Google has recently created a new service on Google+ which are called communities. It looks to me like this may be useful as potential future for the Pianotech list. This is different than the Google Group which already exists. I have created a Google+ Community called Pianotech and set it up as public but memberships must be approved. The interface is pretty simple to use and it is very easy to include pictures or videos. It seems friendly to email at least in receiving posts and commenting on them. I'm not sure about creating a new post from email. I have been experimenting with this using Gmail which is better connected to Google+. I don't know how well the email works with other systems. There is a nice Google+ app for IOS systems that works beautifully. Google+ is Google's attempt to grab some of Facebook's space. Whereas Facebook makes all your posts public unless you say no, Google+ lets you create circles of people with common interest and send your posts only to them. You can also make your posts public. You do need a Gmail account and use that login for G+. The only thing obviously in question is archiving. We don't know how long posts will be retained. There is a good search of the community to find old posts. (This is Goggle after all) I'm sure we will find other questions or issues as we mess with this. I do find using G+ is easier than my.ptg, and the mobile app for G+ is already created. I can see that my.ptg will be more useful for committee work where we want post to carry over to a new group of people. It looks like G+ might be a good option for something like Pianotech. Google is a major player and is committing a lot of resources to this. I'm sure this will be updated constantly. I am coming to like G+ better than Facebook as a communication place. The photos from my phone upload automatically to a private folder and can then be shared in any post. This makes sharing them easier. I would like to get some more of you to subscribe to this community and let us experiment with it. This is in no way an official PTG function, it is just a group of techie members experimenting with a new service. The Pianotech Google group never gained much traction. I would say G+ would be a good replacement for that. I hate to create yet another group, but this one looks promising. I also wanted to grab the name Pianotech for it. If you would like to try this out, go to google.com and set up a gmail account. (I would highly recommend that anyway since it is a great mail service) Then go to https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105661078186330061386 and use you Gmail login there. I will have to approve the memberships but will watch it carefully. I set it up that way to try to keep down spammers from joining just to spam the community. Thanks, Ron -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ronald Berry Piano Service Indianapolis, IN 317-255-8213 ron at berrypiano.com http://www.berrypiano.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ask me about Healthy Chocolate! http://www.BerryGoodChocolate.com <http://www.berrygoodchocolate.com> Public Key http://www.berrypiano.com/key/Ron_Berry.txt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20130109/383ba284/attachment-0001.htm>
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