Seriously. I am in. You remember that I did not write that positive
about Google Sidewiki. Well with
Google Wave this is different.
It definitely pays off to be active in online forums. Last week one of this online friends asked,
“Anybody wants an invitation
into the \/\/ave?”
Since I was among the first who virtually had raised there hands I got one of those precious nominations and got in within a couple of days.
Usually I am not excited so much about becoming a beta tester of anything and Google calls the current stage of Wave a Pre-Beta. Sounds worse, doesn't it. But actually I am surprised it really feels great. I was not among those in the early rush for Gmail accounts. Started to use Gmail seriously not before 2009. But the loooooong video from Google presented Wave got me hooked immediately.
So now I am in. And I am even more excited. Let me tell you about a couple of prerequisites.
Prerequisits
(1) Obviously you need an invitation currently.
Google wants to slowly build up a base of about 100,000 users and fine-tune their infrastructure as well as completing features that we have heard of in the video but not yet seen in the preview beta version.
Now I have a confession to make.
I am guilty
But first, let's look at a fun video.
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Twitter Has ADD
Sorry for the misleading animation to the right. I won't talk about the Twitter whale, Twitter outages, and overcapacity. It's not a real problem. C'mon, Twitter is usually back in a very short time.
What I want to address is the fact that a recent eye tracking survey has revealed what seems to be so obvious anyway.
“Twitter has ADD”
ADD, the attention deficit order. Your response right now might be, "Wait a minute here, Twitter users have attention deficit order, but Twitter?"
You might be right that many tweeples suffer from this syndrome, but let's think about Twitter.
It paints short messages on the screen and before you have read it to the end it pushes the very same message that you are still reading off the screen.
(Don't miss out the 5 tips at the end of the post!)
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After my post
Is Google Sidewiki Evil? I simply ignored the subject altogether and had disabled this function in my Google toolbar.
Yesterday, I noticed two very good posts with additional insights, good user comments, and I also added my
mustard (as Germans would say) to the conversation and to the Google Help Forum as well.
But first things first.
Not many people are talking about this:
Google Sidewiki API
At least there is a documented API. All details about the
Google Sidewiki API (↑) on Google's site. Here is what a developer can do with it.
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Do you have Google Toolbar With Sidewiki installed?
If yes, please, watch the navigation bar of your browser.
I am using Firefox and noticed a hashtag after the URL in many instances. Not always, so I am not sure about a pattern, yet. When I turn Sidewiki off in the toolbar this effect disappears. Here is the proof.
Google Toolbar Seems To Interfere With Other Browser Add-ons
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A very quick insider note.
The infamous NOFOLLOW attribute has been removed from this blog for the backlinks of all trackbacks.
I think, why not share some appreciation for (quality!) bloggers who write about my posts.
Right now this blog still does not accept PINGBACKS, but TRACKBACKS are highly welcome (quality only!). Regular comments are still not followed.
Now, it's up to me to write and distribute posts which are worth to be written about.
I think about upgrading and enabling PINGBACKS as well.
Let me think …
Of course, I will monitor, possibly moderate trackbacks, and update the comment policy accordingly shortly.
Yours
John W. Furst
A couple of thoughts about Google's new sidewiki.
There are already a lot of webmasters, advertising professionals, and business owners who are asking — actually demanding — an opt-out mechanism to block sidewiki from your site.
Now, Google points out two things:
- A webmaster can claim the first spot, the first comment that is shown on a page.
- They will algorithmically solve abuse problems.
- But you cannot opt-out.
Okay,let's see.
I follow the example which Google gives in their help pages and check their own webmaster's entry on their toolbar blog.
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