Category: Tools

Google+ has landed …

Well something had to wake me up! It arrived this morning, courtesy of an invite from Paul Hobson which worked! I guess it’s connected to having your Google language set to English(US) – yes it rankles but it has its benefits. Anyway, I’m up and running and have given it the once over.

I like Circles – they look a much better alternative to Facebook Groups in two use cases (at least):

  1. For closely defined groups that you want to keep reasonably leak-proof for people you trust (ie family and REAL friends) or who have a coherence of their own (ie a volunteer group, charity, etc), it could really work as a virtual meeting-point and archive of activity.
  2. For corporates frightened of Facebook and never having taken to Yammer, then Circles could be the answer as you can define your own circles and again (and I haven’t checked the security model in detail yet) retain an element of firewall to the circle. [I’ll report back on that in a later post.]

In addition to Circles, I do like the way Google+ is presented; the way your profile is shown, the way you can edit it and the detail you can change so that you can really present yourself, the way you want to be [I haven’t quite worked-out the various communication symbols yet … but I will by the end of the day!]. I also like the presentation on the iPad – the mobile version – it’s really clean and passes usability tests (for me). Finally (and here I’m speaking as a Chrome and iGoogle user) the integration with the rest of the Google stuff on the desktop is really good. In my Chrome taskbar, I now have a David+ tab, and a notifications button, and the same is true of iGoogle – a new tab has appeared.

You can see the future on the Google desktop therefore – this is what it will look like. I think, just possibly, Google may have got this right – perhaps the time and effort in getting it wrong with Wave and Buzz might have not been so bad a thing after all.

Finally, the integration with Picasaweb is also very good and I wait to test the video chat functionality – this could be the real killer functionality. I think Facebook have got a real competitor this time, and for corporates (as long as the security model is granular) there may be a good entry-level collaboration suite to add to the increasing Google in the Cloud offering.

Two tools you should have a look at

Been experimenting with a couple of tools recently:

Evernote – a means of saving scraps of information (from webpages, photos, pdfs, scans, etc) into a repository that is then available to you from the “cloud” – really useful if you move about; are working on a document; want to access it from anywhere … and it’s not the final article. Sort of multi-media equivalent of a post-it sticker that you can get at, anytime you want. Available for both windows and mac, so you can use it to transfer info between platforms also. If the document/project is more than just ephemeral then you could transfer it into another favourite of mine – dropbox.

The other one is – tungle.me – a very clever scheduling and calendaring tool. This enables you to have sight of any number of calendars eg Sametime, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Entourage/iCal (and the contacts associated with these systems) all in one place and then to invite people to meetings, or allow people to book meetings with you, on the basis of your published calendar. For instance you can see my availability at http://tungle.me/davidharrison – it doesn’t show what I’m doing (hope I’m not revealing too much).

However, for those on the move; or those using multiple calendars – this could be a godsend. One thing to note though. When you setup your tungle account, if you want to sync with Sametime, DON’T use Google as your identity provider. The Tungle widget that sits (running in the background) in the Notes client doesn’t know how to handle OpenID and/or anything other than simple username and password. So, regretably, you have to set up a tungle account – I learnt this from experience … I now have two tungle accounts – one of which I won’t be needing for too much longer 🙂

Context and language is everything

[Originally posted on “MWE Social Media” on 8th February, 2009]

Some colleagues of mine who keep an eye on what I’m up to on twitter, observed that through ‘Lofty Thoughts‘ I had announced the appearance of CardiffBlogs. They made some observations on the use of a corporate blogging platform, some of which I responded to. Nicky Morland from Anglia Ruskin University made the astute comment that the variety of socialmedia (or social networking) tools could be confusing to users – something I’d already hinted at in an earlier posting on this blog. I offered to write another post detailing my ideas on the subject. This is it.

It is a subject I’ve blogged on several times on my personal blog ‘Just thoughts …‘, and I believe it’s one of the most important areas that potential bloggers should be conscious of. In several posts I developed my thoughts, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll re-iterate them here.

The first and probably most important consideration is whether socialmedia is for you. In the case of blogging, you have to consider what you want a blog for, and having decided that it’s something you want to do, for whatever reason, you then need to choose the most appropriate hosting for the blog – corporate or commercial platform, and whether you want to keep it private or make it public. In the post ‘Do I blog … or do I not?‘, I try and address that issue and suggest that this decision is of considerable importance because the context then directs the style of writing, the language that you use and the type of message that you communicate. For instance, on my private personal blog, which is restricted to my family alone, I’ve just recorded the number and types of birds in the garden and the state of our goldfish in the pond! This is of no interest to the world at large I suspect, but as a record, or journal entry, for me (and to assist my abysmal memory) and for the family as almost a shared letter – it may have some value. On my personal blog, I’ve just posted some observations on leadership that I recorded from a UCISA Directors’ Forum I had attended. I’ve already referred to my personal professional blog, and over time I’ll use this to record events, observations about Information Services (INSRV), the university and my inter-actions with other colleagues in other universities that might be of interest to colleagues both inside and outside INSRV and Cardiff University. It’ll essentially be a record of my work for INSRV.

For institutions, they need to make a call as to whether they decide to host the corporate blog themselves, or not. In ‘where do you blog‘, I discussed some of the issues that need to be considered by an organisation before they decide to host their own blogging platform. Brian Kelly makes some interesting comments on the subject as well.

The third issue is the connection between the author and their credibility; the authority of their pronouncements. The Web 2.0 world has created an environment where everyone is potentially an author and publisher. What I write on my personal blog is just that – personal; it doesn’t pretend to be the view of an Assistant Director of Information Services, and my references to INSRV or Cardiff are tangential and very occasional. So therefore the issue of Identity and Credibility is of interest because essentially in social networking you gain credibility from the people that look at, or comment upon, your blog posts, follow you on twitter, or whatever.By your followers – you are known.

Finally, in another post I comment upon the ephemeral nature of socialmedia environments. If you’ve got something important to say – be very aware that socialmedia is not the place to write it for posterity. Also the choice of socialmedia is important and is intrinsically linked to the type of message that you want to promulgate. Surrounded by choice, the toolset you use for the message you want to convey, must be chosen with considerable care.