Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This is Martin Shervington. And in this video, we're going to look at how to use Google+
to connect to people in new ways. It's time to take an in-depth look at Google
Hangouts. If I click on the green speech icon, it gives
me the option to sign into hangouts. And hangouts are both chat - which may only be an individual,
or it could be a larger group - or they are video calls. And they can be a combination
of the both. Before I sign in, let's take a look at starting
hangout, the video call aspect of the hangout, directly from the post, by clicking on the
green hangout button. This gives me the option to start a hangout
by adding a message, by deciding who I want to invite. This could be people form my circles,
it could be an individual, or it may even be people from the communities to which I
belong. I then check the box to restrict minors from
entering the video call. And then I can click share. And that will start the video call
and invite those people. Alternatively if there are hangout parties happening already,
I can join the video calls for those from this screen.
When you're in the video call, it will look very similar to this, and the first thing
you can look at is naming it by writing in this section and then clicking save.
If you click on the "expand apps" button you can see that you can invite people by clicking
that button and then adding more names, circles, or email addresses. You can expand or contract
a chat bar, which is called group chat on the right hand side, which if you want to
see shortcuts, put a forward slash, and question mark, and the term. And that will bring up
many shortcuts you can use within the hangout. And when you type message in the box and press
return, you'll see your face appear as an image next to the message.
The next step down is screen share, which you click to share your screen.
The next one is capture, where you can take a picture of the hangout whilst it's going
on. Then you have YouTube, which brings up the
app within this particular hangout so you don't have to leave the hangout in order to
watch a YouTube video together with the group of people who you're hanging out with.
The Google Drive app is excellent for collaborative working as it allows you to bring files into
the hangout and then work on them collaboratively. If you hover over view more apps, there are
many more apps you can add into the hangout. Next, as you can see when I'm speaking, there's
a volume bar, which gives me an idea whether I'm speaking at the right level for the hangout.
Next to it, there's a little microphone, and if I click that, that mutes, and means that
people in the hangout can't hear when I'm speaking.
When you have more than 3 people in the video call part of the hangout, and you enter, you'll
be automatically muted. So you'll need to come and unmute yourself.
Next to the microphone, you have the ability to turn your camera off, and then your icon
will appear, and you can turn it back it on again.
Next to that, you can adjust your bandwidth usage. If your low bandwidth, then you have
settings which you can click in and change the settings for your camera and for your
audio. In the lower left hand side there's a button
where you can learn more about hangouts and get help. And also if you need to report an
issue, click on report an issue, and you can follow the instructions.
A couple of other things to point out. If you hover over the bottom picture and then
click on the person's name, that will take you to their profile. Next to that, you can
mute the person by clicking on that microphone. So if someone's being noisy in the hangout,
you can mute them. You'll probably find that there's a block button there as well.
Next if you click on anyone's screen on the bottom, it will bring them into the central
screen, which is called blue boxing. And what will happen otherwise is that the individuals
when they speak will be jumping back and forth into the screen, which is a very dynamic way
of interacting within the video call. However, if you want to fix one person on
the screen - maybe they're screen sharing at the time, and you don't want people jumping
back and forth, then you simply click, and that puts a blue box around and fixes them
in the central screen. Finally, when you're ready to end the call,
you just click the exit button. Let's now sign into hangouts by clicking on
the green icon, and then clicking sign in. At its most simple level, you'll see in this
section, your contacts, the people who you want to chat with. And if you hover over an
individual, that brings up their hover card. And then you can add them into circles or
you could click on the name and go to the profile.
You also know if a person's available to chat because there's a green line under their image.
And if you want to chat, you just click, and that will bring up a chat box.
In the lower left, there's a smiley face, which if I click on it, it will give me the
option of adding images into the chat. Then I can click out, and on the lower right, if
I click the camera symbol, it brings up the option for me to bring images in either from
my computer or from within Google+. If I go to the camera symbol, and I click
that, that will invite the individual to a video call. Next to it, I can add more people
to this hangout. And this is the text part of the hangout. And I can choose names, emails,
somebody's telephone number, or a specific circle.
Looking on the upper right, there's a cog. And if I click that, you get these settings
for this particular hangout party with this individual.
So if I want to receive notifications when they come into the hangout and start chatting,
I can chat that or not. And again, I can save the hangout history, or I can have that unchecked.
Now, when I'm finished with the hangout, I might like to delete it so it doesn't appear
in the right hand hangout bar. But when I delete a hangout, it means that that party's
over, and I can't just reenter it. So instead, sometimes you may like to use
archive hangout, which will just move it off the bar on the right hand side, and it means
you can reenter the party later on. The final thing to know here is that there's
an option to block an individual. When you've chosen your settings, you can click save.
Here's the hangout party that's had 79 people in it. And if I click on this icon, I can
see the individuals that have been in this party. And this hangout party is actually
still going on. So in that way, I could click on the video
call, and it would ask everybody within that hangout party if they'd like to join the video
call. And there's a maximum number on the video call, but everybody would get the invite.
Because this is a group party, when I click on the cog, I have a slightly different option,
not to delete the hangout, but to leave it. If I click on leave hangout, I can choose
whether to stay or leave. And this is really where the importance of
the archiving comes in. Because if you leave, then you have to be invited back into that
same hangout in order to rejoin the party. Because you may have many hangout parties
going on at the same time, you can also add a name and then you'll know what the purpose
was of that party. Taking this further, you can be in several
hangout parties at the same time, as is the case here. And in this one, we see there are
99 people in the text side of this. But also there's a video call going on, and I can see
the individuals, as their icons are here, that are already in that video call. And if
I wanted to join, I can just click on the green.
This aspect of the hangout is like a conversation, where you can even see by hovering over how
far people have read up to. If a person's typing, you'll see 3 green dots appear next
to their image. You'll also see people joining and leaving
the hangout as their image appears and disappears. If you want to start your own hangout party,
you can do so by dropping to the bottom of the right hand bar and then click start a
party. And that will open up so you can start a video call.
Alternatively you can click on "new hangout" and then invite the names, email addresses,
numbers or circles to that hangout. And when you start one this way, you have the option
whether to send a message or whether to start the video call.
There's a very important tab in the upper right. If you click and it drops down, you
can see you can snooze your notifications for an hour, for 8 hours, for 48 hours, across
all of the hangouts. You can also look at which hangouts you've archived. And if you
click, it gives you the options of which hangouts you want to have left from archive.
You can then go to the cog on that hangout, and you can choose if you want to (or not)
archive it, which will mean it will return to being included in your hangout list.
Also in this section, you can see the hangout requests you've had. You can see how many
people you've blocked. And you can unblock them just by clicking. You can ask for help.
You can send feedback. And you can sign out of hangouts totally.
And if you click on the "customize new request," it will take you to a screen in your settings
that will allow you to decide who can send you a request or who can hangout with you.
You may even like to set up a specific circle, which is your hangout circle and all of those
people can then send you a request. You're also going to find that from your home
stream that you're going to get hangout invites and you can click to join from there.
There's another type of hangout, which I want you to be aware of. If you go across to the
sidebar and then click 'hangouts-on-air', it will bring up a screen that will enable
you to firstly see what live hangouts in there are occurring at this time.
And you can scroll down and you can watch those. And you can start your own hangout
on there by clicking the blue button. A hangout in there is a live event that is
broadcast on your YouTube channel. Once you've named your event, you can add guests that
will join you in that live broadcast. If you want to start the event without inviting the
guests, that's possible to do also. In order for this to work, you will need to
have linked your Google+ page or profile to your YouTube account. And when you've done
that, you simply will click start hangout on there, and they'll enter a live hangout
room. I should point out that you won't start broadcasting
as soon as you enter. You'll have to click the broadcast button.
That's an introduction to hangouts and hangouts on air. There's a lot more to running your
own hangouts on air. So if you click on the annotation, and that will take you through
some more of the details. This is Martin Shervington. Please subscribe
to my YouTube channel for a lot more handy hints, tips, and tricks.