Technical difficulties?

Private User Also, which URL did you receive the notification from?

Brian. I've been trying to detect a pattern, but it seems to pop up randomly. The only constant has been when using the Bing translator in IE.

I've been using the Bing translator as it is much more advanced than the Google version, which often returns incomprehensible results.

From messages I've received, it would appear that the Flash problem has been isolated to those who have multiple browsers on their computer. It doesn't establish the add-on for all of them. If Firefox was your only browser, you wouldn't have had a problem.

The other computer companies (Apple, Microsoft et al) are determined to make Flash interfaces as difficult as possible, and their strategy seems to be working.

Private User Firefox recognizes Flash on both my Firefox browsers (32 and 64 bit) and it is on IE which I only use if I have to. Flash is just unreliable, but it seem worse on Geni than on other sites.

Eldon. Geni uses much more of the Flash functionality than other sites with the tree view. Most sites use it for a simple presentation of movies et al. I would expect any problems to appear on Geni before any of the other sites I use.

Adobe has a real job on it's hands now. I've one computer loaded with every conceivable browser, and watched the update step-by-step. It was a mess. The more browsers, the greater the mess.

It is the link between the browsers and the Flash add-on that keeps coming adrift. On one occasion, I received an automatic Microsoft OS update which made the links unusable. One of Steve Jobs last comments was that he was out to destroy Adobe. Together with Bill Gates, this is being accomplished.

Ken, I think most of Adobe's problems are self inflicted. At first they said the would not develop a 64 bit Flash, then they did. Now they say they are going to stop supporting Flash, now I get more updates than ever. Who knows what they are thinking.

There is no problems with Google Chrome since flash is integrated and have a delay before is released as a Chrome update.

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=108086

In USA, are the Location Fields really working as they are supposed to?? - for example, if I type in "Boston", the drop-down menu shows me "Boston, MA, USA" as one of the choices - if I choose this one, and then click on edit location details, because I know the county and this choice does not show the county - SURPRISE - the county is filled in, AND the state is "Massachusetts" not "MA" and the country is "United States" not "USA".

To the best of my knowledge, in search geni does not match USA with United States, nor does it match MA with Massachusetts - so shouldn't it tell me correctly which one it is entering?? What is more, a search with county left blank will not match one with county filled in, even if all the other values are the same. So seems very misleading to me - Yes??

Private User I see where you're coming from. At Geni, our location details are powered by Google Maps API.

Those geolocation results are not ours, but Google's. We get all of that data from Google, and if you feel like checking it out: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/.

Because of this, we cannot unfortunately change those results. I hope this clarifies.

Private User The best thing to do is not enter locations in the place name field. Click on the Edit location details link and then enter your data there. It will show just as you enter it, Google maps is not used there

Eldon Lester Clark That's correct, the type-ahead is only there for convenience. You can edit the fields manually if you'd like.

Hi Private User - when you enter a location in our single location field, you're actually triggering a search for a place with that name. Once you select one of the search results, all the data returned with that search result are filled in on Geni. This is meant to be a helpful service - rather than having to enter all the fields individually, you can enter less information and still have all the data filled in for you.

As we and others have said, you are not obligated to use this location search service. Simply click the 'Edit location details' link next to the location field, and enter your own data your own way into the fields provided.

... and I've noticed that what the Google API returns seems to have changed recently (e.g. returning full state & country name, rather than abbreviation such as MA, USA).

Moreover, the "Add profile" panel lookup returns different (the 'older' style) data than when looking up locations when editing the profile.

Brian G. ... is that supposed to be the situation -- or is the "Add" panel just a bit out of date?

Dan Cornett The Flash tree uses a special "flash" API which is based off of Google v2 API (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/flash/services)

The search fields on the other parts of Geni are using the v3 API. We're phasing out the old version on the Flash tree, but until that point there will be some discrepancy between both parts of the sites.

... any plans for some automated cleanup to try for consistency in the location names? e.g.: if the lat/long coordinates are present, use them to refresh the non-blank city, county, and especially the state and country names? (so they are consistent)

Dan. It's a problem with all genealogical systems. In Geni, many (including myself) have manually entered the location names. Some use the name correct at the time in history, others use the modern name - some use abbreviations, some don't. With the United Kingdom there are many variations on the name of the country alone. I can't see a solution, but it makes searching by location a PIA (thanks Eldon) on any site.

Since many of the locations I enter are from former Austrian-Hungary empire - I tend to enter 2-3 names for the cities ex: Bratislava (Pressburg, Pozsony) = 1st= current name, 2nd= in German, 3rd= in Hungarian.

Many Archives records - only contain 1 of the 3 language names or other variations.

Wikipedia - has all the City/town variations, history - and that is the Location linkage - I would like to see: GENI > Wikipedia :)

Many of the profiles I work with need to be matched to appropriate projects..

The project selection is made from the drop down list of Profile Project Options, which for the most part functions well.

Frequently of late, the project selected will not 'attach' to the profile, and remains in the selection window of the drop down list. This happens numerous times with the same profile/project selection.

To get functionality with the problem profile / project match, I need a different profile with the original project to clear the 'block'.

It's just time consuming to work around this.

@Michael Alan Stangel, anything you can do about this ?

Hi Pam Karp, in our release next week (roughly on Thursday, noon PST) we've upgraded the drop down list with a type-ahead list similar to the one on the documents page. Can you please let us know then if this does not fix your problem.

Thanks!
Brian

Hi Brian,
Thank you for letting me know about the fix. Great news!
Pam

Hi Brian G.,
Just letting you know the problem is not yet fixed.
Particularly, but not restricted to this one, the Warsaw Ghetto will not 'attach' to any new profile, and either remains in the selection window of the drop down list, or will not appear in the drop down window at all.
Thanks for your help Brian.

Pam Karp I should have come and posted here, but our release got pushed back due to delays. I don't want to promise any date, but it will most likely be tomorrow (Tuesday). Sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you for the update Brian G..

Pam Karp, we did the release today so do you want to check if you are still having trouble?

Michelle Elena Kempner, thank you for that. The problem seems to have been resolved, projects attach quite easily now. Thanks also to Brian and others involved in this release.

Michelle Elena Kempner, thanks for fixing the about cut-off issue. I think the "read more" link could use some more padding above though, especially compared to the padding of the "show less" link.

While on the subject, any chance in increasing the about shown by default? Seems silly that we have so much white space bellow.

It looks like we now have auto-fill for marriages on the relationship tab. Thanks Geni.

Michelle Elena Kempner the auto fill on the project options page is now working really well.It seems though that a new problem has arisen. Or maybe that it has just become evident in the area I am working in.

Previously recorded information in profile 'Place of death' and 'Cause of death' fields is being dropped. This appears to happen most frequently after deletion of 'temporary' birth names of profiles attached to a 'place holder' tree. I have tried to ascertain if there is a pattern for these fields to drop their records but cannot point to anything other than editing of the birth name field.