Posts made in December, 2014

Check out my Google Story

Posted by Sam Lee on Dec 9, 2014 in A Featured Post, Tom's Blog

Google+ going away? There continues to be talk of Google+going away, and I have seen with my own eyes, the end users slowly disappearing or at least becoming less active. I don’t believe anyone will topple Facebook, until they come out with something that is really cool, different, and a lot better. Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest have all succeeded because they are their own idea. They are different enough, that they offered something not fulfilled by Facebook.  Google+ went for the jugular and tried to be Facebook. Those who use Google+ would probably agree the news feed is better, showing more at one time, and larger images, with items that received extraordinary engagement getting superior placement – Full Screen. They have also built some really phenomenal features into the Android portion of the account, especially when dealing with photography. I realize this is not a big deal for most end users, however purely using the auto backup feature,  should be interesting to anyone who has ever lost their phone. Auto Awesome The auto backup “Auto Awesome” feature is a lot of fun, and adds to the experience.  Auto Awesome changes frequently, but will do things such as; create a grid of your photos, filter the photo, or even animate when you take multiple pictures of the same thing.    Google+ Overlay  Photo Grid  Animated Multiple Pictures Google Stories A feature rolled out this year, is Google Stories. Google stories are also taken from your auto backup, and will automatically tag the photograph if your location services is running on your phone.  I take a lot of pictures, both of the scenery and of my kids. I love being able to go back and look at the stories that Google puts together for me, its a glance at the best pictures from any particular time period. I was more than a little disappointed this morning that couldn’t embed my story for you here. I was forced to do screen captures, but if you want to see the original story click Friday in Jupiter This particular story, has some nice imagery of the water, a photosphere of the beach, and quite possibly the funniest video I have captured of my daughter. So is Google+ Going Away? Obviously I don’t know if or when Google+ is going to disappear into the abyss of Social Media sites that never quite made it. What I don’t get is what is going to happen to all these great features? My assumption is that Google+ for the public would disappear, and those with Gmail and Android phones will continue to have G+ accounts.  This will surely be limited in functionality, maybe they will just roll G+ features in Google Drive, or YouTube or maybe Maps Views… Google Maps Views came out of early this year, and is your Google+ account integrated with Street Views. I have...