Google+ First Thoughts

Having been fortunate enough to be invited onto the beta of Google+ (thanks @heloukee!) I’ve been playing with it to see if it is going to be useful to resolve or manage my split digital identities.

As described in a previous post I currently have a professional/personal split to my social media using Facebook for family and friends and Twitter (and this blog) for work related stuff. Both platforms have different content and although the more personal end of my Twitter posts also finds its way onto Facebook it’s not a regular enough occurrence to justify using something like Posterous to post to both platforms.  Talk of Google Circles  set me wondering whether I’d be able to rationalise some of my activity to a single platform. Circles is Google’s way of categorising online contacts so by default you have ‘friends’, ‘work’, ‘family’, ‘aquaintances’ etc. Posts/pictures/videos and so on can be shared with all  or only specific circles and this has the potential to greatly simplify a work/personal split. Conversely you can choose to post to all of your circles and also to ‘extended circles’ – the circles of everyone in your circles.

image from rustybrick

After a few days of dabbling it looks like

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and now we all hate [insert name here]

Technohate:

Having bought an iPad for a research project recently I’ve been using it as an alternative to carrying a stack of paper documents to meetings at work. As long as there’s internet access in the meeting room (and where isn’t there?) I can drop the docs I need on to dropbox or Google docs and easily access and edit them as needed. Plus the battery will outlast even all day meetings. Nice use of the iPad and saves a load of paper into the bargain.

I never expected the amount of hate that the iPad would generate however; comments of “it’s only a big f****ng iPod” and “F****ng iPad” when on the way between meetings made me stop and think. When was the last time a piece of technology generated such hate? The comments spat and shouted at the “b****d Apple fanboy” had the venom I’ve only previously heard from racists about ethnic minorities or football “fans” about other teams fans. Where does it come from?