1. Using Google Plus Skills: Use Google Plus
Concepts: Ongoing improvement and change in network applications, wire-frame diagram
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2. Where does this topic fit?
Internet concepts
Applications
Technology
Implications
Internet skills
Application development
Content creation
User skills

3. Google Plus is a bit like a blog, a bit like Facebook and a bit like Twitter.
Where Twitter limits you to 140 characters, a Google Plus post can be as long as you like.
On the other hand, Google Plus posts cannot be as complex as Blog posts.
For example, you cannot insert images or videos in the middle of your posts and the editor is limited.
As with Facebook, you can establish "circles" of people -- personal friends, school colleagues, work colleagues, people interested in knitting, etc. -- and send posts to one circle or a group of circles or all of your circles if you wish.
You might send one post to your family and another to colleagues working a certain project.
Similarly, you can elect to view posts by people in certain circles and not others.
There are other features -- you can search for people with interest in a topic, share your circles with others, participate in "hangouts" -- ad hoc video chats with up to ten people, etc.

4. Demo/play How do I: Create a new post? Edit an old post?
See posts from people in your circles?
Add/remove people from circles?
Search for posts?
Create and join communities?
Find people?
See people’s posts and profiles?
Use + and # prefixes?
You have to play with the program while going through this presentation.
The following slides will show you how to do these and other things, but you have to spend time playing with the program.
When you can do the things I’ve listed here, you are ready to go on.
Pause to play around with the program. Think about what is in memory, the role of the client and server, etc. while you try it out.

5. View posts selectively
The Home page is for viewing posts from others.
You can select to view posts from all of the people in your circles or only one circle.
In this example, we can select posts ot All circles or only those in circles named named Circle 1, Digital Literacy, Following, and Byte people .
For more options, click More.
Note that the blue underline indicates which circles are currently displayed.
You can also search for content.
You can display all of the search results, or limit it People and Pages, Communities, Posts, etc.

6. View your profile and posts
On the Profile page you can see your posts, about you (your profile), Photos and more.
Note that you can choose which portions of your profile are private and which portions the public can see.

7. Communities
Google Plus communities are just what they sound like – communities for people who share a common interest.
Anyone can create a community on any topic and the community organizer can control who can access and who can post to the community.

8. Manage circles
You group your contacts into circles, for example, family, work colleagues, school colleagues, friends, X-box developers, Cuba.
It is easy to create groups, assign people to them, delete people, etc.

9. Filter what you see in your incoming stream
For each of your circles, you can elect to see More, Fewer or a Standard percent of posts.
I have no idea how Google’s filtering algorithm works or what variables it considers.

10. Create posts
You can attach photos. Links, Videos and Event invitations to posts and send them to a single person, everyone in one or more groups or everyone in all your circles.
If it is marked “public” it will show up in search results and be visible on your profile page.
When you share something, you can identify exactly who you want to send that content to by specifying specific circles or people.
Your extended circles include people in your circles' circles.
Content shared with your extended circles will be visible on your posts tab to people who have access.

11. Keep the conversation going
Recommend
Forward to others
Comment
When you see a post you think others might like, you can vote it up by clicking on +1.
If you think it is good enough to share with others in your circles, forward it to others.
If you have something to add or quarrel with or just want to thank the author for posting it, you can leave a comment.
Comments often lead to conversations.

12. Add a comment when you share
If you decide to share the post with others, you are able to add your own comment.
(In most cases you will want to let people know why you are recommending the post).
When you share something, you can choose who can see it in the same ways as an original post.

13. Sharing with a community
You can share a post with a community.
In this example, I am sharing a post with the CIS275 community.
You get to chose the community (one at a time) and the category this post belongs in.
In this example, I selected the CIS 275 community and the Discussion category.

14. Miscellaneous
You can see your profile, read notifications (I have four pending) , change users or start a hangout using these icons in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

15. After a post is complete
If it’s someone else’s
If it’s your post
When viewing an existing post you or someone else has created, you can work with it as shown here.
The faint down-arrow leads to options.

16. Organization accounts
As shown here, organizations can have Google Plus accounts as well as individuals.
One sees the organization profile, images and video along with a stream of posts.
Organizations can be in people’s circles, but they do not have circles, participate in hangouts or chats, etc.

17. +Larry Press Names start with +
Your Google Plus ID for searches, links and communication is your account name preceded by a plus sign.
Note that there is no space between the “plus” and your name.
This use of the plus sign is like sign in Twitter.

18. Search tags start with #
People tag their posts with key words that describe them in order to facilitate search.
In this case, I am going to use the keyword “baseball” in my post.
As you see, I have typed “baseba” and the program has showed me five tags that have been used in Google Plus that begin with those letters.
I can click on “baseball” to complete the tag.
If someone searches for “#baseball”, my post will be found.
Goodle Plus (and Twitter) use a hash symbol (#) at the start of these search tags and people often refer to search tags as “hash” tags.

19. Rapid change That being said, Google Plus is changing rapidly.
Since the program is downloaded from Google every time you visit the visit the Web site, it can be continuously updated – adding features, changing the user interface or fixing bugs.
For example, Google changes their search algorithm around 500 times a year.

20. Wire
frame
diagram
Google’s designers built the user interface using a wire frame diagram like this.

21. A B C D E F G H

22. Summary
We’ve looked at the Google Plus user interface, focusing on the Home, Profile, People and Community pages. (We will look at Hangouts in a subsequent presentation).
We also looked at a wire frame diagram of the user interface, and showed the + and # prefixes for names and tags.

23. Self study questions
Without looking back can you name the four Google Plus pages we discussed?
Briefly describe each page and its use.
(next page)

24. Without looking back, state how each of these regions of the Google Plus Home page is used. Go back and check your answer when you do as much as you can. A B C D E F G H

25. Resources Get a Google Plus account at: http//plus.google.com
Google Plus help:
Five things Google Plus does better than Facebook or Twitter:
Hangouts on air help: