Editor's Blog - Monday, 16th June
| Author: Ken The Editor | Published: 16th June 2008 14:06 |
Well, the July Gaz is finished and is with the printers. It was all very straightforward. The outstanding material I was expecting arrived on Sunday morning and each piece was more or less the size I was expecting - so that all slotted in OK with the minimum of editing. And nothing unexpected arrived - that must be a first!
I got my ‘scoop' on Saturday - the portakabins leaving the site in West Way (or is it Westway?) after 34 years. There's an article in the July Gaz, but if you can't wait, I have given Jamie copies of the photos and he has promised to load some up to AboutMyArea.
So, just the proofs to be checked later today and we can let the presses roll.
Given that I had some time on my hands on Sunday afternoon, and I couldn't be arsed to mow the lawn, I decided that in would give that Facebook thingy a try. Granddaughter had assured me that "MySpace is old hat - everybody uses Facebook these days".
I found Facebook through a search on Google and in I went. The registration part was easy enough - nowhere near as intrusive as MySpace. So far, so good.
Next I tried to ‘Find Friends'. This starts by getting you to enter your e-mail address - again! (I'd already done that when I registered). However the drop-down menu that lists the various e-mail servers (hotmail.co.uk, lycos.com, etc) didn't list ‘pettswood.org.uk' - I guess that's not too surprising as there are only 10 or so of us! So I thought I would try my personal e-mail address - but there was no sign of ‘ntlworld.com' in the list either and it wouldn't let me type it in - so that bit didn't work. "Crap system!" I thought to myself. Oh well, let's press on...
It then asked me if I wanted to search for people that I ‘IM'. I'm not too sure, but I don't think that I ‘IM' anybody (or if I do, then I must do is subconsciously!), so I ignored that bit.
Next up, it wanted me to search for friends from my old secondary school, so I typed in "Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Wimborne". The result: "No matches found". Oh well, the old grammar school closed in 1972 when Dorset went all comprehensive, so anybody who went there would be 50+ now. Conclusion: Facebook is used by the younger generation.
Interestingly, it also asked for the ‘class year'. Not a ‘from year' and a ‘to year' - just a ‘class year'. Now I was at grammar school for 7 years, which spanned 8 calendar years, and I was in a different class each year ( ‘1 Alpha' in 1965/66, ‘2 Alpha' in 1966/67, etc) - so which bloody year was I supposed to put in? The year I joined? The year I left? Some random year in the middle? Anyway, I stuck in 1965 as that's the year I started. Made bugger all difference, though - it still couldn't find any matches!
Then it asked me for my college. "University of Southampton" I duly entered. The result: "No matches found" again. Conclusion: Facebook in either used by those not old enough to have yet gone to university, or by those not intelligent enough to get there!
Next up, ‘company'. First of all it asked me for my current employer. There did not seem to be an option to tell it that I was retired, so clearly it's aimed at those under 50! I ignored that bit.
It then asked me to enter all my previous companies - this time with ‘from' and ‘to' dates. [If they allow you to enter a range of dates for companies, why not for schools and colleges?]
So, I started from the beginning... "Equitable Life Assurance Society - 1975 to 1980" - "No matches found" (mind you, given that it all went tits up at ELAS few years ago when they ‘forgot' to account for guaranteed annuity rates, I'm not surprised that nobody will admit to having worked there!); "Alvis Ltd - 1980 to 1982" - "No matches found" (they got taken over by GKN or some such a few years back, so only us oldies would have actually worked for Alvis); third time lucky?: "Massey-Ferguson - 1982 to 1988" - "No matches found". I thought "Sod this!", and gave up!
So my initial foray into Facebook was not exactly a resounding success!
But, I did give it another go on Sunday evening. I thought this time I would try working backwards through my employers so I started with "LogicaCMG - 2004 to 2008". The result: "No matches found". However, since I left they have reverted to their old name so I tried "Logica - 2004 to 2008". The result: "236 matches" - success at last!
I was presented with a list of Logica employees in more or less alphabetical order, 10 to a page. So I started scrolling though and I got to page 4 before I found anybody that I thought I knew - Tony Ashton - but I wasn't exactly sure and there was no photo of that particular gentleman. So I thought I had better look up his profile to find out more information about him. I tried clicking on the space where his photo should be - nothing! I tried right-clicking in the same place - just the usual list of options, but no option to access his profile! I scoured the menu on the right hand side of the screen but all I could do was ‘Add as a friend' - and I didn't want to do that as I was not sure that I knew him! What a frustrating site!
But, no problem - there's a help section. So I went into the help section and found the bit on ‘profiles'. Now there's all sorts of questions answered there (like "Why is my name in blue not black?" - Does anybody give a toss!) but not the most obvious one of all - How do I view a profile? If anyone reading this knows how to view a profile on Facebook, please let me know!
I was about to give up, but before I did I thought that I would try to find somebody famous, since granddaughter had also told me "Anybody who's anybody is on there - even Tony Blair". Now I don't suppose he's got many friends, at least not outside of the White House!
Anyway, there's a tasty bit on the Marks & Sparks ads on the telly who shot to fame on that ‘get me out of the jungle' programme - and I certainly wouldn't mind getting friendly with her! She Who Must Be Fed used to watch that programme, so I asked the name of said young lady - apparently it's Myleen Class (must be Australian with a name like Myleen, but never mind!). So I typed in "Myleen Class". Result: "no matches". I was gutted!
She Who Must Be Fed then told me "It's Klass with a K - don't you know anything?" So I typed that in - result: "3 matches". Yes!!! However, none of them had a photo and only one of them gave their location - Nottingham. Now I don't know if the real Myleen Klass lives in Nottingham, but somehow I doubt it (Have you been there recently? There's more gun crime than New York!). So I sort of drew a blank on that one. Oh well, if Myleen wants to be my friend, she will have to search me out!
So, comparing Facebook to MySpace, I would say MySpace wins hands down, and it's certainly more intuitive. The only thing Facebook seems to have going for it is that you don't have to wait 5 minutes each time for the bloody screen to refresh!
Toodle pip.
What do you think?
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