Almost everyone around the world started the New Year, although not all countries celebrate at the same date or the same way, especially in Asia.

Until I came to the UK from Beijing, I always celebrated the New Year in late January or sometimes in February, depending on the day indicated by the Lunar Calendar. Chinese New Year is more like a Western Christmas, when you get together with your family and share a meal. Celebrations continue with fireworks, just like all around the world.
The biggest difference with other countries may be that on New Year's day, when most people are nursing hangovers, in China families visit relatives, exchange presents and continue the celebrations.

Despite some differences from country to country, in Asia there's a common theme that appears to be the most important thing, which is celebrating with family and friends.
Across Asia there are very similar ways of celebrating the New Year. In Japan for instance,

We've just released the new version of our popular genealogy software "Family Tree Builder" (it has been downloaded more than 4 Million times so far). It now includes amazing new features, like "Smart Match Merge": the merging from data between trees with Smart Matches. Or the automatic research of all the people in your tree.

And the publishing features are greatly extended: You can now also upload all your family videos and documents and publish them on your MyHeritage family site.
The newly released advanced features now require a Premium family site, but everything else in Family Tree Builder continues to be completely free.

Enhanced Publishing: Bring your family tree to life with photos, videos, audio files and your family research documents! (click to enlarge)

The expert users among you can read a more detailed account of what's new from Schelly on our genealogy blog.

This is the full text of the press release (you can also find it on PR Web):

This story was sent to us by Paul Cockrill, who has traced his ancestors back seventeen generations. With his research have come many interesting stories. He shares a few of them here.

I started getting interested in my family history over 13 years ago when I received some old files that a relative (Jack Anderson) had started back in the 1930's. He created a Newsletter called 'The Clansman' which he would sell for 25 cents. It was like a family newspaper: he would gather information from relatives on births, deaths and who was doing what and then published it in a newsletter for the whole family to read.

Later on, a grand aunt started to compile the family tree of my mother's family, the family we refer to as the Paynter clan. I became so interested in their history that I asked my Uncle Peer Paynter if there were photos of my ancestors.

He sent many, even some of which date back to the 1860's and that really started my research of family history.

I had initially started compiling the family tree with PAF software and then progressed to Family Tree Maker and now Family Tree Builder. I have used many web sites researching my ancestors over the years,

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!

Steven Finch is founder and CEO of Crenk.com, a weblog founded in 2007, reviewing web and mobile applications on the web. Steven also spots and analyses interesting web trends so he is well placed to give us some insight into technology and families. And as an Australian abroad, he knows very well what it is like to be away from his family..

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

My favourite holiday is christmas.. and we normally spend it relaxing and having a BBQ back home in Australia. Then after lunch we head to my aunties place where we spend the rest of the day relaxing on the canal, swimming and drinking.

How international is your family?

My family is fairly international. My mum was born in Australia but her family originally comes from Blackburn in the United Kingdom. My dad was born in the UK too, in Liverpool, and his family comes from there too.

All of us at MyHeritage want to give a big, warm welcome to Marcella Leite from New York. Marcella created the 300,000,000th profile today, and we are happy she is part of the MyHeritage family!

As a welcome present, we'll send you a special MyHeritage T-shirt. Welcome, Marcella!

She has a fun and interesting story about how she joined:

Hi everyone! I'm Carl, and I'm the Community Manager for the US here at MyHeritage. I'm based in London, but I'm originally from warm, sunny Los Angeles - and yes, I miss the weather!!!

Let me share with you some of the challenges Americans face in keeping in touch with their families, and some interesting stories from my family history.

We're happy to let you know that we just introduced yet another new way of sharing memories with your family: video, audio and document sharing. Many of you are already sharing you family photos but now you can share lots of other stuff as well.

Do you have videos of your children? Digital copies of old love letters? Audio material of your grandparents? This brand new MyHeritage feature was introduced to let you share this material on your family site.

It allows you to:
- Add files to your family site's home page
- Personalise your material
- Share photos, video, documents and audio files

It's free and easily accessible from your family site, just where you are used to find the photos.

This is how it works:

With the start of New Year in India, the celebration times with festivals have also started. MyHeritage wishes you a very happy Lohri, Makar Sankranti and Baisakhi to all the Indian families across the world. Enjoy the festive season and connect with your families world-wide with MyHeritage.com, the world's most popular family social network.

Lohri is celebrated every year on 13th of January in India. It is a festival to worship fire. The story behind the festival is that at this time, Earth starts moving towards the sun, marking the auspicious period of Uttarayan. First, Lohri is very important for newlyweds and newborn babies, as it marks fertility. In a Hindu household, new utensils are purchased and used for the first time. Families fly thousands of beautiful kites all over the skyline. In Karnataka, men, women and children attired in colorful clothes visit friends and relatives and exchange pieces of sugarcane, a mixture of fried molasses, pieces of dry coconut, peanuts and fried gram. As part of the festival, cows and bulls are given a wash and the horns are painted with bright colors and decorated with garland, and are taken in a procession in the village to the accompaniment of pipes and drums. At night, people gather around the bonfire and throw puffed rice & popcorn into the flames of the bonfire. Prayers are offered to the bonfire for abundance & prosperity. People make merry by dancing & singing traditional folk songs. The whole event lasts for four days: the first day, Bhogi, the second day, Sankranti, the third day, Kanuma and the fourth day, Mukkanuma. Now, why fire?

Happy Martin Luther King Day to all of our American friends! All of us know about Dr. King and all the work he did to further equal rights for Americans. But not as many of us know about his family, and there are some interesting stories to be found if you dig deep enough. To commemorate this day, we'll explore some of lesser-known stories from Dr. King's family history: his family's close connection with Ebenezer Baptist Church and the influence of his grandfather, Rev. Adam Williams.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was actually born Michael King, Jr. in 1924 in Atlanta, Georgia. His name was changed ten years later, after his family visited Eisleben, Germany. This is the birthplace of Martin Luther, who founded Protestantism. Michael King Sr. changed both his name and his son's name to Martin Luther in honor of him.

Today, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. It is only fitting that today we will look at his family history and see what stories we can unearth - his family includes an African tribal warrior and six American presidents! MyHeritage even shows you how Obama is related to President Bush!

On his father's side, Obama's family goes back 12 generations to Miwiru. He was the grandfather of Owiny, a warrior-leader of the Luo, a tribe that migrated to Kenya about 400 years ago. The Luo fought many wars with the native tribes and the Bantu. After the wars, the Bantu women intermarried with the Luo men, but unfortunately the women's names and details are lost in the fog of history. This line was preserved through oral tradition, and there are very few written records, so precise dates and facts are lost.

At MyHeritage there's another way to look for relatives, friends or even make new ones: our Community Section.

If you are interested in networking and contacting new people, you can find members with similar interests to you and connect with them in this section.

You can also build a complete member profile with some interesting information about yourself to let others find you.

You can find people through profile indications of their Interests, Age, Gender, Country or whether they have a profile photo or not. Or just look through the list of all the members of the MyHeritage Community.

This is how you set up your member profile:

Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival is the most important traditional Chinese holiday. It is not only celebrated in China but by Chinese communities and individuals all around the world. Because it is based on the lunar calender, the new year begins on varied dates from late January to mid-February. In 2009, Chinese new year falls on the 26th of January - the year of the Ox, year 4707 on the Chinese calendar.

The Chinese calendar follows a 12-year pattern with each year being represented by an animal. Those are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Dog and Pig. Depending on the year you are born, you are believed to have the various character traits of that years animal. The Ox in chinese zodiac implies hard-working, energetic and friendly.

So what do families do around Chinese New Year?

The MyHeritage Gift Shop is welcoming the Valentine's Day season with a special MyHeritage gift offer! Use the promotion code below to receive 5% off any purchase from our UK store.

Just enter sendyourvalentine in the promo box when you confirm your purchase.

Choose from our exclusive Valentine's Day selection of flowers, chocolates, drinks, toys, cards, and more! Celebrate a lifetime of love and memories with a bottle of fine Pol Roger champagne delivered right to your door. Or surprise your sweetheart with a box of heart-shaped truffles or one of our luxury gift baskets - it's the perfect way to say, "I love you."

Visit today to make sure your gift arrives before Valentine' Day - it's only 2 weeks away!

MyHeritage US Gift Shop launching soon. Please check back for more updates.

At MyHeritage we are always interested in hearing your stories. In fact, we have been running some of the stories we have heard about from you, our users, on our blog.

Previously, Paul, who has traced his family back an impressive seventeen generations, shared family anecdotes with us that he came across while researching his family history, while Liora told us how she brought 65 of the 132 family members she has on her MyHeritage site together at a family reunion.

So if you have discovered any distant family through MyHeritage, have rekindled a relationship through the site or have another nice, funny or intriguing story for us, email linde (at) myheritage (dot) com, because we would love to hear and write about it..!

Got any Valentine stories? With this special day coming up we'd love to hear them.