Google Career Certificates

Spotted something interesting at the bottom of the Google search bar today. 

Google Career Certificates 

Google is working with Coursera to allow individuals to complete Google certificates. Up to 500 employees per company, but it looks like solo practitioners can also participate. 

Thought I'd share and encourage you to check it out. 

Blogger Site Map

I'm learning all about Google Analytics and the new GA4 code and how to add to a site to get data. I've got to figure out some data pieces so I'm testing these iterations on websites I can control.  Today's new hack is how to add a sitemap to a Blogger site.

Kudos to Xomisse for a simple fix. Just go find the one Google already made LOL.  Sometimes things really are simple.  

So, I've launched a new tag, I've added a site map, now we'll see what kind of fancy data I get back. 

Data and Google Sheets

As the year begins to wind down, I start to work on my spreadsheets for taxes.  I try to keep up with them all year, but it gets really serious in December! 

I've begun to realize that I can reference data from one place to another and not duplicate things.  The best site that helped me figure out the right string to include was WikiHow.Tech, specifically their instructions for pulling data from one sheet to another in Google.

The single quotes around the name of the sheet was the key.  It's amazing how one keystroke can stop things from working!

Facebook

So, yesterday facebook changed everything again. Annoying. Most of my friends reacted negatively too. Couldn't find things I normally scanned in the morning, lost the train of the feed on several occasions etc.

Interestingly my college aged son wondered what the big deal was. He has the updated feed but didn't care about it. My high school daughter didn't even notice, but then again she only uses FB on a mobile device.

Which got me to thinking. Why was I so annoyed and they so unaffected? My guess would be that they share everything with their friends. I don't.

I started sorting into two main groups over a year ago, people I actually know and acquaintances. The acquaintances got sorted into a group that locked them out of the details of my life. We could message one another, we can play games together, they can invite me to their events, but they couldn't see the pictures of my kids. I also used the lists option to sort my feed, my preferred method was to view status updates and I hid the feeds of many of the games, groups I was asked to like etc. When it was time to play Cafe World or Mafia Wars (yes, I got sucked into those games by my kids and I still play) I could sort the feed for game updates and send gifts etc. I was very happy.

Now, facebook has sorted all my friends for me and the feed lists option appears to be gone. If I click the FB games list, I don't see my friends there who play games with me, only the acquaintances. I have to click several places now to see the info that used to be at my fingertips. From a work perspective, I am concerned that the pages I promote will get buried... that we won't be "top news" cause we publish in waves of info and our fans might not see the info we do share.

This afternoon there was a press conference explaining why all of this is so great. Honestly, it just feels like a targeted advertising demographic grab. If I am forced to sort all of my friends into all the categories in which I hold them, Facebook learns a little bit more about my likes. And someday the ads will be more personalized. Honestly, if I wanted to sort everyone into groups I could use google plus :)

So, if you are as fed up with facebook as I am, come find me on google plus. I've already got the circles started over there. I won't leave facebook, too many friends and family there, but I don't think I'll spend the time curating my peeps the way FB wants. I'll just figure out how to view the basics and play the games. And continue to try to keep my private life private.

About.me

Well, new social media platforms are cropping up all over the place. Today Klout partnered with Spotify to give early adopters a way to sign up quickly. While I have a Klout profile, I'm not into the Spotify insanity. I prefer quiet when I code so streaming music is not something I'm going to chase down.

The twitterverse is jumping all over Spotify, so perhaps now Google+ will have a chance to catch up. While many of my colleagues are in G+ now, many are not. So, I'm still checking multiple platforms to pull my info stream together.

As part of a way to streamline my SM, I recalled About.me (http://about.me/cpd623). I had signed up for an account last October but they never notified me when they opened it up. So, I had my name saved, but couldn't access it. Finally got it all fixed this am. Still way too much stuff to check, but until the dust settles, I think I'm in for a lot of touching base all over the web.

Google Plus

Finally got into Google Plus, so now I have to learn about it. A few thoughts right off the bat:
1. People seem really excited to have an alternative to facebook
2. The sorting into circles is awesome. Can control the flow of info much better.
3. The slowness of invites is hampering the process, but may not affect in the long run. We have to remember facebook started off only on college campuses and had plenty of testing time before being opened to the world.

On the negative side, I now have another place I have to check daily, so my time on any platform will be lessened. I also don't know how many of my friends will migrate again. My colleagues are definitely embracing google+, so perhaps I'll end up with a social platform (facebook) and work platforms (twitter and google). In the long run that might be better.