The Bloggers Guide to Using Google+ Effectively - Video Calls

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and today we're here with the Blogger's Guide to Using Google+ Effectively. And my co-host Jean Layton and I are going to answer your questions and try and share some of our tips and tricks to using Google+ so you'll enjoy it as much as we do. For those of you that are coming off a bitter defeat from the Super Bowl yesterday, you have my sympathy. I do love Peyton Manning and it was hard to watch a little bit, but for those of you rooting for Seattle, hey, you gotta love the game. It was really, really very eventful for them and the 12th man. So maybe we need to start a 13th man on the internet for Seattle. That'll be like a whole new thing, a Google+ way to go. I hear Gene laughing in the back. Anyway, I'm going to turn it over to Gene. We're going to get started. As always, if you have questions about what we're talking about today's video calls, and they are very important, so listen up. But if you have questions about it, leave them in the comment bar, and if we have time, we'll answer questions and any other subject on Google that we can. Alright, Jeanne, take it away.

Yeah, we're always happy to answer whatever you guys need because more than anything else, we want more company over here. This is our starter, beginning understanding of how to get live. Video calls are how you get live one-on-one or maybe with a small group of people. And it's not taped, it's not a crisis kind of thing, it's not like you have to keep track of thousands of details which when you leap into Hangouts and we'll be doing Hangouts, we'll start up next week. Hangouts are all about the details as we discovered this morning. The program can change and when it changes, you have to flex. In seconds in order to find your start button, or how in the world do I get my lower third working, or that was just this morning's problems. Both Sheff and I are members of a group that if you want to be able to run Hangouts for your business, for your brand, for somebody else, I'd encourage you, go check out Hangout Mastery right now. Well, maybe after we're done. Be able to talk with Ronnie Binzer and Michael Daniels and the guys over there that really understand how to bring all this crazy dynamic change into a set of instructions that you can just launch. So I'm going to pop on over to my post about this today because the video calls are a a perfect way to talk with someone one-on-one and be able to actually see them. So we get all of the dynamic ability of conversation without having to be crazy. So I'm going to try and start screen share. The screen share has been one of those things not functioning very well in Hangout land, and from what I've been told Once you start it, you want to keep it on the OnePage, which might be interesting. Chef Dennis, do you have a standalone comment share as a tab?

I do not. I saw that and was wondering where you got that.

Okay, we'll talk about that later because actually I'm going to flip it back over because we use this standalone app and I have never seen it set as a tab. It looks like a Hootsuite deck.

That's news to me. I was wondering how did she do that.

I don't have that. Really interesting. Okay, well we'll flip back to that. And this is what happens. Now I'll take a screenshot of that, I'll upload it into the Hangout Mastery and all these people who are all using Hangout Mastery or Hangouts as a dynamic tool will all chat about it and try and figure out where it came from, where it's going and whether we can all use it or not. A lot of fun. Anyway, so this is what happens. On my post, I have this great little conference call situation and it's what people have happening all the time. You start a conference call, somebody else joins in, somebody else joins in, somebody else joins in. You're interrupted, interrupted, interrupted. You have no body language to go by and it's really a pain in the neck. So this is what happens on the upper right-hand side of your screen. There's a little button that says Hangouts, and then you can type in whoever you want to talk to. It auto-populates with people you have talked with and people you're likely to. And then there's this Start a Video Hangout, and you have an option between one person, you know, a one-on-one conversation, or a I'm open to having multiple people join our conversation. That's what they mean by a video hangout. So once you pick your caller, and I arbitrarily picked myself, and you can do this, you can hang out with yourself as long as you have two different Gmail sign-ins. And you get this button that says, you know, Hangouts. You put in the person and then There's the message, so I type it out, chat, or the camera takes you to the video call. So when you open up the video side, you get this black, all black page with you in the center, your profile picture, and then whether or not it looks like the person you're calling individually is available or not. And at this point, I wasn't available because that profile isn't on Google+ too. So you see up here it says, "To add more people to this video call and to get the full experience, ask myself," in this case, "to join Google+." So it will encourage your people to come over and join you, but you don't have to. And then once you say yes, This is the time where it gives you a sense of check your own camera settings, check your own sound settings, check your background. So that was me sitting on my couch in the dark, which is a terrible way to do any kind of video. But the other thing you can do is you flip over to settings, which is right up here. There's normally buttons, and you can see them here. This little cog wheel is the settings, and the settings allow you to look at whether you're using the built-in camera on your laptop, your built-in microphone, default device for speakers, or whether you start to plug in extra items. Now, Both Chef Dennis and I do not use our built-in laptop information. I think, Dennis— Chef, are you on a SC920?

I am on a 920, and that's the camera I have been using since Ronnie recommended it, pretty much.

Yeah, Ronnie had made this suggestion based on somebody else's suggestion, I'm sure, because it's like the go-to camera for Hangouts. It's not an expensive camera, I think it was around $70-ish.

Yeah, $70-$80 on Amazon usually.

Yeah, on Amazon. And you know, that's the picture of it, it will take you off to them. Yes, it's an affiliate link, well, you know, whatever. And then microphone-wise, you don't have to do much at first. If you have a set of iPhone buds, you're good. You need something so that you're not getting feedback in the sound. Because if you don't plug something into your laptop, you're going to hear yourself talking and you'll feedback into the Hangout call. So just plug in, you know, iPhone buds or a phone headset. You can get a little adapter that will change your typical phone headset into a plug into your computer. And this is my dream microphone setup that is still on my wish list. I'll get it soon enough. But this one has a pop screen so that when you speak and you're hitting your Ps and your, your syllabent Ss and things, you don't end up spitting on your microphone and hearing a pop. But this is the The blue snowball. And that's the one that everybody in the world, wonderful world of lots and lots of hangouts, they encourage. So I know that was really quick, and the reality is the video calls are fast. There's nothing about them that you have to worry about. They don't create a YouTube video that automatically updates onto your your YouTube feed. So you can be more spontaneous, spontaneous with that. You can just see if somebody's online and ping them and say, you know, you got 5 minutes so we can chat. This is the best way to get used to being in the program, on air. There are so many details about going from here to a Hangout that being comfortable actually just talking online is huge because there's things like eye contact. And what I wanted to do, and I'm not sure I'm going to actually be able to do it, I'm going to throw it over to Chef in a second, but I was going to try and see if I could launch the same Hangout from my phone which you can't launch from your phone. You can tap into it from your phone, but you can't launch from your phone. But I was going to see if I could join it from my phone so I can show you my setup, which is really messy this morning. It's huge because there's things like eye contact. This isn't going to work because there's a time lag. But anyway, so I'm in a room, a small room that is also my daughter's office hangout, so I'm surrounded by Christmas lights and posters of rock climbers. And my camera is up here and it's on a stack of boxes so that it's above my eye level and looking down at me. That's the most flattering angle. For a camera because if your camera is— I'm going to see if this will work. It didn't. Pulling out my camera doesn't help. It just froze me. And you can see I was trying— what I was trying to do was see whether or not I could flip it to the camera of the laptop. And it wouldn't let me go.

Didn't let you go, okay.

Yeah, it's really hard to do this live. It's almost as if I'd have to set up differently. So Chef, I'm gonna try and work on getting my camera back in and you go ahead and talk about your setup.

I will entertain, sure. Yeah, I do have the 920. I originally started with a 910, which is a good camera too, when I started doing cooking hangouts. And like Jeanne said, you know, you want to get it up a little higher. When I did my demos which are, you know, you can do to practice on video chats with your friends before you start going live with things. You know, you want to get it up on a tripod a little bit and, and have it set so it captures the right part of you. Now, you want to do a cooking Hangout with your table, you want to have it catch probably from the table up to your head, and you know, you don't need any more than that. And try and get the whole picture in. I mean, that's a good way to get an overall shot of a demo that you're doing. But you really want to practice these. And one thing Jeanne said about pinging somebody just to hang out, to see. Make sure you know the person, because I get more throughout the day from people I have no idea who they are, and I'm really not going to go on with them because I don't have that kind of time, number one, and I don't know them. So if you're going to practice, practice with someone that knows you and that is going to expect the call. And there's also a little bit of software you have to download to be able to use these. You know, it's, it's free, it just comes across as an app, not really software. And so make sure you have that Make sure the person you're calling has that. That'll make life a lot easier for you because then you won't have to get a note from them saying, you know, hey, I'm online, or, you know, I'm downloading this. That's all. So little— it's— and it's always best just to try one. I always tell people, just try and initiate a Hangout. You don't have to call anybody in because what it'll do is it'll make you add on anything else you need to add on. So you can do it. And you're going to love it. I mean, people that I have connected with this and got them to use it, you know, they use it as like an everyday tool now, talking to their friends, because it's much easier to have a face-to-face meeting. And once you start doing these, you don't even want to use the phone. People say, well, can we do a phone? I say, no, let's do a Hangout. We're talking about using Google+ anyway. Let's do a Hangout. It's so much easier than Skype. Every time somebody wants to Skype, I gotta download it again because I hate the damn thing because it starts everything— every time you start everything up, it comes back on and eats up resources, so I don't use Skype at all. And Kate and— okay, I see you put the camera name up. Kate McDermott and Sandra had both asked about the—

it's a Logitech C920. That's the one.

Yeah, don't get something in the 500s or the 300s. You're not gonna save that much money. If it's a matter of another $30 or $40, wait till you have enough to get that because it really makes a big difference.

And if you're on a Mac, if you're on a Macintosh platform, realize that there's extra software you have to download. And if you're on a Mac Pro, it's actually an app from the iPhone store. Don't ask me why, but I'll get you the link for that if you need it. I know Ronnie talks about that in—

So it's just the Pro? It's just the Pro that needs the app?

Yeah, it's just the Pro that needs the app because the laptop I work on is one of those old white— I'm not sure what it is, it's a little MacBook. But I was able to download the software onto my MacBook and so now my MacBook, my old MacBook has become my laptop. For Hangouts. That's the one that I still have separate controls for a microphone and earbuds so that I don't have to try and plug it all in together. Because that's the other thing I've noticed with people who are on a MacBook or a Mac Pro, they have to use the headset in order to get sound out and microphone in.

Wow, okay.

They only have one place for it. So mine, I have the ability to plug in a separate mic, which I do use. I use a separate mic, and it was all of— I want to say it was a $12 mic, and it's a PLMC-15. So that's what I use until I get my Blue Ball. The Blue Ball is the next investment.

The microphone with the Logitech is actually pretty good too, and I've used that that in a pinch. I mean, I do use the one with the headset because that's what Ronnie Bincer was using, so I wanted to be like the cool kids and use what he was using. But I also have a better microphone, and it is an Audio-Technica that was— a podcaster had advised me to use, and it was only about $30, $35. Now, I had it working really well for a while, and then something happened and I It wasn't working, so I stopped. Now I have to try and figure it out again for this. But that was also— they said if you don't go to one of the really expensive microphones, that was a very good alternative too.

And with the video calls, because you're typically in a smaller group and you're not creating a video, it's okay to play with what you want to use for a while. Get used to talking, get used to just Can you keep eye contact with a camera versus eye contact with the image of the person that you're talking to, which is down here? You know, you're actually— my setup is probably 12 inches difference at this point, and it's hard. You know, you're hearing who you're talking to, but you're losing all the visual cues when you're trying to do a video, and it's different. It takes a while. I know everybody in Hangout Mastery has all these different tricks where they put a little tiny picture next to their camera so they still are getting eye contact. Or somebody was saying something about a little tiny animal up on top. I was like, okay, fine. I think that was Heather Crafton doing the animal on top.

I have a hard time looking up because when I look up you see glare in my glasses. So where I would normally look up all the time, now I'm always dropping a little bit and talking down so they don't reflect. So, you know, you got to do what you got to do to make it, you know, look right.

Yeah, and Ronnie has the same problem. Ronnie wears glasses too, and I see his eyes going back and forth in order to not get the glare on the glasses. Because the other thing about the setup Both Chef and I are dealing with lights outside of the setup. I'm going to have to take a video and then just have it upload into a post. Because that's the other thing, you can't take a video of anything and then run it through your Hangout. That's illegal. Or it can get you into trouble, I should say. It's not illegal but it can get you into trouble.

If it's yours it's okay but you have sometimes a hard time convincing Google of it at the time. And after they've shut you down and then you have to take time to explain it and they go, Oh, you were right, we'll put you back. Damage has been done, so we don't do that as a rule.

We don't do that. Ronnie warned us all off of it because they shut him down for 20 days, 22 days, something like that. And he makes videos on a daily basis, 2 maybe, 3 maybe.

Yeah, whatever.

But anyway, so there's lights. I'm going to put my hand in front of my light so you realize I've got a light behind the camera. I've got light here, light there, and lights over here to get it all. You want everything in front of you. You don't want your lights behind you. You don't want to be backlit. Yeah.

I'm actually working off a window to my one side, and I have the shades pulled because there's so much bright light coming off. Then I have a light bouncing off a whiteboard. If you can see it, I'm trying to get the camera.

You can see some of it.

Yes, there's a whiteboard there and I just have a light facing it. So almost any kind of light you could use. You don't want to have it directly on you too much if you can help it, because if you can bounce it, because it'll be harsher on you. So if you can bounce it off of something, it's always a better idea. This is just a fill, so there's not much shadow. You want some shadow because shadow gives you some definition and shadow helps make you more interesting, but you don't want to be like completely dark on one side.

Yeah, and you can see here, I'm gonna actually pick up my camera and I'll show you. I've got these plain little, you know, the silver clip-on lights. There you go. That's what I've got there, and you can see all my daughters camera, and then I've got these littler compact fluorescents up on this side, and then there's the main light. And I am facing a window, but it's a north-facing window, and— or no, it's a south-facing window, and I'm in the Pacific Northwest, which means it's not a good light source most of the time. And there's a house right there.

They even make some little LED lights that aren't very expensive for video cameras. And you can use them and they bounce, or you can use them direct, whatever you need to do. And they're, they're usually like about $30, but the kind she's using, the clip-on, you know, it's pretty much just the cost of the bulb, and you get a daylight-balanced bulb and you're in good shape.

And actually, I haven't even bothered to go to that. Those are just 60-watt white, soft white bulbs. They're just plain light, and I've bounced them. I've played with bouncing them around and My setup is taken down after every Hangout and put back up for every Hangout, so everything changes just a little bit because I don't have a dedicated room for it. I tried to negotiate with my twins and they say no, this is their Hangout and I get to play in their Hangout but I don't get to have their Hangout. Deborah is asking, do we ever use an uplight from the floor? Nope. I don't want to look like a Halloween event. You know, I don't want anything coming under my chin and creating a shadow on my face.

Now, if you do want to use an uplight from the floor, it's got to be behind you. Alright, and then what it does is create some separation between you and the background, so you're more 3D, a little bit of 3D. Ronnie Bincer does use one of those, and it's just coming up behind him to put like a Like in the old days of portrait photography, you'd see some backlighting on people just to make them look more three-dimensional. But yeah, never in front of you.

Yeah.

Unless you're doing a Halloween one, like you said.

Yeah, Halloween effect. Craig Fifield, who's got a ton of information, he's got a way to be paying attention and not miss the visual cues. So he's got a link to his setup and I would go over and check it out because I'm sure it's a great setup and I may learn some cues from him. Rocking the shop lights. And Craig wants shop lights of his own. You know, they were $6 at hardware sales. I mean, they were really super inexpensive and you know, if you're in a situation where you can't do anything but set it up. They clip on so you can move them around as much as you need. And you know, there is a setup on Amazon. Somebody does a— if you look under video setup, I think there's somebody who's pulled together all the components and it's like a $300-ish. You know, they have the lights, they have the backdrop. You know, you want to invest that much on your setup, go for it. I used to have black curtains behind me and I liked the drama of me against black, but it was messing with my lights really badly, so I dropped to the wall. And other than the fact that because I'm in a 15-year-old's— they decided to put this pretty flower up and there's these little frogs on the flower. It's their room. Someday I'll have my own dedicated space, but until then— Yeah, and you can see every time I shift my camera, it changes my— and this is a door here, so I'm in a corner kind of.

And the 920 also comes with a tool that lets you adjust to, and you can zoom in, zoom out, so you can make— and you can move yourself without moving the camera. So you can move yourself. I mean, and it depends on how you want to set yourself to in front of the camera. If this— this is more or less— if you're just having a casual chat, like, I mean, I come on, I don't shave, I haven't combed my hair sometimes, you know, I'm just talking to somebody that I know on a casual basis, that's okay. But if you're doing one that's live and broadcast and you want to start about positioning, I love Martin Shervington. He does some great work, and he always seems to hang in one corner of the screen. You know, that's kind of cool the way he does it. I tried and it just looks strange. So you know, you can try it and see if you can position yourself or how much in. It's okay for the top of your head to be missing, alright, that's okay, but you don't want your chin to be doing— I mean, I worked with some people and they're talking like this and you can never see their face when they're talking. So you want to look if you're using the lower third and practice. And you know, it's the best way to do it. And you can also make— well, first of all, if you're doing a live HOA, the chances of anyone seeing it are not real strong before you go over and mark it private. That's always an option if you want to practice.

Yes.

Jeanne put something up here.

What do you do about backlighting and such is Deborah's question. Like I said, I have no backlighting at this point. Everything is in front of me for mine, but I've got a pale color behind me now. When I had the black curtains behind me, I had a light sitting on the floor shining up on the curtains to be able to get some depth. And it's one of those things I'm still evolving the perfect setup. I think the perfect setup changes quite a bit. If you want to see people who are doing it routinely and professionally, Steve Hovhanyan, he's got a printed backdrop behind him. Ronnie has a printed backdrop behind him. And the company, I think it's Custom Walls.

Yeah, actually Lori Laser does it.

So you can get a custom wall, which is great.

There's a question from Aubrey Griffin.

Oh, how do you get that bar at the bottom of your screen that says your name, has your picture, etc.? Is that internal to G+ or something you do separately? That is called the lower third and it is in the Google Hangout toolbox. So we'll talk about that more next week because that's part of the setup of the Hangout. But if you're on Google+, once you open up, there's this little box that looks like a lunchbox with a wrench in it and the quotes from Google+ and you go in there and it'll setup. It gives you a place to put your name and a second line for your tagline. It automatically draws your profile picture in and you can change the color bar on the top if you want. You can also create customized ones and Jeff, are you on a custom?

No, no.

You're on the basic here.

Yeah, I'm on the basic. I just changed the color of it and I like having my picture there but if you want to put your logo in you can and if you want to make a custom one if you're good at Photoshop you can. Here's a comment from Mark. Jean, have you ever thought of boarding school? You should have your own office.

I know I should have my own office, but my girls are 15 and quite honestly, I am thoroughly enjoying them. They're the most amazing. I have to be a very proud mommy. I spent the weekend sitting in a climbing gym because they were competing at the collegiate level They won 2nd and 3rd place at collegiate level rock climbing. So that's what I did with my Saturday. I sat in a rock climbing gym. And you know what? They're only 3 years away from college, so if I have to put up with dealing with borrowing their office, their hangout until they go off to school, it's okay. I'll get space of my own. They're amazing children, and not just because they're mine. They're really amazing kids. So yes, I do deserve an office, but yeah, not happening. Let's see, who else had a question? Somebody else had a question.

Here's one from Kate McDermott while we're doing this. She says we might have missed it. She's doing a baking demonstration. Would these recommendations for equipment still be suggested as I would not be sitting in front of a computer screen?

It's even more suggested. You have to be incredibly careful with lighting because it has to be broader and you need a lot more fill depending on how broad your camera angle is. And so you start to get into how deeply focused are you. I know Kate's a pie baker, so in general I would think that your baking area, the area you want to use, is going to be a fairly constrained one. It might be no bigger than the rolling cloth, but you still have to have it incredibly well lit, and then you have to be lit as well. You probably will end up with 2 cameras, one on the baking surface or the rolling surface and one on you.

I used to use that for cooking hangouts, and I'll tell you what I did, Kate, was I bought a softbox off of Amazon. If you don't know what a softbox is, it's a light head that holds anywhere from 3 to 4 to 5 light lights on it in a bank, and it's got this big box, this big nylon box behind it on an angle and a white opaque front to it so it diffuses the light. So I bought one of those. I think they were around $60 or $70 for it. The light bulbs are almost more expensive if you have to replace them. And put that in front of me to an angle, and that generally provided enough light. It lit me pretty well, and then again, a bounce card to one side just to fill in some of the light to the side and it would illuminate. And like I said, I would put the camera, the same camera, the 920, on a tripod and raise it up into the air above my eyes. And I would actually use the microphone on the camera at that point because it was good. And then have it coming down so I had from my waist up to my head in view and in focus. Now, if you want to do two cameras, if you had two laptops, you could have one laptop off to the side and use the laptop camera if you wanted to, and then have the camera coming down on your hands or your working area and have that pulled in so that's a tight shot. And then anytime you want to talk to the people, you would just lean into the other camera and you could talk to them. And what happens if you don't blue box, sound will pull you to that camera. So if you're working in front of the one on the table and not really talking that much, it should pick that up. There, when you lean into the other one, it should— the picture should shift to the other one. Or you can have someone working it for you too and just moving it if you have someone that will work with you. It's always a good idea.

Yeah, we're not really talking about the sound for a Hangout yet because that's kind of next week's, but that's one of the things you have to be aware of is that both Chef and I know how to be quiet and unobtrusive when the other is talking and how to physically switch which camera is going to pick up the sound. And if you're taping, you need somebody to be handling that aspect. So one of the reasons I haven't been doing cooking demonstrations on my Hangouts is that most of the time I'm not able to have a second person in the house. My kids are at school, my husband's at work, and during my typical working day, I don't have another person who can handle switching the Blue Box or any of that. And I don't yet have the skills for doing that editing post-processing, so I haven't gone there.

As much as we've wished for it to happen, no one has come up with a third-party app that isn't too expensive for us to use that we could keep right at our fingertips and switch back and forth. We keep hoping someone will make one, but it hasn't happened yet.

No, the one I hear about is about a $300 investment. Investment. I'm perfectly willing to go there once I've— for me it's a cash flow thing. There has to be as much coming in as I'm willing to spend out. I think it is for Shep as well.

That's just for a Mac too. I think the one for PC is even more expensive right now. They're not foolproof.

They are not foolproof. Kate says it's not the lighting she's asking about, it's the camera and the mic. The camera and the mic Yes, you can use the exact same camera because it is, it is able to attach to the laptop, it's able to stand on a tiny tripod, which is what I have it on. You can screw it onto a full-size tripod. So yes, the camera, it can be the same. It certainly has a long enough leash to get to your laptop. And then you'll need the second camera, and that's where you start to get into the How do you flip between the two? How do you maintain the sound quality? That's when you need a person. Yeah, my dog can't do it. It's really annoying.

Doesn't have thumbs, that's the problem. No thumbs, yeah. And using two portable cameras on one computer gets a little difficult because if they're the same make, the computer can't always decide which is which. So if you're going to use two Logitech cameras, you would really need 2 laptops at that point to do it on. Or there's always, if you have a— you did some on your iPad too for a while, didn't you, Jeanne?

I did when I had a— when I first tried getting into the Hangouts, I could not get my laptop to function. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a file that was blocking my ability to use the camera and Chef wanted to do the series and I said yes, I want to be there and I ended up doing my portion of his series using my iPad. So yes, you can use your iPad but you can't start anything from an iPad. You can't start a Hangout from an iPad or an iPhone.

You can't start a Hangout on Air.

You can start a Hangout on Air. You can do the video calls, that's no problem. You can do a video call from it but you cannot start a Hangout on Air from it. From those mobile devices. So it's really kind of annoying that way. Yeah, okay, so we got a lot of people saying thank you. Yes, my daughters have been competitive rock climbers since they were in 6th grade and now they're freshmen in high school and one of their best buddies is off to nationals and one of their teammates is off to nationals this coming week. So yes, there really is a Fabulous sport.

Do they do any real— I mean, you have some really great mountains in your area. Have they done any of those?

Every year. They're on the YMCA team here in Bellingham, and every year the YMCA team goes up to Squamish, which, if you're a rock climber, Squamish is like nirvana. And they spend an entire week up there on the rocks. They love it. And we love it. It's an incredible sport. From a mom standpoint, I've never been in a group of teenagers where all of them are polite, kind, and supportive of each other competing. When you get an entire group, an entire gym applauding somebody making a tough route happen, that's where my girls are. Good place. Yeah, let's see who else has got Questions. Let's see. Are we actually going to get done?

Actually finished our time? I think so. Looks like it.

It looks like it. So next week we're going to be talking about Hangouts and just so everybody understands, it's going to be the very, very basics of Hangouts because there is such a depth of Hangouts that please Punch in the words Hangout Helper in the search box, go join Ronnie's community. He's got a community, Hangout Helpers. And then if you're really thinking about doing it routinely, if you're going to be doing it for your own brand or you're doing it for somebody else's brand, consider investing in the Hangout Mastery. It is worth every penny. It's like, what is it, 30— is he still charging $37?

I'm not sure what it is right now, but whatever it is—

it's not expensive.

It's not. And you will stay up to date because the problem is Google, if you haven't realized by now, changes routinely. And just like Jean was showing you with her tab, that might be something new because things have been hinky, I like to call it. Ronnie had never heard that term, but things have not been quite right and we've been kicked out of things, things aren't turning on, and you'll notice sometimes in the stream things are slow. That's generally an indicator that they're changing something and they won't tell us and they won't tell us when we change until we go to turn it on. I couldn't find my start broadcast button when we went. I don't know what happened to it. It just wasn't there and we were a couple minutes late because I had to restart and come back in. But you know, they'll keep making changes and won't tell you. So Ronnie knows almost before the changes come. I don't know, I think he's got a little crystal ball there where he sits and he gets these visions. But he's ready for them and he can keep you prepared and he can keep it so you know you don't miss a beat. And if you're doing these Hangouts like I am and like Jeanne is, and people— and we need to be on time when we're gonna start something and need it to run— you need someone like Ronnie in your corner.

And the other thing is, do yourself a favor and follow the people who launch the tools. So Dori Storbeck is the person to follow because if there's a change in Hangouts, she'll announce it. You'll start to see the ripples going out from Dori made an announcement and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, everybody is talking about it. She's the one that puts it out there. Follow her. Put her in your all notifications. She doesn't talk much but when she talks, it means something.

Here's a comment from Heather and I just want to address it. Heather said, "Very informative series. Thank you. I really appreciate your expertise but I don't think I'll ever hang out with others on my own. Too frightening. This is— Heather, this isn't. Okay, this is where you have to— you really need to try it. Maybe you'll never do a public one, that's okay, that's perfectly fine. But as a tool to talk to your friends, or just a way to get your friends together— like my wife has some college friends and they try to do it on an iPad on FaceTime and they can only get when someone's at the house and they can share it. But this you can actually bring 9 other people into this with you. Never record it, just be private, completely private. No one is ever gonna know, no one's ever gonna see it, but you could sit down with your friends and you could have a meal. You could, you could have a party and never leave your house. I mean, you could talk to people, they could be all over the world. I routinely talk to someone in the Ukraine and Milan, and it's private, and it's just how I talk to him like you would talk on the phone. So think of it in those terms, and once you try it a few times, you're hooked. It's really a great way.

It really is. You know, and if you have a sibling or a grandchild, you can read them a book. You know, it's one of those things— don't be afraid of it. It's really not— it's nothing to be scared of. It's just another way to have a conversation. If you don't ever want to have things recorded, then just never do a Hangout on Air.

Just a regular video chat.

Just a regular video chat.

No one will ever see it but whoever you're talking to. Think of it, it's just like on The Jetsons. This is what they told us it was coming to. We never got the flying cars, but now we finally got the video chats.

Well, those flying cars might be coming along. They're talking about those auto-drive ones.

It's getting closer at least.

It really is. So if you have questions, feel free to drop them into the stream. I put the link to the post I wrote that has the links to the actual equipment. People kept asking about the equipment, that has those links. Yeah, and it will be up on Chef's YouTube and then I'll mirror it online. If you have questions about Hangouts, if you want to shoot them to me early, that's great. If you want to wait until the event is up, put them right on the event as soon as you see it. We'll try and cover as many of them as possible. I think next week's show is going to be a little closer to the hour than the half hour. There's a lot. There's a lot to a Hangout.

Hangouts on Air are a little more challenging. Only the fact that they keep changing things on us too. So, I mean, once you get a set pattern, and it is rather easy— like, I'm still using the old style because I don't particularly like exactly everything about the new way, but the new way is actually a lot easier to do. But Google just keeps changing, keeps trying to make things better for us, so it's a little more to take in if you're ever gonna do these. But, you know, the other part of it, like I said, very simple. You know, you can talk to anyone, and once you initiate this video chat, it stays on your sidebar unless you get rid of it. So if you want to talk to them tomorrow, all you have to do is go to the same bar on the sidebar and click the camera and it'll ping them. If they're in, they'll answer. If not, you know, you can leave a message for them.

And that's the other thing, is you can leave messages for people who aren't live on air at the time. And yes, you can set it so that you're not available.

Mm-hmm. And you can just use it for chat too. You don't even have to go on the camera. You can just A lot of times I'll just type messages back and forth with someone and we never really go on. We just are communicating that way and I might have 3 or 4 of them open at one time talking to different people.

Which is why the one thing to start any Hangout or video call or anything else, if you want to be absolutely certain that you're using your computer most effectively, is you reboot before you start to get all of those things shut down. All the virus checks and backups, get them all shut down because that can truly mess up your ability to be live on air if that's your goal.

Absolutely. Alright, well it's a quarter of, I think we covered a lot today.

Absolutely, and yes Adrian, you should just follow Dori. That was the— I'm sorry, I just had another person whose child is a rock climber. Bill Ashton, my son is also a rock climber. You're very right about the supportiveness of rock climbers, similar to what I've experienced on Google+. Yes, absolutely. Have a great one.

Yep, and thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you next week. And yeah, go Hawks! Let's talk about that 13th man for next year.

See you later. I think so.

Alright, bye-bye.

Bye, everybody.