G+ anyone?

Are any of you up for a FEZ project show an tell on Google+? Or maybe some kind of educational topic related hangout? I realize this forum is THE place to get answers, but it seems like a lot of the posted questions could be more effectively answered with a video demo/troubleshooting session.

I’ve noticed several n00bs asking for FEZ 101 type documentation. A FEZ 101 online “seminar” via G+ would be even better! With some (but not too much) structure, decent bandwidth and webcam, and a healthy dose of enthusiasm who knows what might happen!

I’ve participated in the similar Adafruit show and tell (on Saturday nights) and found it to be an invaluable source of peer information, networking (human kind), and collaboration.

N00bs speak up!

BTW - “Newbie” is not a derogatory term… a good article explaining why [url]http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/11/zen-and-the-art-of-making.html[/url]

An online GHI sponsored FEZ/Gadgeteer user group that meets via G+ sounds like fun. Unfortunately, Google still thinks us paying Apps users aren’t worthy of G+ yet… I’ve watched some of the Adafruit videos. Looks like a lot of fun.

I have seen those videos and I wan’t sure what software it uses (where the video is automatically switched to the person talking). Is that G+ related?!

G+ handles all the video conferencing. It switches to the current speaker automatically, however this “feature” needs some help, as it does not differentiate between vocal and nonvocal noise. This can be really annoying, but a good solution is to have everybody mute their mics, except for the “presenter”.

We should give this a try. Does it also handle recording?

Sounds interesting :think:

Just got better. Google just opened up G+ to Google Apps (paying) users! I’m ready now.

Cool.

I bet they don’t provide any tool to move everything from a regular account to a apps account?

Now you are dreamin’… :wink: However, it’s not nearly as painless as you’d think. Tell your apps account to pull email from your old account, export/import contacts, share calendar from old to new and you’re there. Few hours of work. However, you should be aware that every new product that comes from Google will come to you many months later…

ok, in that case i’ll maintain 2 accounts :wink:

Actually, i was only talking about G+ (friends, circles, …, not email and contacts)

Yea, I wouldn’t bother if it’s only for yourself. It’s great for small businesses or highly-connected families who want to share a single domain name.

So, what should we do for a hangout test? Just introduce ourselves? Demo a project or two? Maybe even get Gus to demo the Hydra? The trickiest part will be picking a time that works for everybody. I vote for a weekday evening after 7pm, and am in EST.

I will join you guys for sure. We need to do this. Just that the past week has been crazy busy.

Hydra announcement + contest come first.

On a related note - Google just (today) added pages for anything that is not a person.

[url]http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-pages-connect-with-all-things.html[/url]

[url]https://plus.google.com/pages/create[/url]

So, how about those announcements? I thought we were supposed to hear something today…

Relax, they’ll announce when they are ready.

@ Gus - about recording, G+ doesn’t do that yet. Adafruit uses UStream, but I’m not sure how. Some kind of video capture app on a participant’s PC should work. I’ve heard it takes a beefy machine to pull it off, though.