Communication Assignment Help

Write short notes of about 150 words on any four of the following:  i) What are the barriers to communication? How would you remove them in your communication? ii) Discuss the role of body language in communication. iii) What makes a group discussion successful? iv) (living examples (not liom the course material), discuss the difference between Homonyms, I tomophones. IIomographs. and…

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Had a bit more fun with 8-bit synths today. :P

Google+

Hey there! It’s Disengage time again and today I thought we’d take a brief walk through the new landscape of social networking that is ‘Google+’. Unveiled recently without much fanfare the site is currently in an “invite only” phase (similar to how gmail started out really) however I’ve gotten in and have been poking around.

The first thing I noticed about it when getting in was the clean, simple, visually nice layout. With nice colours, simple yet effective icons and a straightforward layout it wasn’t hard to get used to or enjoy. Of course it’s nice that a lot of things are in the same place as they are on Facebook.

Next thing that hit me was circles, which is how your ‘friends’ are managed in google plus. This is really where this network is set aside from facebook. Instead of just lumping everyone in as a “friend” Google+ operates different ‘circles’ that you simply just drag and drop contacts into (in a very visual and cool way which I found very satisfying). You start out with Family, Friends, Acquaintances and Following circles by default for your first few contacts. The first three are pretty self explanatory but the last one I can only assume is for people you want to receive updates from but are not interested in interacting with yourself. This could be potentially for celebrities or something like that I think.

The whole circles idea is a great one I think. So you organise all your contacts into these ‘genres’ and then anything you post can be sent out to 1 or more of your circles, thus giving you greater control over who sees what you post, also who you interact with and who pops up on your news stream. Also you can limit your personal information to specific circles eg. if people start adding me on Google+ because they know me from my youtube show ‘The Tomophone’ then they I can allow them to see my business email, twitter account and youtube homepage link but can then hide my personal email, phone number or any other personal info on my profile. I can do this but making the former available to everyone on the web while confining the latter to my friends circle. This is really clean and much more personal than facebook and makes privacy a really easy thing to navigate.

The only thing that is perhaps missing is an exclude feature. For example if I wanted to post a business related article that maybe my friends and family would not want to see but that I want everyone else to see I would like to be able to set it as viewable by the general public except my family and friends circles. However I’m hoping this will come in an update as it seems like a pretty basic thing.

Another thing I loved is the +1 button. This is clearly google’s answer to facebook’s like button but it’s something I like and it resonates with me more for some reason. However they serve the same purpose and as a result I don’t want to dwell on it too much. Maybe it’s just my RPG brain loves getting +1’s. This button also extends to other websites much like facebook like button has and any page that I +1 will show up on my profile as a recommendation to my friends or whichever circle I choose to make that information available to.

Lastly I noticed this thing on the side called ‘a hangout’. It’s essentially just a video chat room that people from your circles can join. So if I wan to hangout with my friends then I just make it available to that circle, or if I want to hangout with my workmates (for business purposes of course) then I open it up to that circle. It just seems really easy to set up and have a good time and the fact that multiple people can be on video at once without any effort is great. Plus I just love the name, it’s so simple yet effective. Anyway that’s Google+.

My final verdict is if a fair majority of my facebook circle comes over and adopts it (which I think they should) then I will make this my primary social network without a second though. The success of this though really depends on whether this generation can be bothered making the switch but google have done a damn good job making it enticing.

-Tom

more stuff that I'm finally getting round to uploading!

More synth fun!