I would like to customize what appears in my "Stream".
For Example. When I display my homepage, I want to only see posts from my "Friends, Family, and Acquaintances" circles automatically.
It would be great if I could select which circles to automatically appear in the homepage stream and save them as the default. Give me a drop down list to the right of the "Stream" link and let me put a check mark next to each circle I want to appear in my stream.
You could automatically default any new circles to automatically appear in my stream, and then I could turn them off if I want.
Why would I want this? Well, I thought I would follow Wil Wheaton, he posts... a lot. I enjoy his posts, but I am most interested in seeing what's going on with the people I know and actually know me. So, I either have to click on individual circles to get right to the content that's most important to me, or scroll through Wil's stuff and come back and read it later. Frankly I'm kind of lazy and don't want to click any extra buttons. So my other alternative is just not to follow too many other people so it doesn't muck up my "Stream."
RESHARE: Never forget why you're doing what you're doing, are you helping people, are they happy, are you happy, are you profitable, isn't that enough?
Six Hours until I take Charlie to the midnight premiere of Captain America. It's his first midnight movie, and he's stoked. If anyone wants to meet up, we'll be at the Carmike!
Getting ready for the midnight premiere with the 1979 Captain America 2! My wife warned me that the new movie needs to be better than this one or I'm in trouble for dragging her out at midnight.
We're watching the 1990 version now. 11 years makes a difference, but... not enough difference. Thank-you SyFy for feeding me a steady diet of cheesy Captain America movies!
+Lori Cramer is still not impressed or excited with my midnight movie decision.
I loved how they worked in the origin of the costume.
I was worried that the shield was going be awkward. It was kick-ass. I think I may have to get one to carry around the office.
sweet flick. I definitely recommend it. I will prob end up seeing it again. Looking forward to the Avengers movie in May 2012 now. They showed a trailer for it after the credits!
Some of the comments in this Michael Robertson article mirror my own beliefs about college. I'm definitely not the person that you want to have come in on career day and extoll the virtues of a college education. It was a great experience that helped me grow and mature, but ultimately it felt like an extortion scheme where I was coerced to pay for a college diploma which would protect me from a life of burger flipping or gas pumping.
I did get my diploma which supposedly validates my intelligence, which seems ironic since it is nothing more than a piece of paper which cost me over $50,000. It seems especially pricey when you consider that my Mom and Dad are the only people who ever actually asked to see it.
I know I got more than just a piece of paper, but I found it sad that once I was "on the job" for a couple months I had learned more about my chosen vocation than I did in my entire college career. There were a lot of things not related to my core studies that I learned, but I probably could have learned even more with a library card, several years, and my 50,000 plus dollars back.
Oddly enough, I'm still not anti-college, and do foresee my son going into some form of higher education. I realize that not every college is like this, but unfortunately I believe it is more common than not. I just feel like the practice of teaching should be more focused and less driven by a big business type interests trying to figure out how to get more dollars out of my pockets. There should be more bang for the bucks.
Maybe I'll go and dig my up my diploma. I'm pretty sure it's in the bottom of a box in the back of the storage room in my basement.
Here are a couple of good quotes from, and a link to the article I read that got me going.
"Many don't think about college as a business, but it is a giant one. And they're selling the proposition that if you give them money they will give you knowledge and a certificate which will lead to more money and a better life in the future."
"The belief remains that there's some secret knowledge that will be imparted to you if you give $100,000+ or more to a college administration."
I'm not sure why Google+ doesn't have a search bar to find posts. Seems like it would have been a natural addition. I did some surfing and found a fix that works for Chrome - which I use, so it makes me happy.
RESHARE: Interesting Chrome extension that +Nova Spivack found. I love being able to see so many posts in the stream at one time, but without it, I can browse through the full stream a lot faster... decisions decisions..
I keep finding posts that aren't appearing in my main G+ stream. I can see the posts on profile pages, but not in my stream.
I really hope Google doesn't follow in Facebook's footsteps on this. I know that Facebook drops content that it doesn't think you are interested in. I found out I will missing the posts of several friends due to Facebook's content "filtering."
Here's the word from the Google Plus help pages. To me it sounds like EVERYTHING should be in my stream, maybe I'll have to chock it up to it being in Beta.
"About the stream The stream is the place to have meaningful conversations with the people you care about. It centralizes all the content people have shared with you, as well as the people who are trying to share with you, but who aren't yet in your circles. You might see text posts, pictures, videos, links, or location markers. When you share with people either individually or through a circle, your content will appear in their stream."
I saw a sign on the wacky gator game that said "Please don't pull out the gators", which is something I would have never considered doing... until...I saw the sign...
Grumble. A scavenging baby possum scared the bleep out of me again tonight. This is the second time in the past few days that it has crept onto my porch and knocked something over. I think it waits until I'm in deep concentration while working on my laptop to get the optimal heart-beat-skipping effect.
Once I got past the "Holy #$%^, someone is breaking into my house!" scare, I shoo'd him off the porch.
I heard G+ launched their game integration to a limited number of active users. Did anyone get "the button" to the games? Evidently it is supposed to appear next to the circles button for the chosen few.
Google has promised that they will not be annoying. I am interested in seeing how the integration is going to work... but alas, I was not included in the initial launch.
Having a camp out with six 9-year olds in the backyard. Just got them finally laying down the tent. I'm camped out by the fire. Something tells me this is going to be very very long night.
Sometimes I put bottles of water into the freezer for a couple hours to make them really cold. The other day I pulled one out after about three hours, and it froze right before my eyes.
My wife thinks I'm crazy because I keep bringing her bottles of water so she can watch them freeze. My son thinks it's pretty "awesome". I'm obsessed, almost the entire case of water I bought the other day is frozen solid now.
I took this video with my cell phone this morning.
Background: A little kid in my neighborhood has a sign up that he lost his stuffed monkey and to call him if you find it. Its a sad little note. I left him a note from the monkey saying "sorry I can't come home right now...my friend came to stay with you"...
I'm a huge movie fan. I would go to the movies every week if there were something new and worthwhile playing.
However, I think the movie theaters/studios have finally even broken my desire to go to the movies with the constantly increasing prices.
We took Charlie and his fourth grade buddy to see Spy Kids 4D this weekend. The total ticket price was $46.50. $12.75 for each of the adult tickets and $10.50 for each of the kids tickets. Ouch.
I didn't mind going to the movies and paying 7 or 8 bucks, but they finally even passed my pain tolerance. I had already reduced my movie attendance because of price, but now I'm pretty much just going to stay home and wait for the RedBox rental.
Unfortunately, the movie wasn't very good either. Long winded ending that beat you over the head with the "moral of the story" and the darn scents on the "scratch and smell" aroma-scope ticket (you know, the part that made the move *4*D) all smelled like Pez candy. The kid inside me really enjoyed watching the first three Spy Kids movies with Charlie, but that kid didn't come out to play this time.
I will say that both the kids really enjoyed it though. So there is that.
When putting my 9 year old boy Charlie to bed tonight, he says "Dad, I really want to watch some Hong Kong Phooey, I haven't watched it in a really long time."
Whoa, out of left field, but it made me proud.
I just found out that they are making a live action version of Hong Kong Phooey starting Eddie Murphy.
Makes me nervous, either they are going to ruin one of my all time favorite cartoon characters or make him so popular that he'll lose his "cool factor"
RESHARE: Here is a re-share showing how to setup chrome to let you search Google Plus from the URL line. You can also use a service like: http://www.googleplussearchengine.com/
Reshared text: I'm not sure why Google+ doesn't have a search bar to find posts. Seems like it would have been a natural addition. I did some surfing and found a fix that works for Chrome - which I use, so it makes me happy.
Google Plus posts will start appearing in the Gmail people widget soon from the looks of it. Cool, but one more thing to distract me from getting anything done...
In Firefox, I love the "View Image Info" selection that from the right mouse click menu. It shows you all the image properties for any image you select online. I am mostly interested in the image dimensions and image size.
In Chrome, it doesn't exist. Very sad for me.
Until today.I was just told about a Chrome extension that adds this functionality.
Made Out Of Real Engine Parts, Motorcycle Parts and Scrap Metal It's ARC-Welded Piece By Piece And Polished With Wire Brush. Then Coated With Lacquer To Prevent It From Rusting.
Just learned a new Chrome trick. If you want to copy web content, and then paste it without all of the current formatting, you can use the keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-v.
This is going to save me a bunch of time. Usually I paste the content into notepad first which will automatically strip any existing formatting. So long notepad!
Reshared text: The "Interface future" imagined. Do you think we'll live to see all these applications of this technology shown in this video? Which ones already exist?
Google+ is going to be the end of productivity if I'm not careful.
I got up early this morning to get some writing done, but I decided to "check Google Plus real quick like."
So, an hour has gone by, and I didn't get anything done...
Unless you count the time I spent chatting with the computer brain on http://cleverbot.com thanks to the link from +Morgan ABBOU. I never thought chatting with a computer could be so addictive.
RESHARE: Use the tilde (~) when searching Google to include synonyms. Nifty. I will definitely being using this one.
Reshared text: Next time your Google search involves general terms like free, inexpensive, facts, etc, use the tilde (~) operator. By placing a ~ in front (no space after) of your generic term, Google will search both for that specific word and for the word’s synonyms. For example [~inexpensive] will also match "cheap" and "low cost."
I love the http://shirt.woot.com/ concept, I just wish the T-shirts were nicer. They seem a little thin to me. I would love them to have an option for a heavier tee for an additional few dollars.
Just left the office. Wonderful warm night with crickets chirping, a slight breeze, and a perfect crescent moon in the sky. I wish my cell phone camera could do it justice.