I've never been a fan of our train services here in the Eastern
Region, and National Express East Anglia as the latest operator to run
the service are yet to inspire. This morning I was up at 6 to catch
the 7.07 to Norwich. I got to Witham station with 10 minutes to spare,
bought the tickets (which have gone up by £3) and headed down to
Platform Three.

First thing I see is an overcrowded Platform Two (see picture) waiting
for delayed London bound services - apparently a foot bridge has
collapsed in the Liverpool Street area and all trains bound for London
are terminating at Stratford. I'm getting news on what is going on
from Cleveratom Colleague Hal MacLean who is waiting on the platform
in Chelmsford for the very same train that will hopefully be picking
me up. Hal is being told more information in Chelmsford than I am in
Witham - I just watched a National Express staff member find out where
an arriving train was going by asking its driver and then relaying the
information over the tannoy - great system?

An overcrowded London bound train has pulled in to pick up
'customers' (why to train companies insist on calling passengers that)
on overcrowded Platform Two. I hate this railway line.

What do you think?

Imagine the excitement and then disapointment - not in stock. Are they
still about?

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: