This and That
Time for another "assorted stuff" column.
This one is old - but truth to tell, I didn't connect the proverbial dots until just recently.
I have a Facebook page. If by some odd chance you are not familiar with Facebook, this is a social networking site along the lines of MySpace, but aimed at a slightly older crowd. It was originally aimed at college students, then expanded to include college students and grads, and finally is available to anyone. You connect to others on the basis of mutual acquaintances, through your address books, or via one or another organization - such as your alma maters (high school, college, etc.). You create a page, share photos, play games, comment on your friends' stuff, and update everybody on what you're doing at the moment. (Believe it or not, that has its charm. At first I thought it was kind of silly - "I'm working." But then I realized you could have a little fun with it, and post things like what music you're listening to, where you're traveling, people you're seeing, etc., that might actually be of some interest to your friends. And it's always fun to catch up on the latest photos, interests, and family/work developments.)
When one of your friends adds or changes something on his page, you'll get notified, so you can catch up. At some point, I was notified that a friend's photo had been "tagged" on someone's Facebook page. I had no idea what that was, but checked out the photo.
I now realize that "tagging" is seeing and recognizing someone in a photo, and "tagging" that photo by selecting the face of the person in question, and entering his/her name. So let's say you and friends attend a party, and someone posts a bunch of photos of the party. Anyone linked to that friend can then check out the photos, and indicate who the people in the pictures are. It's not quite the same as sitting and sharing the photos and saying, "Yeah, that's my cousin Al," but it works.
Next up: iGoogle updates. Again, if you've not read previous columns, iGoogle is Google's "home page portal" application which allows any Google account owner to create an iGoogle home page (complete with tabs, a calendar, and other "gadgets," such as to do lists, stock market quotes, games, and things like RSS feeds, YouTube video subscriptions, etc.
New to the iGoogle application are full page gadgets. Previously, gadgets occupied a relatively small amount of space on your portal's desktop. This is still true - but now you can expand these gadget, or go to "canvas view," enabling easier interaction with them - but still permitting you to have a large collection of gadgets available at any one time.
There is also now a convenient left nav bar for all of what used to be your tabbed information. Not only can you select any general category (tab), but once selected, that category will expand, allowing easy navigation to the particular item in question. For example, I have my newsfeeds collected on a single page. Now I can look at them in the left nav, and read the ones I'm most interested in.
There is also a great rollover preview - in text only mode - of the actual content of items in your RSS feed lists. That way you can get an idea of what's in the item without clicking through it it.
Gmail also rolled out a recent update: themes. If you go to your settings controls, you'll see that "Themes" has been added as an option. So you can now select a color scheme and layout for your gmail screen and messages.
And don't forget, you can always choose a theme for your iGoogle page - I just updated mine to "Winter Village" in keeping with the season.
This one is old - but truth to tell, I didn't connect the proverbial dots until just recently.
I have a Facebook page. If by some odd chance you are not familiar with Facebook, this is a social networking site along the lines of MySpace, but aimed at a slightly older crowd. It was originally aimed at college students, then expanded to include college students and grads, and finally is available to anyone. You connect to others on the basis of mutual acquaintances, through your address books, or via one or another organization - such as your alma maters (high school, college, etc.). You create a page, share photos, play games, comment on your friends' stuff, and update everybody on what you're doing at the moment. (Believe it or not, that has its charm. At first I thought it was kind of silly - "I'm working." But then I realized you could have a little fun with it, and post things like what music you're listening to, where you're traveling, people you're seeing, etc., that might actually be of some interest to your friends. And it's always fun to catch up on the latest photos, interests, and family/work developments.)
When one of your friends adds or changes something on his page, you'll get notified, so you can catch up. At some point, I was notified that a friend's photo had been "tagged" on someone's Facebook page. I had no idea what that was, but checked out the photo.
I now realize that "tagging" is seeing and recognizing someone in a photo, and "tagging" that photo by selecting the face of the person in question, and entering his/her name. So let's say you and friends attend a party, and someone posts a bunch of photos of the party. Anyone linked to that friend can then check out the photos, and indicate who the people in the pictures are. It's not quite the same as sitting and sharing the photos and saying, "Yeah, that's my cousin Al," but it works.
Next up: iGoogle updates. Again, if you've not read previous columns, iGoogle is Google's "home page portal" application which allows any Google account owner to create an iGoogle home page (complete with tabs, a calendar, and other "gadgets," such as to do lists, stock market quotes, games, and things like RSS feeds, YouTube video subscriptions, etc.
New to the iGoogle application are full page gadgets. Previously, gadgets occupied a relatively small amount of space on your portal's desktop. This is still true - but now you can expand these gadget, or go to "canvas view," enabling easier interaction with them - but still permitting you to have a large collection of gadgets available at any one time.
There is also now a convenient left nav bar for all of what used to be your tabbed information. Not only can you select any general category (tab), but once selected, that category will expand, allowing easy navigation to the particular item in question. For example, I have my newsfeeds collected on a single page. Now I can look at them in the left nav, and read the ones I'm most interested in.
There is also a great rollover preview - in text only mode - of the actual content of items in your RSS feed lists. That way you can get an idea of what's in the item without clicking through it it.
Gmail also rolled out a recent update: themes. If you go to your settings controls, you'll see that "Themes" has been added as an option. So you can now select a color scheme and layout for your gmail screen and messages.
And don't forget, you can always choose a theme for your iGoogle page - I just updated mine to "Winter Village" in keeping with the season.
Comments