Google+ - Why It's Cooler Than You Think

Google, despite being the slightly evil quasi-ruler of the internet, is a pretty cool entity. Most things done by Google turn out well:  Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, AdSense, Blogger, Google Calendar, Google search, Books, Labs, Documents, et cetera.  It's a simple fact of the modern Internet that if you use the Internet, you use Google.

Google+ is the newest introduction to Google's impressive lineup. It is designed to be a competitor to Facebook, despite Google's previous failed attempts at social networking.

Google+ is "real-life sharing rethought for the web." Now, Google+ sounds pretty stupid really. Most Facebook wannabe's are dumb. It's hard to copy something as unique as Facebook and not either make it dumb or too much like Facebook. I'm pretty sure that Google+ has managed to find the right balance of sameness and differences.

Google+ has all of the standard stuff that you expect from a Facebook clone. Everything that you want from Facebook is there. But! There are other features that Google+ has that make it just a cut above the rest:
Circles
     Circles are pretty cool for the following reason:
Everyone has a Facebook nowadays. My mom, my girlfriend's mom, my bosses, and tons of other people important to my life are all watching me on Facebook. Now, I'm a good little boy. I don't do much that is too bad to be on Facebook. Sometimes though, I just want to say something that I'd really rather them not know. I can't differentiate who I let see stuff on Facebook without a lot of hassle, even with their Lists or Groups or whatever they're called.
Circles solve this problem. I can add people to certain circles, and then share stuff to certain circles. I've got people in circles that lets me share just certain stuff with them. That means that the status "I just hit a tree in my dad's truck" can be hidden from my family but seen by my friends who are good at fixing trucks. Or trees, depending on the situation. EITHER WAY THOUGH, the important thing is that I can have different people see different things.

Spark
    Sparks are just really cool little boxes full of interests. It's like you Google stuff from within Google+ and are able to share the link to your...Wall. I just realized that I don't really know what the Google+ Wall thing is called exactly. Anyway, Sparks lets you search for certain stuff and see just snapshots of it that will let you be able discover and share things easier. They're also cool because you can pin an interest to your Sparks page.

Viewing Your Profile as Someone Else
    Have you ever wondered how someone else views your profile? I have. Especially since Google+ has the Circles feature that lets you change who sees what, the ability to see how each person views your page is beyond valuable.




Now, I've got to go fry fish and read Eldest. (The final book in the cycle is coming out soon!) So I'll finish this post once I have time and know a bit more. As you can already see though, it's got some NICE features.

Plus, your mom isn't on it playing Mafia Wars. That's enough to make me love it already.

A Laid-Back Post

So, I'm feeling pretty chilled out right about now. You know that feeling where you're kind of at peace with reality and just feel like kicking back for awhile? I'm there. So this post is not really going to be very long; I don't have a lot to say. I just kind of wanted to post a bunch of music that helps me stay stress free. So if want to be chill and remember that the world can sometimes be a pretty cool place, listen to the following, in order:






(P.S. If you aren't happy after this song, there's something wrong with you...)








Peace.