Our local Brazilian colleague is currently presenting the Brazilian version of dynastree, meusparentes, at an event in a major shopping mall in São Paulo – Central Plaza Shopping. The event celebrates Italian-Brazilian heritage, its theme is thus thoroughly “italianized” – they even copied the Trevi Fountain!

As many Brazilians have European ancestors from Portugal, Italy, Germany, and other European countries, genealogists there often encounter the challenge of having to research their ancestors’ origin abroad, which means that passenger lists of ships, immigration records, and similar documents become indispensable at some point. We’re proud that dynastree successfully helps to connect people from around the world!

Take a look at the meusparentes booth at the fair:

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Today’s blog introduces the last of the major new features from the recent update of dynastree. As announced, the Kekulé-number is now displayed in every profile. So, what does it stand for?

This internationally accepted system describes the ancestral relations through numbers. The progenitor is assigned the number one, while the male descendants are assigned ascending even numbers, and ascending odd numbers are assigned to the female descendants. Dynastree now features this numbering system – the corresponding number can be seen on every profile. The Kekulé-number is also known as Ahnentafel (German for ancestor table), and as the Eytzinger Method, Sosa Method, and Sosa-Stradonitz Method. Click here to see a list of ancestors (PDF-file) with Kekulé-numbers for each person (each entry starts with the number).

It is displayed both in the profile card, and the detailed profile:

We’d like to introduce two of the new features today: the new on-/offline status display, and the many new profile events we have added.

The new status display on your homepage shows which relatives are currently online as well and is designed to improve the cooperation between you and other active members. It also shows which members were recently online, and their registration date. The status display is located on your homepage (below the history of changes).

Did you ever miss a certain event that you would like to add to someone’s profile? We have good news: a wide variety of new pre-defined events can now be added to each profile, and we have also added the possibility to enter whatever event you would like into a free-text field. In order to add an event, go to someone’s detailed profile (click on a profile card in your family tree, then on “Profile”, and on “Details” in the larger profile card that appears). Click on “Edit My Data” in the menu on the left. The menu bar at the top will look like this:

Scroll down until you see the button for adding a new event:

Clicking on “Event” will show you a dropdown-menu from which you can either select one of the many pre-defined events we have created, or a user-defined one. You can select the last entry to create an entry of your own.

We added a lot of new features last week, so now we’d like to know which one you like best!

You can now not only back up your family tree as a GEDCOM-file, you can also include all the profile pictures that have been added manually! Until now, it might have taken a lot of time to collect all the pictures again in a worst-case-scenario, that is why we added this feature. Premium users can now select the second kind of GEDCOM-export from the collapsible menu on the left, which includes all the profile pictures:

The GEDCOM-file will then be created as usual, and you will receive a message on dynastree, as well as an email, once the file is ready for download.  A .zip-archive containing the GEDCOM-file and an extra folder with the pictures can then be downloaded.

We announced a couple of new features yesterday, among them the new view-only invitation, which allows you to invite people whose profiles you have created in your family tree as users who can only look at the tree, but cannot edit anything, or invite other persons to it.

Inviting someone as a view-only user generally works like a normal invitation. There are three ways to invite someone, either via their Flash-profile (from your family tree), or via their extended HTML-profile. In any case, you need to enter the corresponding email address into the field provided for that. You can either enter your own text by checking the box for that (a field for entering text will appear), or use our generic text.

• Inviting someone via their profile card

• Inviting someone via their detailed profile-card: click on “Profile” on the small profile card in your family tree (the email address can either be entered here or into the small profile card)

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• Inviting someone via their detailed profile page: click on “Details” in the detailed profile mentioned above

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This is what the family tree looks like for view-only users, note that the arrows for adding persons and the possibility to add information to empty profile cards are missing:

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We have just deployed a brand-new version of dynastree! A wide range of minor, and, well, major bugs has been fixed, and we have also added some interesting new features. All category 1 features from the list created from your suggestions were added, except for the chat. You can find that list here.

We will be elaborating on the new features over the next few days, and you can find an overview below:

View-only invitations:

• Premium users can now invite people as view-only guests to their family tree. Such users can then view the whole family tree without being able to edit it, and no further persons can be invited by view-only users.

Flippable profile cards:

• More information is now displayed on the profile cards, such as partner, anniversary, date of death or burial, and much more.

Date of funeral

• There is a new field in the profiles for adding the date of the funeral.

Baptistery

• There is now a now field in the profiles for adding the baptistery.

Add custom events

• You can now add whatever event you like to a profile, should you not find what you are looking for in the fields we provided.

Name day

• The name day can be added to a profile, and it is also added to the calender. A reminder can be set as well.

Online/offline display

• A new display on your homepage shows who is currently viewing or editing the tree.

Kekulè number

• The Kekulè number, a genealogical standard number for labeling different generations, is now displayed, starting from one’s own profile.

New logoff page with all surname maps

• All available surname maps are now displayed after you have logged off, and you can search for any name anywhere via the select box.

Web profiles

• A lot of new social networks like Facebook or MySpace can now be added under “Contacts” in one’s profile.

Accents in the search

• Accents are now ignored by the search function to provide a wider range of results.

GEDCOM-export including profile pictures

• Premium users can now export their tree including the profile pictures that have been added, and these are also displayed in our Home Edition desktop software.

We are proud to announce that we have reached the number of 10,000,000 family trees! More and more families have created their trees on dynastree over the last two years, and about 100,000 new trees are added each week. Dynastree’s success remains undaunted, and we would like to thank all our users for their great support!

One of the most prominent figures in U.S. politics died from brain cancer in his Hyannis Port (MA) home on Tuesday, August 26. He was 77 years old.  Edward Moore Kennedy (born 1932) was the ninth and youngest child of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Below is a cut-out from the Kennedy family tree (click on the image to enlarge it).

The Kennedy family became very influential in U.S. politics during the 2oth century. Ted Kennedy’s father was the grandson of an Irish immigrant, and served as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The height of the family’s political influence had probably been reached when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the second oldest of the 9 siblings, became the 35th President of the United States in 1960.  Triumph and tragedy were never far from one another in the Kennedy family: John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert (who served as attorney general and later as senator) were both killed by assassins, and Ted Kennedy himself survived a plane crash in 1964, which caused permanent problems in back and neck. Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (born as the 5th child), who founded the Special Olympics, had just died two weeks before Edward Kennedy.

The story of the Kennedy family tree is truly remarkable.

The theory that the modern form of men, Homo Sapiens, evolved in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, is scientifically accepted and based on solid evidence. One branch of the common (very large!) family tree left Africa around 60,000 years ago and spread over what today is Europe and Asia.

But who would have thought that Britain’s most popular TV-chef, Jamie Oliver, has Sudanese ancestors – only 6 generations back! Oliver claims that there might indeed be some optical hints in his family, and also says that the picture of himself on the cover of his book “The Naked Chef” is quite revealing.

He now would like to participate in the BBC’s genealogy program “Who Do You Think You Are?” to find out more about his African heritage.