Tech Tip: Google Plus
Google Plus is the latest big thing from Google. But what is it? According to its creators, Bradley Horowirz and Vic gundotra, it's 'an extension of Google' and it aims to make online sharing simple.
But what does that even mean? And how will Google+ work?
Basically Google+ enables you to create a personal profile, add friends, share content between friends and meet new people. Sound familiar? It's basically the same premise as multiple other social networks, however Google definitely has the advantage of a massive userbase behind it.
Google will also be integrating it into their powerful search engine, enabling you to refine your searches based on your profiled interests, things your friends like and things that are currently popular to Google+ users.
So let's start with Circles. Circles is the Google+ concept for friend groups. The aim is to make it easy for you to control who sees what you share and to catch up with specific groups of friends directly.
Instead of having one big list of 'friends' containing best friends, not-so-great friends and merely acquaintances you'll be able to easily pop your contacts into different groups based on your real-life friendship circles.
This leads me to Hangouts. Working with your circles, hangouts enable you to have joint conversations with specific groups of friends. Using video chat and some Google wizardry that brings the person talking to the forefront of the screen, Hangouts are probably the best implementation of an online group chat that I have ever seen.
It really is the closest you'll get to real-life group conversation while online. Google+ calls it a face-to-face-to-face conversation and states that 'Until teleportation arrives, it's the next best thing' - I find myself agreeing!
Huddle is for those circumstances where you want to quickly organise something among a group of friends. It's a group chat session that is simple to use and can work straight from your phone. No more sending out mass-messages trying to figure something out and getting a confusing number of replies back - everyone is on the same page (or perhaps that should be screen?) with Huddle.
If you're anything like me you'll have a bunch of photos and videos on your phone that you've been meaning to share for a while. In fact I think I have some on my old phone, as well, that have never seen the light of day simply because connecting my phone to a computer is NOT fun.
With Instant Upload Google+ seeks to overcome this problem. Exactly as the name states, instant upload is a phone application that uploads your photos and videos to Google+, instantly. They're saved online to a private album, which you can then choose to share to different circles.
Finally, Sparksmight look like a search engine, but its creators are quick to point out it's more like a 'sharing engine'. It refines your search based on things you and your friends are interested in and when you see something you like, you can add it to your list of sparks to share and look at again later.
Google+ is shaping up to be something very, very interesting. A social network that focusses more on sharing things (links, photos, videos, etc) than dreary status updates.
Currently Google+ is a closed network, meaning it's available through invite only, but as it grows and the features become more stable it will become publicly available. If you're interested in joining Google+ then add your name and email to the list.
