Bulletin Board Extras

Classmate Directory
Uploading Photos & Files
 

Weekly Chat Proposal

Pending
 

Step 1.  Make friends with Yahoo.

Very easy.  You're going to sign up for an email account with Yahoo.  You don't ever have to use that account, but you have to have it.  Go to www.yahoo.com and look for a link to click that reads Free mail:  Sign Up.  You'll probably find it towards the upper right hand corner of the page.   Don't be shy; sign up.  Remember, this can be a throwaway account if you don't care to use it, but write down the Yahoo email address you select and your password.  Your Yahoo ID is the first part of your Yahoo email address.

One thing worth mentioning at this point:  Your Yahoo account is distinct from your membership in a Yahoo group.  In particular, you can provide a certain amount of personal information when opening your Yahoo account ... or not ... and this so-called "profile" can, strictly at your discretion, become part of a Yahoo directory, more or less public information like a listed phone number in a telephone directory. Again, what information you provide beyond the bare minimum required to establish a Yahoo account is up to you.  Not much is needed for that purpose.  And you need not participate in the Yahoo directory.  So it's pretty benign.

The profile you provide as a member of our Yahoo! Group, however, is definitely not public information.  As will be mentioned again later, it is only available to your classmates, the other group members.  Basically, it's what you provided Mary Lou and Margie as they tracked you down to make a membership list in anticipation of the reunion weekend plus whatever else you want to state, if anything.  In case you're wondering, it's easier and more secure to keep that information here in our Yahoo! Group and make it available to each other that way than to do so on the class website. 

Step 2.  What's a Yahoo! Group?

Yahoo! Groups are primarily internet based message boards where members post messages addressed to their fellow members and reply to messages posted by other members.  Grouped by topic, (into what are called "threads"), the messages become discussions.  A chat in slow motion.  But you'll see once you're there. 

As Ed McMahon would ask, "You mean there's more?!"  The Yahoo! Group is actually an extensive website with sections in which you can maintain your own name and address contact information, look up that information to directly contact another classmate, post pictures of grandchildren or vacation travels, recommend books and movies and the like.  You'll see.

Oh, did I mention that we've set up the list so that access will be restricted to just us (class of 1957, family and best friends)?  That applies not only to posting profiles, messages and photos but also to seeing them.  It's private to just us and it's controlled by you.

Step 3.  C'mon in, the water's fine.

We've named our Yahoo! Group spc1957.  There are jillions of Yahoo! Groups.  So you don't get lost, this link will get you directly to ours:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spc1957

Go ahead.  Look the page over.  Now find a blue button on the right side of the page saying Join This Group! and give it a click.  This brings you to the membership request page which is pretty much the self-explanatory boilerplate you'd expect it to be.  But let me suggest, no, let me strongly urge that in their Step 2 (Message Delivery) you click the radio button for Web Only.  You can read messages that are posted within the group website ... you probably don't want them individually emailed to you.  (You should trust a person who is a member of a group whose message count since 2001 is upwards of 62,000.)  When you click Join, an email will be fired off to an ever alert moderator who will verify that you are a classmate and not a dreaded spammer and who will promptly approve your entry into your group.

Step 4.  OK, I joined.  Now what?

Look around.  There may be messages to read.  But notice the navigation bar on the left hand side of the page, the one with the link for Database.  Click it and you'll find the table we'll use as our directory.  Surprisingly, we've named it Directory.  It's the contact list that Mary Lou put together plus enough (optional) profile information to suggest who you've become in the past 50 years.  We may have pre-populated it with the information you supplied the reunion planning committee ... again, more private than posting the contact list on the website, less expensive than mailing the contact list to everyone, and updating or correcting the addresses, phone numbers, etc., is in your hands now.  If you posted your profile information to the Classmates.com website, it became available to anyone who registered and paid the subscription fee to that company, regardless of their affiliation.  What you post here is visible only to group members.

Step 5.  Hereafter, as long as you're signed into Yahoo, you are automatically signed into your Yahoo group and can read or write messages, upload photos or essays by clicking Photos or Files on the navigation bar or use what's provided in the Links, Polls or Calendar sections.  (The Members section is not useful ... it's merely a list of the Yahoo IDs of the group members.)  You can enter the Yahoo! Group website at any time just by clicking the link shown in Step 3 above.  Note that you will be prompted for your Yahoo password, (the one you established when you created a Yahoo email account in Step 1 above), at least once every 14 days.  If you are prompted for it more often and want to decrease the frequency, find the My Account link at the top of any Yahoo webpage and click it.  There you can modify your Yahoo profile and preferences. 

Enjoy.  We hope you find some use for the Yahoo! Group, even if only to send greetings to another classmate.  But its real purpose is to encourage you to informally communicate your observations on life.  Low key and conversational.  Any topic you like.

Plans for a chat are not quite complete yet but center around registering a channel on an Internet Relay Chat network like Dalnet.  Keeping a channel private is not a big deal to people already familiar with IRCs but does represent a steep learning curve for the uninitiated.  Besides installing and making friends with a chat program like Pirch or Turbo IRC, (I'm mentioning the free ones in case you're wondering where MIRC is), you have to register a "nick," remember to "identify" to the IRC admins, and retrieve a password from wherever we store it ... probably on the Yahoo! Group site.  Piece of cake if you have grandkids to show you how .

The alternative is to use a chat facility provided by the company hosting our website.  Regrettably, the ones tested exhibit very slow response times. 

We'll sort this out soon enough.