Here is a riddle: what is the best way to take over the world? Need a minute? The answer is this: make something that everybody uses. This was my first thought on encountering the now almost inevitable internet destination that is Google Plus. What it is is an aggregation of Google’s top services and much of what we use on the internet, in one place.
It has got everyone talking. Even my grammar professor want to know how it can be used to teach an online class (hint: it can’t without the glitches of privacy and copyright concerns). It can, however be used to manage a social existence without worries to privacy the kind that Facebook brought. What exactly is Google Plus? I’d say it’s Facebook, Twitter, Blogger combined with some of other services we use everyday. Who would have thought that a day will come when everything we search for on Google can now be indexed publicly for our friends to see if we want. Who needs twitter? Who needs Facebook? Who needs a blog even? With Google Plus, everything comes together, and you still get to keep your gmail address.
Here’s how someone put it in a recent shared post:
Instead of saying, “I’m going to write a blog post now,” or “I’m going to send an e-mail” or “I think I’ll tweet something” you simply say what you have to say, then decide who you’re going to say it to.
If you address it to “Public,” it’s a blog post.
If you address it to “Your Circles” it’s a tweet.
If you address it to your “My Customers” Circle it’s a business newsletter.
If you address it to a single person, it can be a letter to your mother.
Why would you pay to keep a blog online when you can have everything a blog gives you for free on such a cool platform? Oh, I know the answer: that little issue of copyright and ownership. Besides that however, Google Plus is a nice new addition. I’ve already begun considering leaving Facebook though I know it might never really happen. It’s already a while since I last logged on to twitter. I think there is something relaxing about not having to open so many windows on my (wait for it: Google) Chrome browser.
I hope to use G+ to share some of my online curiosities and discoveries, particularly those not worth writing a whole blog post about. Join my Google Plus circle here.
I did not grow up with computers around me. I am definitely not a first generation internet user. Much of the first creative things I wrote in my life were in long hand on rough sheets of paper, and later on an abandoned typewriter in my father’s lounge. Today there are kids growing up who probably never spent a day without getting on the computer. Whether they are smarter or more efficient than us is beyond me, but I do know that there is some kind of thrill in my current adaptation to a 24hour electronic cycle. The book is dead, I’ve heard, incredulously, and yesterday when I tried to read the current edition of Time magazine in print, I found a certain kind of lazy resistance, and some unexplainable wonder that they still make paper editions of those in this age of the internet. It must be why I spend so much time trying to to finish reading a book of just 300 pages. There’s definitely a sort of taking over by the internet, and I’m surprised to be on the train, considering that my first email address was just ten years ago.
In today’s case however, it was none of the above reason. I was working on a translation task that took much of my time. I slept at twelve, woke up at two and slept again at five thirty. By the next time I woke up, I was thirty minutes late for my teaching class. I have never rode by bike as fast as I did today, and I got to campus panting like a deer. And silly me, I was still expecting to find the students waiting for me in class. I met only one of them the lobby, and I hurried up into the class to find an empty set of seats. Perfect. Back to the lobby, there was Bre reading, and waiting for her next class.
#1. It doesn’t have mosquitoes.
