CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-16 12:22:29 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 15 +1s)

I'm also submitting this (with notes from my past posts) to Google+ feedback.

2013-04-19 10:30:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

SMS Messages, Snow, and a few thousand hours...

Just a few weeks ago the UK was buried in exceptionally late snow.  After a few thousand hours of volunteer time, 10,000 texts, and nearly 1000 incidents, here's the story of the three days 22-24th March.

March 2013 was the 4th coldest on record, the coldest since 1962. 

2013-03-22 17:00:39 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Techies, s/w developers...

My pal +Fuzzygoth Dave is trying to get answers to a survey on continuous personal development as part of his degree and forthcoming career change :)

If you could fill it in, I'm sure he'd appreciate it.  Course the silly sod person has been sharing it on Facebook, not here.

2013-03-11 12:51:16 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Today's Douglas Adam's 61st Birthday...

Most of you will have already seen the Google doodle for this, but here's a link to prints of the original TV artwork from the original artist.

The TV adaptation was a little low budget, but the computer animations of the Guide were all hand drawn and animated!

If you want the best incarnation of the Hitch Hiker's Guide, the original radio series is by far the best.  Beg, borrow, steal or torrent the CD set.

We'll not mention the truly appalling film :)

DNA -  a truly sad loss.

2013-02-17 19:16:55 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

#MLP   #Bronies   #elderscrolls   #Skyrim   #mods    

2013-02-14 10:38:56 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

So, communities...

G+ randomly drops posts from certain communities I'm in into the stream

I appear to have no control over this.  Needless to say it's presenting posts that I don't want to see in the stream.  In fact it seems to be actively favouring two particular communities that don't have notifications on, and I only want to visit occasionally.  ie when I decide it's time to dive back into android or whatever...

The fact that certain topics I want only sometimes are firewalled into community silos is great, except they're not...

Is there a hidden setting to prevent this, or is my only recourse to actually leave these communities?

2013-02-09 20:18:12 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

Beauty at its finest.

2013-02-06 12:30:22 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

So many errors in so few words...

Fox appear to get their maths from the same place they get their 'facts'.

The number 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times  um, no.
Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance Oh really?

Half the article seems to be lifted from +New Scientist, but with many of the facts removed.

hey ho

2013-02-04 12:42:31 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Progress is not an app...

2013-02-03 18:59:28 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 24 +1s)

Human, just open the damn door already...

2013-02-03 13:54:19 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

1986 

i was a freshman in high school and you could fill up your gas tank with less than 10 bucks. 

2013-02-01 13:12:43 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Good grief...

This has to be some sort of joke surely?  Or it's an awfully long free course...

2013-01-30 21:50:19 (8 comments, 4 reshares, 4 +1s)

Awful mobile G+ update...

Edit... 1 hour of weirdness and only seeing the single most recent notification is fixed by clear data and reinstall.

-What the hell you done with notifications?  They were 100x better than desktop, kept a long chronological history you could scroll right back through, and didn't clear all unread immediately.  Frankly it's how the desktop browser version should have operated.

It meant on more than one occasion I checked notifications on phone even when sat at the 27" iMac, because it was better.

Now you just removed them all.  Completely.

How can I regress please?-

#googlefail  

2013-01-30 21:03:22 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

US Authorities Have Sweeping Powers to Monitor Worldwide Users' Documents
Any non-US citizen's use of a cloud-storage system that comes under US jurisdiction can be spied upon at will by US authorities.

#surveillance   #civilliberties   #privacy  

2013-01-30 18:09:29 (4 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

Fly You Fools

2013-01-25 13:11:31 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

Reasons to like Antigua....

#112:  The govt backed offical Warez site.

2013-01-24 20:21:39 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Maps Navigation Relative Volume...

Have a Nexus 4 and am mostly delighted with it.  Navigation is a pain in the rear though - if I have the navigation volume loud enough to hear, music through Play takes my eardrums out.  Music at an OK level and I simply can't hear the navigation.  There's no relative setting as far as I can see.

All I see in Google are complaints, no fixes...

Are there any apps, hacks, or alternative (loud) voices out there?

Phone's not rooted, but I've no issues making it so.

2013-01-24 13:01:18 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Facebook Graph Search is ___

I've read dozens of pieces, blog posts from both the general and SEO arenas, and whilst I've come up with a million unintended consequences, humour, and a good few facepalms, what I've not yet seen is a single, coherent post on how anyone is going to actually benefit from it commercially.  Not one.

Fact is, the level of accuracy (and frequently in fact, major on irony) most people use when filling in their FB is farcical.

So.  Where's the business opportunity here?  Optimise for Graph Search?  I've yet to see anything even vaguely convincing as to why...

FB you're a busted flush.

2013-01-22 19:07:53 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Social media experts will tell you, and they’ll make a pretty good case too, that it is the golden key to unlocking meaningful customer relationships and the gateway to surprising and delighting them over time. So how does social media do this? Well all it takes is to listen, be part of the conversation, curate great content, run native advertisements, and oh yeah, be transparent and authentic. Done and done.

Well, wrong and wrong.

Word!

Social media is not your saving grace: Experiences should first be defined and supported by +Brian Solis 
http://www.briansolis.com/2013/01/social-media-is-not-your-saving-grace-experiences-should-first-be-defined-and-supported/

2013-01-22 14:34:16 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

The fire service is marvellous...

Smart Arsed Yoofs: 0  Fire Service: 1

2013-01-22 13:35:01 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Well duh...

Turns out Sky have way oversold their broadband, and they've run out of capacity.  Course there's complaints from people who rely on broadband or need it to work.

Should have gone to +Zen Internet or another decent provider then.  If it's running at anything other than absolute max on Zen it's a sign my router's having a sulk :)

2013-01-18 20:28:27 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Geometry: Enemy of the People!

Many of you who encounter American politics are routinely horrified by the things that some of our political parties want to do to schools: teach more religion, mix creationism in with science, make sure that kids aren't exposed to the evils of evolution or set theory. But as usual, Israel is here to help you remember that, no matter how crazy your local politics may seem, it can do crazier. In Israel, there are parties that are filling in that important empty slice of the political spectrum to the right of Bill O'Reilly and to the left of Mullah Muhammad Omar.

This is a recent poster from one of Israel's religious parties, UTJ. Let me translate this for you, with footnotes:

EUCLID
No, it’s not the name of a medicine.
It’s a Greek mathematician that your sons will learn about instead of learning Mishna.(1)more »

2013-01-18 17:08:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

I Had to Do It!

For those that may not know Vadim Lavrusik works on the Facebook messaging team that is now charging $100 to send "non friends" messages.  

You might enjoy this +Michelle Li 

2013-01-18 13:57:02 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Tesco's and the orphan horse...

2013-01-17 16:29:03 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

New Facebook search?  What IS the point?

“italian restaurants that my friends have been to”
“hair salons that my friends like”

Is this how people make purchase decisions?  Nope.

Do I choose a text messaging company based on who my friends like?  Or might I choose it on price, or the opinion of friends whose opinions I value in that area?  Chances are I'd want a bit more than just that they clicked like on a FB page.  Do I care what my friends like or think when I'm shopping for anything?  Mostly no, and when I do it is specific - I'll ask my photographer friend when thinking about a new camera for instance.  An actual conversation?  How very 20th Century!

So, how is this going to help a business?  High novelty or teen sheeple targeted services and products perhaps, but for most things?  Not a chance.
Google data see... more »

2013-01-16 21:02:22 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

16th January 2013

Failed to get out mountain biking, but c'est la vie.  So tonight it is a photograph taken at Newby Bridge on the edge of the English Lake District.

2013-01-16 18:25:20 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

The continuing decimation of the High Street...

In a move to help the commercial centre of every town to consist of nothing more than Tesco, Starbucks and numerous charity shops, Blockbuster have gone into administration.

That said, when was the last time anyone at all went to a shop to rent a film?  I'm actually amazed they lasted longer than some of the other losses.

2013-01-15 20:45:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Google should buy all the #HMV   sites in the UK and open up a series of Nexus Stores. Apple would, naturally initiate a lawsuit for "having stores with technology products that make ours look vastly overpriced and utterly underwhelming" but Google would have a cunning counter-defence, No stock of any Nexus devices at all! It's genius... has to work... 

2013-01-15 13:41:17 (9 comments, 3 reshares, 4 +1s)

Deloitte predicts 90% of passwords vulnerable to hacking...

In which I repeat myself ...

I made a blog post back in October in which I essentially pointed out how pointless and useless passwords, as a means of security, were.

"Deloitte predicts that in 2013 more than 90 percent of user-generated passwords, even those considered strong by IT departments will be vulnerable to hacking"  (my emphasis)

In a recent study of six million actual user-generated passwords, the 10,000 most common passwords would have accessed 98.1% of all accounts

Are you using two-factor authentication yet?  From Deloitte:

What other solutions might work better?

Multi-Factor authentication is a strong candidate.  Instead of requiring only an account name and password to gain access, multiple identification factors would berequi... more »

2013-01-15 12:54:31 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

Hmmm it's a bit white out there...

Dog will be disappointed not to be here as snow is his version of lottery win

2013-01-14 21:32:24 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

2013-01-12 20:32:41 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Someone save me from reality TV

Happily settled watching archaeology on TV, the folks I'm staying with prefer some Z list celeb bad diving prog, called Splash.

If the dog were here, he'd be going for a 30 min minimum walk right now.

What's worse, they are discussing the programme, and whether it is worth making regular viewing...

leaves in search of some paint to watch dry

2013-01-12 20:19:19 (10 comments, 4 reshares, 24 +1s)

#orthography  

2013-01-11 18:36:36 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

Facebook Pimping Out Mark for $100

Yep! Apparently for just a quick $100 you can message Facebook's CEO and say 'Hi, great product!" directly to his inbox. Guess it really is a tough economy and everyone needs to pull their weight. Full story at: http://goo.gl/qxUTW

2013-01-11 11:37:06 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

G+ Help?  Can't add circles

Have a colleague who's trying to get going with G+.  Can't currently add circles - for weeks on end it has returned the "You've reached the daily limit for adding to your circles. You can add more tomorrow." message.  Net effect he's not added anyone for over a month.

In the past I've seen this issue mentioned numerous times, and in each case there seems to be some fix / hacking that Google can do to resolve the issue.

For +Liam Vince no one has been able to resolve.

Anyone have any useful suggestions or can ping an appropriate Googler who may be able to wield an adjusting hammer?

2013-01-09 18:40:42 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Dear human race, yet again, you suck...

...and all for a little ivory to sell for a few carvings and alternative medicine, mainly in China..

I've no doubt it will continue until there are no elephants left.

2013-01-09 11:15:11 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

150 years of the tube, and an excellent Google Doodle...

The oldest sections of the tube, the world's oldest underground railway, have been operation since 1863.

The atmosphere would have been interesting, as the early services were steam.  Electrification only arriving in 1890, along with the deep-level tunnels.

2013-01-07 21:17:15 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 22 +1s)

A Tale of Two Mustangs

Canon 1DX, 1/60 at f/20, ISO 100
70-200mm at 175mm
+Kenyon KS-6 Gyro 

2013-01-07 13:12:48 (11 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

With your help, we can make Ice a thing of the past. Let's go.

So while climate change is a serious thing, and its effects, as scientists say, could wipe out a large chunk of humanity, such outcomes are a mere possibility — whereas the benefits from oil extraction are a certainty.

In the epic struggle between man and the north, icebergs, nature's pirates of the sea, have posed a constant threat. Climate change is making a difference. Some may say "unnatural", but we think an Arctic freed of the iceberg menace makes northern oil exploration, and therefore the future of humanity, just a little safer.

Just for Kids: Angry Bergs (HTML5 game) → goo.gl/pxi0e

More brilliant 'Arctic Ready' ads ➜ goo.gl/3AJEu - Story: goo.gl/BPUqE

2012-12-23 13:58:48 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Ingress...

So far, so utterly pointless.

Nothing at all within 30 miles. That's never going to work as a distraction while dog walking.

Nothing in any of the places I visit regularly.

So big cities only? And then only in the centres?

That's pretty rubbish.

#ingress

2012-12-20 14:09:45 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 16 +1s)

It is with deep sadness...

..that this will probably be my last ever posting on G+, as by my the Mayan's reckoning the world is to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.  Or something.  I'm sure that G+ and a few other random bits of the net will stick around for a while, but as there'll be no humans to see it...

ta ra then.  Now, I'm off to find my towel...

(I am deeply disturbed that searching for "hyperspace bypass" results in many results for nail polish.  The world deserves to end.  so there) :p

2012-12-20 12:16:08 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 22 +1s)

The Must-Have Christmas accessory...

A present opening and wrapping disposal device.

Showing no sign of needing replacement batteries after seven years...

2012-12-19 20:26:34 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 20 +1s)

The SEO goes nicely, but I get to be speechless...

16gb Nexus 4 arrives, and turns out to be my Christmas present from work!

I guess I'm doing more than ok then :)

2012-12-16 15:27:37 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 14 +1s)

Happy 65th ...

The transistor is 65 today.

Quite a bit has changed since, because of that invention...

2012-12-14 18:46:11 (46 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

On Guns, Shootings and the answer "More guns"...

How is it, whenever there's an appalling loss of life in the USA, within minutes people are suggesting the answer is more guns, teachers trained in marksmanship, armed guards etc etc.

Hello?  *Less guns.*

Yes, yes, I know that's such an affront to your libido.  :p

Other countries cope quite happily without everyone packing assault rifles.  With fewer shootings.

2012-12-14 13:32:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

UK a nation of hi-tech TV lovers...

The UK is ahead of other countries such as Japan and the USA for catching up with TV online and is at the forefront of using new technology such as smart TVs and digital video recorders (DVRs)

The most searched-for term on the web is facebook Which just goes to show how few have cottoned on to typing URLs into the box at the top of the browser!  Search for it, and click the little blue link still wins apparently!

The UK consumed the most mobile data per connection. 424MB of data was downloaded per mobile connection in 2011

The UK is one of the leaders in text messaging among our comparator countries. The average person sent 199 SMS messages per month in 2011, up 17% compared with 2010

UK consumers break the £1,000-a-year barrier for spending online   Think I may have passed that a decade back!
... more »

2012-12-14 11:56:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

If you are here for the social part of social media, this is the circle for you.

Follow +Social Circles and share this circle now; and you'll be in it tomorrow. It's that easy! :)

+1 and comment on the original post to be sure you don't get missed!

#circleshare    #sharedcircles    #sharedcircle  http://goo.gl/M48qJ #sharedpubliccircles    #circlesharing    #publiccircle  

2012-12-14 08:57:53 (24 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Anyone know anything about getting G+ Pages verified?...

"After reviewing your request, we can't verify your page at this time, because:  Your page does not have enough followers to be eligible for verification"

Page has around 5000, yet there's loads of validated pages down to 200 and less.

+Google+ Help  #pages  

2012-12-13 19:05:24 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 3 +1s)

Contender for Stupidest Idea of 2012...

Social Denim lets you quickly click the device to let people know your current location or mood. Your “happiness level” features eight different moods to choose from, ranging from positive to negative

Oh well, another reason (as if one is needed) to not Facebook.

2012-12-13 18:57:21 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Dear RMT, if you think this will help public sympathy...

You are very, very stupid.

One employee is sacked, who allegedly reduced a customer to tears, and you wish to ruin Christmas for thousands of families.  I hope you all get fired.

The fact I am booked to travel Scotrail on the 22nd in no way colours my opinions.  Much.

#bringbackdeportation