August 2011

On August 31, 1949, actor and activist Richard Gere was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gere has starred in several highly successful films, including An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, and Chicago. Did you know Gere is a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims Francis Eaton, John Billington, George Soule, Richard Warren, Degory Priest and Francis Cooke? How are you related? View Richard Gere’s Geni Profile

In this episode, Grant sits down with Geni Pro member Bee Dalton to discuss how she uses Geni for her family research. We’re very pleased to talk to Bee, and we want to have more users on the podcast. If you’re interested in participating, please email Grant with your contact information.

Last night it was announced that Chaz Bono, transgender advocate, writer and only child of Cher and Sonny Bono, would be joining the cast of Dancing With the Stars. Chaz will be the first openly transgender contestant in the history of the show. Are you excited to watch the dancing competition’s 13th season? View Chaz Bono’s Geni Profile

Today we are happy to announce a brand new giveaway! This go ’round, we’re offering a three-month Geni Pro account along with a copy of the Geni Charting Companion to five lucky winners. Here’s the full breakdown: How to Enter 1) Tweet this phrase: Hey! @geni is giving away free Pro accounts. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/GeniPro #genealogy 2) Post a link to your Tweet in the comments below this post on the Geni Blog. Rules 1… Read the full story

Yesterday at the MTV Video Music Awards, Beyoncé Knowles announced that she and husband Jay-Z are expecting their first child. Congratulations to the happy couple! Check out Beyoncé’s growing family tree and see how you’re related! View Beyoncé Knowles’s Geni Profile

American actress Loretta Young began her career as a child actor in silent films. Throughout her long and varied career, Young earned accolades for her acting, winning an Academy Award for best actress in 1948 for her role in the film The Farmer’s Daughter. How are you related? View Loretta Young’s Geni Profile

Today we introduced some improvements to the site. Details and release notes are below. Latest news box is back on the homepage. You can use this area to post updates to your family and followers. Notifications have been improved. You will now receive an email to notify you when someone starts a discussion about a profile you are following. In addition, the notification count in the header will reset to zero every time you check… Read the full story

We posted earlier this week that the tree display bug had been identified as a problem with Adobe Flash. As of today, Adobe officially released the latest minor update to Flash Player to version 10.3.183.7. Reportedly, updating to this latest release will fix the bug that caused text to display vertically instead of horizontally. Unfortunately, there is still a small bug in this release that relates to the names wrapping improperly. We’re still talking to… Read the full story

Yesterday, August 24, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs announced he would be stepping down as the company’s CEO. Born in San Francisco, California, Jobs was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. In the late 1970s, he co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and through Jobs’s leadership, transformed the company into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Check out his family tree on Geni! View Steve Jobs’s Geni Profile

On August 24, 1899, Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges was born. Considered one of Latin America’s greatest writers, Borges’s works significantly contributed to the science fiction genre and focused on the “magic of realism.” His most famous works of fiction include Ficciones and The Aleph. How are you related? View Jorge Luis Borges’s Geni Profile

Beginning earlier this month, a portion of Geni users have been noticing the names in their tree displaying vertically. As soon as we started receiving reports of this issue, our engineers began investigating why some users were seeing this bug while others weren’t. As it turns out, this is a problem in the latest version of Adobe Flash. We’ve been working with the folks at Adobe, and they intend to release a fix for this… Read the full story

Today we remember writer and theatrical producer Oscar Hammerstein II, who passed away on August 23, 1960. Noted as one of the most influential lyricists in American theater, Hammerstein won eight Tony awards and two Oscars for “Best Original Song.” Along with his partner Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein brought to life some of the most memorable Broadway musicals, including Oklahoma!, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. View Oscar Hammerstein II’s Geni Profile

Last weekend, I spent my saturday in a small town in Ohio. That town is where my father’s family has been for generations, and it’s where our annual family reunion is held. Since I was going to be using this reunion as a way to collect and disseminate genealogical information, I decided it was worthwhile to let you folks in on how everything went down, and what I learned from it. As it turns out,… Read the full story

Tonight (Monday, August 22, 2011), GeneaBloggers Radio will host a special live call-in episode with Geni’s CEO, Noah Tutak.  The episode will air at 9pm ET (1am GMT), with a large portion of the episode dedicated to Q&A with listeners. According to GeneaBloggers Radio, “we’ll be discussing some of the recent changes to how Geni works for both their free (Basic) users and their paid (Pro) users as well as the reaction to such changes…. Read the full story

Interested in seeing what happened earlier in the week at IAJGS 2011 in Washington, D.C.? Take a look at some of the pictures we took while we were there: It was a very interesting conference, and we were very happy to see dozens of Geni users there. We’d like to see more of that in the future, so we’re going to make sure you all know when and where you can come see us in… Read the full story

On August 19, 1883, French fashion designer Coco Chanel was born. Chanel believed that “luxery must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.” Her classic designs, including the Chanel suit and the “little black dress,” are still highly popular today. How are you related? View Coco Chanel’s Geni Profile

We’ve received a lot of feedback on the changes that we recently made, and we’re happy to announce some enhancements based on your feedback. The loudest feedback we heard is that users were having trouble finding profiles of their close relatives and other profiles that they added to the tree. It was never our intention to make it difficult for users to find these profiles; users could still find these profiles through our auto-suggest tool… Read the full story

Profile Hovercards At the beginning of the year we released document hovercards, a popular feature for quickly finding out more information about documents on Geni.  Today we added the profile hovercard, which makes it easy to find out additional information about profiles in search results. To view a profile hovercard in search results, simply hover over the link to the profile and additional information about the profile will be displayed. Profile hovercards will continue to appear… Read the full story

On August 18, 1952 actor Patrick Swayze was born in Houston, Texas. Today, he is fondly remembered as the romantic lead in the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Sadly, Swayze lost his battle with cancer on September 14, 2009. How are you related? View Patrick Swayze’s Geni Profile

When we made last week’s account changes, we understood that some Geni members would not be able to upgrade to a Pro account to continue using features like merging and site-wide search.  Today, we announce the Geni Public Access program, and we hope that this will provide an opportunity for more users to experience Geni Pro.  Grant and I (with the help of several users) have been testing this functionality all week at the IAJGS… Read the full story

On August 17, 1943, actor and director Robert De Niro was born. Considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, De Niro has played many memorable roles in such films as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Godfather Part II, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Check out his family tree on Geni! View Robert De Niro’s Geni Profile

Last week we introduced some significant changes to the way Geni works. Unfortunately, we did a poor job communicating these changes to our community. We should have given you more notice of these changes than we did, and for that we apologize. As expected with changes of this magnitude, there has been a great deal of discussion and feedback from the Geni community. I want to assure you that each and every comment has been… Read the full story

Beloved film actress Audrey Hepburn is perhaps one of the world’s most famous actors of all time. As a film and fashion icon, Hepburn has continued to influence the industry well after her passing. She remains one of the few entertainers to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Her most memorable movies include Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday and Sabrina. In addition to her work in television and film, Hepburn… Read the full story

On August 16, 1948 Major League baseball player Babe Ruth died at the age of 53. One of the first players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ruth is widely regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in history. Check out Babe Ruth’s family tree on Geni! Perhaps you can help connect him to our World Family Tree! View Babe Ruth’s Geni Profile

Today, India celebrates its Independence Day. On August 15, 1947, India officially elected Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as its first Prime Minister. During the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi lead the campaign for independence through non-violent protest. His leadership has inspired civil rights movements throughout the world. Check out his profile on Geni! View Mahatma Gandhi’s Geni Profile

On August 12, 1881, award-winning director Cecil B. DeMille was born. DeMille was as a pioneering film director of both silent and sound films and a dominant force in Hollywood throughout his career. His best known films include The Ten Commandments, Cleopatra, and The Greatest Show on Earth. Check out his family tree and see how you’re related! View Cecil B. DeMille’s Geni Profile

Update March 2014: For current membership offers and subscription pricing, please visit the Geni Help Center. At Geni, our vision is to empower the genealogy community to create the world family tree, the single largest, most accurate, and comprehensive family tree in existence. Thanks to the efforts of our curators and power users, the world family tree is fast approaching 60 million profiles, and is more accurate, better sourced, and has less duplication than ever. And we’re just… Read the full story

In addition to our changes to Pro, today we are excited to release a cleaner, simpler header to make navigating on Geni even easier. You can now go directly to your tree with just one click! We’ve also consolidated all of your notifications to one place. Simply click on the icon to the right of the search bar to view your inbox messages, requests, tree matches and discussion notifications. You can read more about these… Read the full story

[Download This Episode] [Subscribe in iTunes] [Subscribe in Your Favorite Podcatcher] Show Notes: How did you get started with Genealogy? I got started back in the early 1990s when my mother handed me a copy of a printed genealogy one of my ancestors had created in 1916. George W. Putman was my 6th cousin 5 times removed and he published The Genealogy of David Putman and His Descendants, 1645-1916 (view digital version online here). Only… Read the full story

Today we remember Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who passed away on August 11, 2009 at the age of 88. Shriver was the sister of President John F. Kennedy and a passionate advocate for children’s health and disability issues. She founded the Special Olympics, the world’s largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Check out her family tree and see how you’re related! View Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s Geni Profile

On August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex, was established by the bequest of James Smithson, an English scientist. Smithson stated in his will that his estate be given to the U.S. government to create an “establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” How are you related to James Smithson? View James Smithson’s Geni Profile

If you’re going to be in the Washington, D.C. area from the 14th to the 19th of August, please make sure to stop by the Grand Hyatt Washington to visit our booth at the 2011 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. We’ll be there in full force with a good bit of swag to give out to all of you. We love talking to fellow genealogists and Geni users, so don’t hesitate at all to… Read the full story

On August 9, 1854, author Henry David Thoreau‘s most famous novel, Walden, was published. In addition to his work as an author, Thoreau was an accomplished philosopher and abolitionist. As a leading figure of the Transcendentalist movement, Thoreau’s writings inspired many political leaders and reformers including Mahatma Ghandi, President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817. His father, John Thoreau, was a pencil maker and… Read the full story

Recently, a team of archaeologists discovered what they believe to be privateer Henry Morgan‘s flagship,”Satisfaction,” on the coast of Panama. Remembered as one of the most notorious and successful privateers of all time, Morgan lost five ships, including “Satisfaction,” in rough seas while sacking a fort on the coast of Panama in 1670. How are you related? View Henry Morgan’s Geni Profile

Yesterday, August 7, South African actress Charlize Theron celebrated her 36th birthday. In 2004, Theron won an Academy Award for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster, thus becoming the first South African to win an Oscar in a major acting category. Check out her family tree and see how you’re related! View Charlize Theron’s Geni Profile

Today marks the 49th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe‘s death. Marilyn was an acclaimed actress, model and singer, who died tragically at the age of 36. To this day, she is still viewed as cultural icon and an American sex symbol. Check out her family tree on Geni! View Marilyn Monroe’s Geni Profile

[Download This Episode] [Subscribe in iTunes] [Subscribe in Your Favorite Podcatcher] Show Notes:   What is a genealogy research log? A research log is used to track your genealogy research findings whether they are online or in person at an archive or a library. Most genealogists need some system of tracking the information and evidence they locate in order to determine whether or not that data proves a relationship or a theory. Very often, as… Read the full story

Rita Moreno Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican actor, singer and dancer. Best known for her role in the musical West Side Story, Moreno has earned critical acclaim across a variety of mediums. She is the only Hispanic to have won all four major entertainment awards, the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. View Rita Moreno’s Geni Profile

I took some time recently to sit down with the folks at MobiWolf to talk about their wonderful Geni client for Android phones called GeneDroid. If you use an Android device, take a moment to read through this Q&A. And of course, we’d love for you to check out GeneDroid for yourself. What does GeneDroid offer? Access to the biggest genealogy database Geni from your handset. GeneDroid – it is an easy to navigate family… Read the full story

With many areas of the U.S. experiencing a sweltering heat wave, we thought it would be fitting to highlight Willis Carrier‘s Geni profile. Willis Carrier was an American engineer and inventor of modern air conditioning. In 1906, Carrier was granted a U.S. patent for his invention, an “Apparatus for Treating Air,” the world’s first spray-type air conditioning equipment. Check out his profile and see how you’re related! View Willis Carrier’s Geni Profile

Last weekend, George and I were in Kansas representing Geni at the Midwest Family History Expo. We got to talk to hundreds of enthusiastic genealogists, and a bunch of Geni fans. We had two presentations about collaborative genealogy, and we also participated with Ruby Coleman, Arlene Eakle, and Holly Hansen in a blogging panel. Everyone who attended learned something, and that means a lot to us. We’re happy to be raising awareness of collaborative genealogy…. Read the full story

On August 2, 1876, James “Wild Bill” Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American Wild West, was shot from the back while playing a game of poker. His hand at the time of his death, a pair of black aces and eights, became known as the “dead man’s hand.” How are you related?

As many of you are aware, we experienced some unexpected downtime this past weekend. First, we want to apologize to our amazing community of genealogists for inconveniences that the outage may have caused. Our goal is to provide the best place for all of you to work together to build a single family tree of the world, and we failed to provide that service for more than 48 hours over the weekend. Our engineers worked… Read the full story

Today is Colorado Day, which officially marks the anniversary of Colorado’s statehood. In honor of this celebration, we’re highlighting John Evans’s Geni profile. Evans was one of the earliest governors of Colorado and one of the state’s most prominent figures. He is also known for being one of the founders of Northwestern University and University of Denver. To learn more about John Evans, check out his Geni profile and see how you’re related! View John… Read the full story