http://www.geni.com/people/Eli-Whitney/4225067167990045366

Want to come meet the Geni staff, and get some neat swag? Well, that’s easy. We’re going to be at two big genealogy conferences coming up soon. The National Genealogical Society 2011 Family History Conference will be taking place May 11th-14th in Charleston, South Carolina. We have secured a booth at this conference, and we can’t wait to see you there. The 42nd Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamoboree will be held in Burbank, California between… Read the full story

Today we feature the RMS Titanic project. The goal of this project is to identify the survivors and casualties of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on Geni. On April 10, 1912 the RMS Titanic, the largest passenger ship in the world, set sail on her maiden voyage from Southhampton, England to New York City. Four days into her journey, the ship struck an iceberg and tragically sank to the depths of the ocean the following… Read the full story

We are currently working on getting listed on the iTunes Podcast Directory. In the mean time, you can already load our podcast in iTunes manually. The easiest way is to simply click this link: Subscribe in iTunes. If you prefer, you can subscribe by hand. In iTunes, go to Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast Now, enter this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeniPod Click the OK button, and now you’ll get Geni Podcast episodes automatically in iTunes.

Changing what displays in the Recent Activity tab on the Geni home page is very easy. First of all, click on the Filter drop-down menu under the Recent Activity tab. Next, decide what you want to be displayed by unchecking topics that don’t interest you. For example, you might only want to see public messages. In that case, you’ll just uncheck the Private box. Click the Save button, and let the page refresh. Now you’ll… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Sigmund Freud http://www.geni.com/people/Sigmund-Freud/315773591250001676

The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is a wonderful resource to locate the genealogical information of your ancestors. This enormous database holds records for over 77 million people. In 1935, the United States passed the Social Security Act, which would provide federal assistance to the elderly, the unemployed and widows. The deaths recorded in the SSDI are those reported by relatives to either request survivor benefits or to stop benefits to the deceased. While you… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Agatha Christie http://www.geni.com/people/Agatha-Christie/368026093200007369

Noah Tutak, Geni’s CEO, will be on GeneaBloggers Radio tomorrow night at 10 PM ET. Thomas MacEntee and Noah will be taking calls, and answering questions about how social media and collaboration impact the genealogy community. Even better, we’ll be giving away 3-month Geni Pro accounts as “Door Prizes,” and one lucky person will receive a lifetime Geni Pro account and a Geni swag pack. If you’re interested in tuning in, please read Thomas’s post… Read the full story

[Download this Episode] Hosted by: Grant Brunner Featuring: Thomas MacEntee Show Notes: What is a genealogy webinar? Why are they important to the genealogy community How is a webinar different than attending a genealogy lecture in person? How are webinars helping the genealogy community? How can I locate upcoming genealogy-related webinars? GeneaWebinars (http://www.geneawebinars.com) How to register for a webinar? How do I host my own webinar? Skype (http://www.skype.com) Free programs vs. Fee programs. See Web-Conferencing… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Judy Garland http://www.geni.com/people/Judy-Garland/6000000002098941023

So, you’ve done a lot of work to make your tree awesome on Geni. How do you show off your work to friends and family? The Like button. On every profile on Geni, you’ll find a Facebook Like button. As long as you’re logged into Facebook, this is what it will look like after you click the Like button. Now, on your Facebook wall, a news story will appear showing that you liked a profile… Read the full story

Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the achievements of women. First celebrated in Germany in 1911, the holiday is now recognized on March 8 of each year by over 100 different countries.  The holiday observes women’s struggle for equality and empowerment throughout history. In honor of the holiday, today’s Family Tree Tuesday highlights Susan B. Anthony, one of the most prominent figures of the women’s rights movement in… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Aldous Huxley http://www.geni.com/people/Aldous-Leonard-Huxley/6000000010799521427

The fun thing about working at a genealogy company is that we can see how a lot of us are related to each other in the big tree. Today, I want to show you how I’m related to four Geni employees in the big tree. As more of our team works on their family trees, we’ll find how we’re related to even more people. So, how are you related to us?

One of the strong points of Geni is the ability to collaborate with your close relatives very easily. Today, I’m going to show you how to invite your family to work on your tree. First, find the profile of the person you want to invite. Then, enter their email address in the field on their profile page, and press invite. Next, an email will be sent to that person. When they receive it, it will… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Alexander Graham Bell http://www.geni.com/people/Alexander-Bell/6000000011624971392

As of 1 PM ET on March 11, 2011, this contest is closed. What you could win: • A 12-month Geni Pro Account How to enter: 1. Tweet this phrase: “I want to win a #Geni Pro Account — http://tinyurl.com/GeniWin #genealogy” 2. Post a link to your tweet in the comment section of *this* post. Rules: 1. No purchase necessary. 2. Winners will be chosen randomly. 3. Odds of winning are directly related to how… Read the full story

Profile of the Day Natalie Portman Johnny Cash Dr. Seuss Francis Scott Key Lonel Richie Geni How To How To: Make a Public or Private Discussion How To: Make a Profile Public Interesting Geni Blog Posts The Geni Podcast: Welcome, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak Look Who’s Related: Tony Blair and the Royal Family The Genealogy Experience by Thomas Pileggi Family Tree Tuesday – George Clooney Additional Updates to Geni More Documents and Sources Enhancements Introducing Profile… Read the full story

We have two positions available at our West Hollywood, CA (USA) office, and we’d love it if you helped spread the word to any local folks who may be interested. The positions are: Director of Monetization Customer Service Representative Info about all open positions at Geni can be found at http://jobs.geni.com. Thanks!

This week we highlight the Great Composers of Classical Music project. This project includes some of the most renowned classical composers whose music has left a significant mark in history. Today, their compositions are performed and enjoyed throughout the world. Here’s a look at a few of the profiles included: Ludwig van Beethoven – He is considered one of the most famous and influential composers of all time. Even after he became completely deaf, Beethoven… Read the full story

With the latest version of their product, 23andMe tests over one million SNPs all over your genome. That’s a million points of data about what makes you who you are from a biological standpoint. That’s pretty impressive just knowing that. When you factor in that the testing kit, the processing, the analysis, and one year of updated results come in at about $260 USD, it starts to become more compelling from a consumer standpoint. Now,… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Lionel Richie http://www.geni.com/people/Lionel-Richie/6000000007008689102

While court records may be a little more difficult to research, they may yield some unique information you may not find anywhere else. Before you jump into these documents, you will first need to have an idea about what type of court records you are looking for and in what location. This is key to knowing which archives to search. Remember, county, state and federal cases are archived at different levels. Here are a few of… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Francis Scott Key http://www.geni.com/people/Francis-Scott-Key/6000000001180341043

Documentation is extremely important to genealogy. Sadly, the documents we find are often in pretty bad shape. First thing we need to do is get them scanned. Once we have a digital copy of the original document, we can start touching it up to be more legible. To get started, you’ll need some image editing software. Some of the more affordable applications are Photoshop Elements, Acorn, Pixelmator, and The GIMP. Now, open up your image… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Dr. Seuss http://www.geni.com/people/Theodor-Geisel/5529202663300088565

Gene, our Systems Engineer, took a plane over West Hollywood. Here is what the Geni offices look like from 1400 feet.

Our engineers are always working to make Geni better. When a lot of updates are happening like yesterday, there is occasionally points where Geni.com won’t be available for a short period of time. To better serve you, we’ve implemented an Uptime monitoring system that you can follow on Twitter (@GeniUptime). If you’re not a Twitter user, just keep your eyes right here on the Geni blog. As soon as we update the Twitter account, there… Read the full story

Last summer we introduced the ability to view revisions on Geni, and shortly before Christmas we added the ability to view and revert text revisions for profiles, surnames and projects. Today marks our next major “revisions” release:  profile revisions. When you click on the revisions tab for a profile you will see this interface, which allows you to view the revision history and revert to previous values for each of the profile fields displayed.  A… Read the full story

In addition to the new profile revision features, today we released some enhancements for sourcing profiles on Geni. All sourced fields on a profile show a document icon; hovering over the icon will display a hover card containing the document providing the evidence for the field: The ‘Edit Profile’ screen also contains the document icons with hover cards. The ability to add sources is a little easier now, too.  When you click on the Add… Read the full story

Today we released profile revision features and additional document and source features, as well as some additional enhancements that make Geni better for our users. Set your time zone Now you can set your time zone, and over the course of the next few weeks we will update timestamps across the site to reflect your local time. To set your time zone, visit your profile and click on ‘Edit Profile’.  In the next screen, you have… Read the full story

Oscar winning actor and director George Clooney is best known for his roles on the television show ER and movies such as Ocean’s Eleven, Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck which he co-wrote and directed. Clooney has also devoted much of his time to his humanitarian work, raising awareness for the conflict in Darfur and raising funds for several recent natural disasters throughout the world. Clooney was born on May 6, 1961 to parents Nick and… Read the full story

Profile of the Day: Johnny Cash http://www.geni.com/people/Johnny-Cash/6000000000315787220

I was reading wall posts on the Geni Facebook page, and I saw a particularly interesting post from a man named Thomas Pileggi. I thought it would be worthwhile for him to share his genealogy experience with our readers, so I asked him to write up a summary. Here is what he said: I did my first family tree around 1979 or 1980 as part of a training in Family Therapy. I spoke to a… Read the full story

The best part of having a World Family Tree with over 53 million profiles is the ability to find out how all of those people are related. Last week, we showcased how the US Presidents are related. Today, I want to show how Tony Blair, famed former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is related to Prince Charles and the royal family. As you can see from the relationship path pictured above, Tony Blair and… Read the full story

Discussions are a great way to communicate with fellow genealogists. Here’s how to get started.