CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-06-18 17:27:11 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

ISS is a cover up for the Enterprise! Breaking news: this is supposed to be the International Space Station photographed over the moon, but is clearly NCC-1701 caught in a time travel accident :) 

2013-06-17 22:20:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

An exercise in #skyporn

2013-06-14 10:15:57 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 16 +1s)

2013-06-13 23:15:25 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 20 +1s)

An exercise in straight lines :)

2013-06-14 09:37:04 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 15 +1s)

An exercise in continuous shooting :)

#belgrade  

2013-06-11 18:52:45 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

(Business/human communication) Lessons of the day:
- Think before you speak
- Understand that the person you are talking to actually has his own opinions, interests and personality
- You are not the centre of the world
- Be able to forgive without forgetting
- Be brave enough to admit your mistakes.
Unfortunately I witnessed a friend doing the exact opposite of all of the above...

2013-06-10 20:01:38 (12 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Samsung, HTC et al: here's a free lesson in marketing :)
See the new #Apple  ad here http://www.apple.com/#designed-by-apple

h/t +Jari Huomo for the image

2013-06-09 18:22:54 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The gaps in the corporations’ digital world and the victory of the open source movement // Or how a small app and open data saved my weekend in Belgrade :) 

2013-06-06 21:09:07 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 27 +1s)

An exercise in catching the sun

2013-06-06 10:30:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

How Google's Semantic Search Works

Now that the illustration below shows you the process through which the raw text on your website is turned into semantic search entities you understand that for a website to rank in the semantic search web requires      

•   Content that is original, timely, and of high informational quality    

 •   Clear linking strategies on the pages of your website (I return to this a little later in the chapter)    

 •   Content that reflects the unique identity of your company or brand    

 •   Content that clearly reflects the value proposition of your products or services      

•   Content that is constructed in a way that can invite further engagement 

Excerpt taken from: http://goo.gl/ckXqQ

2013-06-05 15:53:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Lessons of Steve Jobs // Great speech by +Guy Kawasaki at TEDxUCSD covering a large number of issues from listening to "experts", anticipating technological changes, understanding what your company really provides to your clients, and much much more (even how to do a great presentation)!

2013-06-04 06:41:24 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

We should all be grateful to +Chris Messina for inventing the use of hashtags on Twitter, but that means we have him to thank for this, too [see first guy in this clip from The Bachelorette last week]: 

... also, please tell me he doesn't use hashtag as pickup lines with you,  +Brynn Evans!  Like "Hashtag: marriagematerial" ;)

2013-06-03 20:18:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

An exercise in light // Shot with my brand new Sony NEX-5R ;)

2013-06-02 22:34:25 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Mass-import of ripples // How about instead of having to input the URL of a post, that +Circloscope can fetch the last X posts or the posts of the last X days and then import the ripples from all of them? :) 

This would allow someone to do, for a example, a weekly review of the people who are engaging with him ;)

2013-06-02 21:41:29 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

★ How I use Google Chrome Extensions to make most of G+ ... ★
(Updated version) I've posted this already quite some time ago, but things have changed in between and since I'm re-writing all my "How I ..." posts for all those new followers I'm recently getting (more than 150.000 now!) I thought I'll give this one some love too. I've discarded some of the extensions I use (not many) and have added some new ones.

☛ Nothing is so good, it cannot be made better ...
That is true even for our beloved #GooglePlus . The Googlers are tirelessly working to improve the platform and a great job they are doing too, but even Google+ can be made better. That is were the #Extension developers come in.

As most of you know, I'm not an engineer, programmer or technician. Please don't expect me to get into the technical side ofexten... more »

2013-06-02 14:21:37 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 42 +1s)

An exercise in finding your way out :)

2013-06-02 10:35:13 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

Handy index of screen sizes // Listed by device and categorised by type (phone, tablet, desktop)
http://screensiz.es/

h/t +Henry Zeitler 

2013-06-02 10:14:43 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Facebook gets lazy, wants us to do it's indexing for them // Around the same time that Google+ is introducing features like automated tagging of posts and your photos being searchable by their content (see http://bit.ly/124fBmF), Facebook wants us to go a through a menu interface and state what we're doing from a choice of options. 

Of course this all comes down to advertising (as Slate pointed out http://slate.me/17MiOci). Explicitly declaring that you drink coffee or watch 60 Minutes puts you nicely in Facebook's audience categorisations for better ad targeting.

It has long been written that users in Facebook's are the commodity. Now apparently we are also replacing Facebook's computer infrastructure :)  

2013-06-01 19:16:08 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

An exercise in the middle of the road... + mobile apps findings: 
a) if you edit a photo via the G+ iOS app before uploading, it will upload a smaller (only 640 pixels wide!) copy, even if you have the settings to upload full-sized photos...
b) the Flickr app is better at that: even if you edit the photo and add effects (which are terrible and can not compare with what Google+ has!), the mobile app will upload the full-sized photo (see http://bit.ly/13bv9Sr)
Anyone noticed something different?

2013-05-31 06:49:22 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

Anyone using humans.txt? Do you see a point to it? :)
If you haven't heard of it, it is "an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. It's a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website."

2013-05-30 21:49:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Amazing photography / photoshop skills by 14-years old fiddle oak 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddleoak/

2013-05-30 10:13:43 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 19 +1s)

User suggestion box back on top // Seems like Googlers realised that putting in the middle of the stream the "you may know" box (that suggests users to follow) basically meant that most people ignored it. So it's now back on top of the stream (for me at least). 

2013-05-30 09:40:23 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 9 +1s)

SQL joins explained as Venn diagrams // A handy illustration explaining how left and right joins work in #SQL, presented as #Venn  diagrams. 

For some examples with actual data, check also this article http://bit.ly/11qFYLU by Jeff Atwood

h/t +Ilya Grigorik, +Data Visualization  

2013-05-29 13:55:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Crowdsourcing experience with new Facebook features.

I'm working on a column about Facebook's major announcements since 2013. If you use Facebook, can you help? 

Specifically, I'd love to know if you remember, use or like any or all of these features rolled out since 2010. 

Another other opinions, observations or comments are most welcome. 

Thank you!!

---------------------------------------

April 2010: Community Pages

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April 2010: Instant Personalization

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October 2010: Upgraded Groups

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July 2011: Facebook video calling powered by Skype

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September 2011: Facebook media platform... more »

2013-05-26 17:33:31 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 21 +1s)

An exercise in the woods :)

2013-05-26 09:51:21 (13 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

197 interesting People // If you're into technology, the Web, photography and science, here's a circle to consider. Methodology: out of 3200 people that I follow, using +Circloscope I ordered them according to relevance score (calculated by Google depending on whose posts I engage the most) and filtered for a value over 30, then filtered for whether they are active (when was their last post) and finally filtered by whether they were in my "must read" circles. Voila! I hope you find it interesting :) 

#circleshare   #sharedcircles   #sharedpubliccircles  #circlesharing  

2013-05-26 08:18:48 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

The temple of God // A short break from my usual tech-related posting for this amazing drawing/Photoshop art by Zhong Fenghua! See more of his work here http://zhongfenghua.cghub.com/

2013-05-25 18:38:45 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

An exercise in lines...

2013-05-25 17:59:25 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 14 +1s)

An exercise in flowers...

2013-05-25 11:19:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Index under "pointless drama"
Terrible idea by the developer to use copyrighted material for his demo. Equally terrible idea by NYT lawyers to think they can bully a person to remove a harmless statement.

2013-05-25 08:34:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Good morning!
(My first post in this community, hope you like the photo)

2013-05-24 17:57:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Find that beautiful bird photo you took last year with Google Photos // Now Google can search your photo archive (if you use Google+ Photos/Picasa) based on content, context of even a word typed in the photo. Here are some examples.

2013-05-24 16:28:10 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

How can I disable all birthday-related features? Reminders in the main Google.com search page, reminders in the G+ stream, etc. This isn't Facebook :) 

2013-05-24 15:42:03 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Find that beautiful bird photo you took last year with Google Photos // Now Google can search from your photo archive (if you use Google+ Photos/Picasa) based on content, context of even a word typed in the photo. Here are some examples.

2013-05-22 22:48:07 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Google Maps Photo Tours turns photos into a 3D experience // Already announced a bit over a year ago, Photo Tours is a Google Maps feature that turns multiple photos of a single location into a 3D-like presentation.
But what started as a list of 15,000 famous spots around the world is now apparently being  automated on a massive scale. In the video you can see a photo tour of small waterfall in the middle of the forests of Luxembourg :) 
If you have Chrome (WebGL is required) you can see it live here http://goo.gl/rCWFT 
(The link is from the preview of the new version of Google Maps, I'm not sure if you will be forwarded automatically to the current version)

2013-05-22 22:42:53 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Google Maps Photo Tours turns photos into a 3D experience // Already announced a bit over a year ago, Photo Tours is a Google Maps feature that turns multiple photos of a single location into a 3D-like presentation.
But what started as a list of 15,000 famous spots around the world is now apparently being  automated on a massive scale. In the video you can see a photo tour of small waterfall in the middle of the forests of Luxembourg :) 
If you have Chrome (WebGL is required) you can see it live here http://goo.gl/rCWFT 
(The link is from the preview of the new version of Google Maps, I'm not sure if you will be forwarded automatically to the current version)

2013-05-21 00:57:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Have you seen the new Flickr?
Here are the new default avatars:
http://www.behance.net/gallery/Avatars-for-The-New-Flickr/8807721

2013-05-20 09:56:24 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Hey +CircleCount, it would be interesting to check if, after the introduction of the new version of G+, there was a change for all the people that had a jump in new followers over the last month. With the "suggested people" box buried deep into the stream I think there might be a change. 

2013-05-20 09:07:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Requirement to be a programmer: "a deep need to probe the mysterious space between human thoughts and what a machine can understand; between human desires and how machines might satisfy them."

Check out this interesting insight on what it means to be a female developer.

2013-05-19 08:44:09 (19 comments, 20 reshares, 24 +1s)

Fixing G+ v2.0: a #Stylish "recipe" // Changed a few things that bumped me in the recent #googleplusupdate : 1) font and font size 2) wider column widths 3) full texts of posts and comments (no more "read more" links!) and 4) hiding animated GIFs :)

2013-05-19 08:48:31 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

How to fix the new G+ layout with Stylish // I've been having some serious issues with the new #googleplusupdate  layout, so I've resorted to Stylish to customise the G+ #CSS . Here's my 1-click-to-install recipe :)

Based on code by +Todd Vierling and +Amber Yust. Thanks to +Nico Gerrits and +Stefan Münz for related research.

2013-05-18 22:21:01 (41 comments, 57 reshares, 117 +1s)

Who are your 50 Most Relevant People in Google+?  // I've been meaning to write about +Circloscope and this is a great chance. Circloscope is a great Chrome extension for managing your circles. The most recent feature (gets updated almost daily) allows you to create an image of your most relevant people on G+ (as determined by Google's algorithms) In order to create such a photo, do this:

Step 1: Head over to www.circloscope.com and install the latest version of circloscope premium (v2013.5.18) on your chrome browser (costs 5$ - it's some of the best 5$ I have ever spent on software :))

Step 2: Open circloscope by clicking on the icon on your chrome toolbar. And go to "Action > Visualize > 50 Most Relevant".

Step 3: Take a screenshot of your 50 most relevant people and edit the photo as you like :-)

Step 4 (optional): You cann... more »

2013-05-18 22:25:10 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

That silly moment when you try access the new Google Maps on iOS Chrome and get an error message that your browser is not supported and need to install... Chrome :)

2013-05-16 15:21:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

G+ doing OCR on images?
// It seems that a new feature of yesterday's  #googleplusupdate  includes reading people's name on images and sending them notifications like "An image of you was posted". And all that without the poster mentioning any name in the text of the post. Let's see if this works... :) 

2013-05-16 08:47:13 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 16 +1s)

Haha, I kid because I love. :)

#GoodOldDays  

2013-05-15 21:23:39 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Google+ 2.0 is here
// Yippie, I have the just announced new Google+ interface! Meanwhile it's been 4-5 months and I still don't have Facebook Graph Search...

2013-05-15 19:06:48 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

New #googleplus  design coming up!
// At Google  #io13  a redesign of G+ has been announced, featuring a tiled interface. Watch the video below!
#googleplusupdate  

2013-05-15 12:42:19 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

On animated GIFs
// I love animated GIFs as much as the everyone else, but there has to be sone thought by Google on how to handle them. Right now you have people posting files easily over 1MB each and sometimes even reaching 4-5MB. This not only slows down loading but also can cripple mobile users bandwidth bills. Not to mention that you basically have a video playing automatically forever with now to pause it...

2013-05-15 05:54:48 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Epic social media fail of the day: Samy&Amy

// Meet Samy and Amy of the Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro, recently featured on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. It seems they have a bad temper which they showed on the episode. But they really went overboard on their FB page... :)

Read the hilarious posts on BuzzFeed http://bit.ly/180N6VF

That said, the next day they are saying they were hacked...  
Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy &Samy

via +Howard Pinsky and +Sara Carter 

2013-05-15 06:11:05 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Epic social media fail of the day: Samy&Amy

// Meet Samy and Amy of the Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro, recently featured on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. It seems they have a bad temper which they showed on the episode.

- Gordon Ramsey: Your wife can not take criticism, why is that?
- Samy: Ask her that, I have the same problem

But they really went overboard on their FB page... :)

Read the hilarious posts on BuzzFeed http://bit.ly/180N6VF

That said, the next day they are saying they were hacked...  
Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy &Samy

via +Howard Pinsky and +Sara Carter