Just like when Google Wave came out and I offered wave invites in return for cracking a simple puzzle, I am doing the same thing again but this time for the new service Flattr!

I have 3 invites up for grabs and all you gotta do is decode this:

Can you crack it?

Not only will you win a Flattr invite but you will also receive a complimentary Flattr from me as a thanks for cracking the code! Good Luck! Winner’s names and a flattr widget for each will be posted here.

Winners

• Daniel Miessler
• Dennis
• Brandon Odegard

Yes that is right, I have 10 Google Wave invites to give away but to get your invite you must decipher the code bellow and follow the simple instructions:

Decipher this code to win your Google Wave account!

I hope you enjoy this little challenge I have set you! Pleas share the challenge with friends and have fun solving it! If you recognise the encryption this should not take more than 5 minutes to solve!

Winner 1: And the first winner was….. @andy4321! Congratulations to him for decrypting the puzzle!

I have had this blog post ready almost since the day I got Google Wave however the Google Wave Embed API used to crash a lot so I never posted it! It seems stable enough now so here it is:

For all you people out there who are not as privileged as I and do not have a Google Wave account, I have embedded the welcome message for you to read and watch the video in. Just so that all you people without Google Wave feel just a little bit more jealous and envious of me and so that your yearning to get a Google Wave Account increases to a level which you will not be able to contain!

Incase the links dont work this is the wave for “Getting started with Google Wave”

And this is for “When to use Google Wave”

Finally for “Google Wave extensions”

[cb type="product"]Google Wave[/cb]

I am now selling WavePing.com on a GoDaddy. I am hopping to raise as much money as I can as all profits will go towards my new computer, my sites and all sorts of new stuff for FabTekTastic. If you are interested in this domain then please follow this link. The domain was purchase for use with Google Wave and baring in mind that there is a feature on Google Wave called ”pinging” then this could be a valuable domain to a developer. Please bid if you are interested and share this wherever you can so that it gets more people bidding!

Google wave was down a little earlier but don’t worry. The maintenance page they have designed probably has more JavaScript than Google Wave!

Surf's out, dude. Google Wave is down for maintenance. Time to chillax.

If you cannot work out where the JavaScript in this page is, the clouds move It is okay now because Google Wave is back up and running

Today when playing about with Google Wave I went to type and excalmation mark but instead of holding shift, I held control and discovered an array of keyboard short cuts to control the formatting. I have compiled a list and will update if I find more:

• Ctrl+1 – Heading 1
• Ctrl+2 – Heading 2
• Ctrl+3 – Heading 3
• Ctrl+4 – Heading 4
• Crtl+5 – Bulleted List (on only – does not toggle)
• Ctrl+6 – Default Text (clears formatting)
• Crtl+7 – Align Left
• Ctrl+8 – Align Right
• Ctrl+B – Bold
• Ctrl+U – Underline
• Ctrl+I – Italic
• Tab – Indent Paragraph
• Shift+Tab – Outdent Paragraph

I finally got my Google Wave Invite today! Just to make you guy jealous, I have decided to blog my experience of receiving a Google Wave Invite!

Well receiving your Google Wave Invite is very much like receiving any other email except the subject of the email is “Your invitation to preview Google Wave” and it it from Google Wave! In my case it looked like this:

The invite to Google wave that I received.

If you are even remotely thinking “What did you do next?” then I find that offensive! Is it not obvious and customary to accept an invitation when you receive one! So that is what I did and it could not have been more simple! I clicked the link, typed in my Google password and I was off!  I was logged straight into my Google Wave account.

What I was greeted with on my first ever login! (Don't ask why the navigation bars on the left are blank? They are not now... I think it may have something to do with the fact I had use Firefox to get the screenshot but I will confirm later)

I then read my 2 new messages:

The welcome message from Google (well Doctor Wave to be precise).

The welcome message from Doctor Wave exapnded to use the whole screen.

My 8 invites for Google Wave... Who do I send them to

And that was my first experience of Google Wave! I did have a little play around afterwards and will make some more blogs about Google Wave later! But if you are so jealous and really want an invite, watch this space as I will be running a twitter competition to get 3 of my 8 beautiful invites!

Finally it has happened to me
Right in front of my face
My feelin’s can’t describe it
Finally it has happened to me
Right in front of my face
And I just cannot hide it

Google Wave, the app of my dreams
The one and only true love or at least it seems
With a blue skin and a white background
It’s just the way it looks at me, that gentle lovin’ stare

Finally you come along
The way I feel about you it just can’t be wrong
If you only knew the way I feel about you
I just can’t describe it oh no no

If you couldn’t guess from my really, quite awful parody of Finally by CeCe Peniston, which only had the odd word changed; I finally received my Google Wave invite! I don’t know if it had anything to do with the constant emails I sent Google or the ranting blog post I made but I am finally a user of Google Wave! I have already accepted and had a little play with the application and will be blogging the Invite Experience soon!

The invite to Google wave that I received.

I have been trying for months to get my Google Wave account and am now starting to give up hope! The big hype about Google Wave started on the Thursday 28th May when the product was announced on Day 2 of the Google I/O event. The product was unveiled in the morning keynotes at approximately 9am and at that point the web went crazy over this product. Everyone at the event was twittering and blogging away about Google Wave and the hype began. If you have not seen the keynotes from this day or want to know more about what Google Wave is, I recommend you watch this YouTube video:

You can also find more information on Google Wave from here.

As soon as I had watched all of this video, I started my mission to get a Google Wave account! within an hour I had filled out the following forms with great detail:

• Request an invitation to Google Wave
• Google Wave Developer Sandbox Account Request
• Get Involved Form (Google Wave Federation Protocol)

At this point, I just waited…. And waited…. And waited until I could not take it and made a few stroppy tweets about how I wanted my Google Wave account ASAP! I then got a response from Christine Tsai who I believe works for Google (well she had an @google.com email so that was kind of obvious )

“Brilliant,”, I thought, “finally getting somewhere!”

After exchanging som DMs on Twitter we eventually started emailing and eventually the followign conclusion was made:

Hey Fabrizio,

It doesn’t look like you registered or attended Google I/O. Please note that right now, Wave sandbox accounts were only given to I/O attendees and that’s what I was checking for on Twitter. If you signed up on https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignupfordev/, you’ll be notified when it’s available for you.

Thanks
Christine

I though, “Fair enough,” and just kept waiting!

A couple of months later on Monday the 20th July, I got the following email:

Hi,

You are being sent this mail because you requested access to the Google
Wave Developer Sandbox. If you would still like a Google Wave Developer
Sandbox account, please fill in this linked form:

http://wave.google.com/signups/signup1.html [I removed my unique code from here... Why would I share that with you? ]

After filling in this form, you should receive a mail with your account
details within a few days.

Hope to see you on Google Wave soon,

- The Google Wave Team

I was finally close to having my Google Wave account! I eagerly filled out the form and waited a bit longer!

I presumed that Google would be swamped with accounts to set up and that it may take some time but after 6 days I tried to contact someone. Sicne then I have received no replies or any contact from Google and my account was never set up

Hopefully someone at Google finds this blog post and can get me an invite to the real google wave which is now running!