On May 27th, 2009 I remember waking up early that morning because I heard that Google was going to announce something special. As we all know that product turned out to be Google Wave, a product that Google claims to be what email would be if it were invented today. On that day they announced that the sandbox was going to be open for developers only, and that a limited release would come later in the year to a select few people who signed up using their sign up form.

I immediately signed up because I knew that Google Wave would be very useful for my two lines of work. As the days and months passed I read every single article from blogs like this one, I viewed countless Youtube videos that demoed exactly how Google Wave works. My excitement grew.

It was then announced that September 30th, 2009 “100,000″ new users would be allowed into the Google Wave beta. I figured since I signed up early and I put in a detailed reason how I would use Google Wave I would certainly be among the first to get an invite. I was wrong.

I have been a loyal Googler. When the search engine launch I shared with my then High School friends why Google was better then that altavista/dogpile site they were using. When Gmail came out I announced to my College friends that they should make the switch as I called Gmail revolutionary. When Google acquired Blogger I bought a damn Blogger logo sweater and wore it around campus.

Google – why wasn’t I invited to Google Wave?

I know of countless individuals on twitter who didn’t even use your pathetic sign-up form that I filled out on May 27th who have since gone on to receive invitations just for begging on twitter! One of my twitter friends was “nominated” 12 hours before he received an account. Meanwhile, my wait has been over 6 months.

Your process for rolling out products is COMPLETELY UNFAIR.

You claim that there are scalability issues when it comes to your new service and this is why you are only limiting “100,000″ invitations initially. I call BS on this. Your plan is to create hype around the product with a limited release like you did with Gmail and Google Voice. Who are we kidding? You are Google, you have enough resources to copy every single website around the world every few minutes, but you can’t scale new users on this new product?

The only people who can activate new Google Wave users are located in Australia. How about flying two employees to the great western hemisphere and keep them knocking off people in the original queue – you know, the list of people who signed up the morning of May 27th, 2009.

I understand the importance of Google Wave. I work part-time with a news gathering organization and I see how Google Wave can be very useful for the journalism world. I also work full-time as a web developer and Google Wave will be a benefit in the collaboration of building websites.

I would be a person who would be using Google Wave every minute of every day – but I probably won’t get invited for another 6 months because of some idiotic sign up process.

Screw you Google.

Finally after six years of being a faithful user of WordPress the features that I think just about everyone wanted are finally here. As soon as WordPress 2.8 comes out of Beta you will gain the ability to add new themes inside the WordPress Admin section, and the widgets section got a complete overhaul.

Add New Themes

What you see above is a picture of the new “Add New Theme” section underneath the Appearance Tab.  There are several ways you can get a new WordPress theme on your blog. First you can browse through the WordPress.org Extend Free Theme Gallery. You can filter this gallery by keyword, author, tag, color, columns, width, features, and subject. Also you can view the Featured Themes that WordPress.org’s crackpot (term used with effection) team have suggested that everyone use. They also allow you to filter by Newest themes and most Recently Updated themes.

These options are all well and good if you are interested in getting Freebies. But the feature that has me really excited is the new upload feature! That’s right you now have the ability to upload wordpress themes as zip files directly into WordPress!

This totally eliminates the need to explain to clients what FTP means and why they need to CHMOD something. It’s easy to use too! All you need to do is browse for the zip file, click on upload. Once uploaded it will ask if you want to Preview or Activate the theme. If you don’t want to do either it will take you back to the themes you have already installed.

Widgets Overhauled in WordPress 2.8

Yes! What you are look at above is the total overhaul of the widgets control panel. Currently in WordPress 2.7 the widgets are somewhat of a pain to use – and is especially hard to explain to new clients who have never used WordPress before. You have to show them where to find the drop down menu that allows you to switched between different sidebars. It’s too confusing.

But not anymore. The new Widget Control Panel means you don’t have to load any extra pages. All the work can be done right here. You drag and drop widgets to their appropriate sidebars like you used to be able to do Pre-WordPress2.6. Also, they have included a new feature called Inactive Widgets. When you drag a widget to this area it will keep the settings.

Speaking of widgets…

The Links Widget Upgraded

The links widget got completely updated too! One of my biggest complaints from clients was they were not able to automatically separate the Links in the Link Widget. Let’s say you filtered your links using three Link Categories, but you only wanted one of those categories to show up on the sidebar. In WordPress 2.7 there are NO Link options. That changes in WordPress 2.8! Not only do you get the ability to choose which categories you want listed in the Link Widget – you can also choose if an Image, Name or Description should appear with it.

Also, new for WordPress 2.8 is the ability for the Admin to rate his/her links.

Press This get Upgraded too

One of the hidden gems inside of WordPress has always been the “Press This” browser link. For those who don’t know, “Press This” allows you to post WordPress blogs on the go while browsing other website. One of the new features inside “Press This” is the ability to add media from the page you are viewing. In the page above I’m viewing the New York Times article about Rachel Alexandra’s win. I have decided that I want to post an image from the article as well so I went ahead and clicked on the horses coming out of the gate. It’s that easy!

If you are viewing a Youtube page and you click on “Press This” it will automatically give you the embed code that you can then insert into your post. I can see this becoming VERY useful for bloggers.

Update: I guess this was already upgraded in WordPress2.7. Hehe It’s new to me!

WordPress 2.8 Beta

Learn more about WordPress 2.8 Beta on Codex Page.

For those who are brave and want to try out the new WordPress before it is officially release head over to the Download Page. I must warn though – this is a Beta and it has the potential to mess things up! Use at your own risk!

Are you a twitter power user? I’m finding that I’m spending way more time on twitter then I probably should. I used to focus on writing blog entries for a couple of my sites, now i’m more interested in following twitter streams and replying to everyone that I can. I want to continue to use twitter because it’s the “popular” trend right now, but I don’t want to completely avoid my blogs either.

Well, with Twitter Tools I can pull my twitter feed and have it update my blog automatically!

Twitter Tools

Get it Here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Description: Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Set up a Daily Digest of your Tweets

1. Download and Activate the Twitter Tools plugin.
2. In the Settings Menu on the Dashboard click on Twitter Tools.
3. Enter your Twitter username/password (Future releases will probably include the “OAuth” aka Twitter Connect option)
4. Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog? – YES
5. Set this on by default? – NO
6. Create a blog post from each of your tweets? – NO
7. Create a blog post from each of your tweets? – YES
8. Choose a time that is more convenient for you. I choose 11PM
9. Scroll down to the Categories part: Choose the category you would prefer your tweets to be added. Most like creating a new “twitter” category. I just placed mine in the JoeBrooks category.
10. Tags: These are the tags that will be added to each daily digest. Mine are: JoeBrooks, Tweets, Twitter, Joe Brooks Tweets, Joe Brooks Twitter
11. Exclude @reply tweets in your sidebar, digests and created blog posts? – NO (If you want to include all your tweets) or YES (If you want to exclude your replies to others).
12. Click on the Update Twitter Tools Options button.

That should do it! Check back tomorrow on your blog to see if everything posted properly. Here is how my first Twitter Daily Digest appeared like: http://www.joebrooks.me/twitter-updates-for-2009-04-27.html