Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

How To Use Google Plus Sparks as an Internet Listening Post

Are you tuned into the web today? My guess is that if you are reading here, you’re already familiar with the importance of monitoring your listening posts to stay in the know about your favorite subjects, your name and anything else that’s important to your life or business. And guess what!  Google Plus has built in the ability to set up listening posts right inside your dashboard with a feature called Sparks. About Google Plus Sparks Google Plus Sparks might be one of the coolest and most overlooked features that Google Plus has offered us in the field test.  Essentially, it seems to be an easier-to-use version of Google alerts with the advantage of being built directly into your Google Plus dash board. What makes Google Plus Sparks valuable is that once the content is delivered as a result of your search, you can immediately share it across your circles with one simple click. There’s no need for any coping or pasting or even the use of a browser plugin or applet. While theres a lot of room for sparks to grow with enhancements, for now it can be a pretty effective tool if you know your way around boolean search operators.  For reference, that link back there will take you to a complete list of boolean search operators that you can bookmark and use to narrow down your results. What you search for is directly related to what interests you have, so you searches will be different than mine. A Few Examples of My Searches in Google Plus Sparks But, here’s some examples of what I’m playing with. Feel free to look off these and create your own: “Columbus Ohio” OR “Columbus OH” AND Jobs — this search allows me to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the job market in [...]

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Google + — My 25 Random User Insights and Observations

Well now. We’ve been sucked in, haven’t we. I’ve had to start a new tag in Diigo just to catalog all the perspectives, ideas and commentary that’s being written about Google +.  And, it  keeps coming. Here are a few of my favorites I’ve read so far: How to Blog with Google + — Chris Brogan.  I like that Chris is experimenting already.  He shares some neat ideas in this post that you can try. How to Measure Google + with Analytics – Leave it to Chris Penn to immediately look at Google + from the metrics angle. My advice, read this guide and do it for yourself today. 10 Things to Consider As You Move to Google + — Gini Dietrich.  Gini’s advice in this post is, in my humble opinion, spot on. Garbage in breeds garbage out, and Gini offers cautions as to how you as a user should consider your own approach to Google + Shiny Objects and Brain Dumps It seems that whenever a new platform is introduce, bloggers find it hard to organize their first wave of thoughts.  Over time, the brain dumps get filtered and discussed and organized into nice clean buckets. With Google +, we are still very much in the mode of exploration. We probably will be for even a few more weeks, and that’s okay — we’re simply brain-dumping. Please join us. Take this away — read all of the above posts and any others that come out in the next few weeks (including mine) knowing that at best, bloggers are making educated guesses as to what Google + will eventually be, how it will work in your life and businesses and how you can best use it as one more available tool. Fair enough? Bloggers Sidebar Chris did his Google + 50 post, which was a [...]

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Humans, Robots and Circles — On Google +

What ever happened to the meaning of the word ‘friends’? Our experiences on Facebook would have us use this word to describe old long-lost classmates, former-coworkers or even complete strangers who happen to stumble upon our profile and send a request. But, that’s not been working for us so well, has it? We’ve learned our lessons, taught to us through countless hours of unfriending, and the online drama that ensues as a result of hurt feelings and severed connections. Have we become more gun shy about who we lend the keys that grant access into our little digital homes? Was Dunbar right all along? Humans, Robots and Circles Maybe the good folks at Google think we will we be wiser with Google +. They’ve given us the controls and made it easy enough to use. But will we actually adopt?  Or is Google + on it’s way to becoming yet another online popularity contest, populated by soft shadow’s of relationships and robots disguised as human avatars. For those of you who are already inside Google +, do you think that features like Circles answers the call easier segmentation of of our personal social networks? nateriggsLike what you just read and want to get my posts delivered to your inbox? SUBSCRIBE HEREMore Posts Follow Me:

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