Photo Gallery Info

Google+ – Social Networking, Differently

Recently we saw the launch of the “limited field trial” of Google’s latest social venture, Google+ (or G+). There has been a lot of talk about G+, what it can do, who will use it, and whether it is going to compete against Facebook. As with any service, there are good things and bad things which seem similar to other products and things which seem new. G+ is no exception to this.

In this article, we are going to take a quick look around G+, explain what stage it is at right now, have a look at what is already on offer to enhance the experience and of course compare it to its “rivals”.

As with many of the Google services you are likely to use, G+ is built into the whole framework of Google’s sites. Recently, Google revised their sites to include the now “feels like it’s always been there” Google Bar. Once you have a G+ account, the first entry on this becomes “+yourname” – at least, in general. If you go to Picasa using the “Photos” option on the bar, the first entry becomes “+You”. This is a tiny inconsistency which will no doubt be corrected soon enough.

Right now, G+ is integrated into the Picasa service from Google. In fact, Picasa provides the image hosting for your photos on G+. This is quite a powerful facility.  If you already use Picasa, you will know that you have a free 1GB storage limit for pictures, as a standard. And that any picture you upload that is shorter than 800 pixels on its longest side, is not counted towards that limit. If you have a G+ account, the 1GiB limit still applies, but now any picture that is shorter than 2048 pixels on its longest side is not counted.

For those of you who are wondering what 1GB is:

In the early days of computers, sizes were created related to binary. So a Megabyte (MB) was 1024 Bytes because 1024 could be represented with a single 1 in binary. A Gigabyte (GB) was 1024 Megabytes. Now, this didn’t sit very well with the International Standards Organization because Mega should mean 1 million and Giga should mean 1 billion. Those pesky 24′s were getting in the way of people’s understanding of the terms. To conform, a Gigabyte is now officially classified as 1000 Megabytes. Which left us traditionalists out in the cold. The suggestion was a slight twist on the term, and the KibiByte, MebiByte, GibiByte were born. These now take the place of our beloved KB, MB, and GB terms of old. So 1GiB is “One Gigabyte in old money”.

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand. This has come about because G+ has followed Facebook’s example of offering you unlimited space for photos on your Facebook account. Any photo you upload using G+ will automatically resize to 2048 pixels on the longest size (and scale accordingly). Of course, because it is using Picasa directly, there are alternatives. For instance, I use the Picasa 3 software on my laptop to organize my photo collection. By default, this is set to scale pictures so that the longest side is 1600 pixels (and thus, with my G+ account, is not included in the storage limit). All I do is what I’ve done for a long time, I create my albums in Picasa 3, sync to the Picasa site, and there they are in G+ as well, ready for me to share to my Circles (we’ll look at those later).

Google have also hinted that they will be offering some form of integration with Gmail and Documents (though they haven’t worked out what that integration will offer just yet). Personally I would like to be able to share documents based on my Circles rather than just by e-mail address. I’d also like to see them do that with Google Calendars.

G+ works around this concept of Circles. When you think about your “real life” friends, we supposedly think in circles. There is the circle of family members, close friends, acquaintances and so on and so forth. Google has taken this and applied it to G+. Also in the same way as real life, a person may consider you in a friendship circle, even if you don’t feel quite the same way. In fact, Google has a pretty good explanation in a video.

You can make circles, give them names. Put people you know into a circle. Put them in several circles to help you organize. You can put people you don’t know into circles to ‘follow’ them and see their public posts on your “Stream” (we’ll get to the Stream in a bit). For those of you familiar with Twitter, you’ll already understand this concept. Circles allow you a lot of freedom, and as the video above shows, you can also decide to see posts in your Stream that are only from people in a chosen circle. This means that you don’t have to spend ages scrolling down the screen, clicking “More” because there have been 589 new posts since you logged in last night, all on the same Feed. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll wonder why this isn’t the norm everywhere.

Here’s the other great thing with Circles. Not only can you use them to determine which people’s posts you view on your Stream, but you can post your own message specifically to the people of one, or more circles. This gives us a whole new level of control over how we share information with one another. For instance, I follow a person who has a circle that contains people who are crazy about cats. That way, she can share her love of cats with people that are interested in cats, without overwhelming all of her contacts with cat posts that they don’t want to see.

When you start a G+ account, there are a few default circles created; Friends, Family, Following and Acquaintances. There is nothing special about these circles, you can delete them or rename them. However, the names of these circles are special. The four circles with these names are grouped above the rest of the circles you have. So whilst all of your other circles are in alphabetical order, these four will always be at the top. This may be convenient for some – personally, I got rid so that all my circles were in alphabetical order.

Now then, this Stream that we mentioned above is what you will spend most of your time on G+ with. Streams look much like the Newsfeed on Facebook – at first glance. However, they offer so much more flexibility over Facebook’s newsfeed.

When logging into G+, by default you are presented with the Stream. This shows you all of the posts made by you and the people you follow (who shared their post as public), or the people who have sent an update to one of their circles of which you were a member. They are all in chronological order, much like the “Most Recent” option on Facebook’s news feed, and like Twitter’s feed in general.

Now, this can get a little noisy, especially if you follow some of the regular public posters that are so popularly followed. So, with the Stream, you have the option to view the stream from people within each of your circles. So, if you only want to see what your family members have said and you have a Family circle, you click on that circle and the stream only displays posts by the people in your family circle.

This takes the idea of looking at a Facebook friend’s wall posts, and expands it to allow you to look at the wall posts of a collection of friends. A great bonus is that you can group people together in more than one circle. This can help if you have people that post similar things that are related. For instance, I have a Google group for members of Google staff that I like to read posts from.

Google does not allow you to filter what you see in the default stream (aside from allowing you to mute posts so you don’t see them again). This has been mentioned by many users who would like to be able to select which circles are shown. This may be something they introduce, however, in the meantime; I have created a circle entitled _My Stream (the _ puts it at the top of the alphabetically organized circles). By simply adding a bookmark for the _My Stream circle to my bookmark bar, I can open up the Google+ website and go straight to the circle I want to see. In fact, you can create these ‘permalinks’ for several circles to save yourself a little time.

The ability to post to users within a specific circle comes in really handy when I want to send out a post to family members with greetings and information on what we have been doing. Indeed, this carries over very nicely to the photos side of things…

It has to be said that in its vanilla state, the Stream can get a little bit unwieldy, but with the help of some cleaver extensions in the Chrome browser (and other browsers if you use them are bound to have G+ extensions by now) you can really start to take control. Extensions will be covered later on.

So you have your friends in the appropriate circles, you’ve found the people that you are interested in hearing views and reports from (for instance Robert Scoble has a pretty big following of 54,937 at the time of writing) and added them to your circles. Some people have added you to their circle and you’re starting to think about what else you can do with G+.

Well, obviously as well as photos, G+ provides the facility to upload and share your videos. The underlying video hosting is taken care of by another Google service (YouTube) and is pretty well integrated into G+. To be fair, it’s not like Picasa where your videos are available to you in either service, but that may well be on the way. What you can do is search YouTube directly from the status box, preview any of the videos shown by the search before inserting them. Also, if you have got videos uploaded to YouTube on your Google account, you can see a list of those in G+ from the status box. You can also upload a video from your computer, or link to a video by a URL.

So far, G+ has pretty much taken all the best bits of Facebook and Twitter, put them together and thrown out the rubbish. But there are always two sides to this story. I like the G+ UI – I can find things where I would expect them to be. My wife on the other hand, finds it confusing because things aren’t where they would be in Facebook. G+ has an interface that may take a bit of getting used to. But it is definitely worth the effort. That said, of course, there’s always help from some aftermarket solutions.

That’s right; we’re going to have a look at a few ‘extensions’ for Google’s Chrome browser specifically for G+.

Currently I am experimenting here and there with a range of extension. A little tweaking of options to make sure they all play together nicely, and a little patience as some are in early development and are prone to the odd little glitch here and there. To start with though, I’m going to list the extensions I am using.

 

+1 Button – Plus One Button:

This handy little extension places a “+1″ box in your address bar. This means that you are still able to +1 a site that has not yet incorporated the Google +1 button.

+Comment Toggle:

In G+, comments appear (as you would expect) under posts in the Stream. However, if you have people that get a lot of comments, they can be a little unwieldy. This extension collapses them for you, and shows you the ones you have not read, tidily hiding away the ones you have read (which are available with a single click if you want to look back over old comments).

+Photo Zoom:

This automatically zooms into a photo on G+ for you, without needing you to click on (and load the image viewer) that picture. There is an option to only do this when you are also holding a key on the keyboard to stop it from zooming on every image you roll over. Nice little time saver.

+Beautify G+:

Has a range of options for subtle changes to the appearance of G+, including the ability to make the top, left and right of the screen static (so it does scroll with the Stream). I tend to leave the left and right as normal and just keep the top static.

G+me for Google Plus:

This does for Stream posts what +Comment Toggle does for comments. With this extension, rather than all of the posts being visible, you can collapse them to a single line showing the name of the poster, time and the beginning of the message. Much like your e-mail inbox may look. Hover over a post, and a preview appears to the right. It keeps that Stream really neat and tidy.

Surplus:

The notifications in G+ are great, but this extension pops a notification icon just next to your address bar. You don’t have to have the G+ site open in your browser to see notifications, see what has been posted or even respond!

Usability Boost for Google Plus:

This nice little extension boxes the posts in your Stream in a way which makes them easier to distinguish from each other. It also slightly changes the style of the comments area for each post to make them stand out from the post a little more.

Of course this is only a small selection of the extensions that are out there for G+ already. With a little looking, and some experimentation you can put together a group of extensions which change the way G+ looks and works to make it much friendlier for you.

G+ has also created a real stir when it comes to articles, tips and tutorials. These are popping up left, right and centre. So if you’re concerned you may not be able to use G+ there is bound to be a guide that will help you.

About the Author

For more information on web design and dedicated web hosting, please visit us!

Upload Image to Google Picasa Web Album using Picasa Software Step By Step Guide

Picasa 3.6 og Picasa Webalbum – Book $79.2 Picasa 3.6 og Picasa Webalbum udgør tilsammen den perfekte platform for organisering, behandling og deling af digitale billeder, og det hele er gratis. Enhver computerejer med et aktivt digitalkamera kan ikke komme uden om de populære og velsmurte programmer fra Google. Følg dette veloplagte kursus i brugen af programmet Picasa 3.6, og få et unikt overblik over din billedsamling ved hjælp af bl.a. mapper, album og de nye funktioner til stedsangivelse og ansigtsgenkendelse. Lad også venner og familie deltage på nettet i Picasa Webalbum, hvor du nu fx kan oprette samarbejdsalbum, så flere kan b

Google Sites and Chrome For Dummies $19.79 Curious about Google Sites and how team collaboration Web sites can help you share documents online from various locations? Curious about Google’s new Chrome browser? Google Sites & …

Picasa 2 Essential Training $37.95 Is your digital camera’s memory card filled with photos you haven’t copied to your computer yet? Are the photos on your hard drive randomly scattered everywhere? Did you take an almost perfect but slightly crooked shot? Take control of your digital photos with Picasa 2 Essential Training. These movies are packed with tons of useful tips on managing your photo library, editing your pictures, and sharing them with friends and family. In almost no time you will learn how to organize, sort, rate, and locate specific pictures as well as how to rotate images, remove redeye, and adjust exposure settings. You’ll also learn how to share your photos via email, the Web, over a network, and even by ordering prints and books online. Stop just taking pictures and start enjoying them. Learn how this free software from Google can become a central part of your memory authoring process. Exercise files accompany the training videos, allowing you to follow along and learn at your own pace.

Google Sites And Chrome For Dummies $17.09 Curious about Google Sites and how team collaboration Web sites can help you share documents online from various locations? Curious about Google’s new Chrome browser? Google Sites & Chrome For Dummies has what you want to know! Today, Google is so much more than another word for "search." Google Sites & Chrome For Dummies shows you how to create great collaborative Web sites with Google Sites and surf the Web with the super-fast Google Chrome browser. Find out how they work with other Google Apps, too. You’ll learn to: Take advantage of free hosting, free tools, and a simple, straightforward interface with Google Sites Set up a Google account or Google Apps account Create wiki sites that let coworkers collaborate on projects or keep family members up to date Use Google gadgets to keep track of projects, manage calendars and documents, or display photos Integrate documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other Google Apps into your site Work with Contact List, Google Talk, and Google Chat, and handle e-mail with Gmail Download and install the speedy Google Chrome browser Install browser plug-ins, enable offline access to Google Docs, and manage misbehaving tabs You’ll even find instructions and examples to help you plan sites for personal and business use, plus a sample college course site. With advice from Google Sites & Chrome For Dummies, you can make collaboration easy and have the high-speed Web at your fingertips.

Picasa $14.95 Picasa