Wednesday, December 07, 2011

A Dolidhfied FAQ on Joining and Starting Hangouts




Starting and Joining Hangouts

So you've joined Google+, you've managed somehow to find a few friends you want to try out some of these cool features that all the cool kids are talking about. Hangouts being one of the new features! I've made a wee FAQ (Frequently asked questions) for those folk that don't really know and haven't managed to ask yet.

So what is a hangout?

A hangout is Google+'s video conferencing chat... that might sound kinda techy and scary to those not in the know, but what that means that people can join in a little common area on Google plus and video-voice-type-chat. These can be opened publicly, just to certain circles or just to specific people you want to share to. And it's not just for the people on computers! If you have the app on Android or iPhone, you can join in the hangouts that are already happening on your stream!

What do I need to hangout?

Technically, you just need an internet connection and the ability to install the google talk plugin (it's super-easy to do, it'll ask you to install the first time you go on, click the button to install the plugin and follow the instructions on the screen), although it's recommended that you get a microphone, headphones (or a headset to combine the two) and a webcam. But they do have a chat facility on the side of the hangout. People like it to be able to see people as well as speak to them. Especially if it's a hangout filled with people that have cameras on.

If you're having problems with your camera or mic, pop into the cog icon for settings and make sure things are selected properly. If you can't hear sound in the hangout, then check you're plugged into your speakers/headset and that the volume is up, not just on the headset/speaker itself, but also the volume of the computer itself is turned on and up.

A handy tip is that by clicking the picture of the microphone or the camera, you can disable the mic or cam quickly and easily. Just click again to put it back on.

So what can I do on a hangout?

Well, this is where you can follow the conversation or get creative. Some hangouts have names (those are on Hangouts called Hangouts with extras - we'll talk about them in a bit) Normally starting off with introducing yourself if you don't know people is a good way to go, but just like in polite society, it's not cool to interrupt, so my advice is to hold off till there's a lull in conversation or post a hello in the chat bar (On a hangout, there's a button at the bottom of the hangout called Chat, it'll bring up a chat pane... and there's a >> bar to the far left in Hangouts with extras if you can't already see a white chat bar pane on the left). Sometimes hangouts have a topic, sometimes they don't... I like to show off geeky plushies I've bought or if I'm in a girly hangout, the new beauty stuff I've been buying/given. Occasionally we've had hangouts where people perform music, do artwork live on hangouts and dance. I even managed to hangout from my birthday party on a mobile device!

What's the extras in Hangouts with Extras?

Well, it's the preview section for new features in Hangouts. You can name a hangout, share Google Docs with people in the hangout (if you're so inclined - if you want to learn about it - https://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=49008), you can share notes and use a common sketchpad - not just for fun, but could be used if you wanted to use hangouts for work with collegues... And you can screenshare, something that can become very handy if showing someone how to do something or letting someone see something on your screen. Just make sure that if you do screen share, you don't show off information you're not happy to share... like passwords. Don't do that.

To start a Hangout with Extras, you'll need to click the wee text link under the Hang out button on the 'Check your hair and make sure that your mic works! screen.

How do I start a hangout?

On a stream, (when you see what people are posting) there's a Start a hangout button on the right hand side.

How do I find hangouts to join

There are a few ways to find hangouts:
1. If someone's currently hanging out and they've shared the hangout with you, you will have a stream post that will say that the person is hanging out (and who with) and a button underneath to Join this hangout.
2. Over the right hand side of your streams, if you have any hangouts that are live, you'll have a clickable link to see however many Hangouts are live now! It'll fold out and allow you to join individual hangouts there.
3. By being directly given a URL to go hangout. Whether it be through an email, instant chat, a post URL or some other method... although don't click links from people you don't trust.
4. There are apps for Google Chrome browser that find hangouts and display your hangouts to other people. I can suggest

So I've met a lot of my circled peeps on hangouts... and it's one of my favourite features on Google+... have you got a memory from a hangout like when everyone share-screened my picture on my birthday to make me hangout with multiple me's? (https://plus.google.com/u/0/103038287804535196503/posts/S5rQWH8qmnT)

You can check my original posting on Google+ here >

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Paypal are doing a wishlist competition!


*When you wish upon a star*

Have you seen that Paypal in the UK are doing wishlists... not only that, but for 5 lucky people a week... people will actually win their entire £5000 wishlist!! Lucky sausages!! Well, my wishlist pretty much the majority of it is a couple of new iPhones (for both me and my hubby) but I put some cool geeky stuff in there too - https://www.paypal-wishlist.co.uk/users/d7f7a240-ff78-012e-6d05-0050560102ad/wishlist
So fingers crossed ^_^

If you want to do your own wishlist and maybe even win something - pop onto the main paypal page on www.paypal.co.uk and click the picture on the front that says Buy It - Win It.

Monday, November 07, 2011

The Amazing Weekend of Birthday Awesome-sauce!





I've really had a wonderful weekend... thanks for the lovely birthday wishes that you sent.


It all pretty much started on Friday.... I had pressies at breakfast, the beautiful flowers from a client (Ta Gemma! xx) and tea Kai and Kennie in the office made for me in near constant supply while I was at work.

Friday evening started off by getting ready to go out, then popping onto hangouts to say hi (I did promise!)

Of which, the guys basically had a mini party and let me take over the hangout -

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103038287804535196503/posts/S5rQWH8qmnT Lol

I then headed on out to Stirling, meeting up with some of my best friends in the Kilted Kangaroo (that's the

place in the piccy) and then onto a club/pub called Cult. I managed to borrow my friends iPhone4 and jump

onto a hangout... thus, this happened: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103038287804535196503/posts?hl=en

We had an amazing night, ending up stargazing up by Stirling Castle before being run home by my very, very

generous and amazing big brother Andrew. Unfortunately, Kai broke his iPhone... booo!

So... that was the actual birthday... Saturday ended up with Kai and I running around Falkirk trying to find

me a new pair of shoes (since I managed to maim my good boots the night before) and then heading through to

Haddington... I've done a super-short vlog on youtube to thank people for the brilliant messages.

We went out for dinner and had a fabulous time (apart from trying to break in the new shoes)... we enjoyed

watching the fireworks on the way home (Nov 5th is Bonfire Night - AKA Guy Fawkes night. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night )

Sunday consisted of being fed an enormous breakfast by Kai's step-dad Chris (which was amazing, thanks Chris!) driving back home and then visiting my mum... organising what's happening at Christmas! (huzzah! I love Chrimbo!) Saw my brother, Sis-in-law and two beautiful nieces while I was out at Mums... My brother Andrew said he had the kit to fix Kai's phone, so we got it off him and fixed Kai's phone! Yey!

We went off and saw In Time at the cinema... a couple of hours of very good entertainment (I thought the idea of it was so clever)

Then headed back and watched Misfits on Channel 4 and something else while I attempted to shove up that video on youtube for you...

But thanks again everyone for being a fairly chunky part of my birthdayness! xx

The Amazing Weekend of Birthday Awesome-sauce!





I've really had a wonderful weekend... thanks for the lovely birthday wishes that you sent.


It all pretty much started on Friday.... I had pressies at breakfast, the beautiful flowers from a client (Ta Gemma! xx) and tea Kai and Kennie in the office made for me in near constant supply while I was at work.

Friday evening started off by getting ready to go out, then popping onto hangouts to say hi (I did promise!)

Of which, the guys basically had a mini party and let me take over the hangout -

https://plus.google.com/u/0/103038287804535196503/posts/S5rQWH8qmnT Lol

I then headed on out to Stirling, meeting up with some of my best friends in the Kilted Kangaroo (that's the

place in the piccy) and then onto a club/pub called Cult. I managed to borrow my friends iPhone4 and jump

onto a hangout... thus, this happened: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103038287804535196503/posts?hl=en

We had an amazing night, ending up stargazing up by Stirling Castle before being run home by my very, very

generous and amazing big brother Andrew. Unfortunately, Kai broke his iPhone... booo!

So... that was the actual birthday... Saturday ended up with Kai and I running around Falkirk trying to find

me a new pair of shoes (since I managed to maim my good boots the night before) and then heading through to

Haddington... I've done a super-short vlog on youtube to thank people for the brilliant messages.

We went out for dinner and had a fabulous time (apart from trying to break in the new shoes)... we enjoyed

watching the fireworks on the way home (Nov 5th is Bonfire Night - AKA Guy Fawkes night. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night )

Sunday consisted of being fed an enormous breakfast by Kai's step-dad Chris (which was amazing, thanks Chris!) driving back home and then visiting my mum... organising what's happening at Christmas! (huzzah! I love Chrimbo!) Saw my brother, Sis-in-law and two beautiful nieces while I was out at Mums... My brother Andrew said he had the kit to fix Kai's phone, so we got it off him and fixed Kai's phone!Yey!

We went off and saw In Time at the cinema... a couple of hours of very good entertainment (I thought the idea of it was so clever)

Then headed back and watched Misfits on Channel 4 and something else while I attempted to shove up that video on youtube for you...

But thanks again everyone for being a fairly chunky part of my birthdayness! xx

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Farewell IT Crowd, swimmy swimmy and sleepy pups




A sad day yesterday when the BBC let us know that there'll be no more IT Crowd... no more Roy, Moss and Jen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15404501
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/lix9h/iama_man_named_graham_linehan_creator_of_the_it/

Maybe I should try switching it off and on again...



I had a lovely evening last night....

I managed to do 52 lengths of the local pool... hooray! Personal best! That's 1300 metres!

I ended up popping in to do an impromptu Cyber-couch hangout with KOMU news in Missouri together with some lovely people, +Chad LaFarge , +Kim Beasley , +Seth Goldstein


To get in the spirit of all things sleepy last night, I posted a piccy of a sleepy puppy (Fred, our bull-boxer when he was a pup) on G+

Friday, October 21, 2011

YouTube goodness!

I just really took note of the updates they've been doing over at YouTube...

They've been making it easier to share! *Squee!*

Popping onto your own liked videos, there's a Share on your Liked list.... Click on it and you can not only link to it, you can share on facebook, twitter and G+... click on the show more and there's things like Orkut, Blogger, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Bebo, Digg and Myspace.

Sweet!



Just in case you want to spend a couple hours enjoying Dolidh-liking-goodness... you can pop onto mine on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LLAhBKbRzEebOuXHB5laFOBg

Weeee!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Something not to watch late at night

Sent to me by fellow G+er James Lawson-Smith A new viral video's been sweeping the net... it's a bit scary, so don't do it when you're alone, on a stormy night and about to go to sleep in typical horror film-stylee.

http://www.takethislollipop.com is a video that when you sign into your facebook to allow it access, it can pull in pictures and generally scare the bejeepers out of you.

There's still 29 minutes on this counter that's counting down at the end... but I really want to know what it's all about, see if it's perhaps for a new horror film or just generally going to post itself onto my facebook page.

It also creepily says that one of your facebook friends 'is next' Eep! I thought I'd best blank that out, as their mother might be reading :P

I'll let you know when the timer's done.

Shwim shwim shwim!

I had a great time last night - Monday nights are now my swimming nights (even though I’m not all that great a swimmer)

I managed to do 32 lengths of the pool… that’s 850 metres!!! **Squee!!!**

Do any of you guys go swimming regularly? I’m going to try the silicone web things on my hands to see if I can easy how tense my hands get and stop them cramping… I’ll post pics when I get them… maybe I should incorporate them into some sort of halloween costume… lol. They do look a bit freaky!

I didn’t even get the chance to take a piccy of my number of circles on google+ when they were the year of my birth, as quite a few of my friends have been doing… those guys swamped me before I got back from swimming! Over 2000 people following! My word!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Facebook New Lookness and google+ circleness

Facebook new look

OK, so I've had a little play around with the Developer App and been one of the lucky monkeys to see my new profile before they're launched properly.


I think the new profile is quite nice to look at, but super busy... which I suppose suits the facebook followers anyway who're hungrily looking for information on you.


I kinda like the double column thing and viewing images within the timeline lets me stay interested like a little kid.

Youtube preview image opens up to an embedded youtube video, just like on G+ - so it does the job.


I just really like the clean look at G+ though. Facebook is a bit cluttered, but I know so many people on there. Also, there are so many people on facebook that I knew and no-longer care to know well and chat to constantly... kinda like holding someone at arms length. I think Facebook will kinda stay that way for me really.


It's ok G+ *hugs* I ain't going anywhere... After all, I seem to be gaining more an more circlers... people circling me. Maybe people are actually wanting to see what I post or when I originally posted, I posted to Extended Circles since I really didn't have a clue...

There's a couple other ways so far to find new people, like getting listed in one of the G+ directories or maybe someone's just going on one of my friends and clicking on the View All >> on their who's circled and following everyone on there... that sounds a bit laborious. Loads of folk online have been wondering about it... I'll make a proper post when I can be bothered.. make it shiny with pictures! It's unlikely I'll get in the suggestions box any time soon. Really, I need to figure out how they're giving these suggestions before I do a post... some are obvious, cos there's already a mutual relationship there or postings are similar... I wonder if they work it out from the stuff on the about page. *ponders*