I signed up to gmail and google+ from the very beginning, I pretty much persuaded all my family to switch to gmail. Setting up circles, and security/privacy settings was pretty straightforward. I check google+ maybe once or twice a week. I don't post very often, but that's not unusual for me, I'm a bit of a lurker on most of the social networks I've signed up to! I follow a lot more people, news outlets etc on google+ than I do on facebook, I just pick a circle and browse through the streams.
I would use chat quite often, and I have tried to persuade family members to use hangouts, but they are firm users of Skype! I do think video chat and hangouts would be great as an 'Ask the Librarian' service via the library website - they could be marketed, scheduled and recorded for particular groups of students.
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| image from Official Android Blog |
I use Google Keep on my smartphone (android), it's great because it is so easy to write a note or list and set a reminder on the go, you can colour code your notes, for example I use one colour for work related stuff, another for birthday reminders, you can also label your notes, which is like assigning them to folders. No time to type in a reminder, not a problem if you have an android device you can just add a voice note, tap the wee microphone icon and away you go, your note is saved in text and as recording. I've added a shortcut for the web version to the google apps menu of my home email, that way it is always available when I am logged in, I just click on to the Keep icon and check my lists, tasks and reminders
I share shopping lists with my daughter so that we don't buy the same stuff - once it is ticked off on my list, it will update in real time on hers and vice versa! It's also handy for setting joint reminders for family get togethers.
The only drawback with Keep is that it doesn't sync with my calendars, but you never know that might happen in the future.
We've been using google apps in work for over a year now, the amount of storage is fantastic the fact that you can send/share large files via google drive is great. Calendars has to be one of my favourite apps for work, I have a least five on the go at the moment some shared with all the library staff, some shared with just one or two people and my own private calendar, with all my reminders set for the next month or so! Docs and Sheets are easy to upload, download and convert to Word, Excel etc., and I have been playing around with Google slides for a presentation to run on the reception desk screen.
So as you can see I'm an bit of a Google junkie!
Hi
ReplyDeleteGoogle is very central to your online life, by the looks of it! I'm in the same boat myself.....even though I de-Androided (is that a thing?) my life in favour of a move back to iOS about 6 months ago, Google services still play a huge role for me. Some of the apps (like the Gmail one) work better on Anrdroid than on iOS (eg. you can't get a unified inbox on iOS), and some simply are not on iOS at all (i.e. Keep), but even so, most of my online work and storage is through Google.
I really liked the way G+ organised things into Circles. That was innovative, and way ahead of anything Facebook had at the time. It all just came too late, and Facebook had such a head start that G+ was always going to have a tough time competing. I still use G+ for the Communities, but as a place to share things like photos and events in my life, Facebook is still where it's at.
We'll be doing more with Hangouts later in Rudai23, so stay tuned!
The Rudai23 Team