Ninety million users?! On Google+?! What?!

Seven months and Google+ already has accrued 1/8 of the number of users on Facebook (which purports 800 million), and Facebook’s been at this game for eight (8) years. Not only that, but according to a recent article in Hubspot, Experian Hitwise predicts that Google+ will “amass 400 million users by the end of 2012.”

Google+ has definitely thrown down the social networking gauntlet.

But… isn’t this just more of the same in the new-turned-old rivalry between Google and Facebook for domination of the social networksphere?

Yes and no. Yes, this is another development in the long-running battle for dominance between the two Web Giants. But, no, this latest development isn’t just a run-of-the-mill storyline. When you look at the way that Google+ is adding new members (by creating Google+ accounts every time a new user signs up for a Gmail account), and the way that Google is leveraging “personalized search” with Google+ accounts, it becomes very clear that the game has changed.

What is not so clear is how active new Google+ users will be. Nor do we know, yet, how Facebook plans to counter. But we do know that Google will mine the data of its users, whether they engage in Google+ or not.

As Hubspot says, “yes, you should care. Especially still if you weigh in the fact that it’s not really about the individual power of Google+ as a social network. It’s about how Google can leverage the social data of Google+.”

As this battle wears on, it’s becoming clear which company has the deeper arsenal…

And through the friscalating dusk light comes Cameron McEfee. Cameron was also annoyed with the guide system in Photoshop, but he decided to do something about it and built GuideGuide. GuideGuide is a Photoshop extension that makes it easy to add “pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines” with just a few clicks of the mouse. I’m been using GuideGuide to design all morning and it’s placed guides right on the money. It’s so nice to not have to guess anymore!

Here’s the Smashing Magazine article that pointed me to it.

Thanks, Cameron and Smashing Magazine!

Recently, a friend brought the new Wordless plugin to my attention. It’s a typical WordPress plugin that, using Ruby, enhances your toolset for creating themes by integrating some of those aforementioned technologies (Haml, Sass, Compass and Coffeescript), restructuring the theme’s organization and adding some great new helper functions.

Features

(taken from the Wordless’ Github)

• A structured and clean theme organization
• Haml views (with support to layouts and partials)
• Sass & Compass stylesheets
• Coffeescript-powered logic (optional)
• 50+ Rails-like helper functions
• Released under the MIT license

Requirements

(taken from the Wordless’ Github)

• WordPress .htaccess file present
• Ruby (any version, full RVM support)
• Compass and Sprockets gems installed

Graphic designer, Julien Mercier, created a typeface that combines both serif and san serif font details to create a really interesting and elegant approach to typography. It’s called Otsuki-Sama and you can check it out here.

What about General Sentiment or Converseon or Trendrr? Even if you haven’t heard of them, chances are if you talk about television on your Facebook or Twitter accounts, they’ve heard of you. Or at least, they documented your comments.

The common thread between the above-mentioned companies is that they track social media and what audiences are saying within each channel. In other words, they are all “social media analytics firms,” intent on understanding what audiences are saying (mostly about TV) and interpreting those comments to better educate (or advise) their clients (i.e. the TV networks and the TV advertisers therein).

According to a recent article in Technology Review, companies are utilizing the services of these social media analyzers to adjust their advertising strategies based on how the general population reacts to their ads (as deciphered through social media conversations). For example, as Technology Review reports, Comcast keeps “an ear open for outbursts of anger to help them detect and respond to service outages and product problems.”

Listening to Twitter instead of answering its own phones? Not quite. Most advertisers who are hiring social media analysis firms are using the mined data to bolster their data from other outlets. It’s more of a plus one, at this point. But as the total number of social media comments rises, interested players will increasingly look for insight and feedback from social media analysis. It’s a kind of “eavesdropping” that was unimaginable 10 years ago.

So, remember, the next time you critique Emily Van Camp’s latest turn or you verbally ogle the next “Swagger Wagon,” ABC and Toyota are most likely parsing your comments…

However, there are certain instances when it would just be easier to use specific formatting within the already existing TinyMCE content areas.  Fortunately, the team over at Smashing Magazine has written a wonderful tutorial that explains some of the various uses for custom content editor layouts and exactly how to enable these features.

Two column content layouts?  Tables in the content area?  Don’t fret, it’s got you covered.  There’s even support for using CSS to style it any way you want within the content editor.

Advanced Layout Templates In WordPress’ Content Editor

Well, now you don’t need to worry about designing your next holiday card! Cartolina Post is an iPhone app that allows you to take a photo, insert it into one of several postcard templates and mail it out…all from your phone. See what I mean??

The article, which interviews a number of experts who offer insights on how to best interpret the findings, proclaims that the “research underscores the growing power of the emerging science of social networks, in which scientists study the ways people interact by crunching gigantic sets of Internet data.”

Indeed, for a world that is becoming increasingly connected via the Internet, this study suggests how powerful social networking can be. Want to make a connection with that business owner? Chances are you know someone who knows her. Want to connect with that company three states away? You might just be two people away from making a meaningful contact.

But then again, how meaningful? As Dr. Jon Kleinberg, a computer science professor at Cornell, told The Times, “We are close, in a sense, to people who don’t necessarily like us, sympathize with us or have anything in common with us. It’s the weak ties that make the world small.”

And maybe that’s the point. Weak or strong. Meaningful or minor. A connection is a connection – make of it what you will. Perhaps that’s the power behind social media in 2012…

Came across this Slate article outlining Apple’s knack for teasing us with with its small slice of the color wheel. White? Black? Chrome? White again? You love it.

In desperation, I went through every guide I could find on rubyonrails.org and extensively searched Stock Overflow and every developer forum I could think of.  Fortunately, after numerous french words, hissy fits, and consolatory beers, I came across the easy-to-follow upgrade instructions posted on Ryan Bigg’s blog.

Mac OS X, Ruby, RVM, Rails and You helps you through every step of the upgrade, including installing RVM (Ruby Version Manager) and necessary database packages.  Do yourself a favor and let this guide be your first stop when trying to start with Ruby… so instead of exhausting all your time trying to get the damn thing to upgrade properly, you get to actually spend time learning a new language.