Genoom Blog

Today marks the 40th year of Earth Day, originally started by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970, that is now celebrated in 190 countries. Earth Day is an opportunity for us to reflect and raise awareness about important environmental issues and, more importantly, take action to improve our planet!!

Here are 7 interesting facts to reflect upon:

• 1/3 of all water is used to flush the toilet.
• Each person throws away approximately four pounds of garbage every day.
• An average family throw away about 88 pounds of plastic every year
• Almost 13 billion pounds of trash is dumped into the ocean every year
• Fossil fuels are being consumed 100,000 times faster than they are being formed
• For every ton of newspaper recycled,  17 trees are saved
• Approximately 27% of all food produced in North America is gone to waste

If you want to take action and don’t know how, we encourage you to visit Pick 5 for the Environment website. Also, if you have a twitter account you can follow: @epagov to get updates throughout the day.

Introducing the Genoom Toolbar! The toolbar is a free add-on to your web browser that lets you stay connected to Genoom and find out what’s happenening in your family network. It’s easy to install and works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Here are some of the features:

Google powered search - search the web with a simple click of the mouse

Quick links - access your home page, family tree, list and other pages

Add photos - start your photo uploads

New messages - receive a notification as soon as you have a new message

Events - reminders of important events in your family calendar

People counter - the number of people in your family network

Users online - find out if someone in your family is online

Status updates - read the latest activity in your family

Look for the toolbar graphic in the right-side column of your home page to get started. Or you may click the following links:

Go to English toolbar »

Go to Spanish toolbar »

Go to French toolbar »

Go to Portuguese toolbar »

Today is International Day of Families and this year the theme is “Mothers and Families: Challenges in a Changing World”. The worldwide observance of this day was first proclaimed by the United Nations in 1997 as part of the United Nations Programme on the Family.

This year´s theme focuses on the role of mothers for families and the secretary general makes the following commentary in his message:

Mothers play a critical role in the family, which is a powerful force for social cohesion and integration. The mother-child relationship is vital for the healthy development of children. And mothers are not only caregivers; they are also breadwinners for their families. Yet women continue to face major – and even life threatening – challenges in motherhood.

We salute all mothers around the world!!

The Startup 2.0 event in Bilbao recently ended and we are proud to announce that Genoom was given the 2nd prize award as one of the top 3 startups in Europe.

The competition began with 157 nominated startups coming from 15 different countries in Europe and we had the opportunity to present among one of the 11 finalists. The event was held on April 24 & 25th in conjunction with the Nonick Conference.

We are very happy to anounce that Genoom has been selected as one of the top 11 startups in this year´s Startup 2.0 event.  The event, held on Friday April 24, will take place in Bilbao as part of the Nonick conference.

If you plan to go, make sure you come and say hello to us!