Sorry about my recent absence from blogging! I have been so busy at school with my GCSEs, sorting yearbook and what not that I just have not had the time to come on here and write however I do hope to make sure that this blog will be regularly updated this summer! I have lots of plans and lots of things to blog about so please wait expectantly. I am still working on finishing up the yearbook but should be able to slowly ease myself back into the blogging world!

Another thing to look out for is when I finally get my YouTube account going! I have so much video to edit and upload but I lack the processing power to do so! I have lots of reviews as well as just random videos! Whenever I upload a video it will be accompanied by a blog post and now with my HD2000 they should all be high quality, HD videos! I also have Adobe Captive 4 and may start doing a few tutorials for you guys!

To keep up to date make sure that you are subscribed to this blog and that you follow me on twitter!

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There is this big thing on Facebook about the lack of a dislike button. A countless number of groups have been set up protesting for the button to be introduced but Facebook has not yet taken note of this. Presumably the reason behind this is because they fear that the button my be used inappropriately in an offensive way and promote bullying, however there are also many situations where the like button can be used for this same purpose! In certain circumstances, a dislike button is the button that should be clicked. Look at this example that I mocked up:

The like button used for bad

If people want to be offensive and abusive to other people, they don’t need a Dislike button to do it! They will just write it in the comments so if this is the reason that a Dislike button does not exist then it is stupid!

Dislike buttons are also used widely on other websites but in a slightly different way; many forums will have a Karma system where you can like or dislike comments giving the comment an overall karma rating. An obvious example of somewhere that something like this is used is on YouTube:

The first dislike I could find on the first Featured video I could find on YouTube!

I totally agree that the Dislike button should be introduced and believe it would be good for Facebook. If Facebook is not introducing the dislike button for another reason or you don’t agree with what I have said, please inform me in the comments!

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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!

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