Google+ Saved The World From Facebook

 
What's the difference between Google+ and Facebook?

Imagine you’re at a party. In attendance are friends, family, co-workers, celebrities, and maybe even a politician or two. As you mingle with the crowd, you selectively share information with certain groups of people. For example you’d only want your friends to hear, “I drank too much last night, maybe I should call in sick,” not your boss or co-workers. On the other hand your friends don’t want to hear about your plan to optimize profits in the social media sector. Your conservative friends don’t want to hear your liberal rants on the budget, and your liberal friends don’t want to hear about your thoughts on Gay Marriage. At the same time you want to listen in on Brad Pitt’s conversation and even watch Obama work the room.

Facebook stinks when it comes to filtering your conversations. If you post photos of your kids playing Batman & Robin before bed, every “friend” sees it. Anyone who has been stopped in a hallway at work by someone and asked “Why haven't you accepted my friend request?” knows the limitations of Facebook. Google+ may have fixed a problem you didn’t even know you had.

Google+ Circles
With Google+ you create circles of people. As you post photos, comments, or links about the happenings in your life you can choose what content to share with which circle. You can add your mom to a family circle, your boss to a work circle, old high school friends to a circle, and your close friends to yet another. You can even add people to multiple circles. After all your cube-mate is a co-worker and a friend right?

Google+ Hangouts
Along with Circles, you also have a fun feature called Hangout. Back to the party idea, when you’re chatting with someone, it’s nice to have friends flutter in and out of your conversation. Imagine doing this online. With Hangout you simply start a video chat that people can join. You can designate certain circles, all of your circles, or even the public at large, a la chatroulette, up to ten people. This is great for meetings, book clubs, or just old friends reconnecting.

Google+ Followers
Forget about fan pages and like buttons, now you can use Sparks to track subjects, companies, just about anything, and it’ll show up in your Stream (Google’s version of a Facebook News Feed.) Using this feature is a lot like Trends on Twitter, but for the whole internet. Speaking of Twitter, you know how you can follow celebrities and politicians? With Google+ you can follow anyone you want, even without them adding you as a friend. So you can see what people share with the public and they won’t be limited to only 140 characters. I can’t wait to see what Ashton Kutcher does with this.

I rarely look at Facebook from my computer. I usually catch up in my friends’ updates while in line at Starbucks, or while watching TV on the couch. Google has built Google+ with the mobile user in mind. A couple features where this is really obvious is with Huddle and Instant Upload.

Google+ Huddles
Huddle is a feature I misunderstood at first. It’s like a chat room, and a group text all at once. On Facebook if I want to chat, it’s with everyone or one on one. But have you ever tried to coordinate a dinner with five or six people and then have a last minute change in venue? You could group text everyone, but if Tim wants greek food and Sally wants mexican, it quickly breaks down into having to call everyone, it’s not unlike herding cats. Huddle will let you create a simple chat room on the fly where everyone can text the group all at once. When you’re done the room is closed, nice and easy.

Google+ Instant Upload
Once you start using Instant Upload you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. I take a lot of pictures with my phone. The process of taking the picture, then uploading it to Facebook is a pain. Google simply uploads every photo you take to a folder in your profile. Once it’s there you can choose who to share it with, if anyone.

I’m not ready to say Facebook is about to head down the Myspace path, but after spending sometime with Google+ I can easily see myself making the switch as my friends do. There is enough innovation here that when I switched back to Facebook after a couple of hours, I felt like I was in an older clunkier version of Google+. It seems I am not alone, being an invite only service at the moment certainly hasn’t hurt Google in any way. At the time of this writing over 10 million people have already signed up, and now that they are allowing users to send unlimited invites, it should clear 20 million by the time you read this.

Are you ready to take a look at Google+, but don’t want to buy an invite on Ebay? Send me a note at www.callnerds.com/andrea and I’ll invite you to the party.

 

 

Understanding Verizon's Tiered Data Plans

 
 
[caption id="attachment_3613" align="alignright" width="473" caption="Verizon's Tiered Data Plans Start at $20.00 for 2gb and go up to $80.00 for 10gbs"][/caption]

When I was little, one of my favorite cartoons was the Jetsons. I would watch George video chatting with his boss, and proclaim to my sister, “The future is going to be awesome!” With every generation of portable technology, from walkmans to cell phones, it seemed my childhood dreams would soon be realized. As I watch my two year old video chat with his cousin on my iPhone, I can’t help but smile: this future is pretty awesome. Then the news broke that Verizon is joining the ranks of AT&T in eliminating unlimited data on mobile devices, and my cozy little reverie was broken.

First, I had a little moment of panic. I travel a lot for work and use my Smartphone for just about everything. I stream music with Pandora, access my Gmail and surf the web. I even use my phone as a WiFi hotspot to access the internet on my laptop. While current Verizon customers will retain their existing unlimited access, I fear it’s only a matter of time until all customers are moved to the new packages. Under the new “tiered plans”, but we'll just have to wait and see.
How Much Do Verizon's New Data Plans Cost?

Verizon customers can choose one of the following:
2GB of data for $30/month,
5GB for $50/month.
10GB for $80/month.
Exceeding the limit will cost $10 per GB.

Rates are very similar at AT&T, the only other mobile service provider to support iPhones. When I saw these plans, I was sure I’d be stuck in the top bracket. What is a self-professed data addict to do?
How Many Hours Of Video Can You Stream on a 2GB Data Plan?

Before I retrieved my old Motorola flip phone and resigned myself to a future of no mobile Facebook, I pulled up my account online. I was shocked to discover that last month I used just over 1.7GB, which keeps me in the lowest tier for Verizon. If you also fear that you’ll need to take out a loan to afford your mobile data, review your last few bills or check with your wireless provider to see how much you’re currently using. You may be pleasantly surprised.

However, with every new amazing app I download, my usage is sure to increase. I reviewed some of the estimators and discovered that I could stream two hours of music every day for a month and only use about 2GB of data. Streaming videos for thirty minutes every day for a month would use about the same. What a relief to discover, there’s no way I have time to stream that much! You can check out your estimated future use with one of the online data use estimators at Verizon or AT&T.

Finally, if you are more addicted to data than to your iPhone, there are still service providers that will let you stream and surf to your heart’s content. Sprint and T-Mobile currently offer unlimited plans, and while T-Mobile will slow your connection after you pass certain thresholds, they won’t charge you extra fees. If you leave your phone’s WiFi enabled, it will drain your battery but reduce your cell network usage. Movie lovers can change Netflix account settings to view movies in a lower resolution which will decrease the quality of the video, but also lower your bandwidth use. There are even apps that can compress data sent to and from your phone, such as Onavo, a free app for iOS devices like iPhones and iPads.

If you’re still considering selling a limb to finance your streaming habits, you can ask for specific suggestions in the comments below, we can tell you less drastic ways to keep your data costs under control.

Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds on Call, a company started in Redding, California., that offers on-site computer and home theater set-up and repair. Contact her at www.callnerds.com/andrea.

 

They War Over The Future Of Music

Everyone has a summer anthem. I’m partial to Will Smith’s “Summertime,” but please don’t look up when that was popular. These days, getting access to your favorite tunes is easier than ever with services that allow you to stream music to Internet-capable and mobile devices. There are even options for families like mine that cross over between Apple, Android and Windows devices. Finally, we can all just get along — and share our music again. While Google Music Beta , Apple iCloud and even Amazon Cloudduel for your loyalty, we have delved into the trenches and reviewed the 3 best Music Clouds that let you access music from anywhere in the world.

APPLE iCLOUD: If all of your mobile devices are stamped with an Apple logo, check out iCloud, launching this fall. Apple’s iCloud finally removes the requirement that all your devices at some point plug into a common computer to sync files. The service is free for any songs you’ve downloaded through iTunes music store. If your library is more extensive, pay $25 a year and Apple will “match” your library online, no matter where your music files originated.

This means songs you purchase or have stored on your iPhone can instantly sync with little Jimmy’s iPod, without having to connect each device to a common computer, upload from one and download to the other — assuming little Jimmy is interested in Neil Diamond’s “Greatest Hits.” The downside of iCloud is that it only works with devices using iTunes to sync music, and streaming is limited to content purchased through iTunes music store. Otherwise, you can only listen to songs you’ve downloaded to each device.

GOOGLE MUSIC BETA: Music lovers who have held out against the Apple tide should consider Google Music or Amazon Cloud Player. Both allow you to store your music library on their cloud server and stream to any Android device or computer. The catch is that you need to first upload your entire music library, which can be a long, arduous task. While Google will sync new content automatically with your library from that point on, Amazon will only auto-sync music you purchase through its MP3 store. Everything else will have to be manually uploaded to its server which is a big downside.

Both services allow you to tag songs to be available offline, so you can still listen to your favorite tunes on your next road trip or flight. Google allows you to store 80GB (about 20,000 songs), which should accommodate all but the professional DJ. Google Music Beta is currently available by invite only, so if you want to try it send a request to music.google.com and cross your fingers. It’s free now, but there’s no promise it will remain so once the service is out of beta. Amazon Music gives you 5GB of storage free (about 1,250 songs). Purchase an album through the Amazon MP3 Store, and the company will throw in another 15GB for free. If you need more space, it gets costly: roughly $1 per GB/year.

Grooveshark: Are you still lamenting the loss of Napster? Grooveshark may be your new best friend. Grooveshark is an online music search engine that offers free on-demand streaming. If you choose, you can purchase one of their subscription services. Our favorite of the two available services is a downloadable desktop app. Upon installing the program on your computer, Grooveshark will scan your system for music files and create a personalized music library. The magical part is that Grooveshark merges all of its user’s content into one giant library that you can stream to any Internet-capable device on which you’ve installed Grooveshark. This means that even if you don’t own the Foo Fighters’ new album, you can stream it online from Grooveshark’s library. Create playlists with your favorites, or choose a genre for an endless music stream. Upgrading to “Grooveshark Anywhere” to use the mobile app costs $9 a month, available only at mobile.grooveshark.com and it is not available for iPhones or other mobile Apple devices at this time.