This is a cursory, “first impressions” post about the latest social networking craze, Google+.

Facebook should be very concerned.  So should LinkedIn.  Google’s latest foray into social networking has all the hallmarks of a Facebook-esque social network but with safety and security at the forefront of the user experience.  Maybe they’ve learned from the failed Google Buzz in this regard?

Then again, maybe not.

Here are a few things I just had to get off my chest:

Gripe one: Instant Upload.

I’ve loaded the Google+ application on my Android-powered smartphone. It’s nice and uncluttered, and easy to use. It looks a bit like this:

However, without informing me or asking permission, the Google+ application uploads any photo I’ve taken to my Google+ account. Granted, it doesn’t publish these photos or make them visible, but when I log in to Google+ I get a notification which alerts me to the fact that new photos are waiting to be published:

You can turn this off in the Google+ app, by going into photos, pressing Menu, and unchecking “Instant Upload”. The problem IMHO is that when it installs, it defaults to ‘on’.

This is a bit spooky, like the uncle you always avoided as a kid, that said inappropriate things at Christmas dinner. It just makes you uncomfortable, and there’s no need for it.

Gripe two: User Invitations.

Whenever you share something with a “circle” (in Facebook-speak, post something on your wall), Google+ defaults to asking if you want to “Also email 124 friends not yet using Google+” or however many friends are in the circle but don’t have a Google+ account.  My 124 friends are now complaining that I am continually sending them Google spam, because every time I undertake a task or share something new, all my non-Gmail friends get a Google+ invitation.

It might be more user-friendly to send an invitation to a non-Gmail friend as a once off, rather than every time I do something.

I understand I can just uncheck this checkbox, but again, I don’t think it should default to being ‘on’.  And anyway, a mouse click is a mouse click, right?

Gripe three: Duplicate Contacts.

This isn’t strictly a Google+ problem; but we all have duplicate contacts in our address books, and the problem is exacerbated by Google+ and its circles. If you create a “Tech Talk” circle for example, you might find you’re dragging Dr Ron into the circle three, four, or maybe five times, because of separate contacts you’ve saved for Dr Ron with different phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook accounts and so on.

This is where I think Android has nailed it, with its ability to link multiple accounts and address book entries. Despite five “Dr Ron” contacts, they only appear as one consolidated contact in my contact list. (Thank goodness.)

And seeing as my Android contacts are my Gmail contacts, and my Gmail contacts are my Android contacts, can we somehow get these links pushed into Google+?  Thanks, that would be awesome.

To be continued…

Otherwise, Google+ is working well. It’s also still in beta, and has a long way to go. But I think it’s got a lot more promise than previous social networking attempts like Wave and Buzz.

More soon.

facebook · google · Google Android · Google Phone · HTC · social media · Social Networking

Like many of you in cyberspace, I’ve spent hours… days… weeks… even months of my life, wilfing on YouTube.

There’s the occasional smirk-worthy video, there’s the all-too-common blatant copyright ripoff, and there’s a heap of garbage which you BACK or NEXT after the first few seconds. I’m certain that I’m guilty of posting each of these types of material at various times.

On rare occasions, you actually find something on YouTube that’s worth adding as a Favourite. Sometimes you even hit Play Again. Occasionally, you literally LOL, and you’re compelled to share a YouTube link on Twitter or Facebook.

Here, then, are ten YouTube videos that I consider worthy of sharing.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

The Mummy / Daddy Song

Every parent’s worst nightmare. Watch until the 1st minute mark.

Be warned, the tune is strangely addictive.

VW commercial

This is hilarious. Darth Vader uses The Force, in his own inimitable fashion.

It’s only clocked-up a lazy 29 million hits.

Ford Sportka commercials

Cat lovers, ornithologists, look away now.

Were these really released by Ford? Yes and no. See what Snopes has to say.

The Man Cold

A short clip from the British TV comedy sketch show, Man Stroke Woman.

For women everywhere that don’t understand what it means for a man to have a cold. And for men everywhere, who know exactly what it means.

Torn

Mr Johann Lippowitz, an “interpretative mime”, performs Natalie Imbruglia’s hit “Torn”.

…and of course, with the great lady herself:

Toto’s Africa by Perpetuum Jazzile

Who needs foley artists when your choir is this talented?

Pomplamoose

The Pomplamoose channel has a heap of home-crafted cover songs, arranged and performed by talented musicians Nataly and Jack.

Their catchy, quirky, toe-tappin’ tunes will keep you amused for hours.

You mightn’t be a fan of Lady Gaga, but you’ll be sure to love this arrangement.

Eddie Izzard’s Death Star Canteen & Lego animation

(Audio not safe for work!)

With nearly 13 million hits, this is a YouTube classic.

A Lego animation of comedian Eddie Izzard talking about the ‘Death Star Canteen’.

Every Day … Telstra needs to Go Forward

Former Telstra CEO and oft-described Mexican Bandit Sol Trujilo says a very odd thing.

Notice what he said? He wants to make sure that ARPU sustains itself, or even grows.

The Honda Cog Commercial

And last but not least: this one has been around for a while, but it’s still very clever.

That is all. Now back to work.

facebook · funny · social media · Social Networking · telstra · Twitter · YouTube

Hi all,

This is just a simple house-keeping post.

Today I deleted over 1000 WordPress user accounts on The Surgery.

Chances are, if your username was “buy_viagra”, “animesex” or “fdksjahgiliegdlzzq” then your account has been deleted.

If I deleted any legitimate accounts, then I apologise a thousand times over. Please re-register with my eternal gratitude.

No tags

Woooaah … truckloads.

There are 1001 blog-worthy things to blog in my blog about.

Sadly, time (lusty and blithe) is at his apogee.

In brief, I have:

• Had a shave, since the last blog post;
• Upgraded The Surgery WordPress blog from 2.8.3 to 2.9;
• Moved WordPress blog from Fedora 9 machine with crappy dynamic IP address (it was killing me) to shiny Fedora 11 machine with static IP address;
• Marveled at my ability to upgrade WordPress, SQL databases and move them across Linux machines, AND make grown-up changes to DNS zone files – am surely a guru of such things now and legend in my own lunchbox;
• Undertaken 2 of 8 Tech Talk Radio Summer Series productions, time-consuming but rewarding;
• Upgraded the HTC Dream / Google phone to the next Android operating system, very successful;
• Teetered on the brink of e-mail bankruptcy;
• Ordered a new PC for Christmas;
• Ventured inside an Apple Store for the very first time, and escaped by making only a minor purchase (a new iPod Touch); and
• Just today, assisted Mrs Dr Ron in restoring her iTunes library, after she deleted all the music files from her PC’s hard disk  - successfully achieved restoration by using a third-party app called iRip which we’ve spoken about on Tech Talk in the past (thanks JD, saviour of Dr Ron’s marriage).

I have also Tweeted mercilessly about our well-intentioned (yet incompetent, foolish and mis-informed) Senator for Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy.  In case you hadn’t caught up with the news (which the good Senator saved until after the last live episode of Tech Talk for 2009), Australia will be ranked highly with the United Arab Emirates, Iran and China in its foolish deployment of an ISP-based Net Filter.

Adam Turner has had a lot to say about this, and made a clever analogy with a different type of infrastructure.  His blog posts here and here in The Age last week should be mandatory reading.

I’ll blog in more detail about these and other things soon.

I hope you have a great Chrissy and a safe and prosperous New Year.

#nocleanfeed · adam turner · andorid · apple · apple store · blog · fedora · Google Phone · HTC Dream · ipod touch · irip · linux · net filter · news · stephen conroy · tech talk · Tech Talk Radio · the age · the age tech · updates · what's happening · wordpress

It doesn’t get funnier than this.

awkward moments · funny · inspirational posters · Social Networking

Hahaha … these are fantastic!

awkward moments · facebook · funny · Social Networking · status updates

Wow.

It’s only taken us six months.

Have a look.

Photo: Robert Broomhead (Monday night's guest)

Tech Talk Radio · TTR · ustream · ustream.tv · webcam

On Saturday I was invited to attend the AGM of the Wireless Institute of Australia in Traralgon, Gippsland.

The WIA is the organisation which represents amateur radio operators to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and purports to be the world’s oldest national radio society, having been founded in 1910!

The WIA AGM “Weekend Of Activities” included conference speakers, informative radio-related technical presentations and off-site activities, like a tour of the Powerworks Energy Technology and Visitors’ Centre.

Yours truly did a short presentation on Social Media and Social Networking on Saturday night.  We had a great evening, the meal was delish and fun was had by all.

Photo: Robert Broomhead

Many thanks to Robert Broomhead for inviting me to attend, and for the terrific audio-visual system which “just worked” with my Asus netbook.

(Audio here: Dr Ron’s diatribe on Social Media and Social Networking at the 2009 WIA AGM.)

agm · amateur radio · social media · Social Networking · Tech Talk Radio · wia

Create a “word cloud” from a blog or RSS feed.  This site is awesome!  Check it out:

http://www.wordle.net/

tech · Tech Talk Radio · web · Web 2.0 · Website of the Week · wordle

Have you ever watched one of those fancy “webinars” or live video podcasts, and wondered how they broadcast “picture in picture” with different camera angles, or clever switching between cameras, desktop demonstrations and pre-recorded video?

I always thought fancy video switching hardware was required, not to mention some big, big bucks.

But… not so!

I was perusing the Ustream.tv help centre today, and saw a topic which immediately grabbed my eye: “…quickly and easily add scrolling text, logos, RSS feeds, special guests windows, picture in picture, pre-recorded video…”

Woooa, are they serious?  It can’t be that easy, can it?

Yep, it sure is.  Straight away I clicked the link to download WebcamMax for the PC.  This is a nifty utility which gives you significantly more control over your webcam and imaging devices than the default Ustream “broadcast applet”.  My mission was to set-up a “picture in picture” video stream, and it only took a matter of minutes to get this working with WebcamMax.

Setup and installation

Download the 8 MB installer.  Setup is fairly painless and after clicking the “Try” button (you get a 30 day free trial) you’re asked to nominate which applications you want WebcamMax to control video.  I unticked all except UStream.  Then you’re presented with an intuitive GUI which displays any video source that’s currently connected to your PC.  In my case, this was video from a traditional camera, piped through an external USB device like this one.

Next, click on the ‘Sources’ button.  The ‘Main Source’ is your primary video input, and ‘Webcam’ is selected by default.  Look to the right and you’ll see that you can select any other video source simply by clicking the combo box.  Now I’ve also got an in-built webcam in the netbook, which appears as ‘USB video device’.  I switched to that and suddenly I’m looking through the eye of a different camera.  WebcamMax makes it easy to switch between cameras or video sources in this way.

Click the combo to select your main source video device.

You can also click other items in the list, such as:

• ‘Screen’ – live-streams the desktop, by following your mouse pointer or sending the entire screen;
• ‘Movie’ – streams a movie of choice;
• ‘Picture’ – sends a JPG or other image (defaulting to your ‘My Pictures’ folder); and
• ‘Color’ – which lets you set a background colour of any desired shade.

Picture in Picture

But how good is this? Click the button at the bottom of the list control labelled ‘PinP Source 1′.  The same controls appear, duplicated, for a different video source.  Wow!  In no time at all I can display my netbook webcam as a picture inside the main picture.  No expensive video amplifiers or professional switching equipment required!

Picture-in-picture, just like that!

You can get much, much cleverer than this.  Play around with the advanced options and you can move the position of your “picture in picture”, maintain proportions or re-scale, and even have images display as a slide-show.

But wait, there’s more!

I only needed WebcamMax to do “picture in picture”, but it does heaps more than that.  By opening the ‘Effects’ dialogue you can simulate a chroma-key function with different backgrounds.  You can add lighting and shadow effects, grid lines, digital snow, scrolling text… the list goes on.  Select from local or online effects libraries.  There’s even a record feature which lets you write an AVI file to a local disk.

But how does it work with Ustream.tv?

WebcamMax emulates a video device in software.  This means that when you start the Ustream.tv broadcast applet, the WebcamMax “device” will appear in your Video Source drop-down, like this:

The Ustream.tv broadcast applet.  Note the 'Video Source' combo -
just select WebcamMax Capture and you're done.

Simply select WebcamMax as your video device and start broadcasting!

Road test

We’ll put WebcamMax through the hoops over the next few weeks at Tech Talk.  We’ll let you know how it performs, and we’ll listen to your feedback too.  One thing we’re mindful of is not becoming too distracted by the studio webcam; it is, after all, designed to supplement a radio programme, and 99% of our listeners don’t watch the webcam.  We’re hoping to change that, and we hope that using cool utilities like WebcamMax will help us along the way.

Visit the website: http://webcammax.com/

Tech Talk Radio · webcam · WebcamMax