Pneumatised!

An ever-changing life inspired by the pneuma

2011/11/02

Google+ Updates – Redesigned Google+ Android App

Filed under: General — feyMorgaina @ 13:59

Yay! Google finally fixed the sign out issue on the Google+ Android app. Somewhere between the original version of the app and the most recent update (October 31st), they lost the sign out option on the app. For more than a few months (I lost count because it took them so long to fix this), I simply could not sign out of the Google+ app until the October 31st update.

Some things I noticed right away on this update (aside from the new design).

Your circles are listed alphabetically and you can’t reorder them to make it more convenient for you. I noticed this since the main site let me reorder my list of circles and it was reflected in the Android app. I’m now stuck with Acquaintances being listed first. I suppose I could number my circles, but I really shouldn’t have to.

When making a new post, you can select which circles to share with like before, but now everyone is your circles is listed after the list of circles – sorted alphabetically, of course. Since this is a phone app and you need wi-fi or a data plan, I imagine this might take a while to load if you have at least 300 people in your circles. I don’t, but I know some people collect ‘friends’ like other people collect stamps or coins. On the other hand, maybe this is a good thing because it forces people to really think about who to add to their circles. 😉 (Not that I’m complaining about people following me, but I much rather have people follow me because they actually read what I write.)

Some things Google has yet to ‘fix’ (though I guess ‘implement’ is a better word since it’s not in the Android app yet – I’m pretty sure about this since I’ve been using the app since it came out) is the ability to +1 individual comments to a post and the ability to edit your posts. Touching and holding on your comment to a post allows you to edit the comment. However, doing this on your post gives you the option to delete the post, but not the option to edit your post. Someone on my Google+ has also suggested an auto-save feature for posts since Google+ allows us to make long posts (in fact, there is no limit to the length of the post). I agree it would be a good feature to have. It would also make Google+ more like a social blog (Tumblr comes to mind) while having the ability to micro-blog like on Plurk and Twitter.

I guess I can be happy that I can now sign out of the Google+ app. (I occasionally like to sign out on my phone.) For those who are using more than one account, you can now sign out of one and sign in with the other. Hurrah! 🙂

~~~C

Addendum: In trying to post this into Google+ using its Android app, I noticed that the app doesn’t have an option to quickly add a link to a new post. I came back to my laptop to do this. It’d be nice to have the ‘Add a link’ to a new post on the app.