Asterisco* - Design, Photography & Marketing

Google+ has been a little off these last few days, and now we know why! Google updated several things on both Personal Profiles and Pages, including Cover Image:

Local Reviews Tab: In addition to your photos, +1′s and YouTube videos, there’s now a place for all your Local reviews. Highlight your favorite restaurants, or hide the tab completely via settings. After scrolling down, you can find it on top right of the menu bar.
Easier to Edit Info: The About tab now consists of separate cards (Story, Places, and Links), each with its own prominent edit link. As always: you can share specific fields with specific circles, or keep them just for you. And a new bonus, now those areas are highlighted with a google color: red, blue, yellow, and so on.
Bigger Cover Photos: And also a better aspect ratio. Cover photos are much larger than before (they can go all the way up to 2120 pixels by 1192 pixels), and they display in 16×9 when fully expanded. This way more images can be used as cover photos, and there’s more room for your selection to shine.
Round Profile Picture (over the cover): As Facebook redefined logo sizes to be square, now Google adds its own twist with making the logo hovering on top of the cover image by making it round – so you have to be careful with logo placing.

Everything’s rolling out gradually, so check back soon if you don’t see it yet. Now, to business! I updated the Google PSD Template to meet the new standards, both for cover pictures and circled profile pictures. You can download the (zipped) Photoshop Header Image Templates here:

Google+ PSD Template

Shortly after 2013 started, I did an in-depth application (and services) clean all throughout my mac. I uninstalled several apps, some of them that I used once in a while (maybe once or twice a year), deleted email that I don’t need to have in Mail.app (but have it backed up) and chose to stop using two of my IM accounts: Yahoo, as everyone that I have there is also on Gmail or MSN; and MSN that now I merged it with Skype. And… a big surprise, uninstalled Adium.

After years and years of using Adium as my primary IM app, I moved my AIM and GTalk accounts to Messages. And since I already set up Messages with my iPhone and iPad, it is a breeze. I use all the IM services, not only with clients but with family and friends. I have to say that so far so good. After a couple of weeks I have gotten used to the bigger UI (still not liking Skype that much) and the ease of sending SMS messages to my contacts with iMessage from my mac.

All for minimizing. Instead of using two apps for those services – yes, I’m still using two but only one of them requires install, since Messages comes preinstalled in Mountain Lion – I only need to install one. And I get to turn it on/off when needed.

And, I am not using Twitterrific that much either – doing most of my tweeting from either my phone or using the Sharing buttons from the Notification Center. Also, decided to uninstall Growl and use the built in Notifications system and it works just as well. However, I am not uninstalling Twitterrific as I have several of my projects accounts signed in through there so I don’t have to sing in/out every time I want to tweet and check the replies online from a different account.

Feels liberating, you know? All those uninstalling and deleting… And makes my Mac lighter (though I have over 350GB free memory – but still).