The Geni Blog

Keep Track of Your Invitations

We’ve added the ability for you to keep track of your Geni invitations and to resend them when you want to send a reminder or nudge.  To view your invitations go to the top of your Geni page and select the ‘invite’ link.  Next select the 'View your Invitation History' link which allows you to view the history of invitations sent by you or by other family members.

Geni Mentioned on Techlife

Check out Dave Kaufman's Techlife Blog today:

Geni - So easy your mom can do it. Really!

New Features & Fixes

We're happy to announce that we've just completed our first major release since we launched just over a month ago. If you return to Geni now, you'll see the following new features and fixes:

Family Tree

• Easier removal of mistakenly-added family members, via the "x" icon
• More arrows for adding parents of relatives
• International keyboard layout support
• A new Edit Info dialog box, with frequently edited data on first tab
• A new field for display name on the Edit Info dialog
• A new Partners tab on the Edit Info dialog, with fields for marriage dates, locations
• A circa checkbox for birthdays and other dates on the Edit Info Dialog
• A county field for marriages and other events
• A new photo upload interface
• Easier entry of same-sex marriages/partnerships
• Better support for partners, not just spouses
• Better support for long names
• Increased size for the text used to display relatives' names, as well the title of the family tree
• Smarter display of "extra" people (placeholder nodes for parents and spouses)

Profile

• A new profile editing system, with more room for all controls
• Convenient in-place replies to comments on your profile
• All the same new fields as described above for the Edit Info dialog box in the Family Tree
• Support for multiple high schools/universities/etc.

Performance

• Optimized complex requests, for faster display of the family tree and family list

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, we're happy to read all of your comments and requests.

Maintainence Scheduled for Tonight at 7:00 PM PST

Notice: Geni will be unavailable tonight from 7:00 PM to approximately 8:00 PM for scheduled maintenance. We'll keep you posted here.

UPDATE: It's taking a little longer than we thought, but our upgrades are proceding in the order we planned. Thanks for being patient!

Email Backlog

We've received a deluge of emails since the Wall Street Journal article came out last week, a lot of these over the weekend--this has resulted in the largest backlog of emails ever. Since we read each and every one of the emails we receive, we ask that, if you have sent us an email, you:

• Please do not resend the question or comment as this slows down the process of responding to others
• Try the 'Help' link and the Geni Blog to see if your question has been addressed or if your suggestion has been made--if not then go ahead and email us.  Feel free to post suggestions on our Blog as we read the Blog to learn what our users are requesting
• Last of all, thanks for your enthusiasm for Geni and thanks for your patience while we work as fast as we can to keep up with growing traffic and layer on some of the exciting features that have been requested from our members

The Geni Team

Welcome, Wall Street Journal Readers!

If you saw us in the Wall Street Journal, or are visiting us from WSJ.com, thank you and welcome to Geni! Please feel free to comment on this blog post with any questions or suggestions you have, and we'll do our best to answer them here.

A little background here: Geni was featured in the Thursday, February 15th Issue of the Wall Street Journal. You can find the article on the front page of the 'Personal Journal' section, or read it online (link will open in a new window).

Site Status

Since we began sending out the "Your Family Tree Is Growing" emails we've received a tremendous reponse--this has resulted in increased traffic and is slowing down the Geni site.  The Geni Team is working as hard and fast as it can to address this problem.   Thanks for using Geni.

Finding Family

Here's a tip from a highly active member, Philip L. who has over 2,000 family members on his tree  “I find that an easy way to locate younger family members is to use social networking sites like Myspace.  I take tidbits about someone in my genealogy and I find matches. I then shoot them email messages informing them that I’d like to give them access to our family site.  I’ve been able to re-connect with lost cousins up to 4 generations removed”