Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

If you don't know what Google+ is then you can read on and find out . Google+ unlike Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn, Live Messenger or Facebook is not just a social network. And while all those mentioned have different elements of social networking in them unique in most cases to each one, Google+ contains elements of them all, and then does it a completely different way.

The most different thing about Google+ is the circles. Simply put circles are overlapping groups that can be created very easily and you can add your contacts to them. You can then easily share posts with different circles. If you need a new circle for a specific reason, just create one, add some people to it and away you go. Additionally, people don't need to be your "friends" in order to follow you and vice versa. Thus you can broadcast to a circle including people who aren't following you, ad they can broadcast to you. Muting or blocking a person is easy.

Hangouts and Huddles are real time chat tools for web and mobile allowing some pretty cool interactivity to occur.

But how can this be used for business, or even should it be used?

I think there are a number of things to consider here.

I am blogging the HTC Desire S and Le Tour for HTC. The posts I write are all up on their public wall along with the other two HTC Desire S Ambassadors writing from Australia, Shane Miller (no relation) and Scott Fitzgerald.

You can see all the HTC Diaries posts or just my posts.

I will update this article with links to each post as I write them.

• Unwrapping the HTC Desire S
• Personalising the HTC Desire S
• Following Le Tour on the HTC Desire S

I came up with a bunch of different first sentences for this post - but ended up with this lame one because i couldn't decide which to use - potentially they were all lame anyway

• Quiet exuberance hardly describes my emotions…
• I'm off to France - so long suckerssss…
• Say hullo to the new HTC Ambassador…

See what I mean - lame.

Anyway now that that's over let me introduce to you the new HTC Desire S Tour De France Ambassador. Moi!

HTC have selected me to go to France for the last week of the 2011 Tour to be their HTC Desire S Ambassador. What that means is they are giving me an HTC Desire S Android handset and hopefully enough phone credit to go nuts with it over there. I'm to report on the phone and how i use it to keep a daily blog and photos and video of the tour including the awesome Champs Elysees seating package I have. Did i mention its also a cycle tour so i get to manfully (or whimper like a girl) struggle up Alpe D'Huez amongst some other rides including the penultimate days time trial circuit. In addition I get to meet the HTC Highroad team and report on their progress in the tour.

Trepidation, Excitement, Nervous Energy, Adrenalin. Some of the things happening right now. This has been a dream of mine for years. I was planning on going to the Tour Down under next year - but this tops that! No more late nights sitting watching scratchy SBS broadcasts (we live in a poor reception area) - I'm going to be one of those blokes on the side of the road with their shirt off cheering like an absolute idiot as the guys ride by up the Alpe!

Lucky Buggers I used to mutter under my breath. Now I am the Lucky Bugger!

Stay tuned for more.

Follow my tweets on http://twitter.com/spyjournal and facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HTCau?sk=app_251315594884338&app_data=author:tim-miller where my diary posts will be published.

Following on from the success of the www.qldfloods.org website I have been invited to a number of panels, communities and working groups.

Last night I was asked to take some team photos for the Emergency 2.0 Wiki working group committee of which I am a part.

What a comedy of errors!

I set the camera up on the board room table, pointing at the group at the end with the projector screen at the end, set the timer, pushed the button and headed for the end of the table - only to have to leap cables on the way - i made the first tangled in the second and couldn't stop, dragging the laptop running the projector screen to the floor and severing the connection. Thus the photo is of everybody staring at me (to camera left) and laughing - and a purple screen.

The second photo I got there in time, but Eileen decided to lunge for the water bottle at the last second!

After several more spectacular failures including a shot that was ok but with inexplicably a Facebook login screen in the background, we eventually ended up with the desired result. We were all staring at an iPad that had the meeting agenda on it and trying not to giggle!