From the outset of Google+ creation – we were told not to create business accounts, and if you have one it’s suggested someone from the business converts it over to an individual account. Because of my genuine interest in how Google+ develops, I watched Christian Oestlien video where he asked people to “hold off” on creating business accounts:

Now I’m sure the general Google+ user wouldn’t have seen this video, and I don’t know whether there was anything detailed in the Terms & Conditions of using Google+, as I didn’t read them.

The point I’m making is, if Google+ developers did not want people to use the service for business purposes, should they have not made it very clear to everyone at the time you received your invitation? For example, large bold writing across the top of the email perhaps?

I for one, if I had spent time creating a business profile, I would be rather aggrieved if Google+ then closed it down.

I suspect 1 of 2 situations have occurred here:

1. Google released Google+ knowing there would be a demand for Business Pages; however, did not have this part of the business developed, but wanted to go ahead in making Google+ available via invitation to individuals and failed to make it clear to users this was for personal use only.

2. Google didn’t anticipate the demand for business pages; however, I do find this hard to believe, and have been since been playing catch up.

So where does this leave someone who’s created a business page and subsequently had it closed by Google? Would you feel aggrieved enough to not go back to Google+, and continuing using your existing platforms? Or, do you accept the situation and wait until Business Pages are available?

Twitter is like an adolescent child. Talking none stop to anyone and everyone who will listen. Mostly, the content is garbled and non-descriptive. All the content is repeated over and over again until a point the original message is lost in translation. What’s popular or trending isn’t popular or trendy. It’s quick, simple and no attention span required.

Facebook – The Teenage Years

Pointless status updates of what you did last night. Sharing of information in a language that only teens can read.  Silly photos, videos and link sharing that everyone has already seen over and over again. The cryptic updates from the attention seekers.

Linked In – The 18-30ths

Network, connect, recommend, spam, brag, resume, jobs – it’s all for the taking here. Only connect to your past, present or future colleagues, but only if you know them personally. Build a network of people you don’t know to impress future clients and employees.

Google+ – Middle Ages

Maturity prevails over at Google. Be selective with whom your share with. Hangout with colleagues during the day, and friends or family after hours. Be free and add people you know, people you admire or simply people you like. Spark a discussion, or share that photo with only who you want to see. Have respect for your work colleagues who don’t want to see last weekends bbq snaps.

NB. This post is published to be amusing and doesn’t represent my view of the above mentioned social media websites.

We are all aware that Geolocation is becoming big business for many mainstream businesses. If you cannot be found on Facebook Places, Foursquare or Gowalla you are behind the times. I understand Twitter is playing with the idea of utilizing their geolocation tags for business purposes. These services offer local businesses huge potential revenue streams, and the ability to offer locational discounts, vouchers and promotions by physically checking in at specific locations.

But what if you have a local business, servicing a specific location but you don’t have a physical location that clients or customers can check in at? Before you can claim a location on any of the above services, you have to specify a location, and you have to be able verify that you own that location. If you don’t have a store or an outlet people can visit, how can you utilize these services?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. However, I am wondering whether there is an opportunity here to develop a new platform, or enhance the existing services that allows non-physical local businesses,  to participate in the geolocation buzz.

Google has released it’s url shortener url service. However, it would appear the only way to access the web page is to type in the url: goo.gl. I cannot find a link from the drop-down menus once signed into your Google account. The service is also not listed in on their More Google Products page.

With this in mind, I guess one can only bookmark it.

[geolocation]

Google has released an update to their popular email service by introducing priority inbox system designed to help heavy email users manage their inbox more efficiently and effectively.

The below is a quick guide how to maximize the system:

Step One:

Once logged into Gmail, you should see a link in red to the left of your email address along the top right of the screen. Click this link, and a short video introduction appears. Watch the video, and click try now.

The below screen will appear where you can amend various settings:

Step Two:

Default Inbox: Select from the drop-down menu ‘Default Inbox’ Priority Inbox. Using this option will always display the Priority Inbox in Gmail.

Priority Inbox Sections: This option allows you to display up to four levels of email settings within Gmail. Here you can select:

1) Important and Unread
2) Important
3) Unread
4) Starred

Each of these options are customizable, and will depend on your own preference as to how you want Gmail to priorities your emails.

Filtered Mail: To maximize the feature of Priority Inbox you will need to select the ‘Don’t Override Filters’. I’ll come on to Filters in a moment and how they will affect your Priority Inbox.

Importance Markers: Again, this a personal choice whether you would like to see emails that are marked as important or not.

Show Priority Inbox: You will need to select ‘Show Priority Inbox’, as the emails selected as a priority, will appear here.

Once you have amended the settings, don’t forget to save them.

Step Three:

In order to ensure every email appears in the correct Priority Inbox, you will need to set up Filters for each email you receive that you want to appear in your Priority Inbox. The alternative is to allow Gmail to automatically do it for you. I tested this for a couple of hours this morning, and it was very hit and miss.

Create a Filter:

1. Click on Settings along the top right row.
2. Select Filters across the top of the page.
3. At the bottom click on ‘Create a new filter’, and you should see the following screen:

4. Type in the email address in ‘From’ which you would like to appear in the Priority Inbox upon receipt.
5. Click ‘Next Step’.
6. Place a tick in ‘Always mark it as important’ and any other Filters that are relevant to this email.

7. Click ‘Create Filter’.
8. You will need to repeat the process for email address.

If you have any questions or need any help with this, please either leave a reply below or use the Contact Us section.

How can you be lonely when you have so many friends on Facebook?

Are you cursed by the social network generation of only having relationships with people you hardly know, or work colleagues that you would rather not know in person, let alone online?

Has time move on from days when groups of friends got together in person for a night out or weekend activity?

Do you feel pressured into having to join popular social networking site because your friends are there, or you need to feel part of a community because online is the only community available to you?

All these questions are faced by many lonely people, who’s only access to people or a community is only available via a social networking website. Users of social networking websites know that you do not have to publish information about yourself, or post minute by minute status updates, but are you excluded or even black-marked by people when you do not join the ‘community’?

In my opinion social networking websites are not the place for a lonely person, because it can quantify your isolation from the outside world and people in person. The news feeds or status updates are constantly updated with streams of peoples activity, opinions, and photographs. It is a continued reminder of how other people are living their lives in text and technicolor and who’s popular and who’s not. Photographs are probably the most heartfelt reminder of when you see people tagged in a photograph and you were not included.

The pressures of young people to join social networking websites is well documented. Bullying has moved from the playground to social networking websites, and is know as cyber-bullying. There has been many reported cases in the media of people being harassed which has driven a few to suicide attempts and self-harming due to the psychological damage people do to one another. Do not get me wrong, bullying is not anything new, and not limited to social networking websites by any stretch of the imagination. My point is, as with many things, and especially for young people, there are social pressures for people to join these networks whether they want to or not.

This is not just a teenager or young person problem. The Mental Health Foundation released a report that a staggering 53% of 18-34 year olds had felt depressed due to loneliness. The report did answer one fundamental question: nearly a third of young people stated they spend too much time communicating online and not enough time in person.

A couple of days ago, Google announced they will no longer be supporting Google Wave. I wanted to write a short article expressing my disappointment at this discussion:

I was one of the first fortunate individuals to secure an invitation to use Google Wave, and the immediate problem I found was that no one else I knew had an invitation, so this obviously limited my use of the applications. As time went by I eventually found a couple of individuals that also had access, and we began testing the functionality of Wave.

We soon discovered Wave was a very useful tool for managing virtual projects in real-time. Once of the most disappointing features of Wave was that it wasn’t integrated into Gmail and ran independently. In effect Wave was a completely separate and independent piece of software that would have benefited from an integration, which would have opened it up to for more users.

I am sure Gmail would look and function very differently if Wave had been integrated, and because of this I believe this is why Google never mashed the two together. It’s a shame because there was no reason why there could not have been an option to integrate or run the two apart. Google did it with Buzz, so I don’t really understand the reasons why.

Either way, its a disappointment to me that Wave will no longer be supported by Google.

]]> http://www.ianrsmith.co.uk/google-wave-rip/feed/ 0 http://www.ianrsmith.co.uk/geolocation/ http://www.ianrsmith.co.uk/geolocation/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:28:13 +0000 Ian Smith http://www.ianrsmith.co.uk/?p=305

Geolocation is the identification of real world graphical location of computers, mobile devices and web site visitors connected to the Internet. Geolocation information can include Country, Region, City/Town, Postcode/Zipcode and latitude and longitute.

In the past couple of month two major players in the social networking arena have incorporating geolocation features and made this technology available to the end-user.

Last November Twitter introduced this feature for their mobile site as well their static web site. If you access Twitter from a mobile device not only are you tweets linked to your current location, but you can also view other users tweets that are in your surrounding location whether you follow them or not. The static Twitter web site allows users to add their location, and those tweets are also pinned to that location. You can read more at Twitter’s blog.

One of the most useful web sites I’ve seen to date that utilises this technology with a practical application is http://uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk. What Ben has done here is pull this information using a short hash tag and present peoples Tweets in a geographic layout plotting Tweeters who are reporting snow fall in real-time. I personally found this extremely useful in making decision whether to venture out or not. This real-time information far exceeds out dated, incorrect and national weather reports that simply where not local enough.

Last week we saw Google enter the social networking market with the launch of Google Buzz. Google Buzz can be access through your computer or mobile device and is pinned to your static location or uses the technology in your mobile device to pin-point your location much like Twitter when you are mobile.

So, what practical application does this new technology have for you and me other than the obvious? I’m sure we’ve all read the tweets or buzzes posted by our friends informing us what they’ve had for lunch. Now we will now where they’ve eaten lunch. But seriously this has mind blowing possibilities for marketing, real-time geographical information and practical application.

The possibilities are endless. For example, if you are a local business and you have a spontaneous promotion that you want local people know about it, tweeting and buzzing could be the answer in drawing people in. Perisable products that need to be sold at a discount is one example that springs to mind.

uksnow is an amazing example of this technology being put to practical use that incorporates real-time. Another idea is road traffic information: People reporting in real-time how traffic congestion, accidents and road works are hindering their journey and providing invaluable information to other road users.

I’m sure in the coming months their will be new web sites and applications being developed that incorporates this technology and providing real-time information. I wonder how long it will be before FaceBook jumps on board?

I’ve been using Google Buzz for a couple of days. It would appear the UK didn’t get access until a couple of days after the American’s did. This isn’t surprising as Google is an American company and their headquarters is located in the United States.

To date, a couple of my friends and family have followed my on Buzz and I’ve followed them back. Also, several other people have followed me who I do not know and I think this is as a result of others I’ve followed, or comments I’ve made on Buzzes (not sure if the is the PC term) that I found through searching.  The immediate issue that struck me if you want to use Buzz as a means to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, every one needs to have a Google account. Needless to say some do and others don’t. I have attempted to convert a number of people to Gmail; however, to some people email is email regardless of what the logo is in the corner.

There are number of improvements I would love to see already, and it does appear Google have been quick to address on major concern of privacy. The issue of followers seeing who your Gmail contacts are is a concern for everyone and Google have addressed this and made it easier for the end user to find and amend this setting.

Like most social networking platforms there is usually a lot of noise and within that noise somewhere is the interesting information that you want to read and reply too. I find it irritating the there is no easy and quick means to delete or in Google Buzz language ‘mute’ posts that you don’t want to see. What I would like to see is a filter, where you can filter in or filter out tags or keywords that are relevant to your interest. Plus a big delete button or X that is easy to hit if you don’t want to see that post again.

I was hoping there would be more drag and drop functionality. Having to type or pasting links to other web pages, images or video is a pain. I want to be able to drop it into my post.

As there are so many social networking platforms available today, Buzz would have the edge if it became the one-stop-shop for all your social networking activity embedded in your email. I personally only use Twitter and FaceBook and what a wonderful place Buzz would become if I can read and post directly to any social networking site from Buzz.

As usual from Google, this a real sterling effort, and I hope that it’s developed into something that no one can do without. At the moment I do have an open mind, and wait with anticipation of how this will develop.

Have you ever been tempted to click on your own AdSense advertisements? I am not suggesting for monetary gain, but because you have been on your own site, checking your latest blog for example when you see an advertisement that actually interests you. If I was visiting a web site that didn’t belong to me, I would have certainly clicked on the ad.  But, because this ad is on your own site you run the risk of receiving a nasty gram from Google threatening to cancel your AdSense account. So what do you do? Do you take the risk of clicking on it, or Googling similar posts to yours and hoping the same ad appears elsewhere? What if you cannot find this ad?

There is one simple process that I find out by playing around with the ad link:

1. Place your mouse over the ad you want to check and RIGHT CLICK on the ad. Do NOT actually click the ad as you will link to it! Now, you will see an option to Copy link location.

2. Once you have copied the link location to your clipboard, paste the data into your Browsers address bar. Do Not click on Go or press Return.

3.  Begin deleting the information in your address bar from left to right. Eventually towards the end of the long url you will see the web site address of where the ad would take you too. Once you have deleted all the Google information, press return or click go and you will be taken to that location.