7 Circle Management Tips That Will Increase Your Google+ Experience

For those of you that use Google+ (which is awesome, by the way, especially on the iPhone) here are some great tips as suggested by photographer and fellow G+er +Billy Wilson.

Many people complain that they won't circle someone who posts something in the neighborhood of 20 times a day, the good news is that with circles you can have someone circled and never see their posts. Here are some of the ways I keep my circles organized. Doing this as early on in your G+ experience as possible is recommended, since putting together and organizing a lot of people takes a lot of time.

1. Create Circles for Content You Want to Consume: Not everyone I circle I want to see posts from, I have +Britney Spears and +Paris Hilton in my circles (see tip 7 why) but I never see a single thing they post because they aren't in my circles of content I want to consume. You also have a volume control on your circles if you like looking at your main stream. 

2. Divide the Content You Want to Consume Into Smaller Priority Based Circles: There are many people on Google+ I wouldn't mind seeing posts from, but some people I like to see more often than others. So I have a series of circles dividing people who I want to see content from starting with people who I don't want to miss and ending with a series of circles containing people I'm not too connected with yet but still want to keep up with and interact with on occasion. 

3. Divide the People Who Produce Content You Don't Want to Consume Into Circles: Doing this helps me remember why I circled someone, for instance I might love hanging out with a person but I find the content they post utterly annoying, so I put them into my "People To Hangout With" circle which is the circle I tend to select when doing a limited hangout. +Britney Spears and+Paris Hilton are in my "Celebrities Who Don't Interact" circle and I mainly just have people like them circled to keep track of big names and when they are hanging out on G+ (see tip 7).

4. You Can Limit Which Circles Are Publicly Displayed on Your Profile: I don't really want to boast that I have a lot of mainstream celebrities on G+ circled so most of them are in circles that aren't publicly displayed. I find this to be a good measure to limit who's displayed since it will affect the "IN COMMON WITH YOU" box you find on people's profiles (found only on profiles with less than 14,000 followers). I don't want to look like I'm following and supporting people I only circled just to organize and see if they might be hanging out (see tip 7). I'll give an example as to how "IN COMMON WITH YOU" works, on G+ I have +Summer Holmquist circled publicly, so if you have me in your circles and go to her profile page, on the right above where it tells you who she has in her circles it will say "IN COMMON WITH YOU" if you hover over that box and click "View All" and type "Billy Wilson" into the filter box I will come up as one of the people who you have in common with her. You can select which circles you have displayed publicly by clicking "Edit Profile" at the top of your profile page, then click the box that displays who you have in circles and you can select who can view this (your circles or public) and which circles will be shown. People will never know which circle you have them in of course, just that you have someone circled or not if you chose to show a particular circle.

5. Create More Circles to Organize People: Even when I have someone circled I like to add them to more circles. For instance I have circles for people I enjoyed hanging out with, people who are artists, Canadians, scientists, musicians, photographers, Googlers; into technology, news; I know from Flickr or Youtube; people who have been on my show, and so on.... This way I'm not just pigeonholing someone based on only one thing.

6. Create Hangout Invite Circles: When you start a hangout that is public or a limited one to more than 25 people, they won't get a notification in the top bar or in chat. So it's a good idea to make a handful of circles with 25 people each that you really want to hangout with so they will be better notified that you want to hangout. It's best to mention you are hanging out in advance in a limited post so people are ready when you invite. 

7. Get +Mohamed Mansour's "My Hangouts" Extension and Make a Notification Circle: I want to know if people I enjoy interacting with are hanging out, and I also want to know if people like +Britney Spears ever actually do take the plunge into hangouts. By using +Mohamed Mansour's extension and connecting it with one of your circles you can be assured that if there's someone you want to hangout with hanging out, you will be notified. 

Morpheus Road

The Black by D.J. MacHale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was amazing how D.J. MacHale tied this second story in the Morpheus Road series to the first. The two stories actually run in parallel - The Light is Marsh's story, The Black is basically the same story from Cooper's perspective. I read these first two stories back-to-back and plan to start the third book, The Blood, today. MacHale is a phenomenal writer. He has a true gift for storytelling. I highly recommend this series. Great for anyone 12 and over!!! (It's a little violent and a little spooky, but nothing that will give you nightmares!)

(And if you haven't read his Pendragon series, you are seriously missing out on some great writing!)

View all my reviews

Memoir of a Mermaid Review

Memoir of a Mermaid: When, at last, he found me. (Book #1) by Adrianna Stepiano
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For some reason, it felt like it took me a long time to get through this book. It's a good story but the writing style is more suitable for a much younger reader. The language slips back and forth between active and passive throughout the whole story, which drives me nuts. Also, the characters' ages are hard to discern. At first I thought Joseph was a teenager based on the way he reacted to Seraphin when he first met her (16?), then it turns out he's a top researcher with CORE (30?), then I find out he's still a college student (okay, 20!). And Seraphin says things that a normal 18-year-old would never say such as this: “Excuse me? How could I have told you? You and Nasani were nowhere to be found—telling us nothing of your whereabouts.”  Ugh - uncomfortable!

The overall story line is cute, though, and I think teens would enjoy it. I wouldn't recommend it for adult readers, though.

View all my reviews

The Value of Good Customer Service

Over the last few months I have relied upon, and been impressed with, better than average Customer Service. In a world where even kids are becoming more jaded and people are out for themselves and commercial competition is always increasing, I'm finding that companies are beginning to realize how good Customer Service can really make or break a business. Here are a few great Customer Service stories that I've recently experienced.

I went to Boscov's Dept store to buy a birthday gift for my 93 year old grandmother. After spending a ridiculously long amount of time searching racks for just the right thing, I took it to the register to purchase. I asked the cashier if she had a box. She said no but I could take my items up to Guest Services, along with my receipt, and they would wrap my gift for free. For free? Really?? I took my gift upstairs, was shown a selection of free and then paid wraps, had a wonderful conversation with the ladies that worked there while my gift was wrapped and ended up giving my grandmother a gorgeously wrapped gift for her birthday. That one simple gesture, which stores used to do all the time (I know because I wrapped gifts at Bamberger's oh so many years ago) simply made my day.

Another company with great Customer Service is Nook2Android. I  purchased an n2a card for my Nook Color which essentially turns my awesome e-reader into an even more useful mini-tablet. Now I can read my books, my email, play games, view my calendars, watch movies and videos, and I don't have to lug my laptop around when I travel. I purchased the card via Amazon.com. That was my first clue that this was a quality product as they have to abide by Amazon's guarantees. (They now sell them from their own website.) But the service with this company is unmatched. They have a public forum on their website and a very active Facebook page. If you ask a question or have an issue with your card, they are right there to assist, almost immediately. I haven't had any hardware issues with my card but I can see on their site where people have had issues and they simply say, "That shouldn't be happening. We will send you a replacement." So far I have seen NO complaints about the card itself and tons of raves about the service. I have had a few questions and have gotten responses right away.  That rarely happens. Way to go n2acards.

My next two examples of good Customer Service are regarding US Airways. I know - not many complements flying in the direction of the airlines these days but I felt the need to point these out. We have been looking forward to vacation all year long. We finally booked a seven night cruise on Royal Caribbean. So excited! Then Hurricane Irene came and threatened to derail our dream. But US Airways stepped in. They posted on their site that if you were flying with them when Irene was scheduled to hit the area, they would waive their change fees and allow us to fly out on an earlier or later date. For a family of four, those change fees would have been $600. I know its something that they kind of HAD to do but we are still extremely grateful. So we moved our flight to the day before Irene was supposed to hit our area. Our plane was full but we took off and landed on time. We don't have to miss out on our vacation. Did I say how grateful we are?

We also experienced the dreaded "lost luggage" fiasco on our recent trip to Puerto Rico and subsequent family cruise. Three of our four bags made it from Philly to PR. My daughter's was the one that was missing. After our initial panic (we were headed out to sea the following day), we filled out the appropriate paperwork to file a claim for the missing bag. The glitch? Hurricane Irene. Philadelphia is shutting down the airports. If we don't get the bag on the next two flights, we would have to wait for the storm to end and that could be days. So we went about our normal routine and checked into the hotel. Had some lunch, explored the town and hoped for the best. Later in the day, I logged into the airline website to check the status of the bag and, lo and behold, our case was closed and our bag would be delivered to our hotel BEFORE we left for our cruise. We got it the same night. We didn't even have to buy new pajamas. I can't tell you how grateful we were. Thanks again US Airways!

My last example is regarding my beloved Nook Color.  My power cord was giving me more and more trouble. I would have to juggle it and then set it in a certain position go get it to charge.  It became very frustrating but I really didn't want to purchase a new one since that cord was only three months old.  I somehow misplaced the original one that came with the device and subsequently had to purchase a new one.  Now I needed cord #3!  Then, of course, the inevitable happened... the cord stopped working altogether! No matter how precariously I balanced it on the edge of the step with the cord dangling to the right and touching the top corner of the front flap...  didn't work! (LOL!)  I emailed Barnes and Noble and sent them the order number of my recent cord purchase.  They sent me a brand new cord within TWO days!  I was so surprised to have gotten it so quickly.  My Nook is working just fine these days.  The quality of the cord feels much better so I think they must have improved on the design since my last purchase.  No more complaints.

At any rate, I thought it would be nice to share some good news, for once.  Hope everyone is having similar positive and happy experiences.  :-)  Cheers!

Angelfall: Penryn & The End of Days

I've been reading a lot lately.  Maybe it's because I love my Nook Color so much that I'm always looking for new stuff to keep me occupied. Maybe it's because I can't stand all of the talking and commercials on the radio so I indulge in the virtually endless supply of "free" audio books supplied by my local library.  Maybe it's because sometimes its nice to just get away from my own life and live a fantasy or romance or adventure filled with unrealistic goals and unattainable desires (like having wings or magical powers).  In any case, when I get the chance, my nose is always in a book.

The last book that I finished was called Angelfall: Penryn & The End of Days (Book #1) by Susan Ee.  It's a teen paranormal fantasy novel which I initially purchased for my 14-year-old daughter.  However, the premise of the book interested me so I added it to my TBR list as well.

This book was so unexpectedly good!  It takes place right after the apocalypse.  However, it wasn't a giant orb from space or another Ice Age that caused earth's demise; it was angels.  (Interesting, right?)

The title character, Penryn has a similar strength and sense of humor to Maximum Ride (from the James Patterson series).  However, Penryn is human; she has no wings and she fights every day to keep her mother and little sister out of harm's way - away from street gangs, rogue angels and other unknown entities.  She is very smart and trusts no one, not even her own mother (read it and you will see why!)

I highly recommend this story.  However, there is one caveat.  The next book in the series is not due out until later this year (an actual publication date has not yet been announced.)  So if you enjoy this book as much as I did and look forward to the sequel, you may have a few months to wait.  I'm drumming my fingers waiting patiently right now...

Mom review: Mild violence and adult inferences. Recommended for ages 12 and up.

The Undomestic Goddess

The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I thought it would be corny... how can a supposedly brilliant lawyer not be able to get herself out of being a housekeeper? But the story is funny and heartwarming and smart. I loved the characters, even Trish and Eddie. It's a light getaway and a perfect chick-lit style beach read.



View all my reviews

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Typical Nicholas Sparks style. Heartwarming, selfless and kind characters mix with a story of revenge. Quick, easy read. If you love Nicholas Sparks (and let's face it, who doesn't?) you'll love Safe Haven as well.




View all my reviews