Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

Google seems to be going all-out with a new departure in the social world. They have an impressive array of tools within the Google+ project, including what looks to be a nice way to organize friends, family, and coworkers into appropriate "Circles", a group chat-type application called "Huddle", and a multi-person video-chat program called "Hangouts", and there's a mobile component too. Participation is by invitation only at the moment while they iron out the kinks, although you can download the Android app to be ready and primed for action. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com and This Week in Google (TWiG) has been playing with Google+ and sharing some fairly positive thoughts on Twitter (@jeffjarvis) along with TWiG co-host Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani). It's early days, but tomorrow's edition of TWiG (#101) should be interesting. Details (and videos) about Google+ can be found at the link below:

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

3G works too

It took a fairly long time to activate the Verizon wireless connection for the Chromebook last night, but it's up and running now, and it seems to work fine. At least Angry Birds worked! I won't get too far with 100 MB of data for a month, but it might be handy for a quick check of my e-mail when there's no WiFi available. $20 gets you 1 GB of data for a month. I'm getting more used to the touchpad and right-clicking. Found a good forum site for users of Chromebooks. It's called thechromebookforum.com and it's very comprehensive. I found quite a lot of information already, and it is a good place to go to learn about upcoming developments and software updates. Overall, today's experience with the Chromebook has been positive. I've been doing all of the normal web stuff that I used to do on my PC laptop, but in a more convenient way. I miss Netflix streaming, however. Hopefully an update will come soon that enables it to happen.

Chrome

Just started playing with my new Samsung Chromebook, which I received today. I got it here. So far, so good. It feels comfortable and was very easy to set up. The keyboard is very nice and the screen looks good too. Feels a bit strange to be cutting myself off from Windows, a big hard drive, all the other amenities that one gets with a desktop computer, but that's part of the appeal. I'd like to see how I can survive online (and in the Cloud) with just this machine and whatever is left of my wits. I won't be using this for work, but will try to use it for personal projects (like this blog) and productivity. Right-clicking is a bit tricky, but I'm getting the hang of it. And at least I seem to able to type. I've been using my home Wi-Fi, but this machine also has 3G capabilities, so I'll test that out soon too.

First Post

So, I've decided to try my own blog. Only ten years too late. It's taken me that long to come up with a title! Felix's Scorpion is a play on "Scorpion and Felix," a fictional short story written by Karl Marx. I've been a bit preoccupied with Marx recently, and for my sins, I've started reading "Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, Volume 1: The Social Determination of Method." Not easy by any means. I had to read the Introduction twice, but I got the gist of it in the end, I think. It's written by István Mészáros, who is a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and author of a number of other books. I'll try to keep at it, and may post some thoughts here. The book is published by Monthly Review Press; you can find their RSS feed at the bottom of the page.