Remember the niceties

A wee while ago, I wrote a post about the social contract of social media and how important it is that we can trust our wider social network, particularly when it is in a professional context.

One of my 'extracurricular' activities is to host an invite-only Facebook group of ICT professionals, most of whom work or have worked on application and web projects. It's a fairly relaxed atmosphere where we share resources, stories, ask for help and generally keep in touch. It's a place designed for trust because you only get in if you're invited by one of the members and as a rule of thumb invitees are people we've worked with and are deemed 'worthy'. It's actually not as snobby as it sounds because really most of us know each other in the real world and are keeping in touch, dispersed around the globe, after working on some pretty gnarly projects together.

To get the most value out of our particular wee group, we occasionally have to speak quite frankly about issues we are encountering to get the best advice and assistance, therefore knowledge of who is listening as well as who is responding and participating on a particular topic is fairly important.

I may be a little old fashioned but I like to think we can be as mannerly in our digital world as we are in the real one and I find it disconcerting that we can lower our expectations just because we're online. Not only is it more difficult for someone joining into a digital activity when they don't know who the others are, it also decreases the trustworthiness of the social circle when there are unknowns that enter quietly and stand in the back.

Whilst most online group interactions are self-assigning and more analogous to attending a community meeting or a running club that meets at the park, there is a subset, usually for work purposes, where membership is for collaborative purposes and knowing each other is quite important, from Moodle student projects groups, Basecamp document sharing, to Government hosted collaboration tools. It is this subset I'm particularly concerned with.

One of the rules I have imposed is that new members get an introduction by whomever has invited them: just a short post about them, why they've been added to the group and a prod to other members to say hey. Usually the newbie at least likes the post or comments to say thanks and hello. Some even write a post themselves outlining what they want to get out of their participation.

Introductions: remember those? That thing you do when two strangers bump into each other and you're the mutual party; or when there's a gathering and everyone else knows each other it's done to ensure your new entrant to the social circle is known to the old hands. Whether it's a Facebook group or an online collaboration tool don't leave it to the surprise post or puzzling comment before people notice there's someone lurking in the room they didn't know was there.

The social contract of social media

I've recently had some strange LinkedIn connection requests. One of them apparently from a senior official of a bank. Whilst not completely unheard for me to receive some unexpected requests they usually come with some explanatory message, for example from agents wanting to discuss an employment opportunity or asking for recommendations. Often it's obvious that they work in a sector related to areas I'm familiar with and there are at least a couple of mutual connections.

I could be considered a bit cagey when it comes to my use of social media channels. I rarely connect with people on LinkedIn whom I haven't actually worked with on something or have some business opportunity to converse over. Having been employed by the same company is not criteria enough nor is a chance meeting and one deep conversation on open source versus commercial at a conference. And whilst I may accept connection requests from colleagues at an organisation I am working with during the term of my engagement, I will look back a couple of times a year and drop connections where I don't envisage an enduring relationship. Likewise my criteria for Facebook friends is either you are an actual friend or family member and we socialise together, you're in my wider social network even if we're not best buds, or I would choose to cultivate a friendship with you outside of work, location or circumstance.

So as you can imagine, I do my homework on people who request connections on my professional network. And my warning bells went off regarding this banker. The account was obviously new, I couldn't validate his position at the bank, our mutual connections first numbered one and then two in the space of a day. Suspicious. It bothered me enough to look up the published board members of the bank and there were no correlating documents, media releases or other useful search results marrying the person and the company. I left it in my inbox and a few days later the invitation disappeared as did the person's profile.

The reason I am careful with my connections and why I prune regularly is because I use LinkedIn as verification, both for myself and for others. Unless we carry out a full security check on every applicant for a job, it's difficult to verify that what's in their CV is actually anywhere near reality. Sometimes evidence is a simple Google search away. If you search for me you'll still find an article on the Lincoln University website regarding the launch of a student intranet and another on the establishment of an IT Project Office: so yes, I really was there to put online enrollment facilities together; I really do know what working in the tertiary education sector in New Zealand requires. But outside of those things, LinkedIn and my connections with other people who've also worked for the organisations I've worked with, is one way to validate me and my experience.

In effect there is a social contract in place that we each will be responsible for validating our contacts and we can rely on each other to be effective gatekeepers. There's the expectation that we allow trusted others into our wider network and that information, such as our contact details, that we restrict to our network is being opened to people who don't have intent to be a nuisance or worse. If we start to distrust that network and begin to lock our information into tighter and tighter security circles we basically undo the primary advantage of having a professional network.

So, in this world of easy click or tap to allow people in I take my duties seriously. Are you playing your part?

Picstitch the weekend party

If, like me, you get snap-happy at events and on holiday and like to share your favourite pics, but don't want to inundate your friends with "Gadget Girl has added 30 photos to the album Doors of Europe", then the answer may be in selecting your favourites and making a collage, picstitch or digital scrapbook page using one of the many available apps for your tablet or smartphone device.

For my iOS devices I have a number of options, depending on the combination of layout, background, frame surround, photo editing and filtering I want to use. Amongst my favourites are Frame Magic and Pic Collage (also available on Android). If you like more traditional scrapbook style delivery, then ScrapPad or Martha Stewart's CraftStudio may be more suitable.

To find your flavour search for apps using "picstitch", "collage", "frame" and "scrapbook" as keywords. There are many options available, regardless of iOS, Android or Windows. Many are free with in-app upgrade options, have a free lite version or have a free trial so figuring out the right app for you is easy.

What I enjoy about this way of sharing pictures is that it allows me to tell a wee story in one delivery, whether simply in the combination of pictures or by the addition of text and sticker elements. It can be quite a fun and creative release.

Straighten up with Instagram

Version 4.1 of Instagram for iPhone (and iPod Touch, iPad) came out on 7 August and now you're able to straighten photos. It's a handy wee feature and one I'm pleased to see has come out along with the ability to upload videos you've already taken from your Camera Roll.

If you're adding a photo from the Camera Roll, straightening is a manual process, however, if you use the Instagram camera to take the photo, tapping the straighten button will result in an automatic attempt at straightening. The belt photos on the top demonstrate manual straightening; whilst the lamp was done using the automatic function.

Instagram

Get your social media on... Instagram gallery feed

One of my blogs is on style, which means it's quite heavy on photos. Most weeks I'll photograph at least a couple of #ootd (outfit of the day), and a few photos of cool items I've found on various shopping expeditions. Not all of the photos result in a blog entry, but I'd still like to share them on the website without having to spend time and energy re-posting.

This isn't a service Instagram offers but thanks to its well-published and extensive application programming interface (API), a number of other services have sprung up that allow further functionality to use your Instagram feed. Yesterday I wrote a how-to on using Statigram's Facebook app to add the feed to your Facebook page. Today, I'll talk you through how to use Statigram's iframe-based widget to add a gallery feed to your blog or website.

If you run a Wordpress site (I don't) they have an easy extension. For everyone else...

What you need

• Access to edit the layout components or templates of your website
• An Instagram account

Instructions

• Go to iconosquare.com and login with you Instagram credentials.
• Select 'Promote' from the top menu.
• Scroll down to 'On your blog & website' and click the 'Get your widget' button in the 'Photo Gallery Widget' box.
• Configure the display settings and click the 'Get code' button.
• Copy the iframe code and paste into your website template or page layout component.

Looking to build an effective Instagram strategy?

Get your social media on... Instagram feed on Facebook

So, you've been busy snapping photos to help engage with your customer or fan-base on Instragram. After all that effort for something so fleeting, you want to share the feed without reposting every instagram to your Facebook page and having the crossover group receive multiple notifications. Solution? Add your Instagram feed to your Facebook page. It's quick, relatively painless and is a simple as a step-by-step wizard.

And, if you're conversing on Instagram using a special #hashtag, such as #gadgetgirlfiles, you can even add a feed for that #hashtag and share other people's related 'grams.

It all starts by going to https://apps.facebook.com/instagram_feed. First you'll be asked to log into your Facebook account, one with management rights over the Facebook page you want to add the feed to. After selecting the page you want to manage, you repeat the login but this time for your Instagram account. Give permission for the two accounts to play together and that's it.

There are further settings, such ordering the #hashtag feeds and imposing moderation once you've added the app to your Facebook page.

Get your social media on... Google+ badge

The next in our social media series is on how to add a Google+ badge as featured on this blog. Similar to the Facebook like box, the work is essentially done for you.

What you need

• Access to edit the layout components or templates of your website
• A Google+ Page

Instructions

Go to https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/. Either enter the Google+ URL you want to create the badge for or log in to access all the profiles, pages and communities associated with your Google account. Configure the settings until you get the result you want. Simply follow the instructions to insert the generated code into your website template or content.

Google+ Platform

Get your social media on... Facebook like box

For a couple of my blogs, I use social media to promote content and engage with readers. You'll notice that there are links on the header navigation to the Gadget Girl Google+ and Facebook pages, as well as a link to the Twitter account.

The merits of engaging through social media channels isn't the topic today. Instead I wanted to share how simple it can be, using the readily available online tools, to provide links to social media assets from your own website or blog.

Today's how-to is to add a Facebook like box, as featured on this blog.

What you need

• Access to edit the layout components or templates of your website
• A Facebook page

Instructions

Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/ and change the default URL to your Facebook page URL. Configure the settings until you get the result you want and click "Get Code". From there, simply follow the instructions to insert the plug in code into your website template or content. There are a variety of options, from a simple URL call to iframe and HTML5.

Facebook Like Box

Signing out of Google+ Hangouts

I rarely take a negative view on change: I view that improvement is a type of change and sometimes on the way to better we have to give something up; a trade-off if you will. Occasionally, I find myself having to have a wee rant.

Google messing about with both Talk and Hangouts, two wonderful functions of which I have long been a loyal user, has gotten me very annoyed. Not only has the replacement of Talk on Android with the unified version of Hangouts produced a messy, lesser functioned product which is as unusable on iOS and almost as unusable on the GMail client, the browser version now inserts itself persistently anytime you are logged into Google+. And this applies when you simply want to go in and play around with photos on what used to be Picasa Web!

I consider myself pretty adept at things technical, particularly in the application and web space but for the life of me I can't figure out how to better control this widget. This loss of control of when I'm logged in, what my status is and the inability to actually see who's online and seeing me is a significant reduction on privacy control and I really, really don't like it.

So, Google, you're losing some kudos here. To think we pile vitriol onto Facebook for their loose and ready application of privacy and security but at least I can specify who sees me online for chat and I can log it out whilst I play with my photos. And for all open hostility for Apple's lack of customisability and configuration without jailbreak I can figure out most applications without being reduced to googling "how to log out hangouts without logging out google+".

If you check out the forums, I am obviously not unique in my frustrations: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chat/0edQ0n1aGD8.

Sign out of Hangouts on Google+

Because I had quite a difficult time figuring it out, here's the Gadget Girl guide to logging out of Hangouts on the browser. Remember, if you've been upgraded to Google+ Photos from Picasa, you'll want to check this out.

1. Click the little green and white hangouts quote mark button on the right of the header
2. Click the arrow at the top of the hangouts bar, next to the 'New Hangout' field
3. Sign out is at the bottom of the list