Useful Tips to Enhance your Google Plus+ Experience

Google has finally unveiled Google+ which is not yet another service like Google Wave or Google Buzz, but a power packed social network deemed to rise high and hopefully compete with Facebook.

I was invited for an early access to give it a try. So, it’s been a while now since I started using Google+ and I have a strong desire to continue using it.

In this mean time, I discovered about a few tips that can enhance your Google+ experience.

1. Click ‘J‘ to navigate down to the next item or ‘K‘ to navigate up when checking the stream using keyboard.

2. For text formatting:

• (*)bold(*):  Add * before and after the message.
• (_)italics(_):  Add _ before and after the message.
• (-)strike(-):  Add - before and after the message.

3.  You can click on the profile picture on one’s profile to flip through them.

4. If you're sharing a post with a small circle of people, you can prevent re-sharing by clicking on the arrow at the top-right of the post and select "Disable reshare".

5. Clicking on the "Incoming" stream shows stuff from people who are sharing with you, but who are not in any of your circles.

6. To Get Google Plus inside Mozilla Thunderbird, install the Google Calendar Tab add-on in Thunderbird and click on the email link in the top toolbar. Once you do, the Google+ link magically appears in the new tab. Click that and you get a Google+ tab in Thunderbird which is always open.

7. To share posts directly from Google Plus itself to Facebook or Twitter, simply install the Extended share for Google Plus chrome extension. Alternatively, Start G+ extension also does the same job. But if you want to share Google+ posts on more social networks, Share+ Social Buttons extension add additional options.

8. Add a “+” or “@” signal to specifically mention someone in a post.

9. To share a post privately with an individual, type their name or email address in the “visible to” field of the “Share” box and then “disable re-share".

10. If you’re annoyed of the repeated notifications for new comments on a post and want to stop receiving further of these, simply click on the arrow at the top-right of the post and select “Mute this post”.

11. You can use the “Scroll wheel” of your mouse to easily navigate through the photos of an album in the gallery.

12. Hitting “Enter” when focused on a Post opens up its comment box.

13. While on the “Home” tab, press the “Q” key twice on the keyboard to search or add a person to your chat list.

14. If you’re a Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome user, and would like to revert back the color of Google’s navigation menu bar from black To white, simply install this Greasemonkey userscript named Google light Menu bar. Or, install the Google+ : Facebook stylish extension to make Google+ look like Facebook. Alternatively, there’s this Google Plus bar color changer extension that lets you configure the color of the Google+ bar to your favorite one.

15. To invite all your Facebook friends to join Google Plus, perform the following steps:

1. I. Create a Yahoo! Mail Account, and import all of your Facebook contacts by clicking on “Contacts” at the top, and then “Import Contacts”. Authorize Facebook access to your Yahoo! address book.
3. II. Log in to Google Plus and navigate to your “Circles” Tab.
5. III. Click on “Find and Invite”, and then select Yahoo! Then Import your Facebook friends to the “Suggestions” section and then drag everyone into the appropriate “Circle”.

16. Holding down the “Shift” key on your keyboard while dragging people between circles, preserves your selection.

You probably know that to copy people from circle A to circle B, you open circle A ("View circle in tab"), select the people you want to copy, then drag them to circle B. But if you shift-drag your selection from circle A to circle B, the selection remains intact after it's copied into circle B. You can then click "Remove" to remove them from circle A.

End result: you've moved the selected people from circle A to circle B!

17. Install Surplus: a Google Chrome Extension to get Google+ notifications right beside your address bar even when the Google+ tab is not open.

18. A new browser extension called Google+Facebook supported by Google Chrome, Firefox and and Internet Explorer, which once installed, adds a Facebook tab to your Google Plus+ Dashboard, switching to which will initially request full access to your Facebook account, for it to be able to deliver and post Facebook updates.

Similarly, to add a Twitter tab that shows your Twitter timeline and also lets you Tweet right from within Google Plus, with support for URL shortening and photo sharing, install the Google Chrome extension named Google+Twitter.

19. Google recently revamped the navbar on top of Google+ and other Google products. The new, black navbar houses links to your often-used Google services, and the Google+ Enhancer userscript (with support for Firefox, Chrome and Opera), makes it even more useful by adding unread item(s) counts for Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Calendar.

20. Google+ notifications appear on the top-right corner of the new black Google navbar that shows up on top of Google sites. But if your work email address is associated with your Google+ Account, you might want to focus more on work and consider disabling the Google+ Notifications to avoid distractions by installing the BlockPlus extension for Google Chrome.

21. Got a post in your Stream in a language you don't know? In Chrome, if you click on "Link to this post" in the post's menu, the post will open up in a new tab. Chrome will then offer to translate it for you. Alternatively, Chrome extension: Helper for Google+, adds two links to all the posts in Google+ - one to translate the post and second to tweet it.

22. Create a circle named "Me" and add just yourself to it. Use it to save drafts and save copies of posts for later by writing a draft & then sharing it with "Me", which can later on be edited, and Re-sharing a post with "Me" for later.

23. This one is more of an advice. If you want to reshare a Public post but don't want to fork the comments thread, do this:

i. Click on the little menu next to the post you want to reshare and click, "Link to this post".

ii. A new browser tab will pop up. Copy the URL from your address bar into the clipboard.

iii. Reshare the post. In your own comments, add, "Comment at: " and paste the URL.

iv. Once posted, click the little menu next to your reshare post and click "Disable comments".

Performing step i & ii can be made quicker by right-clicking the timestamp next to the original poster's name and clicking on "Copy URL" or "Copy Link Address" or however your browser does that.

24. Installing a Chrome extension called Tweets +1, adds +1 button next to every tweet on Twitter.com.

25. Though the search box on top of the Google+ website allows you to find people on Google Plus, it does not display public posts about a particular topic.

Anything that happens on Google+ can be made public with the world, if someone chooses to do so. And, to find out what people are talking about a particular topic, simply go to Google.com and in the search box, put in the following as your search query and hit Enter for the results:

site:plus.google.com inurl:/posts/ <topic>

Similarly, you can also search for like-minded people with similar interests by navigating to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/search?q=<keyword>&tbs=prfl:e&safe=strict

This string searches Google Plus for profiles that mention the keyword. To make this search about your interest (like: dancing, singing, blogging, etc.), simply change/replace the keyword in the string and paste the URL in the address bar.

Chrome makes this easier by settings up two special search engines. To setup the two options, you’ll need to go to Chrome’s settings and input the following in the “Other Search Engines” area.

To enable search for Google+ Posts:

Column 1: G+ Posts

Column 2: post

Column 3: {google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s

To enable search for Google+ Profiles:

Column 1: G+ Profiles

Column 2: profile

Column 3: {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&tbs=prfl:e

Once done, you can search from the Chrome address bar by typing “post” or “profile”, then press [tab] key and enter the keyword to search for.

Alternatively, you can use findpeopleonplus.com, to search for people by Name, Profession, Location, Interest or anything else.

26. Your Google Plus profile URL is really long and difficult to remember because every Google Plus profile has a unique 21 character numeric ID attached to it. No one can remember such a long string and it becomes really difficult to promote your Google Plus profile. But there are a few services like Gplus.to and zipl.us, that offer you to shorten your Google+ profile URL into a short, easy to remember vanity URL.

You can also add one’s Zipl.us URL as a subscription in your feed reader to receive their updates via RSS!

Zipl.us, also has its Google Chrome extension called Quick Jump. Once you’ve installed it, just type "+ [TAB]" followed by your friend's zipl.us badge, and you will jump straight to their Google+ page!

Alternatively, if you set a username for your Google Profile, then you can use that personalize profile URL to get directed to your Google+ Profile now, as both have now been integrated, like - profiles.google.com/<username>
That might be a bit longer, but sounds and seems official.

27. Installing the +Photo Zoom extension for Google Chrome, allows you to easily zoom photos and profile pictures from your Google Plus Stream by simply hovering over them.

28. G+ Extended extension for Chrome, provides you with additional keyboard shortcuts to make navigation easier, including +1 (+), share (s) and expand comments (e).

29. Some of the posts shared on Google+ might have long list of comments and you actually might not be interested in that thread. Installing Comments Toggle extension for Chrome, will hide the comments and you can view it by togging them. You can also try out Google + Comments extension which does the same job.

30. Installing Chrome extension: Usability Boost for Google Plus, adds some useful CSS styling to Google+ interface by grouping each post into a section along with its comments.

31. Installing the Notification Count extension for Chrome, shows the number of new notifications you have received on Google+ on the top navigational bar without having to open the Google+. When you click on the notification button, you will be taken to your Google+ account.

32. Google+ Tweaks is a new extension which will tweak the layout, hide elements and make Google+ more cleaner. Since Google+ has lot of white space, you can even expand it on your screen to make use of the complete screen space. Similarly, Google+ Ultimate extension for Chrome allows you to remove certain elements from your Google+ account when viewed in Chrome.

33. Plusbar for Google+ adds an audio and video media player to the top of your stream. At present, it offers Amazing Radio, DFH Radio, Grooveshark, BBC News and TWiT livestream options.

Did you know that…?

#1. You can drag photos & videos from your desktop or any local folder on your computer and drop them into the “Share” box?

#2. All photos uploaded in Google+ won't count towards your free storage quota on Picasa.

Now you know ;)

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