This morning I had a sniff round the new version of ‘Friends Reunited‘, I’ve been meaning to do so since its relaunch in March.

Friends Reunited was set up in 1999 in the UK by a couple of people who saw a market in reconnecting people who went to school together. They worked tirelessly to put the site together, and chose a subscription model to establish, maintain and progress the site.

Initially it was £5 a year to join, and for the fiver users were then able to list themselves next to their school name and send messages to old friends also listed on the site.

I joined the site in 2001, and got in touch with a couple of old friends, was a great little service… it was great to see what old friends were up to. When the membership fee rose to £7.50 I decided not to pay it, as I’d been in touch with those that I wanted to talk to and nolonger needed to be a paying member…. and Friends Reunited never worked properly on an Apple Mac anyway.

In 2005 ITV bought Friends Reunited for £120m, just before Myspace and Facebook started to take over the world with its free alternative social networking site. These sites were free to join, and paid for by advertising revenues.

I joined Facebook in 2006, with more and more of my friends (from all over the world) joining Facebook it became pointless to log in to Friends Reunited.

So this morning I revisited Friends Reunited for the first time since the relaunch and found it surprisingly refreshing. The new homepage is easy to navigate and simple on the eye, better than the cluttered mess it used to be! But once logged in after watching the introduction video with Martin Clunes voiceover I became unimpressed. All the data in my ‘timeline’ was incorrect, I struggled to navigate to find friends and wondered why I had to click ‘My profile’ followed by ‘My profile’ to get to my profile. I went into a group called ‘Ultralab’ which I’d previously joined (a few years back) within Friends Reunited and came across a list of people I once worked with. I clicked ‘add to friend list’ on one of my old colleagues and Friends Reunited then asked me how I knew the person, and where we worked together? I had to click ‘Ultralab’ again, why? I’m already in that group.

I’ve found Friends Reunited painfully slow to load and confusing this morning, and think they were an early pioneer in connecting people back together, but totally missed the ’social networking’ element as it came along, and are now a little too late and I think should really concentrate on linking people up with their old school mates, for free. Still 100 times better than Yuwie though!

Some things don’t change:

 

Cleveratom are exhibiting at eXcite 2008 Thursday and Friday this week (24th and 25th of April 2008).  We’ll be demonstrating our project, software and experience in the fields of personalised learning, building schools for the future, learning space design, digital creativity, learning platforms, learner voice and much more….Last Friday we built for the first time our 2 by 2 stand… here it is, look out for it at the show…. 

  

Nick is working from home today, and Hal is on Clacton beach, but we’ve still managed to have a quick meeting thanks to the wonder that is iChat.

We left the Ibis Hotel in Bregnez, Austria and headed towards the German border, criss crossing back into Austria from time to time as we drove through some amazing mountain ranges. The views were amazing from the top of the mountains and we took lots of pictures. We were heading in the rough direction of Fussen, Germany, home of Neuschwanstein Castle, which we arrived at just after 3pm, and annoyingly ticket sales closed at 3pm. We drove the short distance to Schwangau and eventually found a hotel (Helmerhof - www.helmerhof.de). The picture above is the view from our window, you can see the castle if you look closely. Tomorrow morning we will return to the castle, have a look round and then head in the direction of Luxemberg. My brother will be excited to know that the castle we can see from our hotel window (and will be visiting tomorrow) is the very castle featured in the film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'.

We woke this morning in a 'B&B' brand hotel and started the short journey to the German border stopping at a hypermarket to get a few bits for the journey (including my new favorite drink, ice tea). Once over the boarder and with Justina as navigator we headed into the black forest. The black forest part of the journey was amazing, as we ventured further in the higher the hills and the deeper the snow, we have some great pictures. Once through the forest we headed south towards a lake and eventually found the crossing car ferry port which would take us to Switzerland. Justina had spotted the car ferry on our European map so we decided to fund out how much it would cost in time and Money to cross. Arriving at the ferry port there was one empty car and a motorbike queued up to cross. We parked behind the car and walked over to the biker to ask if he knew the next ferry sailing time and how much it was going to cost to cross and how do we pay. The biker did not speak much English but understood my very bad rubbish sign language, we understood his too. We got talking to other passengers waiting for the ferry and learned that the crossing would depart soon and we pay on board. Swiss customs checked our passport as we drove onto the ferry on the German side and we paid €25 for the crossing. Once parked on the very unbusy (for vehicles) ferry we headed upstairs to the lounge area and were served hot drinks. In the lounge was an amazing selection of people and animals. A drunk man irregularly burst into loud song every now and again during the 40 minute journey, three massive dogs laid sprawled across the floor and Jus kept pointing out '80s pop group man' who she decided, with his massive hair, looked like he was famous (for singing). Once in Switzerland we drove (avoiding toll roads (as we had no Swiss cash)) looking for a hotel. Within an hour we had not found a hotel, but did find the border to Austria, so we crossed it. We kept driving and driving till we found a big town and an Ibis Hotel. I don't know where we are (Jus does, but she is asleep) and have no idea which direction we are heading next (Jus does, but she is asleep). We found a restaurant and had pasta, the restaurant, although very nice, was very smokey...... How I love the UK smoking ban (I just wish UK smokers would not smoke right outside entrance and exit doors, which kind of defeats the object as non smokers have to choke through it to get in and out). We ate a really nice meal and headed back to our hotel, ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Jus is asleep.

Justina and I have been driving most of the day and are now in Strasbourg in France on route to who knows where on our annual European roadtrip. Tomorrow we will head in the direction of Germanys Black Forest and see where we end up. French people drive way too close to each other on motorways.

Justina and I are on route to Europe for an unplanned road trip. We were up at 4.30 this morning and were meant to catch the 8:00 NorfolkLine ferry from Dover. There are big queues into Dover port (roadwork signs, queues, no sign of the actual roadworks!) and then lorry jamming confusion surrounding Seafrance cancelling all their ferries due to strike action, resulting in a ton of Seafrance customer lorriesvwith nowhere to go and nothing to do but jam up the port - we, and other cars, missed our ferry. I've always liked Norfolkline, they were helpful and moved us to the 10:00 ferry free of charge. So glad we did not book with Seafrance, or P&O (whose 6.35 ferry has still not left yet(!). All we have to do now is sit here and wait. Dover is in abit of a mess this morning.

Running a small business we get lots and lots of marketing literature from other companies looking for business. Until today the best "free stuff" we have had includes a really nice pen, and a Cadbury Boost chocolate bar from a marketing promotions company who wanted to give us "something to eat while browsing our magazine". Today came the strangest item.... a £10 used note attached to a letter addressed to me from a company who manage training for other companies. Apart from the letter being passed around the office and read by everyone (rather than the usual skim read by me, then file in the recycling bin) this 'clever' idea to read the letter brought one question to mind...... Can you think what it might be?