Google+ for iPad

I want to like Google+.  Seriously.  I am an Android user on mobile even though I use Apple everything else.  Mac, Ipad and AppleTV (both of them).  Google+ highlights the value of "the conversation" for me.  For most of my friends and family, the conversation is on Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter.  Since that is the case for me, Google+ is like talking to myself, in a weird room where only Robert Scoble and Bill Gross post.  Good stuff though for what it's worth.  The most valuable thing for me so far has been Google+ contact integration in Android and hangouts.

Hangouts are a really good collaboration tool and to me it kicks the shit out of Skype.  When I have to talk to more than one person I always use Hangouts.

Google came out with a new iPad version of Google+ today and while it looks great and does all the stuff you would expect of a higher end tablet application, it is Hangouts that has me excited.  We did a 3 way conference call at work this afternoon and it was amazing.  The iPad seamlessly handled all the audio and video and was drop dead simple to use.  The best part for me was the nice switching between the various speakers during the conversation.  If you do remote collaboration and have an iPad I would highly recommend using it.

Random Things I Am Using

Started using two new applications in the last couple of days and thought it might be fun to share some of the stuff I have been playing with that is new/cool.

Voxer - I had this on my tech to do list for a long time but couldn't really figure out why I would want to use Push To Talk Technology (PTT).  One of the fantasy football leagues I am in insisted that we all use it so I signed up and overnight had something like 70 messages where two guys were going back and forth about how awesome they are and then talked about all kinds of nonsense.  You have to love starting out with Spam.  Aside from that though, it is a really cool tool for doing asynchronous group messaging and once we get the other guys to figure it out I am sure it will be frequently used.

Google Drive - Saw the Fred Wilson post on Dropbox vs. Drive and installed the Mac client.  So now I have Dropbox, Drive and Pogoplug.  Interestingly Pogoplug is the only one that I think really helps me with anything as the others have such a small size ( 5 gigs) and the main use for me is to do things like archive photos and movies which require 10s of gig.

Waze - Waze rules.  I am not even going to tell you what it is, you just have to get it.  There.  Just kididing.  Waze is a crowd sourced navigation tool that does really cool stuff like tell you where the cops are and where there are accidents etc.  The speed trap finding capabilities and the smart traffic routing when you are driving in places like LA make this a very frequently used app for me.

My new company - ScoreStream

I just recently started a new company called ScoreStream.  I posted our first post here.  Please take a look and check out our application here.