Google+ : A Basic Walk-through

So you've signed up! Now what?


Google+ is clearly Google's answer to FB and is designed to get a piece of the phenomenal social networking market. Having said that, I think G+ is a neater, cleaner and more elegant platform than FB and it won't take long for more people to jump on board. Sign-up is still invite-only as Google tests each feature with a limited database of users (how 20+ million users can be "limited" is beyond me) but "sometime soon" G+ will throw open its doors to anyone. I like it because from one place I can access my G+, Gmail, Calendar, Documents and other Google services.


But how do you actually use it? Read on for a basic tute...


HOME SCREEN
Below is the home screen you'll see once you've logged in.

You can see 3 general columns: the first under the Google+ logo, the second (widest) in the middle and the third starting with the people in your circles and finishing with a green box saying "start a hangout".


VIEWING OPTIONS
You can filter what you see in your stream (equivalent to FB's News Feed) by choosing a group to view. Under the Google+ logo, your profile  pic and the Welcome, you can select Stream to see all posts, or posts just from Family, Friends, Acquaintances, etc.


SHARING (Status Updating on Steroids)
G+ uses the "Share what's new" box at the top of your stream for what FB calls Status Updating as well as for targeted messaging (FB = inboxing).

As the pic above shows, simply click in the box and start typing. You can add photos, video, a web link or location to what you share, or remove it by clicking the X in the top right of the box. To share what you've typed, click the green Share box.

Above the Share box is the green Public box. This post is currently visible to anyone on G+. To remove the public box, click the X to the right of the word Public. Once Public is gone, click "+Add more people" (see below)...

Once you click "+Add more people" a dropdown box will appear. You can choose to share your post with:

• one or more groups (circles), or
• one or more individuals (just starting to type the name of a contact), or
• a combo of selected individuals and circles.

Your post will only be visible to those listed.

SENDING A PERSONAL MESSAGE (FB = inbox)

This is done by sharing something in that same box (see above), then selecting one individual with whom to share it:

I've typed something to share, then started typing "mel g" as my recipient. "Mel Graham (providencede..." has been suggested (along with Mel Gibson!) so if I click Mel Graham, my post will only go to her. This post will appear in her stream as "Aj Graham - [TIME] - Limited" and then the message, and she can click Limited to see who else this message has gone to (if anyone).

CIRCLES

This is not a feature of FB. Circles are the groups into which you have placed your contacts. What it means is that you can share (or see) information with or from certain groups very quickly and simply.

At the top of the page, click the Circles button. This will take you to the page where all your G+ contacts are listed. You can put your contacts into one or more circles, create new circles or have contacts that aren't in any circles. If you search for new contacts, you can then add them to your circles. People will be alerted that you have added them (in FB your Friend Request has to be accepted), but they can't see which into which circle they have been added (if any).

I chose not to add any pics here because they'd be of people in my circles, some of whom may prefer I didn't put that info out there publicly. Besides, I thought it looked straightforward enough with the instructions on the Circles page not to need pics here.

PRIVACY/PUBLICITY

G+ is, by nature, more public than FB. However, you can set how public or private you wish to appear. This is done by clicking "Aj Graham" - do I need to mention it won't say Aj Graham for you? - (in the black bar, top right of page) then Account Settings.

Select Profile and Privacy and set your preferences. There are heaps of fine-tuning options, so I'll just share one.

Clicking the above button will take you to your profile information. Scroll to the bottom and set your Search visibility. This determines whether or not people will be able to see you when they search for you on G+.

OTHER ASPECTS

• Chat. Fairly self-explanatory. To chat with someone for the first time, you will need to send them an invitation to chat.
• Sparks. This is basically made up of interests you specify (edit Sparks when you first click on it). You can share these with others and pin your sparks categories to your profile page for quick access later. Others can also see your sparks (I think) and so begin conversations about your (and their) interests.
• Hangouts. This is like Skype. Start a hangout and chat face-to-face with your contacts...up to 10 at a time!

That's pretty much it for now. Comment if you want more or different info!

Cheers, and see you somewhere in G+!

Sleeping in a rolling boat.

So 9:30pm finds me lying on my narrow top bunk in the bowels of this mechanical leviathan, surging more or less northwest through metre-and-a-half swells.

Several sounds have been fairly consistent for a time. The first is the rhythmic shaking of our craft and is more a feeling than a sound; it seems to emanate from all sides of the small cabin at once, inviting one's whole body to be involved. Yet from the coerciveness of the sensation it quickly becomes apparent that the "invitation" concept is a somewhat thin veil: this shaking is going to include me regardless of my degree of consent. My second noise consists of doors and fixtures rattling with the aforementioned hum; the last is my wife sprawled across the two bottom bunks telling our kids about once each minute to lie down and go to sleep.

I can't help the feeling that I'm going to roll out of bed and come thumping down onto the floor, defeating the purpose of any and all sleep encouragements aimed at my kids. I wonder how Jesus managed to sleep in the boat as it was tossed by the wind and waves while hid disciples panicked.

I reckon that sometimes I dumb down that story in my head. Surely it'd be impossible for someone to sleep during a storm in a small boat? Yeah, that's it. He was sleeping because the storm can't have been that ferocious...but hang on. The Bible says the disciples thought they were going to drown. At least three of them were seasoned fishermen. They'd know a storm when they went through one. So Jesus really was asleep in a real storm.

I note that the breathing below me has changed. Deep, slow breaths are audible in place of the determined, imposed silence and reminders to surrender to slumber.

So how could Jesus have been so peaceful? I'm sure he understood that there was a greater purpose to his calling than being drowned on a lake, so perhaps that helped him know that things were in hand. Is that what causes us to question where to from here? or how do I get out of here? or even contemplating deserting our faith? Is it a lack of understanding that our calling does not stop here which makes us panic at the now?

If we understood that whatever storm we're in, we're not destined to end in it, would that give us a greater sense of peace in the now?

Will you draw out the best in me?

This afternoon my beloved switched on the TV.

Before us was the final of the Under 20 Soccer World Cup from Bogota, Columbia. The contenders? Brazil and Portugal. The score? 2-2 at full time. Thirty minutes of extra time were imminent. Players from both sides were sitting on the pitch, taking water and stretching, preparing themselves for another half hour of exertion, having already completed three times that.

The final score? Brazil 3-2 Portugal. But that's not the point.

What amazed me was witnessing two acts of extraordinary sportsmanship during extra time, when players from opposing sides assisted instead of contended with one another. At this point in such a match, cramps are a hazard. The finalists are playing their seventh game in 28 days (most on top of their usual club seasons), and have already played a full match before being subjected to another half hour.

The first act was during a stoppage in play. The footage streaming into my lounge room was of a Brazilian helping a Portuguese stretch out a cramp. The latter was on his back with his leg raised vertically, while the former was holding that leg, helping him stretch.

The second was a Portuguese player being substituted off for cramp. It happened after Brazil had scored what was to be the winning goal. The Portuguese player had to hop and stumble off the pitch, and an opposition player came alongside him and assisted him off the pitch. When they both reached the edge of the playing surface, the crowd's applause was not merely for the Portuguese hero, but also for the selfless act of sportsmanship.

Am I being too romantic? Were my eyes looking through spectacles a shade too rosy? I don't believe so. Of course the Brazilian players could have been assisting in order to resume the match as quickly as possible (for an advantage), but I don't think that was the motivation. Why? Because without doubt the assistance which was lent only served one purpose: it allowed the opposition players to play better against those assisting. In the case of the substitute, it only served to speed the entrance of a fresh player from the other team. Many a match carrying lesser stakes has been won by a substitute being brought on with less than two minutes remaining.

I believe the acts witnessed were amazing, selfless acts of sportsmanship. Each of them was birthed from a value of people being more important than winning. It is the spirit in which each of us hopes sport is played. And it says to the opposition I want to beat you, but I want to do it while you are at your best, because only then will you draw out the best in me.

Do we play sport in such a spirit? For that matter, do we ever conduct ourselves in such a way? Interacting with another in such a way that enables us to give our very best. Do we value the best to be seen in others the way we desire our best to be seen by others?

Can a woman's hemline really predict the weather?

The following is an article that appeared in Melbourne's Herald Sun (after they pinched it from England's Mail on May 31st 2010)...

If you want to know what the weather is up to, it might be best to start looking down. For apparently the length of a woman’s skirt is a good way of forecasting whether to expect rain or shine. The bizarre claim is the result of sales analysis by experts at the online marketplace eBay. They insist that the length of skirts sold rises several days before the arrival of sunny skies. And when the air is about to cool, they drop. This happens, they say, at least three days before the weather changes, and sometimes even before the forecasters at the Met Office have issued their most traditional predictions. The trend, they claim, correctly predicted Britain’s temperamental weather last year, as well as the recent short-lived heat wave.

‘We’re calling it Mini Skirt Meteorology,’ said eBay’s Ruth Szyszkowski. ‘If you want to know what the weather is going to be like in three days, just take a look at hemlines.’

During the recent hot spell, it is claimed that demand for short skirts soared by 200 per cent a full seven days ahead of the actual event – well ahead of the Met Office forecast. There are said to be distinct changes in skirt length with the rise and fall of the thermometer, typically starting in advance of the actual change.

Mostly, I find this humourous. But I wonder if it's actually got some merit? eBay sales analysts reckon it accurately predicted both the general weather in Britain last year, including a heatwave. So that means sales of higher hemlines went up days before the temperature, and vice versa. Several questions are raised:

1. Is the trend applicable only to Britain, or can it be observed worldwide? Does it only occur in temperate climates, or polar and equatorial ones as well? What garment would you use in those other regions to predict the weather?
2. I wonder if someone could get a bucketload of money from the relevant grants authority in order to test the hypothesis that hemlines predict weather. They could gather data from online as well as physical retail stores, and let us all know what great expense the taxpayer went to in order for us all to find out.
3. Could eBay start to offer a weather forecasting service?
4. Is there actually some truth to this? Do we have some innate, subconscious ability to anticipate the clothing required days before the mercury changes? Ants, spiders and flies are known to move to higher or drier ground before rain, and I bet they don't think about why they're doing it, or keep a running record of the skirt length of their colleagues; why should they monopolise this meteorological ability?

Community: at the local footy, the takeaway shop - or wherever.

It happens all around us.

I saw it at the local footy match yesterday. It may be in the way the home crowd got vocal (or their car horns did - often both) when the local team notched up another major. It could be in the shouts of recognition between spectators as they met. It might even come from the three old biddies in the takeaway shop who were sitting behind me last night harping on about the 12 goals "our boys" managed in the last quarter.

So the takeaway shop then. These three ladies were having a terrific yak about the game when I walked in. Clearly two of them had seen the game and the third had missed it, because they were plying her with the highlights, including how their team have good prospects for the flag this year (and I think they do, too). Somewhere amongst their gathering and conversation, it was happening again.

It happens at my church, too. People get together and talk about their day, their week, their family ("Want to come over for lunch?"), their relatives, their farm ("We're coming into calving now. Things have been busy this month"), their holiday, their kids, their work, their school...

Community is happening all around me, but it doesn't just happen on its own. There are a few things which are necessary:

1. The common factor (COMMunity and COMMon have the same root word, after all). There has to be something what brings people together in the first place. A sports team, a school, a church, a fishing club, even people shopping together.
2. A shift in thinking from prioritising me and what I do (while others happen to be there: "I play hockey") to us and how, when we get together, we play hockey. Sounds simple, but it's likely far from it...
3. A deliberate decision to form community by delving below the comfortable surface. Belonging to any of the groups mentioned above, or attending such events, does not guarantee the formation of community. People waiting for the same train aren't necessarily contemplating community (although they could be). People have to decide to take their common incidence beyond mere location and into each other's life. Even then, inviting someone over for dinner doesn't make community. Once they leave and you close the door after them, do you feel your duty is over, or would you gladly offer your assistance when they call later that evening asking for help because the roof blew off their shed in the wind?

Community is so vital to all of us, whether or not we like to admit it. Perhaps, as a society, we need to find ways (and pursue them) to build the community in which we live - whether we're at the local footy, the takeaway shop - or wherever.

The Left-Handed Whopper and Other Distractions from the Truth

So back in 1998, for a joke, Burger King (Hungry Jack's here in Australia) took out an ad in the USA Today for a left-handed whopper. The idea was that it had all the same indgredients, but they were rotated 180 degrees so that there was a weight-bias to the left-hander instead. The date of the ad? 31st March, advertising for the 1st April...yep, it was an April Fool's joke. However...

The next day Burger King found that thousands of people had gone in to order one of the new burgers, and many had actually asked for the right-handed version. They even released a follow-up ad explaining their joke.

Interesting, isn't it, how we can so easily be wowed by something that sounds credible, exciting, promising, the latest thing, yet turns out to have no substance at all? How many of us have bought or chased something, or listened to someone, or followed a teaching that promises so much yet delivers so little, if anything at all? There was, of course, nothing new or exciting about the "new" whopper. If you'd had one on March 31st, would a left-handed version have felt different in your hand on April 1st? I wonder how many left-handers felt that special feeling evaporate on April 1st when they realised...

Life's like that; it promises so much yet, on its own, delivers so little. Jesus is different; he is able to, and does, keep his promises. Promises like I give life in abundance (John 10:10); Anyone who comes to me will never thirst, but the water I give will become a spring of water welling up in eternal life (John 4:14); Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest...(Matthew 11:28); I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).

Jesus didn't promise bliss all the time, but he did promise strength through tough times. He didn't promise freedom from tempting moments, but he did promise grace during them.

He promised eternal life in a daily, ongoing, fulfilling relationship with him, and asks us to meet him in that relationship. He also promised there are no exceptions as to who can meet him in that relationship and begin walking with him daily.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and he loves left- and right-handers alike. Promise.