Saturday, July 9, 2011

Google+ - THE Social Network

Google+ or Google Plus has so far been the best online social experience of my life. No I didn’t meet some interesting people out there or saw some pictures I shouldnt have, its just the joy that I dont offend people by adding them to my circles and then just not share anything with them. This privacy feature is just the best of all the features that Google+ brings to the social networking front.

I wanted to start off with that, it so far has been my favourite feature on Google+. So, Google+ (G+) invaded my life about two weeks ago now, a time when i was pretty much whining why I didnt have the G+ invite yet, or if someone could send me and invite, it was just the elite club I wanted to get into. Google have been saying that they keep on doing these invites in batches so that the existing users on G+ dont suffer from any availability issues, i.e. their infrastructure is able to keep up with the demand. Now, let me tell you, when I first heard that, I was a bit annoyed, its just odd that a behemoth like Google is saying that one of it sites may face availability issues due to excess requests. But then after finally getting in, and after a few happy laps, I clicked on this green button, on the right pane of the page, ‘Start a Hangout’, and thats when it all made sense. Google knows that the privacy features are something that arent that difficult to deliver technically, but being able to provide lag-less stutter-free video conferencing via your browser does need some infrastructure behind the scenes. From what I’ve read, this is achieved via some codecs from Vidyo to help with this. This needs the Google chat plugin to be installed for the browser being used. Google does have plans to make it independent of plugins and will then use something called WebRTC which is currently supported but Mozilla and Opera. Either way, this, so far has been the most popular feature on G+.

So now coming back to me finally getting an invite, I was greeted with the welcome screen and then after filling up some very few details, I was shown this popup asking me if i wanted to link my Picasa account with this one. Since I really hadnt been using picasa much, but had a few pics there, I just complied and then under picture/photos, all my picasa albums were listed. Pretty cool I thought, but then FB doesnt have any uploading limit on my albums, but Picasa has a 1GB limit, after which I have to pay for excess storage. I didnt bother at the time as I was more involved in uploading some recent pics online and then setting up my profile pic. Soon I realised that, though Picasa always has a scale on the side of the page telling you how much MBs have you used till now from your designated 1024 Megs but nothing of the sort here. Turns out, there is actually unlimited storage available for uploading pictures and videos. Though I aint exactly sure about videos but the scoop about the pictures is spot on. Also, unlike FB, my pics were actually uploaded in the resolution they were clicked in, and are downloadable from Picasa.
So I thought, this was all there is to G+ when it comes to pictures, obviously the mobile upload would’ve been via the app, which I had downloaded pending an invite, so I wasnt expecting any surprises here.

The Instant Upload feature on the Google Plus app for Android was just something unlike I have seen. In a world where we had N8 like cameras on our android devices, Internet access available on out android device at all times, and no limit on the data upload, this would be a pretty amazing service. Though I dont have a good camera on either of my current two android devices, I do have a proper unlimited data plan and internet access for my android devices. Also being a big fan of being able to share pics the moment they were clicked, I was in love with this feature. I was pretty much clicking some random images, or rather anything I saw and then sharing it within minutes. For someone who travels a lot, and sees some amazing things, and has a good camera on his/her android device, this feature is a godsend. Though, do realise that the pics are not shared with the public the moment you click it, its just that they are uploaded to your profile and are available for you to share in a few clicks. But this too can be setup if you want to.

One thing about the way pictures are handled on G+ is that its said that Google uses some hardcore PNG compression technique for storing the images, which is pretty much lossless. Though this is something i would be worried about if and when I am uploading any quality pics, which as of now, i am not.

Now, after playing about with the Huddle, the pictures, and the various picture upload services and storage features, I went about taking a closer look at the privacy features, which I was adoring since I joined G+. The circles, or grouping is very well integrated within the entire site. Everything, from your Hangouts to Huddles to even the simple google chat, everything is governed by you, with the option to be available to which of your circles. This feature can also enable the entire G+ community to block someone out completely, with that person just being able to see whats being shared to public. This kinda works against the idea of a social network where you share some pictures and then have some really random people comment on it, maybe they were in your list of friends but that pic might not concern them. This is something that could result in starting new friendship from just mere acquaintances or rekindling some lost friendships. I guess, Facebook would be the kind of social network for that to be achieved. Though this is something you can also very well achieve by sharing your posts to the public, something that will spotted even in the Google Searches. So, I would say, this new privacy feature all depends on how you use it, its all in the hands of the end-user, the person to whom the profile belongs to, rather than Google. The only thing that Google wants to keep public about your profile is your name and gender.

You could keep a tab on any new features being doled out at http://twitter.com/#!/Google_Plus apart from Google Blog. From what I’ve read, expect to see some core blogger and picasa integration in the coming months. Apart from that, I’d expect some subtle UI changes, adding Hangouts with video on Android, the much awaited iOS app for G+. Something I would like to see more of, is the integration of Google Docs and G+, something I see missing, imaginge collaborating on a document while hanging out. Pretty much takes care of handling college projects unless there is some hardware related work to be done. The possibilities are all there, just have to wait and see what Google ushers towards us, at a brisk pace.