MyHeritage Announcements From RootsTech

This week has been a whirlwind of activity for the team at MyHeritage.  Each day has been a new press release about the products and changes happening within the company.  

Photo Discoveries:

Friday was the launch of a brand new feature - exclusive to MyHeritage - Photo Discoveries™.  A Photo Discovery provides users with a set of photographs of ancestors and relatives, originating in family trees contributed by others. Users can add the photographs to the matching profiles in their family tree, in a single click.

Photo Discoveries is an innovative feature which transforms family trees by automatically adding matching historical photos. A Photo Discovery provides users with a set of photographs of ancestors and relatives they may have never seen before, originating in family trees contributed by others. Users can add the photographs to the matching profiles in their family tree, in a single click.

Layered on top of MyHeritage's highly accurate Smart Matching™ technology, which locates matching profiles in other family trees, and Instant Discoveries™, which enable users to add entire branches to their family tree in just a few clicks, Photo Discoveries identifies the profiles that have no photographs in the user's family tree and provides photographs of these individuals from matching profiles on other family trees.

Users can add up to ten photographs per Photo Discovery, reject specific ones they do not wish to receive, and apply Photo Discoveries as many times as they would like. The photographs are then copied over to the associated profiles, preserving all useful metadata such as people tags, dates and place names.

“At MyHeritage we’re constantly brainstorming innovative new ways to make our industry-leading matching technologies even better,” said MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet. “Receiving a never-seen-before photograph of an ancestor is a delightful emotional experience, and one that we would like our users to enjoy as often as possible. Photo Discoveries deliver this and fulfill the promise of collaborative genealogy in a slick and gratifying one-click experience."

Viewing Photo Discoveries in thumbnail form is free. Applying Photo Discoveries to one's family tree requires a PremiumPlus or Complete subscription on MyHeritage.

The official blog post can be viewed here:
https://blog.myheritage.com/2017/02/introducing-photo-discoveries/

Appointment of new CSO

They announced on Thursday the appointment of Dr. Yaniv Erlich as its Chief Science Officer. Dr. Erlich, a DNA scientist of world renown, will lead scientific development and strategy for MyHeritage DNA, the company's newly established DNA service for family history and ethnicity, and ensure that its products are built on a solid scientific foundation.

Dr. Erlich, nicknamed the Genome Hacker by Nature journal, brings to MyHeritage unparalleled experience in the field of genomics as Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Computational Biology at Columbia University and as a Core Member at the New York Genome Center. He is also the former principal investigator and a Whitehead Fellow at MIT's Whitehead Institute, founder of DNA.LAND and the principal investigator of the Erlich DNA lab.

Dr. Erlich completed his Ph.D. at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2010, and has won numerous awards as a cutting-edge scientist, including the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award (2013), the Harold M. Weintraub Award (2010) and the IEEE/ACM-CS High Performance Computing Award (2008). Dr. Erlich has a B.Sc. degree cum laude in Neuroscience from Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Erlich's research interests are diverse and cover many facets of computational human genetics, including population studies, DNA privacy, DNA storage and genetic research in crowd-sourced family trees.

“We're delighted to welcome Yaniv to our management team. Yaniv's expertise in computational genetics and its synergy with family history will provide the solid scientific foundation that is fundamental for setting apart our fast-growing DNA service from the others” said MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet. “We are committed to providing our users with the most accurate DNA results, and helping them understand more about themselves. Yaniv will lead a dedicated team of world-class scientists to help us achieve this.”

“I’m excited to join the talented team at MyHeritage and put my scientific experience to use by the millions of users on the MyHeritage platform,” said Dr. Erlich. “I've collaborated with MyHeritage since 2012 and have known them to be forward thinkers about building tools and platforms that enable massive scale scientific studies. I look forward to opening new horizons in consumer genetics in my new role, and further empowering our users with useful and creative tools that harness the latest scientific discoveries”.

MyHeritage DNA was launched in November 2016, offering simple DNA home-testing kits for determining users' ethnic origins and discovering new relatives. The service is offered in more than 190 countries worldwide, in 42 languages.

Discoveries Pages

The Discoveries pages provide a unified experience for all matches, organizing them into two main pages: Matches by People and Matches by Source. Now you can look at all matches that were found for a particular individual in your family tree, or all matches found in a particular collection of historical records or matching family tree. Whatever you choose to use, the new pages combine Smart Matches (matches with trees) and Record Matches (matches with records) into the same unified and consistent interface.

MyHeritage also will now display the new information that each match provides, and matches are arranged by the value that they add to your family tree, so that those matches that add the most value are listed first.

This saves you time and allows you to focus on the most valuable matches. You can easily save all new and improved information to your family tree.

MyHeritage is known throughout the industry for it's matching technologies, and they have just gotten even better with a great new user interface. The new pages are easier to use, more intuitive and much faster than the previous layout.

Please learn more about the Discoveries page in the official blog post: https://blog.myheritage.com/2017/02/introducing-the-new-discoveries-pages/

MyHeritage Launches PedigreeMap

MyHeritage Launches Online Family History Map

PedigreeMap™ plots events and photos from users’ family trees on an interactive map to provide geographical and historical insights

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah,  — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, launched  PedigreeMap™ today — an innovative way to visualize family history, optimized for tablet devices. PedigreeMap™ displays all events in a user’s family tree, such as births, marriages and deaths, as well as digital photos and scanned historical photos, on an interactive map. This allows users to trace the locations of their ancestors and gain new insights into their lives. All data is grouped by country and location, and users can easily filter their view of the map by person, family group, event type, and time period.

PedigreeMap™ comes with additional features such as place name standardization to improve data quality, and Heatmaps that showcase which geographic areas have a high concentration of activity in the user's family history.

“MyHeritage is the family history technology leader. We’re constantly developing new ways to give people insights about their family history," said Uri Gonen, Senior VP of Product Management at MyHeritage. “The first release of PedigreeMap™ helps people understand the life journeys of their ancestors, and we have interesting and original ideas lined up for the next releases.”

PedigreeMap™ is free for all users. To access it, log in to your account on MyHeritage or create a new account for free, then select PedigreeMap™ in the “Apps” menu.

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the world's fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history. As technology thought leaders, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s accessible and instantly rewarding. Its global user community enjoys access to a massive library of historical records, the most internationally diverse collection of family trees and ground­breaking search and matching technologies. Trusted by millions of families, MyHeritage provides an easy way to share family stories, past and present, and treasure them for generations to come. MyHeritage is available in 42 languages. www.myheritage.com

My Heritage New Community Q&A hub

MyHeritage Launches New Community-Powered Q&A Hub

MyHeritage Community allows users to post requests for assistance with their family history research and receive help from the global 81-million-strong MyHeritage user community

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, April 19, 2016 — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, announced today the launch of MyHeritage Community, a new online Q&A hub that fosters family history research collaboration. MyHeritage Community is built as an image-oriented forum integrated into the website for users to help one another solve genealogical challenges, such as translating documents, deciphering handwritten letters, identifying unknown people in photos and searching for elusive ancestors.

With more than 81 million users around the world registered on MyHeritage and 42 languages supported, MyHeritage Community is uniquely positioned to serve as a meeting place for people trying to solve genealogical mysteries, and other people willing to help them. Users looking for assistance can post requests in the MyHeritage Community to get expert genealogy advice or benefit from native language expertise and local geographic familiarity. For example: a user in the United States with roots in Germany can post an image of an ancestor’s handwritten letter written in Kurrent — old German handwriting — and ask for help deciphering it. Another user from Germany can then translate it and add first-hand information on the town from which the letter was posted.

Volunteerism is an important value in the world of genealogy. Since the recent release of the MyHeritage Community, inspiring cases of users helping other users continue to surface. Examples include a user who posted a request for information on her relatives from a specific region in Italy and received pinpointed advice down to the address of the relevant office to contact; a user who asked for a translation of a church certificate from Portuguese to English and received a full translation and in-depth explanation of the purpose and origin of the document; plus many more.

“My definition of a genealogist is someone who — after consuming most research directions for his/her own family — helps other people research their family tree, just because he/she loves it so much,” said MyHeritage founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet. “Many genealogists are generous with their time and knowledge, and eager to help others explore their family history. The new MyHeritage Community allows people to help each other, making our service even more useful and effective.”

MyHeritage Community is free, and is accessible at www.myheritage.com/community.

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the world's fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history. As technology thought leaders, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s accessible and instantly rewarding. Its global user community enjoys access to a massive library of historical records, the most internationally diverse collection of family trees and ground­breaking search and matching technologies. Trusted by millions of families, MyHeritage provides an easy way to share family stories, past and present, and treasure them for generations to come. MyHeritage is available in 42 languages. www.myheritage.com

Discovery! is almost as good as Eureka!

For the last year I have been playing around once a month with the MyHeritage website.  I would do more, but OMG this year has been so hectic and way to fast pace. Really, it’s June already?!

Moving on.  One of the features I am growing to love more and more is the instant discovery icon.  While I am not brave enough to merge people straight into my tree from another member’s tree it is a great way to get hints on other lines.  The hints I have found have really been worthwhile, and helped to fill in details I didn’t have.

Oh, and yes, you read that right I don’t (anymore) merge people’s trees into mine.  No matter how good the tree looks I am leery, and cautious. One too many bad apples upset the apple cart you could say.  That, however, is another post.

But back to MyHeritage. 

This discovery feature can be accessed two ways: from your family tree or the main page under discoveries.  Simply click the “Discovery!” icon and it will take you to a series of pages to confirm this is your ancestor.  From there you can choose to add those people into your tree.

The new people are actually marked “new” so if you disagree with anyone added from the merge you can go delete them.  That is my one complaint, I wish there was a way to only add the people you want to from those discoveries into your tree.  From what I read and saw there is no way to do that.  It is all or nothing. 

Lucky for me, I have a more complete tree (remember from earlier posts, I am adding people as I find through the record matches only on this site) on my desktop.  From my home tree I can compare the data before I merge it, but you may not have that ability.  It’s a neat feature, so I encourage you to explore it.  You may love it!  I know I have found it interesting so I encourage you to go and explore a little!

My Heritage: progress and minor frustration

Okay, the new tree is going really well for the most part.  My biggest excitement came when I was able to find records for my husband’s great grandmother in Wales and England.  Frustration came quickly after since I have not figured out how to page through the images.  So, where do I begin?  How about with finding new a new document?

Last month I received the death certificate I ordered from the state of New York for Thomas Pittard.

He was my husband’s 2^nd great grandfather who immigrated to the US in the early 1880s with his children and 2^nd wife.  On it there were clues to who his parents were, which made me giddy beyond all belief.  You see Pittard is a very common name in the area he was from on the border of Wales and England.  Plus, throw in Thomas, which is not a very distinctive name, and you have dozens upon dozens of hits.  However, becasue of the new record now I know that his parents were Thomas Pittard and Elizabeth Palmer and the whole family was born in Martock, Somerset, England.

I know, death certificates cannot be trusted 100% of the time.  Yes, the person may be giving information they think is correct but may be all wrong.  Yep, got it, but I am inclined to believe it for a couple of reasons.  First, they were married in England before coming over and the wife may have known them. Second, the family lore that his 2^nd wife and 1^st wife were sisters.  If that is correct I am pretty sure she would know their names.

Last week a record hint appeared for the 1851 England Census.  Thomas was born in 1850 which made him 1 on this census.  Lucky for me it looks like I found the family.  Whoot!  He was there with his parents and a slew of siblings.  Plus, an uncle named Thomas Jeans who was 51 and deaf.  I copied the image of the census record below:

Needless to say there are now lots of little clues coming up very frequently.  It is hard to spend only my allotted time working on this (I do have other things I have to get done after all) but it is very nice to come and see actual record hits every time I open the page.  Yes, it is the beginning and in the beginning there are a lot of hits, I wonder how long I can keep building the tree out from these records alone before I have to go to my files.

The thing that I am extremely frustrated about is that I can’t browse the images.  I like to look forward and back from my family of interest to see what else I can learn about the community and to see if there are other potential relatives there.  I still can’t figure out how to do that with the website and it is bugging me.  I mean, the image is awesome, but for good research I need to be able to research and that means looking forward and backwards in the record pages. 

If you know the hint to solving this problem let me know.  I’d really love to hear it!

MyHeritage: a new adventure with a new to me family tree

Back in May at the NGS Conference I found myself waiting for Dear Myrtle at the MyHeritage booth.  While I was there I spent my time talking to the great guys manning it.  Honestly, they are really nice people and we were having a great time.  Well, anyway, one thing lead to another and after I mentioned that I was a writer and blogger I found myself being set-up with an account.

Not exactly what I had planned.  I mean how many family tree accounts can one person have right?  However, the demo and the way they answered my questions kind of hooked me. Well, I will admit, I was intrigued by what they could offer me that was different from the other sites out there.  A lot of the same record sties, just searched in a different way.

I do have an Ancestry tree and the beginnings of a Family Search tree.  I am also lazy about my own family research.  Seriously.  Over the last year I have been so focused on lectures, teaching, and writing that my poor shrub has started to gather dust and be decorated by spiders. 

It took a lot for me to say that I would give this a try and have them help me set-up my account.  Now, this is where I need to admit something to you.  I have a free premium plus subscription to try MyHeritage and blog about my experiences.  You all should know that I will be honest with you about those and I did warn them that I could be a bit opinioned. 

Now they knew I would not be able to really delve into the site until August.  The summer is always crazy for me with kids home, vacations, outings, and parental visits to name a few, but, true to my word I sat down last week and played with the site for a few hours.  Oh my, it’s addictive.  Just what I didn’t need!

To put it through its paces I decided to start from scratch.  Well, start with what I have in my head only.  It would be super easy to transfer information over from another site or my computer database but I wanted to try it like a “real” person.  You know, someone who is just starting out and might only have what is in their head, what their parents told them, and a shoe box of pictures or documents.

It was actually very easy to get started.  However, I didn’t fill in all the miscellaneous information the site asked for.  Like what were my parents hobbies, interests, likes, and dislikes.  That may have to wait for the Christmas visit where I will interrogate them one on one.  I can hear them groaning now.

In this first session I managed to enter me, my husband, our kids, our parents, their siblings, and our grandparents.  I figured that was a good first week since I am trying to get as much as I can remember down about them, with pictures if possible, before I start uploading documents later.  What I couldn’t believe was the record hits that happened very quickly.  Even for my husband!

I plan to do 2-4 hours a week on this site for the next couple of months, giving you updates and progress reports as I go.  Also reviews of how I like the functionality of the site and if I run into anything I really don’t like.  After I get the tree up and running I am interested how connecting with others and gathering documents from the site will work.  Plus I just downloaded the app, let's see if I hate it or love it next time!

On that note, I hope you will stick around and see what happens.  It should be fun!