Want to play a game?

Every now and then, it can be fun to blow off some steam and play a game.

Yeah, a game. You may have heard of them. A pleasant way to waste some time and have fun, preferably with friends. Games can be pretty social things, if done right.

No no... wait... I'm not talking about games you might find on other social networks, where part of the point is to send messages to all your friends asking for something. Sure, those games are in Google+ (even if you didn't know it), but theres more. Lots more.

"Social" Gaming

A small pile of games developed over the past few years, mostly centered around building your world and convincing others in your social network to help you do so. They're mindless, but can be fun and a good way to unwind. There are other games in this vein as well, mostly played on social networks, and generally with some social component (usually allowing you to post updates to your friends). Don't worry about those updates, however - only people who are looking at their game stream will see those updates.

To access the games, you can click on the "Games" navigation tab on the left side of Google+. (This may be available under the "More" tab, if you don't immediately see it.)

Hangout Games

Perhaps you like to see your friends when you play games. No problem! Hangouts to the rescue!

One of the first things that people did when Hangouts rolled out were to play popular games like Pictionary. There are now apps that let you do simple drawings right in the hangout, so you don't need to draw something on paper and hold it up to your camera. But there are plenty of other games, too. Want to play pool with your friends? 8 Ball Pool Multiplayer may fit the bill. Into some role playing? Tabletop Forge will help you out. A bit of a mind game? Perhaps some 3D Tic-tac-toc-toe.

Check out their pages on Google+ for information about how to get started, or take a look in the "Apps" tab when you're in a hangout.

More Social Social Gaming

Unlike the games where you try to beg your friends for help, a lot of people are choosing to play games directly in Google+ itself, and they're doing it with some games that are more like the parlor games you've probably played in the past. A recent popular game has been Breakfast Combo, a guessing game where the initiator has to cleverly give clues to an object they're thinking of.

These games are much more free-form - just start a post and invite people to play it in the comments!

Make it an Event

Finally, sometimes you may need to plan these games out ahead of time and schedule a time when everyone is available to play. Take a look at the "Events" navigation tab on the left side of Google+ and you can invite your friends.

You can even plan to get together in person and play some games. Wow... what a radical concept.

Whatever you do - have fun!

We have met the enemy...

I wanted to take a step away from the "how to do this" posts I've recently made and talk a little about the "why". More importantly, I want to talk about the "why not".

I have a lot of motivations for doing so. One is this post, where the author talks about how he was pretty viciously harassed by an anonymous stalker. First online... and then through physical mail. He talks about what happened when he encountered the troll - in person. But he didn't get much of an explanation out of the perpetrator. Other motivations are posts from a few friends of mine, talking about how they shouldn't need to use the safety tools (ignore and block) that Google+ offers - that people should be courteous enough to behave. And finally, I've been pondering my own behavior - wondering how people see me and my actions.

The biggest problem with online communications are that the secondary cues that we're so used to in conversation (tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, etc) are totally missing. Posts are largely reduced to facts or, when they degenerate, to shouting matches with each side trying to be heard. We seem unable to have civil conversation because we are unable to "look the other person in the eye". At the same time, we tend to feel safe(er) hiding on our side of the monitor, free from possible repercussions about what might happen if we said the same sorts of things in person.

We try to compensate. Sometimes our avatars do give the impression that we're a real person. We share personal details of our online personas, which can help to bind us to others. All of these are some level of risk, of course...  but they are similar levels of risk that we take in person.

Perhaps that is what we most need to remember when we talk to others online. We are talking to real people. So why shouldn't you make crude or threatening comments to someone else? Because you wouldn't in real life - and you know you shouldn't. (And if you don't know you shouldn't - then that is why you'd be ignored or blocked.) Why, in a discussion, do you sit and listen to someone else and then try to discuss their points? Because in person you can see this is a person who deeply cares, and you want to understand, and they want to understand you. Because you're a real person, and you deserve to be treated as a real person.

And, as the author found out, the troll is a real person too.

Circles of Life

We have talked a lot about circles in the past - no surprise, since Google+ has circles as a core feature. Today we're going to discuss two approaches to circle management - how you create circles, who you put in them, and how you use them. Remember that nobody will ever know what circle they're in unless you tell them.

Theme Circles

The method that Google seems to suggest is that you break up your circles by theme. These themes are somewhat broad - friends, family, and a generic "following" circle. This makes senese when you want to use circles as a way to share private things to different groups - so you can share photos of your party with your friends, but your family and coworkers don't need to know. You can invite your coworkers to a meeting, which doesn't make any sense for your friends. If you have particular themes that you talk about that others may not be interested in (for example, if you're a big Twilight fan), theme circles are also a good way to just keep your chatter to yourself. Most of these circles will have the same "volume" - the default setting will make sure you get the messages you want, but you may wish to adjust the volume of some of them. We've discussed volumes in an earlier post.

There are downsides to this, of course. The biggest is that just because someone is in your "knitting" circle doesn't mean that all they do is knit - they may talk endlessly about a movie that you're not interested in. But thats how friends can be sometimes, isn't it?

Watch Circles

Another popular strategy is to setup circles based on how much you want to hear from different people. So you might setup a circle called "volume low", set its volume to a very low level, and put people into it who occasionally have interesting things to say, but are generally too chatty. Other people say things that you never want to miss, so you may have a "volume high" circle for them. And there are a few people who, if they ever post, you want to make sure you know immediately - and you can put them in a "notify" circle, and set the volume accordingly.

This also has some downsides, although it works fairly well for people who post publicly, it doesn't always work well for private messaging.

What is the Best Method?

Both of course! You may need to find a mix and some circles and volume settings that work best for you, but here is a strategy that combines the best of both worlds:

Create theme circles that you primarily will use to *send* messages. So you know that when you need to send a message to your college buddies, you can send it to the "College" circle and be reasonably assured that they'll see it if they're interested.  These circles will likely have the volume set to "off", although for some circles you may want to set the volume higher.

Then create a watch circle, and add everyone to one of these circles if you want to hear from them. This way you can determine what level of interest you have in each one. If you find someone is getting more spammy, you can put them in a lower volume circle. If someone is particularly interesting - move them up! You can move them right from their hovercard, so you don't have to break your stride when reading messages.

People can be in more than one circle, and Google will pick an individual volume based on the highest volume circle they're in. So it is safe to put a person in a circle whose volume is off to categorize them, and then also put them in a volume circle to adjust how much you want to hear from them. This is a good balance of both tools.

There are other strategies, and you may want to adjust the specific way you balance these, but give this a try and see if it helps you find and interact with the people and messages you most want to.

Notifications on Google+ - Some Thoughts

Do you like getting notifications in Google Plus? Does your heart race every time you see that red box scroll into view? Have you used the new notification tools to make sure you get lots and lots of notifications?

Perhaps you should pause and think about the best way you can use notifications. Here are some of my thoughts.

I think this feature isn't really about making sure I see every message I want to see - I think of it as making sure I see every message I don't want to miss. Lots of things in my stream are great - and I read my stream often to make sure I see them all. But sometimes I get busy. Or sometimes I have a lot of stuff in my stream and I''ll miss some things. 

If I turned all of these into notifications - that red number would never stop spinning!

Instead, I think of all of these as messages that I'll probably read anyway - so I don't need the reminder to go look at them. But a few things are important to me. These are messages that I want to make sure I don't miss - no matter what else I might be doing. The people who send me these messages are in my "Alert" circle, and I have that circle set to send a notification (and an email) when a message comes in.

But I don't always use the red box to read them. Sometimes I'm busy, so to make sure I see these messages, I'll use Gmail to read the notifications. This is also a good place to mark them in case I need to followup in more detail later, or file them away. When I do reply, I can reply right from Gmail.

There are lots of strategies to help you manage these notifications in Gmail, and we'll be covering some of them in the future. In the meantime, why don't you share with us some of your tips for managing your notifications?

I'm Allen Firstenberg for Oasis in the Stream

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HELP! I need somebody.

You say that something about Google+ isn't working or is confusing you, and you need some help or guidance? Don't know where to turn to find out more? There are lots of resources about Google+, but sometimes you just don't know where to look.

A good first step to helping yourself is to check out the Google+ Help pages. You can access them by going to the gear towards the top right of most Google+ pages and selecting the Help item.  Seems easy, huh?

But sometimes you just can't figure out the answer there. Or even find it. Another good approach is to check out the Google+ Discussion Forum. This is one of Google's official product forums, and both community managers and "Top Contributors" from outside Google read the forum and try to help out as best they can. A good first start might be to search the forum (hey, this is Google, after all), and if that doesn't work, find a good category to post your question. Make sure you give it a clear subject and you explain all the problems you're having with as much detail as you can.

Finally, don't forget that this is a social network. Ask your friends! Some of them might know the answer, or know somebody who can help out. And if you're asking, don't forget to include +Oasis in the Stream and we'll see if we can find an answer for you. We're also willing to start a hangout to discuss problems if you prefer to troubleshoot that way.

So if you need some help, don't feel lost... there are plenty of tools that can provide guidance.

Alright Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my touch-up

Do you use the photo albums in Google+? Perhaps you use Instant Upload from your phone to capture lots of memories, and later collect them into albums. Or you have a more traditional camera, and you upload pictures periodically. Or perhaps you take part in #BlastFromThePast and you're scanning all those photos from when you were 7... No matter what you do, here are a couple of tips for working with photos in Google+.

First, Google+ is pretty flexible about what format the pictures can be in. GIF, JPG, and PNG are popular formats that you may be familiar with, but you can also upload the RAW format that many cameras support - but Google may convert any of these formats to another format for display, and the results may not be as good as you'd like.

Remember that you can upload an unlimited number of photos - but the pictures can be no bigger than 2048 by 2048 pixels. This is about 4 Megapixels, using digital camera lingo. If you upload a larger picture, Google will resize it so the longest edge is 2048 pixels. While their algorithm is pretty good about scaling things, you may want to do some editing yourself.

Speaking of editing, there are some pretty good editing tools built into Google+. These are available from the Edit Photo button that is in the upper left corner of your pictures when you're flipping through your album. (This is sometimes known as the Lightbox View of your pictures.) Based on the old Picnik tools that worked with Picasa, you will need Flash to do the editing.  You can apply a number of special effects (sepia tones, funky colors, polaroid effects, and more), adjust the brightness, blur portions of the image, eliminate some blemishes, crop and rotate the picture, add text, and do other editing. When you're done, you can either save over the original, or save a copy.

When your photo is picture perfect, share it in an album... but don't be surprised if it shows up again in your stream hours or days later. When an individual photo gets it's first +1, it may be automatically shared to everyone permitted to see it - think of this as very positive endorsement of the picture.

Go ahead... take those amazing cat pictures and share them with the world. You know you want to.

Hash - Not Just for Breakfast

If you look at the Trending on Google+ list much, you'll notice that there are often a lot of trends that start with a tic-tac-toe sign. This symbol, sometimes called a pound or a hash mark, is used by Google+ users for a lot of different reasons. Let's take a look at how it is used, why you may want to use them, and what you need to do.

The hashtag was borrowed from Twitter, where people used it to discuss similar topics. As such, it created ad-hoc communities, and people would follow streams of these hashtags instead of needing to follow specific people. Google+ encourages this use of hashtags as well - searching for a hashtag will take you to posts that have this hashtag, and posting from that stream will automatically append the hashtag to your post as well, so future searches will also return your post.

This isn't as necessary with Google+, however, since posting to pages or shared circles can sometimes accomplish the same goal.  Even searches don't need the hashtag - you can just use normal words to describe your post and the power of Google search will index it correctly, but many people still use hashtags to help categorize their posts.

You will also see many themes that are posted with the same hashtag, and these themes will tend to trend. For example, a lot of people post cat pictures and jokes on Saturday, and these will get tagged with the hash #Caturday.

Using a hashtag is easy - while you are writing your post, in the body of the post itself, type a # mark, and then start typing the hashtag you want to use. A hashtag cannot have any spaces in it, so if you are using more than one word, run them all together. Many people capitalize the first letter of each word to make it easier to read. As you're typing, Google may suggest some other hashtags that match yours - feel free to select one of them, but they will be all in lower case.

You can add as many hashtags to your message as you like. If you are adding a lot, however, it is usually good form to put them at the bottom of your post, so they don't make the post itself difficult to read.

Don't overuse hashtags, however. Many people (myself included) don't like them, since they may clutter up a post. It can also be difficult to make sure you find the right hashtags to use - for example, should you tag your posts about the olympics with #Olympics, or #Olympics2012, or #London2012 or #LondonOlympics, or... So if you're going to use hashtags, be selective in how you use them. Remember that you don't need a hashtag to find a post later - Google indexes every word of your post, so you don't need to talk about the Olympics, and gold medals, and perhaps your favorite sport, and then have to apply a hashtag for each one as well.

Hashtags are an easy to use tool in Google+, and if not overused, can make following selected themes and topics a lot easier. So go ahead, have some hash with your Plus.

Make Your Links Look Lovely

Last week, we talked about the various controls you can use when posting to Google+. This week, we're going to look in a little more detail on one of those controls - the Link button. For many pages, there is a lot you can control when you share the link. Taking a few second when you share a page will help people understand what you're sharing and can make your share look better.

1 - To get started, click on the link icon when you want to share what's new. This info also works if you're sharing from the page itself using the Share or +1 buttons on that page.

2 - Enter the URL for the web page you want to share and...

3 - Click the add button. If you change your mind, you can cancel the link by clicking on the X next to the add button.

Then it gets interesting. Google will try to read the web page and get some information about it. This may include the title of the page, some text or other descriptive information about the page, and an image from the page.

4 - Review the graphic. Usually, Google is pretty good about picking a graphic that makes sense, but not always. If you move your mouse over the graphic, you'll see two arrows that let you pick which graphic you think goes best. If none of them do, you can click on the X on the graphic to remove the graphic.

5 - Review the description. Again, Google is pretty good about picking text for the page, but sometimes what it picks doesn't make sense. If you don't like the text, or you don't want text with what you're sharing, you can click on the "Remove description" line to remove it. The title of the page, however, cannot be removed.

Change your mind about linking here? Go ahead and click the X to remove the link completely.

Once you have that done, you can enter additional comments about the page, select who you want to share it with, and click the Share button.

More to Sharing than Sharing

So you want to share what's new? No problem. Just type in your text and click Share, right? What about names and circles? Or sharing a photo or video? And how do you prevent your post from being re-shared?

Here is a rundown of some of what you can do when you share a thought.

The non-option
Your first option, of course, is to post nothing. Change your mind? Just click the X in the upper right corner. But be sure you mean it.


Photos, Videos, Events, and Links
You may want to share some pictures, or a YouTube video, or an event, or a link with your circles. Pressing each of these buttons lets you do just that that. Sometimes you can change how each of these shares look - and we'll discuss that in a later post.


Who?
Of course you're going to add who will see this. The easiest way is to start typing in a circle, person, or one of the special send groups such as "Public". You can also press the "Browse people" button to select circles or people you follow.

If you select a circle, hovering over that circle gives you a brief idea who is a member, plus it lets you send a notification to that circle. Use this sparingly! People get irritated if they get a notification for every post you make, but it can be useful to make sure your family sees when you've posted great new pictures.


Follow the Down Arrow
The down arrow on the side of the user/circles field lets you set some additional options (as illustrated).

If you "Disable Comments", people won't be able to comment on your post. Duh.

If you "Lock this post", then people won't be able to share the post. (But keep in mind that some people are clever and will get a screen shot, so this isn't perfect security.)

Both these settings can also be done after you make the post, but this helps you do it up front.


Conclusion
Take a look at the options you have when you post a message. They help you create quality posts that are perfectly tailored for your audience.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Click on photo to view G+ post

Inevitably, you’re going to run into problems here on Google+. When that happens - what should you do?
A good first step is to Send Feedback to Google about your problems. From the Gear in the upper right hand corner of the stream (just above the Trending topics and below the search button) you can click on Send Feedback, describe what the problem is, possibly highlight part of your screen to illustrate the problem, and then send the issue off to Google. 


They probably won’t reply, but they do compile weekly summaries internally of problems and use the feedback to prioritize what changes they will work on next for Google+.

Another good suggestion is to share your problem with your friends, publicly, and with Google’s Community Managers. (And feel free to mention us, too.) You may even share the same post that you sent to Google. If your problem is about Google’s photos or Google+ Events, make sure you mention Brian Rose. If the issue is with hangouts, then Dori Storbeck is the person to include. Otherwise, Natalie Villalobos handles general Google Plus questions and issues. These Community Managers can be busy, so sometimes responses take a while, but they do try to get to every message.

Finally, if you’re being harassed or have a problem with a user on Google Plus - report them and block them, or at the very least uncircle them. Google has put the power in your hands to manage some of these issues - don’t be afraid to use these tools.

Help make Google Plus a better tool for everyone - share your feedback and ideas.


-- G+ Post via Allen Firstenberg