Hi ! Welcome to our very first post about all the less noticed MyHeritage features.

There are lots of little tricks that you may not be aware of and that you can start using to make the most of MyHeritage for you and your family. We will be discovering them here one by one.

Now, let's start with the first tip.

Did you know MyHeritage can send you reminders of the events in your MyHeritage calendar not only via Email but also by SMS directly to your mobile phone? And it is completely free! Setting them up is very easy, this is what you have to do:

If you're a MyHeritage registered user and you're using our Calendar to keep a record of birthdays or family anniversaries, go to the Settings tag in the MyHeritage home page.

You will be directed to the My preferences tab. There, go down to Event reminders, where you will be able to select "Send calendar alerts by" Email or SMS. For the latter, you just need to include your phone number (with country code!). You can send a test message, to see if everything work fine.

That's it, all done. Now there will be no excuse to miss any family event.

You finally want to put into practice all you have learned about online marketing? You know the US as your home country or from living there? You've had some contact with the online world already and joining an experienced team behind a website with 27 million users sound like the right thing for you to do now?

We offer a job in our marketing team, based in London (or Tel-Aviv or potential remotely from the US) starting anytime between now and January and on an internship basis to start with. Prepare a list with your 10 favourite websites, one sentence each about why you like them and send it together with your CV to mario (at) myheritage (dot) com.

Or maybe you know the right person for this job? Make them happy by directing him here. Feel free to email any other questions to Mario.

Now you can share your Christmas spirit with your loved ones and win a video camera!

Join MyHeritage's 'Jingle along to your family song' contest by singing a Christmas carol for your family and even the world. The most original and funny performance wins.

So all you have to do is:

• Record your video singing your favorite Christmas carol. Before you start your song, say your name, where are you singing from and whom are you singing to.


• Upload the video onto the contest's group on YouTube. To access the group and enjoy other people's videos click here or to upload a video if you already are an YouTube registered user click here.

Submit your video until December 18th (time enough for the prize to reach the bottom of your tree on Christmas day) and check this blog regularly to see the short-listed videos. And obviously we will also announce the winner here.

This Christmas, not only your family is looking forward to hear from you!

Politicians, stay-at-home dads, academics or businesswomen...they all know the value of family and the joys of staying in touch with them. But what is on their family photo's? How often do they call their mother and what celebrity do they secretly admire? Get ready to find out through the MyHeritage interview series!

Cecelia Mecca is a mother of two and a real mom blogger. She runs the Baby Kid blogs, a series of blogs that discusses what baby products to buy, give tips on educational products and resources and answer any questions moms may have on blogging, parenthood and babies. This week she answers MyHeritage's questions.

What is on your favourite family photo?


My immediate family in front of a sign "Welcome to Caltebelotta" on a trip this summer to Caltabelotta, Sicily, the town where my great-grandparents are from.

What is your favourite holiday and how does your family celebrate it?

Christmas, hands down.

We've just launched the MyHeritage Christmas contest, but we have already received some entries!

Here is yesterday's entry:

Just to remind you what the contest is all about:

Join MyHeritage's 'Jingle along to your family song' contest by singing a Christmas carol for your family and even the world. The most original and funny performance wins a video camera.

You choose where you record it, how, for who and in what language!

Did you know that you can choose the order in which you want the names in your tree to be displayed?

Many of you have contacted us about how to display names in a different order in the family tree, whether to make appear the surname first and your given name second to name an option.
This feature is critical to the Chinese language for example, in which the order of the names cannot be changed because they would mean something different otherwise.

This function has always been there on MyHeritage, so let's discover it together:

Step 1: Go to your family tree. On the right hand side of the page you will find four symbols: an arrow, a printer, a spanner and a question mark.

Step 2: Click on the scanner, the Preferences menu will pop up. You will find the Display names option at the bottom.

Step 3: Use the drop down bar to select how you want your name to be displayed and then click OK.

All done. Now your family tree will look like you wanted it too!

written by Nan, community manager China

Being a German, but living with English, French and Canadian flat mates in London I noticed again how different Christmas traditions are - even across Christian countries in the northern hemisphere. At the end of November or early December the "Adventszeit" starts in Germany. Actually the last 4 weeks before Christmas are the beginning of the Western liturgical year and called "Advent" in most Christian churches, but in the UK nobody really uses that word.

It is when you start seeing "Adventskraenze" in the average German family - no matter if they are religious or not. It is a wreath of branches from different fir trees or conifers. They have 4 candles one for each week of Advent. In the first week you can light one candle (like on the picture), in the second week two, then three and form the 4th Sunday in Advent and all the time through christmas you will light all four candles. If you take care you can see the same thing in Anglican churches and some churches in the US.

The other event that is very important to German families is "Nikolaus". It is apparently the origin for the American

This holiday season the designers at MyHeritage have prepared something special: At least in your virtual family home on myheritage.com you can enjoy "White Christmas". If you go to your family tree now, you should see the background covered in snow like in our celebrity tree of US president-elect Obama and his family here in the picture on the right.

Enjoy the Holiday season, with snow or without ;-)

By the way, you can always switch back to the "normal" family chart or our "classic" view with the buttons on the bottom.

So far our Christmas carol contest is running and very promising. We are receiving more videos daily and some are really funny.

For those who aren't familiar with our contest, here is a quick catch-up: MyHeritage "Jingle along to your family song" contest offers you a great opportunity to sing your favorite Christmas song for your family, share your Christmas spirit with your loved ones, and you may win a digital video camera - all you need to do is upload your video here. See our full story click here

Here is our new short-listed one, have a look:

Have you uploaded yours? Christmas is all about your family and your loved ones, they are waiting for your christmas messages...

Politicians, stay-at-home dads, academics or businesswomen...they all know the value of family and the joys of staying in touch with them. But what is on their family photo's? How often do they call their mother and what celebrity do they secretly admire? Get ready to find out through the MyHeritage interview series!

Bennett Greenspan is CEO and President of DNA testing company FamilyTreeDNA. He founded the company in 1999, when he decided to turn his hobby into a business. Last month, MyHeritage started working together with Family Tree DNA to offer you the possibility to uncover your family roots through your DNA. A good occasion to ask Bennett all about his family.

What is on your favorite family foto?

"A Bar Mitzvah party...of the family and it looks unrehearsed for."

What is your favorite holiday and how does your family celebrate it?

"Sukkot... eating outside with the family and friends, telling stories and looking at stars."

Christmas is just around the corner, would you like a new digital video camera to record your special family moments? Last chance to join our 'Jingle along to your family song' Christmas carol contest this week: Sing your favorite Christmas song with your personal message for your family and loved ones, and share your Christmas spirit with all of us. The most original and funniest one will win our prize.

More and more people are sending in videos to our contest. We have had some really good entries so far, some serious and some very funny. If you are feeling brave enough then upload a video of yourself singing.

Have a look at our new entry that we think you may like:

It doesn't matter how good you sing, it will anyway be the most beautiful message to your family at Christmas and some fun for your friends!

Best wishes from MyHeritage team!

Did you know that you can share your recipes with the members of your family tree?

A big part of a family's culture is made up by its food tradition, so MyHeritage allows you to keep it alive with a simple function that lets you store, manage and share your recipes.

It can turn into the form of a family cookbook as you can decide whether any or all members of your family tree have access to your recipes so they would also enjoy them.

It's easy and free to use. This is what you have to do:

Step 1: As you're logged into your account, go to the "Activities" tag and then select "Recipes", and select "Add recipe".

Step 2: Start following the presented steps and filling the fields as needed. You can also include an attachment to your recipe.

Step 3: Choose whom do you want to see your recipe. To do this you have to turn off the Default configuration to get access to all the options. When you finish, select "Save" at the bottom of the page.

We hope you enjoy this feature as much as your whole family will enjoy your recipes!

The MyHeritage team is pleased to announce the winner of our "Jingle along to your family song" Christmas carol contest:
It is John - he will receive a prize of a digital video camera! Watch his Christmas greetings to his family here.

In the past two weeks, we have received many videos. We would like to thank everyone who participated in this - thank you very much for sharing your Christmas spirit with us. And we are sure that your loved ones are really happy to see your special Christmas message to them.

Congratulations to our winner!

Jews around the world will celebrate the first night of Chanukah on Sunday evening, December 21. This eight-day holiday - also known as the Festival of Lights - with its bright candles reminds us of events that took place more than 2,300 years ago in the ancient land of Judea, now Israel.

It isn't considered as much a religious holiday as a family holiday that celebrates history, freedom and independence.

Chanukah is celebrated by all Jews, from secular to very religious, around the world, from North America to India to Israel, from Russia to Italy to Australia, South and Central America. Eastern European or Sephardic - every group celebrates it.

And, like all Jewish holidays, it encourages the gathering of generations, providing an opportunity to share family history, and re-tell the stories of our ancestors to the younger generations, to preserve this precious history for the future.

The Jewish calendar is lunar, and the holiday may begin anytime from late November- Late December, but it always begins on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev.

While holiday activities are home-and-family focused, there are also

It's again the time of the year for the Festival of Sacrifice or Eid al-Adha. Today, all Muslims thank to God for whatever he gives to men. So, as a member of the MyHeritage family, I would like to wish happiness to all people celebrating the day and wish them that all their prayers come true.

The historical origin of this day is thought to commemorate Abraham sacrificing his son which is a common belief in all three of the big religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam. There are other commonalities in the books of these religions, but what I am going to mention is about the timing of celebrating these special days. For the last three years, the Muslims' Festival of Sacrifice has been in December around the same time as Christmas and Hanukkah. This is a great opportunity for every one of us to feel a climate of closer relationship between the religions. These days people from all three religions come together with their families and celebrate, become thankful for what they got, have peace with everyone and love each other even more, no matter if they are Muslims, Christians or Jews.

Next year, Eid al-Adha will be in November again, as it's date is determined by the Islamic Lunar Calendar. So, the Festival of Sacrifice and Christmas will again be at different times. However, I wish this increased climate of understanding will continue and people from these three religions will grow their mutual understanding.

Stay with love... Stay with your family... Stay with us...

Image from happy jumper.

This holiday series consists of three posts, one about Christian "Christmas", one on Jewish "Chanukah" and one on the Muslim "Eid al-Adha".

These days, we often wish "Merry Christmas" to people around us, rarely thinking about the fact that for many people Christmas isn't much more than a cultural phenomena. That's why we thought we would set up a couple of articles about the different kinds of religious holidays that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are celebrating these days.

The MyHeritage Team spans the whole world, from the US, the UK and Israel to Turkey, India, South America, France or Italy and consists of people from all the big religions as well as people that are secular altogether. So find my brief 101 on Christmas below, the article from our Turkish colleague Oguzhan on the "festival of sacrifice" here and Schelly's article about Chanukkah here.

Happy Holidays to all of you, whatever festival you are actually celebrating ;-)

I don't need to tell you about the cultural part of Christmas. Even outside Christian countries, some of the Christmas trees, Santa and Rudolf, presents and cookies, bells and candles have probably found their way to you.
So instead of being about the

Good news if you fancy becoming a MyHeritage Premium member: We have simplified our subscription plans and celebrate the launch of our new offers with a hefty christmas discount.
Get 50% off if you upgrade your family site to Premium now, that's only $1.95 per month. And you can still get even more discount, if you go Premium for more than a year.

You can also sponsor a Premium plan for the rest of the family. Or ask one of your relatives, if he makes a MyHeritage Premium plan the christmas present to your family.

And the good thing: A Premium membership is valid for the whole family site, so your relatives will benefit as well.

See all the details of our new plans here:

We're pleased to announce that our Help Center has been improved and enhanced for better support and service.

Now you can enjoy access to a larger directory of frequently asked questions to promptly cover and solve common issues when using MyHeritage.


PHOTO: MyHeritage Help Center

This directory has been compiled from the most popular questions users ask when contacting support. If new issues come up and become frequent we will be add them as new entries in the FAQ list as well, to make the MyHeritage experience as pleasant as possible.

The Help Center is currently

We talked about "Christian Christmas", "Jewish Chanukah" and "Muslim Eid Al-Edha" in our holiday series.

Continuing our festival posts, today we take a look at what are the various ways of celebrating Christmas in India. Generally the Christians who live in the plains decorate mango or banana trees at Christmas time. Some of them also decorate their houses with mango leaves. However in some of the other parts of India, a lot of people use small clay oil-burning lamps as Christmas decorations. These small clay lamps are placed on the edges of flat roofs and on the tops of walls. During Christmas in India, most of the Churches are decorated with candles for the Christmas Eve service.

One of the most famous states for celebration of Christmas in India is Goa. A former colony of Portugal, Goa is known for its unique culture, which is a perfect blend of Portuguese and Indian style. People here observe all the festivals of all religions equally. Christmas is one such festival, which is celebrated with great zeal in Goa. The Christians and non-Christians in Goa observe this day with great honor towards Christ. The celebrations last for 3 days and tourists also participate.

Although the Hindu and Muslim population are the majority in India, Christmas is celebrated with a large amount of fanfare. Christmas in India is declared as a national holiday and people irrespective of their religion enjoy it along with the Christians. Celebrations of Christmas festival begin

Life is life everywhere but some things will never be the same. Take Christmas for example, millions of people are celebrating it throughout the world, but the sense of it will be different for practical reasons on either sides of the equator.

The most common imagery of Christmas, like the trees and the snow are unmistakably Northern Hemisphere ones. Mostly all these elements are also used to signify and celebrate Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere, but the feeling of it is completely different, putting the unequivocal religious significance aside.

From my personal experience, one can feel that in this part of the world (the north) the weather itself accounts for much of the idea of Christmas as a time for family reunion and for the believers, a time for reflection. The cold, the short days, the snow, among other things, inevitably make you look for the warmth of a home and to share the moment with your loved ones around hot food and drinks. See a nice description of these traditions in one of our previous posts. This situation matches the poetic force of the Christmas winter elements known worldwide.

In the Southern Hemisphere,

In the past several years I have lived in various countries and observed how Christmas is celebrated in Estonia and USA. Originally I am from Russia and will be glad to share with you how our traditions of winter holidays are different from European and American celebrations.

Thirteen days after many countries in the world celebrate Christmas, on January 7th, it will be the time for Russia to observe this great holiday. I am sure some of you wonder why Russian Christmas is in January. The reason is that Russian Orthodox Church still uses the old Julian calendar.

After the 1917 Revolution and during the reign of communism, Russian people were forced to stop celebrating Christmas. Only in 1992 the holiday was openly observed. Therefore a lot of traditions, which existed many years ago, were lost. Nowadays, on Christmas eve family members get together for a 'Holy meatless supper' which includes 12 different foods symbolic of the 12 Apostles:

Did you know that you can view your family's data in reports on MyHeritage?

With one click the site lets you display reports on ancestors or descendants, where your family is located and other interesting facts.

So here is how to do it:
Step 1: Go to your MyHeritage family website and go to your family tree.

Step 2: Select the tab named "Reports".

Step 3: Click on the reports you are interested in. There are a lot of nice options.

The Relationship report is a report showing

The period before the celebration of the New Year means for many a time of personal reflection, an evaluation of the past and a time to make plans for the future. It is a celebration, full of hope for the new things to come and another chance to be together with our family and loved ones.

As we get to the end of 2008, many events attracted the world's attention this year, like the Olympics in Beijing, China, the US presidential elections or the bad news of the global economy crisis; but happily the celebration of the New Year is the one recurring event that brings the world together in celebration every year again.

Many go to great length to make the most of this festive day. A different mix of food, drinks, traditions and superstitions makes the evening uniquely celebrated within many different cultures. As a reflection of that, cities around the world have been having their ways of celebrating New Year's Eve for many years.

New Yorkers traditionally get crazy in Times Square, the city's iconic centre, although a curious celebration takes place on January 1 in Coney Island, NY, where some people use the day to take a dip in the freezing waters of the Atlantic.