Managing your Google+ stream

If you are a typical Google+ user, it’s either “famine or feast” when it comes to your Google+ stream. When you first join, the stream is in a “famine” stage with new posts appearing few and far in between. Perhaps all you have are your posts and those from members of your family who reluctantly joined Google+ at your urging even though they’re already on Facebook :-)

It’s easy to get out of the “famine” once you realize that you can add other interesting people to your circles even if they don’t add you to theirs. Plus there are Google+ Pages from organizations that you may want to follow. At this point you get a healthy number of posts in your Google+ stream. You probably read most of them, comment on some, and even feel great in having a discourse with others of similar interest.

Soon some others see your public posts as well, like them, and start adding you to their circles and, assuming you have similar interests, you reciprocate. Before you know it, you can get to perhaps 100+ people in your circles. This is when things get tricky. Some of the people in your circles are going to be more prolific than others and now your stream has way too many posts. You can hardly keep up. Now you are in the “feast” stage of your Google+ stream and, if you are like me, you probably don’t like it because it’s now hard to keep up, let alone provide thoughtful comments.

If this is your situation, don’t give up, just “Use the Circles” and Prioritize. First, arrange everyone judiciously in circles. Instead of lumping people into a few large circles, subdivide into smaller circles according whatever is important to you. Then, check the postings of only the circles that you care about, by clicking those circles one at a time.

For example, now I focus primarily on my Family circle and a small "Professional Connections" circle, otherwise, it gets to be too much. I also apply the rule that "real life trumps Google+ or anything virtual on the Internet" and that family is the highest priority. With  these simple rules, life is good again and I still love Google+ :-)

Here's some more information to help you...

I described why I love Google+ in an earlier blog post:

Why I love Google+

You should turn on 2-step verification for your Google+ account, here's how:

NBTMV - Turn on 2-step verification on your Google...

Cloud computing from a user’s point of view

In previous videos I had tried to explain cloud computing, its benefits and risks, and why you may want to go for a public cloud. But recently I realized that all those terms such as public vs private cloud or platform-as-a-service or software-as-a-service, are just not relevant from the user’s point of view. That’s why I wanted to provide this brief description of cloud computing from a user’s point of view.


By “user,” I mean individuals like you and I as well as organizations. As far as you and I, as individuals are concerned, we have a laptop or a tablet, or a smartphone (or all of these) with some connection to the Internet (which is the “cloud”), and all we know is that when we need our email, it’s there, when we want to upload a video or share photos with family and friends, we can do it. We don’t care how Google or Facebook manage to store all this information that millions of users upload. That’s what is cloud computing to you and I - - to get access to our email, documents, Facebook, and Google+ etc. from any Internet-connected device, when we need it.


Now, if the user is an organization, they could, for example, go to Amazon Web Services and buy whatever computing services they need - - they can get database, storage, order fulfillment, payment service, or just plain computing platforms. That’s cloud computing to a corporation - - to be able to just go to the Amazon Web Services web site and order whatever type and amount of computing services they need. That’s what cloud computing is to organizations that need more computing than just the email, documents, etc. that we, as individuals need.


In summary, from the user’s point of view, it’s cloud computing if you can go to a vendor and buy whatever computing services you need and pay for just the amounts you use. All the technical definitions with jargon such as virtualization and elasticity are just technical explanations of how the cloud computing vendors do their magic, but that’s really not important to the users. What’s important to the users are: (1) a broadband connection to the Internet and (2) access their email, documents, etc from any device.

Here's some more information to help you...

You can find my previous posts on cloud computing on this blog, but here are direct links to help you get to specific posts: 

• Why public cloud  
• What are some of the risks of Cloud Computing
• Why you should consider cloud computing as an opti...
• What is Cloud Computing

Interest


Here are some interesting books related to cloud computing:

Tags: cloud+computing, virtualization, public+cloud, private+cloud