In these unsure economic times we know families across the globe are feeling the pinch. With wallets being tightened and less money being spent it seems all of us are affected in some way, shape or form.

But we're wondering how exactly is the current economic climate affecting our readers? After all, we're interested in the factors that bring families together and conversely what keeps them apart. While most families will associate the current climate with difficulties, perhaps because of job stress, loss of income and a lower standard of living, there are also reports of families who feel this period has led to positive developments. Perhaps the current financial difficulties are bringing families together more often than before, perhaps families are returning to a more modest, yet more enjoyable life style or perhaps the hardship has brought some families closer together.

That's why we're asking you, has the financial climate had a positive effect on your family? Vote below and let us know! And feel free to comment on how exactly it has brought you closer together.

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

Trevor Cairney and Family

Father and grandfather, Master of Australia's New College, former teacher, academic and educational blogger Trevor Cairney helps others learn about children and education. To that end he embraced new technology and started a blog in 2008 on which he shares his research and writing on education with parents, teachers and trainee teachers. There he discusses topics such as literacy, education and communication. Keen to learn himself, Trevor enjoys the interaction of a blog and so he was happy to interact with MyHeritage.com on this occasion.

Tell us a little about yourself?

Life Expectancy in Ages Zone

Have you ever wondered who is your oldest living relative, or what is the most common birth month of your family? How about who married the youngest, who had the most children, and whose marriage didn't make it?

Now you can access all this information easily with Family Statistics, MyHeritage.com's new analytics feature. This new feature puts at your fingertips 45 original metrics to breathe new life into your family tree and help point out errors in its data. The Family Statistics feature is 100% free and is easily accessible from both your home page and the reports page of your family site, providing visually appealing trends both numerically and in colorful charts and graphs. Best of all, the more your tree grows the more interesting and impressive the stats become.

So what can you do with the new stats?

Click on the Family Stats button (see image on left) on the home page of your family site to access the stats overview page. Here you will get a taste of the valuable information of the stats feature. Find out about the family's gender divide, the living versus deceased in your tree, even chart the relationship status of your entire family tree. Your overview stats page also acts as a portal to six additional zones: places, ages, births, marriages, children, and divorces. Click on the links and explore more stats.

Phil Wood, 64, from Whittington, England, has been with MyHeritage.com now for quite a few years. Having done extensive research into his family history, he's come across a number of interesting stories, including a rather dark tale from his family's distant past. He shares this story with us here.

Phil Wood at age 7

A very distant relative of mine, John Westwood, was born 1802 in Hammerwich and married Sarah Parker at the age of 20. The couple subsequently had seven children so life was hard, and making ends meet was a daily task. Thus, to help with their money John and Sarah rented out a room to a lodger, Samuel Phillips - a Nailor who was employed as a farm labourer come harvest time. Years went by and the family was on good terms until one day John found out Samuel had been romancing his wife. A fight ensued, witnessed by the whole neighbourhood, which John won. Afterwards he became possessive, ordered his wife to stop going with Samuel, and tried locking her indoors. But Sarah proved a defiant wife, swearing at John, threatening to leave him and continuing to see Samuel.

Green Oasis in Brooklyn

Recently I spoke with Paul Schwartz of Planned Television Arts, a media publicity company representing Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. This verdant cemetery has been labeled a National Historic Landmark and dubbed an 'oasis for the refreshment of the city's soul and body' in the recently published book Green Oasis in Brooklyn. A green oasis it is; the grounds meander 225 manicured acres, jogging back and forth between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. The cemetery was designed by influential period architects, Alexander Jackson Davis and Andrew Jackson Downing in 1849 as a non-sectarian burial ground.

MyHeritage.com is a lot more flexible than you might expect, as we offer a vast range of functionalities for the family researcher. If you're the Site Manager of a Family Site, you can find an array of tools and functions to help you out in the Settings tab, located in the main menu.
Take a look through the pages of this section and you'll be amazed by the power you actually have to make MyHeritage's platform work the way you want, and look the way you want it to.

This week the media drew attention to a dark page in the history of Australia and the United Kingdom. Many of you know about the convicts that were shipped from the UK to Australia, but what came to light in recent weeks was that this wasn't the last wave of forced migration; seven thousand English kids from deprived backgrounds were also sent to Australia after the Second World War. In total 150,000 British children are believed to have been sent to Commonwealth countries.

Australian premier Kevin Rudd apologized this week to the British children, most of them from deprived backgrounds, who were sent to Australia, often to be put in foster homes or forced to work on farms. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will do the same in the new year.

These children -often without even a passport or other documentation- were sent abroad with the promise of a better life,

As you know we recently launched the fourth version of our free genealogy software, the Family Tree Builder. It had a lot of exciting new features, such as more photo options, family chat and a family toolbar and a feature to map your family's migration patterns.

The news about the new Family Tree Builder didn't go unnoticed; many of you wrote about the launch or reviewed the program. Therefore we would like to show our appreciation for the attention you've given to the news and share some of the best coverage here.

A big thank you to genealogists, journalists and bloggers:

In Israel:

Ayelet Noff - Blonde 2.0

For interviewing our Marketing Manager Mario about MyHeritage.com and the Family Tree Builder and publishing about the Family Tree Builder on thenextweb, SocialMediaBiz and Blonde 2.0.