DigitalFanGirl

I’m calling Google+ The Redemption Product because it feels like Google has really made an effort to make a five star product after the disasters that were Google Buzz and Google Wave.

What I Like About Google Plus:

- It’s easy to add people to your circles. You simply drag and drop the contact to your chosen circle. It’s also extremely easy to create a new circle.
- I actually LOVE the circles. What I talk about with my academia friends is not the same topic of conversation I have with my techie friends. – So, I am loving circles more and more everyday. I find it incredibly useful in keeping those conversations separate, but not separating me from my entire “friend-base”.
- Loving the instant photo and video feature. When I take a photo on my Droid2, it automatically gets loaded to Google Plus (in private mode) and then I can elect to make that photo public or not and share it.
- I love how allow you to edit a post you already posted. Unlike Facebook where the only option is to delete the post and rewrite/repost it.

What I Like About the Google Plus App:

- The app is amazing and since I can’t access Google Plus at work because our browser is not supported, THIS MATTERS TO ME.
- You can still do things like create new circles (which I initially thought you were unable to do) and it’s really simple to do.

What I’d Like to See:

In the APP: When someone posts a status with a YouTube link; it would be nice if that video played within that status update. It currently directs you to YouTube.com to play the video.
In the APP: Would like to see circles where people have added ME. Right now you get a notification that someone has added you to their circle.
From the Web: I know Picasa is a Google product, but I’m still an avid Flickr Pro user and I wish there was a way to link to my Flickr photo albums, but of course their only pushing the Picasa photo integration.
From the Web: The ability to share a circle would be really nice.

I feel like I’m always waiting for a beta invite code

Lately I’ve been thinking a great deal about the use of personal domains (www.yourname.com) or should I say their declination of use.

I’m sure most of you have heard about Flavors.me and About.me (unless you live under a ton of rocks) by now. These services allow you to create a homepage in a matter of minutes and connect to all your social networks. I think about.me has made a bigger impact than flavors.me, but both have been the highlight over the last six months or so.

You may think I’m recommending you not use these services, but that’s not what I’m doing and that’s not the point I’m trying to make. However, I am telling you to refrain from kicking your personal domain to the curb and here’s why.

1. New Services Come and Go. At this point, we all know how fast new services are born. They may come out with a bang and truly sizzle in the end. There are a ton of services that were deemed “hot”; only to become a distant memory six months later. That’s just the name of the game and we can rarely detect who will be he hot-to-not company. In spite of this, when new services launch, we all rush to set up an account and grab our username, just in case THIS service is the one that will stick around for years to come (i.e. Twitter). But, how vested should we really get when we don’t really know if the service has staying power or not? This remains to be seen.

2. If Acquired, Things Could Change. Acquisition is the name of the game. If a service is acquired by a larger company (like Google or AOL), you assume the service will be better on all fronts; why wouldn’t it. Afterall, a larger company with much more resources has just taken it over, so it has to get better right? But, things don’t always turn out that way. Facebook acquired FriendFeed and absolutely nothing changed. FriendFeed didn’t get worse, but it sure didn’t get any better. CISCO acquired the Flip video and literally killed it! (betcha didn’t see THAT coming). In 2005 Delicious was acquired by Yahoo and more recently acquired by AVOS. We’ll have to see how that all plays out. The point is, an acquisition of a service you’ve been using can go in a number of directions and there is no way you can predict which direction they’ll go in and if it’ll benefit you, the user.

3. Longevity of the Service is Not Guaranteed. We sign up for so many new services and then we promote it to the world, but there is nothing written in stone that says how long the service will actually last. For all you know, the moment you blast your new service url to the world, it could shut down the next month. Then what???

4. Maintaining a Consistent Presence (a permanent home). The concept behind about.me and flavors.me is really great and again, I’m not saying don’t use them, but it’s kind of like renting an apartment. You don’t own that apartment and you’re at the mercy of the landlord. Whereas, you have full control over everything when you actually own a home; owning your own domain is like owning a home. Your own domain is your permanent home and when all these other services go away, you’ll still have your home. I mean, who really wants to be homeless? I see a large number of people sharing business cards that only have their about.me url on there. I look at it and I get a little nervous. Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using about.me, flavors.me or any other service similar, but for goodness sakes, don’t completely shove your own domain to the side. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to totally to commit to something you don’t own, so think long and hard about using those services as your main calling card over your own domain. Remember, there’s no place like home…

Have you kicked your personal domain to the curb for about.me or flavors.me?

Square, the San Francisco start-up that lets anyone accept credit card payments through mobile devices, on Wednesday announced it had received an undisclosed “strategic investment” amount from Visa, the No. 1 credit card company. I blogged about their exciting wonderful new service/product during my 31 Days of Android App Goodness and I received my Square device a few days after that post.

Keith Rabois, Square’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that the companies will “explore collaborative partnerships that might make sense,” adding that “their vision and our vision align.”

John Partridge, Visa’s president, said in a statement that the company “invests in payment innovations that can enable more businesses to accept Visa.”

More than eight million U.S. businesses accept Visa and Mastercard, Rabois said. Square is trying to help the 27 million businesses and entrepreneurs that don’t accept credit cards because they haven’t qualified due to poor or no credit history, he said. Square charges 2.75% per transaction to the merchant or person accepting the credit-card payment.

Square was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey, the creator of microblogging service Twitter, and the company made its credit-card readers available for free starting last fall. So far hundreds of thousands of people or businesses have signed up to be able to accept payments through Square’s readers, Rabois said. In the first quarter of this year, the company processed a total of $66 million, he said, and it expects to triple that figure during the current quarter.

Before the undisclosed Visa investment, Square had raised nearly $40 million, including an investment earlier this year that valued the company at around $240 million.

Earlier this year, Square CEO Dorsey took on a formal role working at Twitter, where he was CEO until 2008. When asked how Dorsey is handling both roles, Rabois said “the company is thriving and Jack is leading us…just as he always had.” He added that he interacts with Dorsey the same amount as he had before Dorsey began working formally again at Twitter.

Source: “Visa Backs Jack Dorsey’s Square”, The Wall Street Journal, 04/24/11

My oldest daughter is a senior in high school and as you know, there are a lot of things, events, payments to keep track of during their senior year. What I’ve realized is the school has a terrible way of communicating and all information regarding the senior class is poorly communicated. In this instance I can see how Facebook could help fix this communication problem. Why Facebook you ask? Well, almost every parent is on Facebook and it’s installed on pretty much every single smartphone on the market. If a parent doesn’t know how to do anything else remotely technical; they damn sure know how to access and use Facebook. In terms of reaching parents, it’s a no-brainer. And we already know teens live on Facebook, so that’s a given.

1. Use Facebook to List Upcoming Events

Currently, the school uses one of those automated call services, where it calls you and spills out a message. This is how they communicate the months events to you. I swear it’s so annoying I want to pull my hair out. It never fails, this darn system ALWAYS calls me when I’m either driving home from work or cooking dinner. It calls you and says “Good Evening (school name) parents. Here are this months events.” And then the message proceeds running down a list of events (event, date, time, place). Now, here’s the kicker. If you go to the school website, none of these events are listed. So, if that system calls you and you don’t have a pen and paper handy at that moment to jot all that down – you’re out of luck.

SOLUTION: Use the Facebook Events app. Creating an event for each activity and meeting that goes on during the year allows parents to get this information at their leisure and RSVP, which gives the school an idea of how many parents and/or students to expect.

2. Use Facebook for Reminders

I wish I could say my daughters high school is tech savvy, but they aren’t. They still send home flyers for everything. I also find this annoying as I try to be as paperless as possible. The summer before my daughter entered 12th grade, the school mailed a flyer home that listed when the PAC meetings would be held, when senior dues are to be paid, but failed to note how much senior dues cost and what the dues include. The flyer also noted what teacher handles all this stuff, but only provided that teachers room number; no email listed, which would have been nice for us parents to have. I never got another flyer providing more accurate information.

SOLUTION: There are lots of things to pay for and schedule your senior son/daughter. Using the Facebook page is a great way to give parents reminders about upcoming payments that are due for senior photos, senior dues, senior trips as well as reminders for various senior events.

3. Use Facebook PayPal Fundrazr App