CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-22 22:00:59 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

After so many months went into this #book. I am SO proud to finally announce and bring you

Joplin: Our Words, Our Stories, Their Hope

http://www.amazon.com/Joplin-Words-Stories-Their-ebook/dp/B00CXS40DU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369253989&sr=1-1&keywords=joplin%3A+our+words%2C+our+stories%2C+their+hope

ALL proceeds go directly to JoplinRebuild.org

#joplin   #tornado   #help   #book  

2013-05-22 20:42:23 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

World Changing
I might be the last dude on the planet to learn about this, but Swiping is far preferable to typing on virtual keyboards.

Huge difference. Zow!

h/t +Chowmut Le 

2013-05-22 18:14:41 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Interesting article on brands making use of Hangouts.

2013-05-21 15:00:33 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Please note the new update of +Pro Studio.

In short, you can now cycle the filmstrip in the YouTube stream to:
1) Hide
2) Display
3) Auto hide when only 1 participant is on-stage

Also, you can set new participants to Mute notifications (no more "ding" in the stream as they enter).

I appreciate your feedback.

2013-05-21 01:40:45 (10 comments, 9 reshares, 26 +1s)

Recent Update

Many thanks to the great and might Hangouts API team, for because of their work, I've been able to add two valuable new features:

► "YouTube Stream" now allows you to cycle between three states:
      ☼ FOCUSED FEED (Always display main feed only)
      ☼ HANGOUT VIEW (Always display main feed and filmstrip)
      ☼ AUTO (Automatically hide filmstrip when there is one user)
► "Notifications" can now be set to default to "Audible" or "Muted" for new users entering the Hangout. No more [ding] every time something happens in the Hangout :).

Please remember to set Notifications early! I believe it affects new participants as they enter, not those already in the Hangout.

As always, your feedback makes things happen, so please let me know how it goes.

2013-05-18 11:46:12 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

San Francisco to Kansas city by way of Atlanta GA ?!?

2013-05-18 03:55:35 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

If you happen to be walking through SFO this evening, swing by and say hello... just look for me :)

2013-05-18 03:37:55 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Down-Time Reflection
I'm sitting at SFO waiting for my flight. I walked 1/2 mile from Moscone to take one bus, four trains and then walk another 1/2 mile to my gate. Not too bad, but I'm walking through a fog. I'm exhausted.

This week has been amazing. I've learned so much, met so many terrific people, and... sort of... breathed.

I look forward to some creative brainstorming with a group of new friends. Wouldn't it be something if, together, we:
✦ Created an amazing thing that changes some aspect of the world
✦ Fleshes out our portfolios (for the better ☺, of course)
✦ Enriches us to the point where we can choose the projects and priorities in which we engage
✦ Teaches us things we never would have otherwise learned... happy lessons, not those "life's tough lessons"

If you hadn't noticed... Ifeel like I... more »

2013-05-17 20:58:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

On Memorial Day, you have a unique opportunity to tour the 9/11 Memorial with Sept. 11 witnesses, victims' family members and veterans who fought to protect our freedoms in the aftermath of the attacks.  The National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center is providing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans a virtual tour of the 9/11 Memorial via Google+ Hangout.  The names of nearly
3, 000 men, woman and children killed in the 2001 and 1993 attacks are inscribed in bronze panels edging the 9/11 Memorial's acre-sized reflecting pools, a powerful reminder of the largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil and the greatest single loss of rescue personal in our country's history.  This special tour is made possible through a partnership with the +9/11 Memorial  +Google+ , +Veterans United and +Virtual Photo Walks™ . Please join us for the livevirtual ... more »

2013-05-17 20:52:56 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

Making new friends at #io13... Great group.

2013-05-18 16:28:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Karen Hutton and 1 other was tagged in Chad LaFarge's album.

2013-05-17 05:11:54 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

I had a wonderful tour of San Francisco this evening... what a beautiful city. Great dinner, great company... a great night. I'm blessed to have good friends.

2013-05-17 05:03:06 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Street View Vehicles
I had no idea they had so many ways of getting around with that gear... groovy.

2013-05-16 22:45:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

I helped Bugdroid find his lost dog at Google I/O! Do you want to join the search?

2013-05-16 17:20:55 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Fireside Observations
I'm sitting in the Google+ Platform Fireside Chat... nice to see +Jennifer Lin, +Vic Fryzel, +chee chew, +Seth Sternberg, +David Glazer, and +Sandy Jen in person.

Interesting questions from David to open the session, gauging the experience of the crowd... and good numbers for both usage and development experience.

+Bradley Horowitz is in attendance, but not on stage... or his doppelganger, but more likely Bradley :).

+Trey Ratcliff is sitting 5 feet to my right. We haven't met but I attended his Photo Walk two nights ago... good times. Some dude just sneaked up to him to shake hands... bet that happens a lot.

Lot's of familiar faces in the crowd, actually.

Chee just offered that Google uses Hangouts about 20,000 times per day internally.  It takes +Mike Downes at least 3 weeks to log thatmany Hangouts.more »

2013-05-16 15:23:48 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

+Mike Downes , our breakfast, sir :)

#io13

2013-05-15 22:04:25 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Just trying out my beautiful new PIXEL (!!!!!) I've decided to keep it :)

2013-05-15 15:40:12 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Nice turnout... Or so I've "herd" ;) #io13

2013-05-15 15:32:08 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Geez

2013-05-15 15:26:27 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Small crowd to enter keynote. #io13

2013-05-15 15:05:58 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

#io13 The line for the keynote is developing into concentric rings in the breakfast hall. Logistical oddity... Tough to keep order when neighboring 4-5 person stacks are queued directly beside one another

2013-05-15 14:38:58 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 12 +1s)

#io13 Breakfast is served! Photo taken from the line to get into the keynote... In 90 minutes.

Top of the morning to ya'!

2013-05-15 04:19:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

While surrounded by hundreds of photographers at tonight's Photo Walk with +Trey Ratcliff and +Thomas Hawk, I mostly took snapshots, as I only had my phone. Still a good time was had by all, and I would not have seen as much of San Francisco as I did without this event.

Thanks for allowing me along for the experience.

PS: The last of these is not form the walk, but I wanted to share it anyway... what on earth is that building with the furniture on the walls?!?

2013-05-15 01:08:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Added photos to Karen Hutton Virtual Photo Walks.

2013-05-14 22:22:24 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 4 +1s)

Thousands of +Arduino floating around at I/O... Nice job!

2013-05-14 19:56:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Not sure if I'm at the right spot... ;)

2013-05-14 18:59:33 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

I'm going to say it's... "quaint"... My room :). Off to find some grub.

2013-05-14 16:47:21 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

We have wheels on the ground in San Francisco! Now to find my way to the hotel...

2013-05-14 13:46:08 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Soon to take off for leg two of the journey to Google I/O.

2013-05-14 10:10:27 (8 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Departing in about an hour for first leg in journey to Google I/O.

2013-05-11 15:57:33 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Girls on the Run
My girls did their annual Girls on the Run 5K this morning! Great job! I'm proud of you!

They really should give medals to the parents who run with their daughters.

2013-05-08 21:40:45 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Lizzie's Piano Recital

Lizzie ROCKED her recital last night! Our little pianist!

2013-05-05 01:29:27 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

This should be important to all of us - Google Takeout Data of our Google+ Stream .. I have made 8,162 posts with 61% Limited v 39% Public ..  

I have made 21 posts a day on average for the last four months .. I have included four other slides of archived posts showing similar data ..

To get you Google+ Takeout Stream visit: https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom:stream click Create Archive ..

2013-05-04 20:43:59 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Lizzie's First Clown Kill

Happy Birthday to my sweet Lizzie! I took her out to the range today and she fired a Sig Sauer P250 9mm Sub-Compact (http://www.sigsauer.com/CatalogProductDetails/p250-2sum.aspx). She fired two rounds (marked with yellow arrows) at 7 yards (6.4 meters for you metric-lovers out there)... not too shabby. The rest are from the Full-Size frame at 25 yards, both chest and head. It's new, folks... give me a little time to practice. I'll bring it in. But clearly she did great!

A nice couple at the range also let her fire their .22 rifle. Oddly, she prefers the .22, and she also declined to fire "The Judge". There's just no accounting for taste ;).

She took instruction very well, kept the barrel aimed down-range or into the ground, and quickly "got" why we never raise a barrel when someone is down-range. She also... more »

2013-05-02 21:09:08 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

My biggest problem right now is limiting to one session per time-slot. ARGH!!! Time, you MOCK me!

2013-04-23 22:21:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Former paratrooper and medic, Larry Huff manages a three Week online Math Boot Camp preparation course, called VetOut. VetOut specifically prepares students
to pass the Mathematics College Placement exams and is free for Active Duty Service Members, Military Veterans, and their families.

2013-04-22 02:50:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Holy Crap, Cardboard Boat

This is the most awesome cardboard boat I've ever seen. You guys worked your butts off on that project and it showed.

Great job, +Columbia Gadget Works.

2013-04-16 18:38:37 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Family Portrait

Emily drew this mash-up of her, Lizzie and Erin... My girls :)

2013-04-14 17:28:35 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

A Novel Approach to Story Telling

I hang with story-tellers a lot. That's why I found this article really interesting. It's primarily for Web Designers/Developers, but I think offers some inspiration for those knowledge-hungry others with whom I hang from time to time. I'm looking at you, +Mike Downes. I could see +Christy Wilcox telling the story of the Syrian rebels controlling the border crossing on the Turkish border with images and maps of Aleppo. I could see the +KOMU 8 News coverage by +Sarah Hill of a Harrisburg Bank Robbery broadcast with way-points and Street-View images of the bank and escape route, pointing out where our citizens need to be careful and watchful as the events unfold.

The development end of this would require a simple admin interface to enter way-points, related art and copy, along with the user interface to move from way-point toway-poin... more »

2013-04-12 01:55:50 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

What a Nightmare

Not for the kids... you'd think this would be in the news more...

2013-04-11 02:19:58 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

CodeSpells Teaser

I love this idea... I wonder how my kids will warm up to it? I found this via +Slashdot, of course. Quoth the great and mighty /.:

"Computer scientists at UC San Diego have developed a 3D first-person video game designed to teach young students Java programming. In CodeSpells a wizard must help a land of gnomes by writing spells in Java. Simple quests teach main Java components such as conditional and loop statements. Research presented March 8 at the 2013 SIGCSE Technical Symposium indicate that a test group of 40 girls aged 10-12 mastered many programming concepts in just one hour of playing."

2013-04-09 15:27:56 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

VA Home Loan Program Director Hangout

Happening Now LIVE...

2013-04-08 19:52:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

GlowRun5K

This is my family (from me in the center, down- and right-ward) and a friend-family, at the end of the Glow Run 5K in Columbia MO. My girls ran like warriors and the boys were cool as ever, just saying "hi" every 2 seconds as we passed, or were passed by, other runners.

The stroller is a mixed bag: pushing up hills, getting pulled down others, half-leaning at times in the flats.

None of us are runners, so it was a new experience for all of us... it's the second 5k for Erin and Emily, but other than that we're all green.

This was really fun, and we're now looking for other running events near town.

2013-04-07 03:00:38 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Glow Run 5K

We had a great time at our first Glow Run 5K, tonight. We ran into some friends and got to visit... and glow, good times :). About 2000 were registered to run.

The twins held out in the stroller until the very end.

How'd you do, +Michele Spry?

2013-04-04 13:58:18 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Girls on the Run

Heart of Missouri Girls on the Run is up against Heart of Missouri Court Appointed Special Advocates in flight 3 of Nonprofit Madness... My Emily is participating in Girls on the Run, and would appreciate your vote to help secure a $250 donation (the winner of 16 charities will receive a $250 donation).

Please lend your vote!

2013-04-03 19:59:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

I've created a team for the +National MS Society Walk: Jefferson City event coming up on May 11th (Find out more about Multiple Sclerosis at the National MS Society's Google+ page). Team K Fitzy is in honor of my mother, Karen Fitzwater (Hence, "K Fitzy"), who has had MS for as long as I've been alive. It sucks, I've created the team along with my family to help fight MS and raise money as well as awareness.

Would you consider walking with my team on May 11th from 10 am to 1 pm, or at any point during that time frame? You can join the team at the link below as well as donate. My dream is to raise $1,000 for this event and have 25 friends and family members join the walk.

You can join my team at the link --> http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Walk/MOSWalkEvents?team_id=334511&pg=team&fr_id=20734