Social Media – Page 2 – JerseySmarts.com

More Information on the Revisions Made to JerseySmarts.com

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Joe

As some of you may have continued to notice, there are more changes here at JerseySmarts.com. First, the header is now changed to a three part design with the site’s button-style logo on the far left, a set picture of the steps leading up the path at my Mom’s house in the middle as well as a graphical representation of the site’s name, and an advertisement in the far right. You’ll notice the “Joe’s Journal at JerseySmarts.com” name has been shortened to just “JerseySmarts.com.” Hey, that’s the name of the site – no reason to beat around the bush, right?

I’ve also darkened the background on which you are reading right now. For those of you that liked the brighter white background, I’m sorry – it just hurt my eyes too much so I had to change it. Chances are I spend a lot more time on this website that most of the readers so I have to be sure that simply looking at the website doesn’t bother me!

I’m always looking for new ideas, so let me know if you have any thoughts. Right now I think the site is somewhat boring in its approach, but that’s because I’m not currently integrating pictures and other multimedia into the various entries. That should be changing soon. Also, I have some graphics that I’ll be adding to the sidebar sooner or later (for example, the link to my Facebook pictures). I’m debating whether or not to even keep the Google image gallery, so I can’t guarantee that the Google images link will reappear.

Frankly, I wanted to do these revisions to JerseySmarts.com in November, right around the one year anniversary of merging JerseySmarts.com and Joe’s Journal. However, sometimes you just have to act on the momentum in your head and make the changes while you’re motivated!

Again, I’m always open to your thoughts and ideas, so please feel free to send them over.

What Happened to AOL Instant Messenger?

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Joe

Seriously, what happened to AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM)? There was a time when this was the major method of communication between college students, high school students, and even some small businesses. Yet, the other night I signed on and only 12 of my 112 friends were online. And of those 12 people that were online, 6 were either away or in a sleep mode!

What happened to AIM? Could it be that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (with their built-in messaging systems) have rendered AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger useless? Maybe the fact that text/picture messages and Blackberries are ubiquitous in today’s society also hinders AIM’s growth. Seems logical.

Granted, I understand that I first started using AIM over ten years ago (probably closer to 15 years ago) when I was a young teenager. Since I’m in my late 20’s these days, I guess that most of the people that I talked to on AIM are either now on my text message list or are a Facebook friend. It would appear that I don’t need AIM any more, actually, since I rarely sign on anyway.

And as I’ve written on JerseySmarts.com a few times already, I’ve been very interested in paring down the software that sits dormant on my laptop. In the last month I’ve removed a bunch of this unneeded software that has been taking up precious disk space. A week or two ago I uninstalled Google Chrome because I rarely used it (plus I’ve already become so accustomed to Mozilla Firefox) and earlier today I uninstalled Yahoo! Messenger since I haven’t used it in over a year. When looking around my computer, I found the old “AOL Instant Messenger” program which was replaced with AOL’s current AIM program…so I removed the old program since I hadn’t used it since the spring of 2006. Also, I purchased a discounted copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which prompted me to uninstall OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems. Could AIM be next on the list of programs to be deleted? I’m not sure.

I think that I’d like to keep at least one of each of the major programs (one instant messenger program, one major non-Microsoft browser, one major office productivity suite, etc), so AIM may stay around on that fact alone. But the truth remains that even if the program does stay on my computer it’ll probably be a rarely used piece of software.

Isn’t it amazing how the internet and electronic communication have changed?

My Ten Year High School Reunion

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Joe

This past Saturday night was the ten year anniversary for my graduating class from Roxbury High School. Actually, it was a combined reunion for the Class of 1999 (my class) and the Class of 2000. Typically, high school reunions only draw in 10% – 15% of possible attendees so combining the two classes was a good idea. Each of our classes had some 350+ students in them, so out of possible pool of about 720 students, I would say that maybe 60 or so showed up. When you add in wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, and fiances, there might have been about 100 people in attendance.

It wasn’t a bad event, in fact it was fun. I enjoyed seeing a lot of the people that I haven’t talked to since Project Graduation, which took place right after we graduated high school. Also, it was nice to meet the husbands and wives of some of my old high school friends.

When I was driving home, though, something did cross my mind. Namely, do reunions have the same value that they once had now that Facebook is ubiquitous? Granted, there are a lot of people who are not on Facebook, but the fact is that there are a growing multitude of people who ARE using this social media platform. And yes, while I understand that there is something special to be said about the face-to-face interaction that comes with a reunion, there is also something to be said about the ability to look someone up on Facebook and see what they’re up to these days.

Just something that crossed my mind as I was driving home.

The group that put the reunion together to an amazing job and I hope that they receive the credit that they deserve. I put a little note on the lead organizer’s Facebook page telling her what a great job that she did. Reunions are hard events to plan, so I hope that this team comes back again in 5 or 10 years for the next one!

Ten Year High School Reunion Coming Up This Weekend

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Joe

This weekend I’ll be attending my ten year high school reunion. The organizers did a pretty smart thing, I think, because they waited for a few months to go by after our official ten year anniversary (sometime last June) and combined our reunion with the grade below us. In other words, the Classes of 1999 and 2000 will both have their reunions at the same time in the same place this weekend for one large reunion.

I think this is a pretty good idea since between both classes there are some 700 or so students. If the classes manage to pull in about 10% to 15% of that number of graduates, it may not be such a bad turnout. You figure if 100 people come and half of them have a significant other than accompanies them, you’ve got about 150 people in one place – which would be a good turnout.

The group that the organizers put together on Facebook shows some 69 “confirmed” guests (with 105 invitees not attending and 117 “maybe” attending). Frankly, I don’t think that many of those “maybe” respondents will make it over into the “confirmed” column. That’s okay, though.

If I remember to bring my camera, I’ll try to take some pictures to add to my Facebook collection. Should be a good time – I’m looking forward to it.