Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [70]
Including your location (a.k.a. “checking in”)
As you learned back in Chapter 3, you can include your location in your posts when you write them on a computer, and the same is true when you write posts from your phone. Google+ refers to this as “checking in,” but it’s nothing more than adding your location to a post.
If you’ve tapped the pencil icon to write a regular post, somewhere on the post-writing screen, you’ll see a section that either lists your current location or says “No location attached.” If you’ve given Google+ permission to use your location, your location may appear automatically, in which case you don’t have to do anything to include it in your post. (If you don’t want to include your location, you can wipe it out by tapping the X next to it.) To add or change your location, tap the location field on the post-writing screen—a pin-like icon on an Android phone, or the field showing either a location or “Not location attached” on an iPhone or in your mobile browser.
Google+ pulls your location from your phone, compares it to locations it knows on Google Maps, and displays a list of options. The top three choices are your general options:
Your current location is a street-specific description, like Main St, Anytown, Florida.
Your city location lists a more general area, like the name of a town or, if you’re in a big city, the name of a district.
Hide location (or “Do not include location”) is what you can pick if you change your mind and don’t want to include a location. (Selecting this option does the same thing as tapping the X next to the location field on the post-writing screen.)
Below those three options are specific businesses and landmarks that Google found near you. If you’re at one of them, tap to select it; if not, use the search box at the top of the screen to try to find the location you want.
Circles and Profiles
On an Android device, the Circles section is a handy way to view and edit your circles. On an iPhone, or if you’re using the mobile-browser version of Google+, the Circles section is the only way to check out an individual circle’s stream.
Whichever version you’re using, head to the home screen and tap Circles to get started. What you see next depends on how you’re accessing Google+, as the following sections explain.
Android phones
The Google+ Android app divides your circles section into two parts, Circles and People. The Circles list shows all the circles you’ve created, along with the faces of the people in them (if they’ve signed up for Google+ and uploaded a profile photo). There’s a search button in the upper-right corner, which you can tap to search through your contacts, or all of Google+, to find a person. You can tap a circle to see who’s in it, press and hold a circle to bring up a “Delete circle” option, or tap the button at bottom to create a new circle.
If you tap the People tab at the top of the Circles page, you see an alphabetical list of everybody in all of your circles. Tap some-one’s name to jump to their profile page. (At the top of the page, the “Find and invite people” link brings up to the same list of people Google thinks you might know as you’d see in the browser version; see Adding People to Circles.)
On a profile page, tap the speech-balloon icon in the upper-right corner to start a new conversation with the person whose profile you’re looking at—basically just a post that’s shared only with that person. The tabs at the top of their profile are pretty straightforward: Posts shows you their most recent posts, About shows their profile info, and Photos displays the person’s photos that you have permission to see. On the About page, the gray button to the right of the person’s name shows which circles you have them in, and you can tap it to check and add them to (or remove them from) circles.
iPhones and mobile browsers
If you’re on an iPhone or using