10 Tips of Google+ for new use

Google+ is a social networking service operated by Google Inc.. The service launched on June 28, 2011 in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends, who are above 18 years of age. This was suspended the next day due to an "insane demand" for accounts.

Google+ integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introduces new services Circles, Hangouts, Sparks, and Huddles, which may be a little hard for your initial experiences.

That’s why you may consider yourself a noob when it comes to Google’s social platform. But, here, fortunately, we’ve got some handy hints to help you out. From quicker sharing options to better content curation via savvy privacy settings, we’re bringing you 10 tips and tricks that will soon have you Google Plussing like a pro.

Please share in the comments any Google+ tips we haven’t mentioned — your suggestion could be featured in a forthcoming NETGAINS  BLOG article.

1. Add More Information to Your Profile Description

To most Google+ ‘strangers’, you're just a thumbnail. If they do care to hover over your avatar, then you're a thumbnail with a few words of description, likely your company name, profession or location.

There's a simple "hack" that can make Google+ display much more info when someone hovers over your avatar -- similar to the appearance of Twitter.

Go to edit your profile, select the employment section, and in the first "Employer name" box, write your bio and check the "current" box.

2. Organize Content With Circles

Circles are a useful tool for organization of content. Thanks to the fact you can create empty circles, there's a variety of organizational options open to you.

As Google+ currently has no way of bookmarking content, Plussers have devised workarounds.

You can create empty circles to "share" under different headings. Make "bookmarks" for links you want to check out when you have more time, "read later" for longer posts and articles, and even "test" if, you want to muck around on the service without annoying your followers.

Once you've set this up and shared content to your various empty circles, viewing that circle's stream will bring up all the Plus bits you wanted to save.

3. Click on Profile Pictures to Roughly Browse

One really neat trick Google has built into Plus is the ability to scroll through all of a user's uploaded profile pictures directly from the profile or posts page.

You can do this by clicking on the person's avatar image at the top left of the screen. If they have added more than one pic, Plus will flip through the album there and then.

While on one hand this is a handy way to see profile pics at-a-glance, some Plussers have gotten creative with the concept.

4. Disable Sharing on Posts

One of our favorite things about Google+ is limited, rather than public, sharing. You can share a post with one person -- or the entire world.

However, there's nothing to say that one person won't click "share" to expose your previously private post to the entire world.

Thankfully, Google+ offers the ability to disable sharing on posts. If you've posted something you'd like to stay private, click on the drop down menu arrow at the top right of the post and select "disable re-share."

Do be aware this doesn't mean people can't screengrab your post, etc, but it will at least communicate that you'd like the post to stay private.

5. To Find Post’s Permalinks

If you want to find a post's permalink, it's simple. If the post was shared publicly, you can hit the drop down menu arrow at the top right and select "link to this post." This will open the post in a separate tab, allowing you to copy and past its URL.

If the post has limited sharing options, this setting won't appear in the drop down menu. Instead, click on the time or date stamp toward the top of the post. This will also open the post in a new window and reveal the URL, although not everyone will be able to view it.

6. Drag and Drop Content

If you expand the "share" box, you can drag and drop content into it. This works for video, photos, links and even other Plus profiles.

7. Change the Visibility of Your Circles

Google+ displays all people in your circles at random on your profile. However, you can change the default options to show only certain circles and hide others.

In Google's own words, this is so you can "hide that weird aunt you’re embarrassed about, and show off the coolest people you know."

To change your circle settings, click "Edit profile" and then hit the circles boxes on the left of your screen. You can now choose which circles you want the world to see, and even decide whether to display people who have added you to circles.

8. Notify People About the Posts

Rather than risk burying an important post in the stream, Google+ offers a way to notify people in a circle about the post, without having to add their Google+ username.

To set it up, click on the circle you're sharing and check the "notify about this post" box.

9. Add Special Photo Effects

Click on one of your photos to bring up the dark background view, then hit the "Actions" menu at the bottom right. In addition to useful options such as "Auto Contrast" and "Auto Color," you can also Cross Process, Orton-ize, or turn your image black and white.

As far as we can tell, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option will randomly apply an effect.

10. Google+ URLs

Did you know you can find Google+ at various URLs? There's:

http://google.com/+

http://plus.google.com, and

http://google.com/plus.

Shadowy High-Speed-Railway and growing civic awareness in China---have-to-say words

A while back, I had a long enjoyable chat till dawn with my roommate, Maxime De Techtermann, about the democracy in China and India,he spoke highly of the high-speed railway in China, and set it as an example, 'Last year I paid a visit to China for business communication, instead of airplanes (cause the airport is too far away from the downtown), I took a train from Shanghai to Beijing. Over 1300km in 5 hours, Ricky, this is gorgeous, Chinese government finally do something good despite the clever foreign economic strategy.  That’s the forceful advantage of despotic government. You can profit massively from this in 10 years.'

Yes, we can. But what you should notice is that, for months, doubts and accusations have also swarmed on  China’s high-profile push to develop its high-speed rail system. But harder questions — about corruption, waste, quality, safety, service and intellectual property — were submerged , pushing claims of technological superiority to win political points, which is a everyone-knows secret.

Fortune or misfortune, we got a tragic opportunity to prove now.

A collision between two trains on July 23rd near the coastal city of Wenzhou-famous for its east-jews businessmen, not only killed at least 35 people (most of the people believe it’s over 60), but also unleashed a torrent of online criticism of the network and the railway bureaucracy which has whipped up a new wave of public anger toward the Ministry of Railways —toward the government more generally — and brought a new and crazy sharing of information online, even as authorities have moved quickly to stem media coverage.

For many Chinese, one of the most frustrating aspects of this story has been the government’s apparent unwillingness to answer the most basic questions, and its tendency to fall back on fuzzy responses.

Actually, 3 accidents have already happened in a row in July due to the same reasons, all eyes on china’s new high-speed rail, the questions are: why there was no contingency plan, why passengers had not been compensated, why backup power systems had not been used . Responses from the Ministry of Railways were not forthcoming at first, as then claimed that ‘it was only natural that the high-speed rail needed time to work out the kinks.’

The tension between real answers and propaganda seemed to boil over at yesterday’s press conference with Wang Yongping(王勇平), the Ministry of Railways spokesman. Especially when Wang was asked yesterday how it was possible that a five-year-old girl was found alive after officials had declared an end to the search and rescue, Wang responded: ‘That was a miracle. ‘shouts erupted among the reporters, “It is NOT a miracle! It is NOT a miracle!”  The reporters didn’t want to hear more nonsense. They wanted to know exactly why the girl had not been found earlier, and what her discovery revealed about the nature and handling of the search and rescue itself.

The internet has proved a powerful  public monitor in China, especially since Twitter-like services, which called sina-weibo, began to take off 2 of years ago. I have to say, Twitter-like sina-weibo is not a perfect information resources, cause the numerous of rumors and analysis-less opinions, but at least, it’s a progress of civic awareness.In this case, it has provided real-time, uncensored insights into a disaster that the authorities would doubtless have preferred to be covered in another style by trusted party organs like the Xinhua News Agency.

This accident is a tragedy.I convince accidents in general are unavoidable, and they happen everywhere. But this accident can be entirely avoidable  if railway authorities had taken the design and construction of the trains more seriously, or alternately, if they had listened to the warnings coming from all areas of society over the past few weeks and stopped the operation of high speed trains until the obviously serious problems could be fixed.

Then to turn around society is making a progress more or less, especially the rising of civic awareness, it's not rational yet and sometimes is lack of analysis and independent or critical thoughts in most cases, but 'half a loaf is better than no bread'. 信不信由你，反正我信:)

Reference:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/dc-metro-crash-ntsb-report-safety_n_661553.html

http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/07/11/13686/

http://chinageeks.org/2011/07/death-on-the-high-speed-rail/

http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/07/13/13764/

How to prevent your Google+ Account from being banned

Recently, not only the majority of business accounts, but also some personal Google plus accounts are audited which appears to be a suspended phenomenon. I believe that, in most cases, it’s triggered by the inconsistence between the user name/ Google private and Google+’s  community criteria.

Google does not force users to use their real names, but , to some extent, the user name must comply with Google's relevant guidelines.

Real-name authentication is not implemented

Google + hasn’t taken up any practical implementation of real-name authentication, therefore, a lot of network marketers pretend to be celebrities and use their names to register accounts due to the lack of restriction.

For instance, Ma Ying-jeou(马英九), the 12th term and current President of the Republic of China, was trapped because someone registered a Google+ Account using the name as ‘President Ma Ying-jeo’,  and then manually sync Ma Ying-jeou’s Facebook information to Google+. Soon afterwards, Google+ team banned this account. And perhaps for security considerations and to put an end to the recurrence of this kind of events, the real President Ma sighed in an account immediately.

In the foreseeable future, Google may imitate Twitter launching real-name authentication mechanism, which will enable users to distinguish the real celebrities from the fakes. It will definitely strengthen the validity of the information resources and protect the reputation of the celebrities as well.

Google’ s  Policy

Google does not force users to use their real names, but users need to meet certain rules written in the Google+ "User Content and Conduct Policy":

‘To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.’

The more detailed description of the Google+ policy, check ‘Your name and Google Profiles’:

‘Use your full first and last name in a single language.
If you use your full name, you'll help people find you online and connect with the right person. Note that professional titles such as "Dr." or "Prof." aren't allowed in the first or last name fields. If you’re referred to by more than one name, just choose one, and place the others in the “Other names” section of your profile.

Avoid unusual characters in your name.
When you create your profile, our system will check the name you submitted for unusual characteristics. For example, numbers, symbols, or obscure punctuation might not be allowed.

Your profile and name must represent one person.
Google Profiles doesn’t support profiles for couples or groups of people. Additionally, you can’t create a profile for a non-person entity such as a pet or business. Google may continue to allow existing profiles that don’t meet these criteria, as long as the profile names are unchanged.

Don’t use the name of another individual.
Impersonation is a serious issue. Pretending to be someone else could cause your profile to be deleted. If someone is pretending to be you, go to their profile and click Report this person.’

In short, user-name strategy is to: 1) Do not mix the name with several different languages; 2) Do not use non-personal accounts (such as business accounts, web accounts, news accounts, etc.); 3) Do not impersonate another person.

From here you can see, Google + does not force users to use their real names, but users should use their usual name, if the user profile is suspended, that means  the user name is inconformity with Google Policy, Then the user will receive a notification to review the profile.

Users can click on the Google profile page contact us, put forward further appeal applications, in most cases can get a response within 24 hours after filling the form.  It’s not necessary to fill out the real name, common nick name or screen name can be accepted. But if it is commonly used screen name, you need to fill out the complaint form with sites profile page URL  corresponding to Twitter, Facebook or other social networking sites.

The user can edit their names or personal information even the user's personal profile is suspended. But, if users edit their own profiles under the suspended status, Google team still need to review the user's name, and then re-activate the user's personal information.

Drawbacks

In my opinion, it is controversial for Google team sticking to their policy under the current situation of Google+. If the user name does not meet the policy, Google should set limit during registering, rather than banning the accounts suddenly after a long period’s experience, which can be destructive to the user experience. 

Even if Google+ determined to suspend the user account, it’s better to contact the user first and give them some time to amend the profile to meet the policy of Google, rather than give a red card directly without any notification.

It’s maybe a little difficult for the Googlers who are mostly engaged in engineering to understand how important the user experience and hommization design are in SNS. In all probability, that can be a large stumbling block if Google+ really want to challenge the supremacy of Facebook and Twitter in social network field.

And someone also pointed out the potential harm to the users in community caused by real-name policy:

      I.        Online and offline harassment.

    II.        Employment and service discrimination.

   III.        The reality of physical threats.

  IV.        Arrest, imprisonment or judicial control.

    V.        The economic harm, such as job loss, loss of professional reputation and so on.

In general,  in the process of creating an account,  the name should be in line with Google's policy to avoid personal account banned by Google.
 if Google user's personal account was suspended or deleted, the user will not only  be unable to use Google+ community, but also impossible to use other Google products such as Buzz and Google +1 which are all personal-information-required. However, users of Gmail and Blogger accounts are not affected by this restriction.

Reference: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/07/22/spat-of-the-day-google-removes-business-profiles/

http://www.google.com/intl/zh-EN/+/policy/content.html

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/vic-gundotra-on-how-google-handled-brands-it-was-probably-a-mistake/

http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=1228271

https://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=name_appeal

The Social Travel Revolution

No need to explain, check the pic below!!

死链接对SEO影响

死链接出现的情况

• 动态链接在数据库不再支持的条件下，变成死链接
• 某个文件或网页移动了位置，导致指向它的链接变成死链接
• 网页内容更新并换成其他的链接，原来的链接变成死链接
• 网站服务器设置错误

死链接对SEO影响

1、损失用户体验。不要无视一个死链接带来的影响，用户体验是影响SEO的重要因素，而死链接让用户访问受阻，必然影响用户体验，用户体验才是网站最终发展的基石。

2.死链接会损失PR值

• PR值是通过链接来传递的。网站中存在死链接无疑会造成网站内部PR值的流失。 　　
• 假设一个网站的网站结构布局的相当好，但是在网站当中存在不少的死链接，那这个网站的结构设计的再好，也发挥不了用处。

3、损伤内部链接。内部链接优化是SEO的根本，若网站内存在许多死链接，那么这个网站内部链接部署的再好，也难以发挥作用。

4、损失网站权重。搜索引擎蜘蛛如果爬行到太多死链接，会影响对网站的权威性和友好性的判断，导致网站在搜索引擎中的权重降低，从而影响到网站排名。

5、损失搜索引擎排名 　　假设你某个网页没有变成死链接之前，这个页面在搜索引擎上有良好的排位。但如果因为缺乏有效的SEO项目管理，页面变成死链接之后。这个页面的搜索引擎排名，不会超过1个星期的时间，马上就会在搜索引擎上消失掉。

如何防范死链接

1、网站上传前，利用网页制作工具检查链接情况，以将无效链接扼杀在上传前。

2、提高网站管理人员的意识，定期使用网站死链接检测具，来查询网站是否存在死链接。

3、解决网站程序错误。

如何处理死链接

1. 如果能用死链接检测工具在蜘蛛还没有爬过来的时候就能解决最好了，如果已经收录了那么代表已经引起降权。

2. 做404页面，这种方法是目前最常用的方法了。如果遇到死链接自动跳转到404页面，这样就不会对网页权重造成大的影响了，可参考404页面一文来设置。

3. 可以使用robots文本来屏蔽搜索蜘蛛对一些页面的访问，这也是对一个很好的方法.

Google began enforcing its ban on all Google business profiles

After warning people about it for weeks, Google began enforcing its ban on all Google business profiles this morning, to much consternation from, well, businesses. Yes Google did warn people at the launch of Google+ that any non-human pages would be killed and that people shouldn’t be surprised that the pages were killed…

But of course, like when anything is axed on the Internet, people were up in arms. Let’s see what Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan has said：

‘Some of the biggest company/brand accounts on Google+ have now — finally, some might say — been removed.

Google has been removing business/brand accounts for more than a week now, but some users were unhappy with the random nature of the process. Some accounts were zapped early on while others seemed to get special treatment, or at least were ignored, and continued to increase their following.

It’s been a rocky few weeks for companies and brands wanting to have a presence on Google+. Within a week of Plus’ launch, Google announced that business pages would be coming soon, but days later had to ask brands to stop making new accounts. Google eventually invited businesses to apply to be part of a test program and accepted applications through last Friday.

Frankly, the entire thing is a mess. Google Profiles allowed for non-human use long before Google+ existed. Search Engine Land, for example, had a profile with Google Buzz (and still does) before this change happened.

Those profiles all now need to be axed, because Google either didn’t think clearly about the obvious need for businesses to be on Google+ or didn’t devote the resources to make it happen? Crazy.’

Google Social Head Vic Gondutra’s solution was to choose a figurehead from the organization to represent the brand and deal with the interim months between now and when the Google+ Business pages launch that way. Gundotra told me that in hindsight the treatment of brands in this way was “probably a mistake.”

Of course the whole thing is exceptionally ill thought out. Using the Pete Cashmore switchover as an example, Gundotra says that Cashmore recognized that he made a “mistake,” and that’s why he changed the Mashable profile to Pete Cashmore; 


But, wait Cashmore already had a Google+ profile with 40K followers when he was allowed to switch the Mashable account (and its over 100K followers) to his personal one. So now Pete Cashmore has two (!) personal accounts. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound at all like “complying with the rules” to me.


When asked if he would take Google up on its solution Danny Sullivan said, “Honestly at this point it’s not that important to me, to have someone go in there and pretend to be our business off of their personal account.” Indeed, as this kind of pullback and “oh here’s a workaround wink wink” strategy creates mistrust between platform and users. “Putting the business genie back in the bottle is just going to generate a lot of ill will,” Sullivan expained.

Reference:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/vic-gundotra-on-how-google-handled-brands-it-was-probably-a-mistake/

http://searchengineland.com/google-removes-mashable-sesame-street-other-prominent-accounts-from-google-plus-86788

Women really do pack twice as many clothes as they need when they take a summer holiday

It confirms all the worst suspicions of their partners.
这证实了所有伴侣们对女性的怨言。

Women really do pack twice as many clothes as they need when they take a summer holiday.
女人确实会为夏日出游打包过多的衣服，事实上她们会用到的却只有一半。

The average British woman packs 44 items of clothing for a two-week getaway but will only wear just over half of them (61 per cent), according to a survey.
根据一项调查，英国女性平均会为两周长的假期打包44件衣物，但其中只有刚过半数（61%）的会穿到。

She packs 18 tops, 12 pairs of shorts or skirts and six bikinis for a fortnight abroad, but of these, she will only wear 12 tops, six pairs of shorts or skirts and three bikinis.
为一次两周的出国游，一个女人会带18件上衣、12条短裤或者裙子和6套比基尼，但事实上她只会穿到12件上衣、6条裤子或裙子以及三套比基尼。

And the rest of the room in the suitcase will predictably be taken up by shoes, with the average woman taking eight pairs away with her.
而行李箱剩下的空间则都被用来装鞋，平均每个女性会带8双鞋。

More than a quarter (25 per cent) of the 3,000 women surveyed even found space for more than 10 pairs despite three quarters (75 per cent) wearing only six pairs.
3000名受调女性中有超过四分之一（25%）的表示会带上十双鞋以上，但同时又有四分之三（75%）的承认只会穿六双。

And it’s not just the added weight that is likely to rile their partners, for the value of all those clothes in the average woman’s suitcase is £1,140.
不单是行李的重量会让同行伴侣头疼，女性行李箱里衣物的平均价值更是达到了1140英镑。

The research also reveals that women spend an average of four hours packing their holiday wardrobe while one in 10 of those surveyed admit to deliberating over what to take for 12 hours or more.
这项研究还显示，女人平均会花上四个小时整理夏日出游的行李，受访者中还有近十分之一承认要用12个小时以上的时间来决定带什么。

Though perhaps surprisingly, women apparently hate packing. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) admitted that it left them feeling stressed while more than a fifth (21 per cent) said packing a suitcase was more stressful than going to work.
虽然这可能会有点出人意料，但女人其实讨厌打包。有近四分之一（23%）的受访者承认打包让他们觉得压力很大，甚至有超过五分之一的（21%）说打包行李比去上班还让人头疼。

And, of course, most women shoulder all the responsibility for sorting out the summer holiday, with nearly a third (31 per cent) organising it with no help from their partner.
当然大部分女性会负责夏季出游的事宜，有近三分之一的受访者（31%）甚至会全权负责。

Cary Cooper, Professor of Psychology at Lancaster University, said: ‘Women plan ahead and pack for a whole range of situations. 
兰开斯特大学心理学教授Cary Cooper说：“女性一般会提前计划，为所有情况预备衣物。”

‘Take just a meal out – women will ask themselves what sort of meal it is. Is it smart, casual, somewhere in the middle?
“即便只是出去吃个饭，女人也会自问说这将是什么类型的就餐。是该穿正式点的，随便点的还是两者之间的。”

‘Most women will pack enough clothes for all these eventualities. It’s no surprise that women tend to pack a lot of shoes, as of course shoes need to go with all the various outfit combinations.’
“大部分女性会为所有可能发生的情况都准备好衣物。所以女人带很多双鞋也就不足为奇了，毕竟每套不同类型的服装都要搭配不同的鞋子。”

Lee Mooney, head of travel insurance at The Co-operative, which commissioned the survey, said: ‘It will come as no surprise to learn than many women are packing far more than they actually need. 
组织了这项调查的旅游保险公司总裁Lee Mooney说：“大多数女人都会多带好多用不上的东西这点并不让人吃惊。”

‘Not only do people over-pack, but holidays are often an excuse to spend more money as people will often buy new clothes to take away with them.’
“人们不仅会过度打包，而且假期也会是花更多钱的绝佳接口，很多人都会为出游而特意买新衣服。”