Fons Tuinstra's home

Getting the settings right

Using Hangouts-on-air (HOA’s) is so simple, most newbies get it right without a lot of instructions. Struggling through the many tutorials is not needed to get started (although they become useful later). But from my experiences with newbies as a regular moderator of hangouts, some very basic things can go wrong. So, here are a few instructions to make life even easier.

When you video or mic are not working properly, you might have to adjust your settings. You find the button on the top right of your interface, next to the button to exist the hangout.

An additional interface opens (like you see on the picture), and you can see what webcam and mic the interface is using (or not using). A drop-down menu for each of them allows you to adjust the standard settings for webcam and mic. When you test it, you can see also whether you are setting straight, have no funny things in the background, your hair sits straight, you are properly dressed or are wearing glasses that reflect your PC.

Second tip: try to use a headset, preferably a simple set of earphones, so the chances of producing unwanted noises during a hangout are limited. You can use more advanced headsets too, but to not forget to adjust the settings to the right position, otherwise both your mic or speakers might not work properly.

Hangout toolbox

And since we are in the educational mode, I would suggest to download also the Hangout Toolbox, an app you can find listed when you look for apps, after you have started a hangout (it needs a minor download). Most of those tools you do not need right away, but the lower third, I would suggest to try right away. (It is the interface at the right, click on the icon with a headset and red square). You see the interface at the right.

It allows you to display you name, affiliation and even the flag of a country in the lower third third of your screen. (Make sure it does not cover your mouth!).  Also, do not forget to move the switch in the right-top corner from off to on. Most of the other tools are just for fun or to mass control, things you do not really need when you start.

I regularly do test runs for people who start using hangouts for the first time. You can add me on Gtalk or drop me an email to get included in such a test. Many other hangout users are willing to do the same when you ask them. After that you are ready to join the hangout, and you can then start exploring the many tutorials on HOA’s, to fine tune your operation.

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Image via CrunchBase

This morning Google was kind enough to send another warning that they were going to kill “Google Reader” on July 1, a dreadful act I find as a long-term user of the service. But it does not look like complaining is going to help, so I will start looking for alternatives.

I did so already over a month ago, but that was too early, since many other companies decided to jump on the black hole Google is leaving behind. I did already use Feedly for a couple of days, but they did what I despise a lot: they offered way more service than I wanted.

That have that in common with Flipboard(only they drive it very far): they try to organize information streams in a magazine format. While that looks nice at first view, it is a weird concept. The magazine as we know it, was developed because of limitation you have when you try to put ink on dead trees. In a digitalized world you would expect solutions that help me to organize information in the way I want it, not in the way magazine makers developed last century.

Anyway, at the end of Google Readers nears, more players have popped up, and I expect more to show in the weeks to come. So it is too early to make reviews, and most likely a few of the new players will survive, since the Google Reader users might have different preferences.

Here is a small list of the alternatives I’m still considering (with a few words of explanations). Do let me know if there are more alternatives, and do add a few notes or even reviews to make our choice easier.

1. Feedspot: was suggested after a post at Google+, but I did not have a look at it yet.
2. Feedwrangler: got some very positive reviews and is a paid service (US$ 18.99/y); based on the idea that without subscription as a business model, any other solution might go away again.
3. Netvibes: suggested in other reviews.
4. RSSowl: also suggested after a post at Google+, have not yet checked for review.

When time allows, I will look at these and other services, and provide reviews (unless others do this for me, hint).

5. Novissum: tip in the comments

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Sun is out in full spring-force, so today an outing to a chocolate factory in the Swiss village of Broc, Maison Cailler. Enjoyable drive to the location, and a relaxed tour in a very touristic area. Fortunately, there was the cinema.

Best of the whole Maison Cailler (apart from some stunning views) is the cinema, showing a range of old-time chocolate commercials and chocolate-related movies. Very entertaining, and giving a good insight into the past of history and how its culture had developed.

The exhibition was actually pretty boring and looking at the large amount of mechanic tools used to tell the chocolate story, I feared I was looking at a sensational good exhibition from the 1980s. In the cinema I discovered the Maison Cailler was only opened in 2010 and telling a story that must have been even boring for tourist standards.

While a certain segment of the visitors might not want to be killed by too many details and information, this was actually focused on the lowest denominator. We got of course a nice tasting of the chocolate, and perhaps we are spoiled by more sophisticated Swiss and Belgian chocolate. The mass market this Nestle-owned operation was focusing at, was not our market.

But fortunately, there was the cinema, and while we had to piece together the story here, that alone was certainly worth the trip.

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Almost a year ago the author and speaker Patrick Schwerdtfeger published his story about a religious UK-based scam, trying to get money out of professional speakers. Since then, comments keep on coming in, suggesting this fraud is pretty successful. Last year it was the Emmanuel Evangelical (Baptist) Chapel, Newport, United Kingdom, today a comment reported about the Apostle Chris Rowland and Mary Rowland of New Glory Tabernacle Church London, United Kingdom, but also some seemed to come from South Africa.

In exchange for an attractive looking speaking assignment, the speakers are ask to pre-finance a working permit for the UK (or South Africa is applicable).  At our China Speakers Bureau one of our speakers was also invited. She fortunately asked us to deal with the assignment and it proved to be pretty fast a scam. Our speaker was a UK citizen living in China, so the argument or getting a work permit was already weird. Then, asking speakers for money up front is turning the world upside down: event organizers are supposed to pay them, and we always ask for an advance.

More than twenty comments have gathered at the post of Patrick Schwedtfeger, suggesting not only that the fraud is continuing under different names, and possibly quite successful, otherwise it would not carry on. Fortunately, search engines work good enough and the original post by Patrick is at least some people out of trouble.

I thought it was a good idea to repeat the original warning.

Earlier I described how authorship as a relatively new feature at the Google search functions kicked in for me. Since the feature is pretty new for most even advanced internet users, and there are some side-paths to explore, a few additional observations on how authorship is helping me in getting scores in the search postings. They have implications both for your circle management at Google+ and the way to use Google+ business pages.

To illustrate my points a screenshot of a Google search on the key word “China”. (You can click on it to see the larger image). You will see two entries coming from my activities on Google+, one on the China Weekly Hangout, another on the nuclear ambitions of China. Both also display the logos from the related business pages, making them look more attractive than entries without displaying a picture.

First a word of caution.  Those results are personalized. So, they do not show up for everybody searching for “China”, but mainly for those who have put me in their circles. But that adds another assets of the circle management, most of the top-10 lists for managing your Google+ circles are missing.

Most people look at their circles as a way how they can manage their own information flow (with a current maximum of 5,000). But it also shows it makes sense to try to expand the number of people who put you in their circles in a smart way, by providing content that makes sense to them. If you are, or want to become, an authority on a certain field, that should go along with a larger number of followers, preferably larger than the number of people you follow back.

Most people with a high number of followers are celebrities or people focusing on Google+ related information; my China experience is a relatively off-beat subject, but I do see dozens of new followers showing up in my systems. No clue yet whether they hang on, after discovering my China obsession, but I’m hopeful, since we are still in a building phase.

Yet another observation that proves to be useful for me, and possibly for others. Google typically allows only one of your entries to show up in a personalized search. And sometimes even nothing shows up, this is all at Google’s discretion. But if you put your eggs in different baskets, more than one entry is possible, like in my illustration here. Two of my business pages (one on China’s outward investments, the other on the China Weekly Hangout) show up in the same search results. My guess it that in the future also communities (like my “China Debate” community), might even increase my exposure more.

More observations later.

Update: I did some additional searches today, and my postings show up under all kind of different key words (again: in personalized searches), like education, Nepal, India, Hong Kong Africa, investments. Encouraging.

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Eric Schmidt by Charles Haynes via CrunchBase

Google is making currently drastic changes in how its search engine works. Over the past few weeks I have started to give those changes serious attention, with some remarkable effects.

The workings of the algorithms at Google do work as a kind of black box: as outsiders you can only watch the effects and speculate on what is behind it. But now, for the first time, I can report that the so-called authorship debate is resulting in a higher number of hits for me.

What is it all about, this authorship dingy? According to the debate among the digital vanguard, links to other websites have lost its longest time as the currency that makes search engines run. That focus on links caused a lot of nasty side effects as link farms and SEO firms tried to improve rankings artificially, but for a long time there was no alternative for rankings.

Now, Google has been working on authorship as a ranking feature (dubbed: rel=author). That means you have to link your original posts and websites to your Google+ profile. In that way the search engine can make a link between the post and your ranking as an author, until recently at least in theory.

That changed when a snippet of text from an upcoming book by Google chairman Eric Schmidt his the media earlier this month. It said: “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” (Source: Virante.)

I’m not a straight forward proponent of this way of validating authors and their postings. Especially in China, being able to post and discuss anonymously offered enormous advantages in a country where it is not always done to offer your uncensored opinion. But recent research on Sina Weibo, suggesting that only 10% of their 500 million followers are real people shows that even in China the benefits of posting anonymously have been outflanked by the excesses.

Also, as a common user of the internet, I might disagree on some points with the authorship policy of Google, it does not mean my opinion is going to change their course.

So, apart from following the authorship debate, I tried over the past few weeks to set up the relevant codes for my websites, this one, the China Herald and the China Speakers Bureau. It took a few days to get it properly in place, and fortunately, Google developed a useful tool that analyses what is going good and what is going wrong in terms of authorship. A few days after installing the codes, in my search results I saw my postings show up. It took some fine-tuning: you need to put a headline and short quote from your article in the comment section of Google+ postings, so the search engine picks up the right snippets. You cannot leave that up to the algorithms only.

Searching “Zhang Lijia”

Attached a screen shot of my search for “Zhang Lijia” whose article I used for my first successful tests. (You can click on the image to get a better result). On the second position you see my posting, including my picture and a few words about the posting.

One word of caution to dampen possible too high expectation: these are so-called personalized results, you can recognize them from a little icon left from the post. That means my snippet is not showing up in every search on “Zhang Lijia”, but mainly for those (4,000+) who have included me in their Google+ circles. That is also the additional value for Google+: they develop a sticky, coherent system of validated Google+ profiles.

And to encourage my enthusiasm: even on this slow traffic weekend, I saw the number of hits to this article going up, suggesting the remarks of Eric Schmidt are not only focusing on a remote future. It does not mean the old-style linking has no value anymore for the Google search engine, but the value might diminish over time.

Other links also remain their value, since they are still useful for your readers, but they will lose value as a currency in the search engines. I’m not sure whether other search engines like Bing or Yahoo will take a similar direction, but I wonder if they can afford not to react.

I’m not going to give you any advice on how to set up all these new bells and whistles: the internet is stuffed with them, and you will find both very active participants and communities on Google+. Well, that would be my only advice: if you are not yet on Google+, or only marginally active, it might be time to reconsider.

Update: What makes is even better is that Google notices my postings really very fast. Just now I have sent off a link to a CNET story on Huawei, and just after clicking it away, I searched for “Huawei” on Google. And there was already my link, with pic and referral. Very cool.

English: Google China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s all about the conversation, the digital age. With enthusiasm I embrace every time the new online goodies that facilitate those conversation go online. But now, I increasingly face a dilemma: because of the growing number of really attractive tools, the conversation gets splattered all over the place. Question: should I start consolidating my digital network, or just wait till Google gets the algorithms and search engine in place, so I can continue to focus on the conversation?

My thing is China. That makes my problem a tidbit special, since the country itself is hiding itself increasingly behind a national firewall denting Google’s popularity severely; my discussions are in English, while most of the Chinese tend to speak Chinese. But apart from those extra challenges, I expect that many other conversation managers, community managers or whatever nice names we give ourselves have a similar problem. I focus in this post on all things Google. Of course I have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LindedIn and a few other I might have forgotten, but let’s not make the problem too complicated, since we cannot expect those major competitors are really going to coöperate to make my life easier.

How does the Google-side of my digital life look like?

• Traditionally, the core of my activities was my weblog the China Herald. Powered by Blogger and originally, before the social media emerged in force, my key platform to discuss China-related issues (like this weblog is mainly for non-China related issues). Some people have abolished their weblog for Google+, but I’m not yet that far.
• Some years ago, we set up our China Speakers Bureau, with a related website. It is not really meant to focus on conversations, but more a window to showcase some of our more famous speakers. That is powered by WordPress (a preference of my partner who is doing the technical operation). We try to include those speakers where possible in other operations, debates and conversations, wherever that is appropriate. Well, it is the way we make some money too.
•  So, when Google+ took off, I was one of the first to sign up for a personal account. As things go, it offers a mixture of things: some work-related, some focusing on my previous media past, sometimes more personal issues. I would have split off China-related conversations in the beginning if other tools would have been around, but now it is what it is. It would be hard now to leave out my China connections here.
• Then we got the Google+ business pages. Good idea, so I started the same day my China Speakers Bureau page. Later I added a page for China’s investments abroad, since that seemed a possible new business. And (but we will come to that later) My China Weekly Hangout page.
•  Of course, I embraced the Google+ Hangouts, as soon as the Hangouts-on-air were possible, linking them directly to my YouTube account. The big idea was to use his beautiful system as a marketing tool for the China Speakers Bureau. I could discuss and record discussion with my speakers, one-to-one or small groups, and plaster them on my websites and social media accounts. That did not yet work out very well, because of the slow adoption of our speakers to Google+. But fortunately, there was also a plan B, setting up a weekly open forum with whoever want to have a say on China-related issues. That is also a great way to educate more people in using the system, as I blackmail them into hangouts one by one. Part of the conversation is also directed to the YouTube page.
• To announce those China Weekly Hangouts, I use of course the events page, like here, an upcoming one on education in China. It is a very useful tool to invite people and get additional conversations going. You can show your hangout in this page (and you can do it on different websites, YouTube and other channels). During the hangout, I mostly limit myself to this page, to stop my from getting crazy. I know there are apps to consolidate diverse conversations during the hangout, but that is only a limited solution to my real problem.
• Of course, I embraced the Google Communities tool as an excellent way to support the China Weekly Hangout. So, I started the China Debate community. Only later  I realized that apart from having a new asset, I also had yet another spot where conversations could be going.

You get the idea? It was illustrated a few weeks ago when James Fallows of The Atlantic pushed an unprecedented stream of traffic to our China Weekly Hangout on pollution.  Mostly we get up to 500 viewers for our hangouts, but are now already close to 2,000. Nice, and you do not hear me complain, but none of those viewers had a clue how to participate in the conversation, if they wanted to. They could see the hangout, get to our YouTube account, but had no easy way to join the debate splattered over more than half a dozen places.

It looks like some consolidation on my side could be a solution, although I see not much overlap between my account, my business pages and communities. But I would not exclude that Google is also working on this dilemma, that might hinder more of their users. It would not be the first time to spend a lot of time in trying to find a solution, just to discover Google is providing a (mostly better) solution. How do you deal with this dilemma?

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KFC Localized Logo Beijing China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No month passes without yet another foreign firm trying to enter the China market throws in the towel: they do not make it. The China Weekly Hangout dives on Thursday 31 January Wednesday 30 January into the backgrounds of those failures. Are Chinese governments giving foreign firm a harder time than their domestic competitors. Or is it stupidity on the foreign side who do not get what the Chinese consumers want? Or a combination of both.

Will they survive competition, food scandals and increasingly critical customers?

On Thursday CEIBS-adjunct professor Richard Brubaker will join us and we will discuss both KFC and Apple at length. Yes, both are still successful, but will they hang on?

Richard Brubaker

Last week, in our China Weekly Hangout on pollution, Richard Brubaker mentioned names of foreign firms who do well in China: Alstrom, Siemens, GE and others who offer the quality Chinese companies do not have. But the number of failures seems larger: Media Markt, BestBuy, Google, Yahoo, Caterpillar, B&Q, just to mention a few.

Update: who is next heading for trouble? We bet on General Motors, who is busy jeopardizing their relationship with their China partner SAIC. They should first talk to Volkswagen, who did a similar move in the 1990s.

Do you want to have you say too? Leave your questions at our event page (available here), or register for participation.

The China Weekly Hangout takes place on Thursdays 10pm Beijing time, 3pm CET (Europe) and 9am EST (US/Canada). This week is takes place on Wednesday. You can follow the discussion also on YouTube at our event page on here in this space.

Is this going to be your first Google+ Hangout and do you want to try it out in a dry run before participating. Send me an email, or add me to your Gtalk (if you use that).

Yesterday the China Weekly Hangout discussed how pollution affects the lives of those living and working in China. Participating, Richard Brubaker and Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau.

I just got the English translation of the master work by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo on China’s investments abroad, China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image.

The book has been published first in Spanish, after a massive research effort, bringing the authors to dozens of countries in almost all continents. Looking forward to the read (and a review will follow shortly), although a bit scared that they might have been taken over by an increasing number of publications.

Later more.

Inside of double deck intercity (first class), of the Swiss Federal railway (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The invaluable English-language Swiss website Swissinfo.ch has this weekend two excellent articles about the near perfect public transport system in their country. Two reason for me to be interested: I’m a frequent user of their public transport, and – since I’m Dutch – I know that the Swiss railways are a benchmark for much of the rest of Europe, especially for the Netherlands where train are notoriously late and unreliable. Not not mention Belgium, my other resident country, where trains are typically so late, you do not look up when trains are leaving. There is always a fair chance you can get the previous one, unless there is one of many strikes.

A few quotes from the articles by Chantall Britt (available here and here.)

First about the meticulous planning:

“In Switzerland the timetable is planned to the second,” Daniel Haltner, responsible for train path capacities at Trasse, told swissinfo.ch. “When we communicate that the train leaves exactly on the hour, we even factor in the 12 seconds the train driver may take to react to the signal turning green.”

And about the popularity of public transport:

With popular backing the government has been promoting public transport. As a result, more than two million people – a quarter of the population – have a half-price pass. The Railways’ slogan “Those with a brain take the train” is not only a household name in Switzerland; many also follow the call.

In 2010, every person would have travelled 2,875 kilometres by public transport, a 40 per cent increase since the turn of the century. The average number of annual trips rose 30 per cent to 225 per head, according to the Association for Public Transport.

While Swiss public transport has 19 operators, 95% of the planning of trains is in the hands of one overarching company, called Trasse.  Especially the Dutch have been obsessed with the Swiss railways. In the Netherlands any change of season causes massive delays, whether its autumn leaves, winter cold or heavy rain. The problem, as described here in Dutch, seems pretty simple.

Although Switzerland and the Netherlands have in length about the same railway system, Switzerland spends annually about 50% or euro 1 billion more on infrastructure. That helps, but that might be for  the Dutch an inconvenient political truth: a good public transportation system does cost money.

Of course, the Swiss do complain about the costs of their public transportation, but since a huge amount of the Swiss do not want to change it, they cough up the relatively higher train fares (although, I would not call the Dutch railways very cheap either.)

The Swiss railways face also their problems, as mobility increases. Passenger traffic always got preferential treatment over cargo, but pressure from logistical companies grows for more capacity. The main difference is that in Switzerland politics, and thus the electorate, calls the shots. In the Netherlands and Belgium railway companies still work out the effects of a basically failed privatization operation.

In the Netherlands, the railway companies have included failure into their schedule. They just skip 20% of the trains in advance, before they can run into trouble,