As announced yesterday, we have deployed a new version of dynastree today, featuring both our brand new Turkish version, and an important new feature: the extended search function. While searching for a relative or friend with a very common name could become arduous at times in the past, it is now possible to enter more search parameters to narrow down to the person you searching for. New search parameters include year of birth, place of birth, and similar ones, making it possible to find relatives about whom you know only a few details.

To use the extended search, click on the “+” next to the search field in the upper right corner:

This opens the new extended search window:

Click on the image to enlarge it

dynastree’s Turkish version, akrabaonline, will be launched tomorrow! We are happy about this expansion and the extended possibilities it offers to Turkish-speaking people around the world. On the occasion of these exciting news, this week’s poll question appeals to Turks and those of Turkish descent.

Today, we celebrate dynastree’s 2nd birthday! We are proud of the great success and happy about the fact that dynastree has been growing constantly, there are more than 9 million members signed up, and over 90 million profiles have been added so far. We would like to thank all our users for joining dynastree and all their input and support.

From now on, dynastree is also present on Facebook and Twitter, check it out!

Have a nice Friday and a relaxing weekend everyone!

A new version (1.04) of dynastree Home Edition has been released today and is available for download:

The help section has now completely been translated to Spanish and Portuguese, and some bugs have been fixed.
To install the new version, download the file via the link above, and then double-click it and follow the instructions.
A complete manual for the program is included under “Help”.

dynastree Home Edition is designed for creating a family tree offline, and can alsobe used to edit back-ups of family  trees exported from the dynastree website. It allows for editing a host of different file formats, e.g. the popular and widespread GEDCOM format (.ged),  but also .csv, and .xml.

Please visit our Infocenter to find out more.

This short introduction is especially interesting for those that have already compiled a large tree containing most of their family and ancestors and would now like to take the next step and research their European ancestors’ origins. As this is vast territory, we will concentrate on research in Germany and formerly German areas (now belonging to Poland) here.

A helpful institution for research about the immigration of ancestors is located in Burbank, CA: the Immigrant Genalogical Society. You do not necessarily have to become a member to use their services, for a small fee (around $5), you can order many books containing e.g. passenger lists of ships, lists of inhabitants of certain areas (e.g. counties) in Germany, Poland, and other European countries, and lists of immigrants from towns and counties. The period of time covered varies, a lot of records are from the 1800s, some even go back to the 1600s. These lists can be quite useful if you roughly know where your folks are from, you might discover a branch of European ancestors you did not know about at all! You can find them here.

A host different research tools and resources interesting not only for those with German-speaking ancestors is also available at the National Archives and Records Administration, they have awhole section for genealogical researchers. The two most interesting subsections are the Immigration Records and the Naturalization Records. These are particularly interesting if you already know when an ancestor arrived in America or became an American citizen. The Immigration Records contain passenger lists of ships as well, you could thus trace the ship’s route back to Europe as a basis for your research there.

This of course is only  a starting point for genealogical research, there are tons of other resources out there, feel free to share them here or in our forums!

Tomoji Tanabe, who was said to be the oldest living man of the world, died at his home in the city of Miyakonojo on the island of Kyushu (southern Japan). He was 113.

Mr. Tanabe was listed as the world’s oldest man in the Guiness Book of World Records since 2007, he is succeeded by British veteran Henry Allingham who is also 113 years old. Mr. Allingham is also the last surviving founder of the Royal Airforce, the last of two British survivors of the First World War, and also the last man to have witnessed the Battle of Jutland.

Asked for the secret to a long life on his last birthday in September, Mr. Tanabe gave the advice not to drink or smoke. He was known to get up at half past five every morning, drink a glass of milk every day, and read the newspaper every morning.  The Japanese are known for their longevity, the life expectancy is among the world’s highest – almost 86 years for women, and 79 for men. According to recent inquiries, more than 36,000 Japanese are more than a hundred years old. A reason often cited is the very healthy traditional diet including a lot of seafood and rice – Mr. Tanabe’s favorite dishes were fried shrimp and Japanese miso soup with clams.

Quite the opposite applies to Mr. Allingham: the Briton once humorously cited “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women” as beneficial to his high age.

While finding and discussing – or even arguing – about the future family member’s name can be arduous and difficult, finding out what your baby might look like is not! Check out this cool website! Just upload two pictures, mom’s and dad’s, let the software do its work, and see what the baby will look like!

So go ahead and give it a try, using pictures of either you and your partner, or whoever you can think of- favorite celebrities, politicians, etc…

We tried it out using pictures of movie stars Zac Efron and Uma Thurman… this is what their child might look like (might… don’t take it at face value!)

Have a nice and relaxing weekend!

Independence Day is coming up, and we would like to know how you plan to spend the holiday!

Mexico’s newspaper with the highest circulation, El Universal, printed a full-page article (titled “The families grow in the web”) about our Spanish version. More than 110 million Mexicans could receive a good impression of the website miparentela.com.

The article has partly been published online as well; those of you who speak Spanish can read the text here.

As you will have noticed, there wasn’t much going on here for a while, but the blog is back now!
There will be new entries on a regular basis again, and we’ll try to get the forums going again as well. Please feel free to participate and comment!

There are lots of new functions, these will all be explained here on a daily basis. Please check out the help section as well, we are currently updating it, new entries are frequently being added.