Tag : Google

This week has been all about Google+ for us here at Made by Many. Well, mostly. So it literally shouts out as the presentation theme for the week. If you're on Google+, don't forget to follow us: gplus.to/madebymany. 

First, Ross Mayfield, Slideshare's VP of Business Development, has a nice guide to how Circles work in Google Plus. Getting Circles right is key to making the right use of Google, so this is good to know for those who are still finding their way around.  

I usually send a bunch of links around the office every week. Perhaps some of you may be interested by them too:

To wrap up this week, here are some interesting links that have been floating around the office, and some of this week's tech news that caught our eye. From the slowly growing relationship between advertising and venture capital to Google's latest ventures, it's all there. 

Last week I attended an event at NESTA about the powers and possibilities of big data, where Hans Peter Brondmo (Head of Social Software at Nokia), Haakon Overli (Managing Partner of Dawn Capital), Max Jolly (Director of Media Solutions at dunnhumby) and Megan Smith (General Manager of google.org and Vice-President of New Business Development) spoke about issues such as privacy (Nokia), investing in big data (Dawn Capital), using data to transform the way a business works (dunnhumby works with Tesco on their Clubcard), and channelling data for social good (google.org).

First things first, this post is going to out me. Despite working at a digital agency, one that calls itself a "social technology" company no less, I don't know a whole lot about coding. In fact until last Thursday's Internet Week event Coding for Dummies hosted by BBH Labs and Google, I didn't know my <p> tag from my padding. Luckily for me, it turns out I'm not alone...

There's a bit in the original film Karate Kid, when Daniel, almost crippled by blows to his leg, assumes the iconic Crane Kick stance and kicks his opponents chin in and knocks him out cold. Brilliant. 

That's basically what Facebook's could do to Google in two really sweet moves. Admittedly, performing those two moves could take a couple of years to pull off, but bear with me for a moment.

I noticed a cool map on the AnalogFolk website recently, and thought it would be interesting to plot some of Made by Many’s favourite hangouts near our office too, in a quick-and-dirty way, with Google Maps. If you fancy popping in to say hello, these are some of the places we may take you to for a drink or lunch. Don’t forget to see our notes on them here, and if you have something to say about the map, feel free to comment on this post or on the map itself.

I did a quick poll via Twitter and email last week to see what sites, services and apps some of the people I know are using in their daily lives. These are of course likely to change as more and more services make their appearance (or, as I sometimes wickedly dream in the case of Facebook, slowly die), but for now I notice some clear trends:

News sites will continue to be a key source of information, even as print fights for survival

BBC News, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Dallas Morning News, Al Jazeera, News24, the Daily Mail and the Sun were the most commonly visited sites amongst respondents to my poll, with the BBC and Guardian clearly leading the pack. Smaller, more local sites still have their audience amongst people who have an affiliation to those areas. News sites found a mention by all respondents, so whatever happens to print magazines, their digital avatars are here to stay. As the Times prepares to go behind a paywall, it will be interesting to see how they respond to the changes in the behaviour of their audience – something that is bound to happen.

In the time I’ve been away and had a baby (she’s 10 months old this week…), a lot has happened.

I found this while going through Slideshare over the weekend. It’s a 6-month-old presentation that Charlene Li made at SXSW’09, but with Google launching Sidewiki recently, I thought it would be very useful to re-visit the concept of how a social network is going to change. WithSidewiki, you can write your comments to a post alongside it, and they’ll be ordered according to relevancy, preserved for all time.