In the first part of the rights management tutorial, we presented the various groups (Family, Relatives, Public, Friends). Today’s post is about your privacy and what information of your profile can be viewed by the different groups.

The privacy settings can be found under “Settings”> “Privacy”. With a slider you can choose between six different levels:

Confidential: The strongest privacy setting. Your profile data can only be viewed your family. All other groups (relatives, friends, public) cannot see anything.

Moderate: Family and friends can see your data. The relatives and people in other family trees can only see place of birth, place of residence and the year of birth.

Default: Family, friends and relatives can see your data. Other people only see place of birth, place of residence and the year of birth.

Accessible: family, friends and relatives can see your data. Other people only see your location, date of birth, place of birth, the statistics box and the profession.

Public: Your profile data can be accessed by all groups (but not edited).

The sixth stage is a custom stage and will be shown as soon as you edit our predefined settings. With a click on “Details” you can change the settings individually and customize the visibility of individual data in the profile (for example your job) for the respective groups.

When you set the slider back on one of the other stages and click on “Save”, the default settings of the stage is restored.

For 2009 we have planned some great new features for dynastree. One of these is the merging of individual trees to a common tree. In order to realize this idea, you need a number of options first to deal conveniently with a larger family tree. With the new rights management, we have now implemented part of these settings.

We will explain the new settings in three parts. Today, we will enlarge on the new role of “family” in the tree. So far we had the distinction between “Family Tree”, “Public” and “Friends”. Those of you who have a bigger tree will easily understand that one is somehow related to all the people in the tree, but certainly doesn’t know all people personally and only a few would be considered as part of the family.

Accordingly, we want to give the own family more rights in the family tree (photos, edit profiles, post messages, etc.) than the other relatives. For this reason, we now distinguish between the roles “Family,” “Relatives”, “Public” and “Friends.”

Who is part of your family circle and who isn’t, this can be set in the “Settings” > “Define my family“. You can keep the circle small and only allow direct blood relatives (parents, siblings and your children), or enlarge the circle gradually and admit blood relatives up to 5th-grade cousins. Your partner’s family and all in-law families can be added to the family circle, too. In the select box you can find the number of persons the selected family circle would consist of.

(Click image to enlarge…)

If you’d like to add a certain person to the family circle or exclude someone, that’s no problem. In each profile you can find under the profile picture the possibility to add to or remove the person from the family circle. These individually added / removed profiles are also listed on the page “Define my family”. Here you can edit your settings at any time.

To further explain the terminology “Xth-grade blood relatives” we have painted a small figure. Dieses zeigt euch ausgehend von euch, welche Profile zum Familienkreis gehören würden, wenn man die Einstellung “Blutsverwandte 1. It shows you from your point of view which profiles would belong to the family circle, if the setting 1st-grade blood relatives was selected.

First and foremost the direct blood relatives are part of the circle. These are parents, siblings and children, dark green in the picture. All persons you “meet on your way to your cousin” are in the family circle as well. In this image, it’s the grandparents, the uncle and the cousin himself (orange). Also, all partners of these persons are included, i.e. your partner and the uncle’s partner (light green). That’s it! Any siblings of the uncle’s partner (blue) are not in the family circle.

What rights you can assign to the different groups, this is what we’ll tell you in the next part.

Keeping the promise of the beginning of the month, dynastree presents a new version of the platform: Semyaonline.ru! Russia is no longer that distant Asian country and from now you can now create and keep contacts with relatives in Russia. Of course, you can search our database for Russian relatives and ancestors and invite them in Russian to the family tree by selecting “Russian” in the invitation language select box. They will see the common family tree in Russian. If you are a Russian native speaker and already have a family tree on dynastree, you can simply change your preferred language in the settings. Enjoy semyaonline.ru!

Nobody was prepared for so many children in the California Kaiser Permanente Bellflower hospital, doctors and parents were surprised by the arrival of eight babies, six boys and two girls. And the medical team, consisting of 46 people, doctors and their assistants, had been awaiting the arrival of “only” seven of them.
So when the eights child’s head came out only five minutes after birth with caesarean section, all those present in the delivery room were very surprised. According to the press, the mother is fine and all babies are in good health, although two of them have been transferred to an artificial lung.

This is the second known case in the history of giving birth to octuplets, after a Texas woman gave birth to six girls and two boys in 1998. Unfortunately, the smallest died a few days after birth. But these are not the most births in which multiples were born. Even births of nine and even ten babies have been reported…

We will launch the “Recipe Exchange” in the worldwide dynastree network. The idea behind this is to present a traditional recipe from each country in the other country’s blogs. This is the first phase: users of each platform send Grandma’s favorite recipe to info@dynastree.com and the editorial staff will pick the best recipe. We will also translate the recipe into other languages. Thus, Brazilians, Germans, Frenchs, Polish, etc. have the opportunity to experience the delights of the UK and US and vice versa. … Ah! Please don’t forget to list the ingredients’ quantities in detail!

At Crittenton Hospital in Rochester, Michigan, twins were born on New Year’s day. Quite usual, you might think. What is special about the two named Tariq and Tarrance is the time the were born. Tariq entered this world at 12:17 on New Year’s Day while Tarrance arrived at 11:51. That means that their birthdays do not only differ in time, but also in day, month and year! Their father is a twin, too. Unusual again, because twins usually skip a generation!

We’ve revised the Generations settings in the tree. Now, you can set the number of displayed generations – ancestors and descendants – from 0 to 10 (in the past, you could only choose from 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10).

Furthermore, the generations setting now has an effect on all tree views and not only on the classic family tree view. To change your setting, click on the “family tree settings” on the left side of your tree:

On our users’ request, we made the voucher values customizable.  So from now on, you can choose between our standard values and your individual gift voucher value. Simply type in the value of your choice and order your gift voucher.

Click here to go to the voucher order.

From now on, Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States and holds its eagerly awaited inaugural speech today.

We wonder if Obama will mention in the speech that he and his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, have common ancestors… Elisabeth Blossom, one of the pilgrims who went to America on the Mayflower in 1620, was a direct ancestor of Obama from the mother’s side – her brother was an ancestor of George W. Bush.

Either way, the speech will be followed by millions of people in the U.S.  For all those who would like to express their Obama mood, we’ve discovered this website where you can “obamize” your own photo.

It’s pollday again! Last week, we asked if you have genealogical literature at home for your research. The poll has shown that the internet has become one of the top sources for genealogical research: about 50% of all voters use the internet for research instead of reading books on that topic. 
Today’s poll is about genealogical societies. Are you a member of one? If yes, please feel free to discuss your experiences in the comments.