I’ve just read on the BBC News website that Google Wave will be going into a public preview later today opening the service up to 100,000 users who signed up at http://wave.google.com when Wave was first announced in May as well as developer people and a few Google Apps users.
As the Wave website shows its basically just Email V2 – chains of emails which different people can participate in, update, edit and change adding interactive elements, easily adding images and maps to and basically just making an emaily type system a whole lot more attractive.
I’m keeping all my fingers crossed in the hope that I’ll be included in the preview because it truly does look so cool – its like email and IM on steroids, perfect for planning events, keeping in touch and I’d have thought a nice way to get email type services back on track - it’s very rare that I receive an email from a friend and I blame Facebook for this, people find Facebook much easier - no email addresses to remember or effort to make because they always have Facebook open. With Wave being such an advance I’m hoping people will move over to it - BUT!, and its a big but! people will need an account which of course they will be reluctant to have, who really wants to have yet another account with a different service?! - A big shame, but if Wave interacts with Facebook and they create a good link this could help the cause.
I’ll keep this post updated if I get in - Its like being picked for a school sports team … only this time I actually want to be picked!

[Edit - 02/10/09] No invite for me unfortunately, I can only wait and hope for that all important email.

I’ve said in the past that my n95 is my favourite gadget, however that is old news - step aside n95, the n97 is in town. The decision for me to get it was easy - its fantastic, from the qwerty keyboard that takes a bit of getting used to, to the touch screen and the browser. I’ve had the phone for a little while and whilst there are a few little issues these will almost certainly get sorted in future firmware versions (an update is due this month which will feature kinetic scrolling on all menu’s). For me the keyboard is one of the best features, I haven’t fully tested my typing speeds compared to the n95 but I’m fairly sure they’ve improved - without predictive text and the hassle of turning it on / off for words that are or aren’t in the dictionary.

I think biggest issue has to be the low amount of memory - when a couple of applications are running it reduces the amount left free to a level whereby error messages hinder usage. however this isn’t always an issue and can be resolved with a cleanup of items left in the browsers history, I also hear that it will be resolved by the firmware update due this month.

The browser on the n97 is another plus point for me, to be able to touch and move around the pages more naturally than on the N95 is brilliant and the loading time of web pages is much lower too.

Applications that make the most of the n97’s touch screen are currently in limited numbers but I hope that over time some more brilliant apps will be released - the Facebook widget is fantastic whilst its working and not crashing.

Overall I’m very glad that I got the n97 and hopefully I’ll get a video done demoing some of my favourite features soon.

Its recently come to my attention that I have too much crap - too many gadgets that I regrettably don’t use. It sounds logical to sell these on eBay after having them sitting around for a while but I just haven’t got round to it! By making this post I’m hoping to get motivated and get it done.

For example my Nokia N95 - at one time my most prized gadget but now, not so much - thanks to my N97 (which I’m yet to write about - it’s great by the way). Whilst I will be sad to see my N95 go and I would like to have it stay with me a little while longer, I don’t think I could handle selling it for next to nothing a while down the line. I’m also aware that a backup phone is always a good idea but I do have other phones that would not sell for much at all that I could use instead.

I’m also going to sell my Nokia 770 Internet tablet - its been outdated and replaced by a couple of other devices, and for me replaced by the N97 mainly due to its better internet browser.

Oh and my Zune - now that my N97 has got more storage space than my Zune (30gb)  its just unfair for me to keep it living in hope of being used.

More on my N97 soon hopefully.