If you've ever gathered you family for a slideshow of your pictures you know how enjoyable it can be to share these images and the memories that go with them. But you probably also know how disturbing it is if pictures are upside down and how quickly family members lose their patience with you having to rotate every single one of them. That's no longer, as we've introduced a photo rotation feature for your site!

When uploading your photo's, the site will auto-rotate your pictures so they display correctly and will also offer the option for you to rotate the picture manually if the rotation is incorrect.

If you already have photo's on your site, the rotation works on those as well. Simply use the manual rotation function and voila- your pictures are ready to enjoy the way they were intended.

The only thing you'll also have to do without is these pictures:

As some of you may know, we are currently in the month of Ramadan. The 9th Month in the Islamic Lunar Calendar, Ramadan is a special month for Muslims throughout the world. It is a month that all physically able practicing Muslims are obliged to observe the daily fast. I know this, because I've been brought up observing the fast of Ramadan, and so know first hand what it's like to be fasting.

During the month of Ramadan, it is forbidden for Muslims to eat, drink, smoke, or make love with their spouses during daylight hours. It is also recommended that we observe our thoughts and attempt to avoid thinking bad things about anything or anyone, and try to only have good thoughts. It is indeed a challenging time.

Me and my family wake up each day, in the early hours of the morning (which in London started off as around 3am), to make sure we eat something before Sunrise begins. Then in the evening we try to break our fast together, as a family, gathering around the table around 8pm, waiting for the exact moment of Sunset, when the Maghrib, or Evening Prayer time begins.

We've been working hard on improving the way in which you use your photos so you can make more of them. We already told you about our new photo rotation.

But there are two more things that several of you have asked us for and that will help you organize your photos:

* Order your photos with drag and drop. You can now order the photos within an album simply by using drag and drop. Select your photo by clicking on its border or ticking its check box and move them around in your album. By the way: The order of the photos in albums will also affect the slideshows (if you have selected that album on the top left of the slideshow fullscreen).

* Mark several photos quickly. You can now mark several photos at the same time and then use the selection for all drag & drop actions like re-ordering, moving to another folder and so on. Simply draw a rectangle with the mouse on your albums page and all photos within it will become selected.

A few weeks ago, inspired by our outing to The Breakfast Club, we decided to have another staff lunch, only this time, we went for an Indian. Based on some strong recommendations from some well informed friends, we decided to check out Tayyabs, an Indian restaurant a short walk from our office here in London. It was especially recommended for it's authentic Indian Cuisine, and considered a favourite by all my Indian friends.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, even though it was only 12:30pm, and we'd passed many empty Indian restaurants along the way, this place was already packed. In true Indian style, we were squeezed into a corner, behind a table of what must have been a party of 20 or 30, presumably there to celebrate a wedding, since everyone seemed to be dressed in fine clothes, and clearly it was an extended family of some sort, with grandparents, and younger children too ;)

When thinking about New York and its history, many of you may think of the Empire state building, the city's yellow cabs, 9/11 or the many communities that make up New York: the Italians, the Irish or the Eastern European Jewish communities.

Interestingly, however, while the Dutch have had a sizeable influence in shaping the city, sending a sizeable community the 'New World's' way.

In fact they can be considered the founders of the city of New York because 400 years ago this month, a man named Henry Hudson sailed on a Dutch ship called the Half Moon (a replica of which you see on the photo here) into what later became New York Harbor. He sailed by what is now Manhattan on his way to finding a western route to India. It was the prelude to the establishment of a Dutch trading settlement called New Amsterdam. Today's New York.

The Dutch are celebrating the anniversary of this historical event this year

After a month and a bit more on the road, I'm now back home. It's time to take a break before my interview on Sep. 15 with Susan E. King and tell you all about my genealogy tour in the US during the month of August.

My first stop was in New Jersey where I spoke to the Genealogical Society of Bergen County in Ridgewood. More than 50 people heard about the latest MyHeritage.com tools to help genealogists with their research and families to better stay in touch.

The public library where the society meets has a large genealogy section with old phone books, genealogy magazines (old and new), a nice collection of books with family information, and many computers, printers and copy machines. The library is about to redesign the space to give researchers more space and to access additional materials.

Marriages are happy occasions. Time to gather the family and unite around the love of two people for another.

We at MyHeritage.com like to think of ourselves as one big family and so when our members decide to get married, well, everyone is invited.

David Melamed is one of our web developers and he and his (now) wife Sarah got married a little while ago in a nice place in Herzeliah, close to Tel Aviv. It was a wonderful day and all of us were happy to be there to share the moment with them.

But the celebrations wouldn't have been complete without some dancing in the honor of the bride and groom and we're happy someone captured these moments for you on picture:

Sagi, Mario, David and Sarah, Dori, Ayelet and Ran (left to right)

Joan [Robertson] Symons is of Scottish-English descent and lives in Kingscliff in Australia. She is 82 and with her age come a lot of stories. Find some of them below.

My interest in genealogy began when my children asked me about the first World War medals that they had worn to school for the ANZAC ( Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) services. My maternal grandmother had given them to me and I knew of the tragedy behind them that was never spoken of because it was so painful to my grandparents.

My grandparents had come to Shepparton, Australia in 1912, from Wiltshire, England with their three daughters. Their daughter Gladys married an Englishman who had come to Australia as a young boy because work was scarce in the agricultural area. He became a soldier, and when he returned from service they were given soldier settlement land near Shepparton, in Victoria and wanted to start a family. Sadly both my auntie and her baby died during childbirth. After this tragedy, my uncle was unable to settle in Victoria and returned to England where he was born.

It makes us proud: Red Herring has selected the investors of MyHeritage.com -- Accel Partners and Index Ventures -- as the #1 and #3 best investment firms worldwide! The Red Herring Top 100 Global Venture Capitalists ranking is renowned in the industry, so coming first and third there speaks volumes about the professionalism, expertise and track record of our investors.

Sincere congratulations to Accel Partners and Index Ventures from the whole team at MyHeritage.com. A special thank you to Simon Levene from Accel and Saul Klein from Index who are working closely with us since 2006 and 2008 respectively.

If you...

I remember when I was a child and would go abroad to visit my family either in Taiwan or in France for the summer holidays, separation and goodbyes were always a difficult time. Back in those days, relations with your cousins and more 'distant' relatives were ephemeral and it was difficult to stay in touch throughout the year. No Skype, no chat, no emails...Just the reassuring idea that you would go back to visit them the following summer. As the years went by it became more and more difficult to stay in touch and keep track of what my relatives were up to 10,000 miles away from me, but thankfully technology and social media has allowed me and my cousins to reconnect. Now we share pictures online and tell each other about our lives through the Internet! In fact, looking back, I really wish I had been lucky enough to have access to all this when I was younger and I believe that it is important for children to be able to stay connected and in contact with their relatives - wherever they are - and that all throughout the year.

If there's one candidate for our MyHeritage.com premium subscription, it's undoubtedly the Israeli Krishevsky family, which, it was reported this week, consists of 1400 members.

The news reached us because the head of the family, Israeli great-grandmother, Rachel Krishevsky, sadly, passed away at the age of 99 this week. She leaves behind an estimated 1,400 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

Rachel had eleven children and her children subsequently had similar numbers of children each, which led to the family reaching an impressive 1400 descendants. The number is unconfirmed officially, as no-one in the family is entirely sure how much members they are! We can't help but wonder whether she would send them all birthday cards...

Jack Gilchrist is a MyHeritage.com member from Michigan. He has brought all those in his family who are family historians, genealogy hobbyists or just interested in the family, together on his MyHeritage website. The result is an impressive tree of over 2000 people, 200 members and hundreds of photos. Even more so considering he only really started building it in 2009. Read about it here:

The Gilchrist 2006 Reunion

I started with MyHeritage in February 2009. It was my first venture into genealogy or any major effort to document my family tree, its history and old family stories and mug shots.

I got into genealogy because my kids asked me a few years ago to jot down some of the stories I liked to tell about growing up in the "Good Old Days". So I wrote down over 40 pages of what it was like growing up in a neat family in the 40's and 50's. I then gave each of my four children a copy as part of their Christmas gift that year. It captured a lot of the old family stories I could remember from being born in 1941 to around 1965, when I finished college and started my first full time job.

The exercise got me thinking about my family history in general and the other stories that others likely had that I had never even heard. Then I lost my oldest living uncle in 2008 and it dawned on me that if I didn't get going my elder relative's stories would soon be lost for good.

Read part 1 here.

Photo by Nancy Adelson

In addition to my work at the IAJGS Philadelphia conference and keeping up with MyHeritage.com responsibilities, I was also happy to meet our newest MyHeritage team member Laurence Harris, the Genealogy Advisor UK.

Schelly Talalay Dardashti (who writes the MyHeritage Genealogy Blog) also attended the conference and both of us enjoyed talking with Laurence over the six-day event.

Laurence was very helpful during my workshop and we three got together to exchange ideas, talk about the genealogy field and even managed a quick lunch out of the hotel in spite of the hectic conference schedule. Laurence will be working from London, where he lives with his family.

As part of my theoretical family vacation - there is no such thing for a workaholic genealogist addicted to the computer - we went to Pennsylvania State University to visit my brother-in-law, who's studying for his master's degree. The Blair County Genealogical Society, in Hollidaysburg, PA kindly re-scheduled their usual meeting day to fit in with my travel plans.