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“Abundance” – courtesy of Geeart.com
If you don’t read any other book this decade on financial prosperity, you must read “The Science of Getting Rich.” The Science of Getting Rich is a great (short) book which was written by Wallace D. Wattles back in 1910. It provides a basic roadmap teaching on how anyone can become financially free.
I will briefly share with you the major points of the book in this article.
The book starts off discussing how there are:
- Smart people that are rich, and
- Blockheads that are rich
- Intellectually brilliant people that are rich, and
- Mentally slothful people that are rich
- Big spenders that are rich, while
- Many frugal people remain in poverty
The authors point in making these observations is to note that riches are not contributable to luck, the right family, or the right neighborhood; but something else.
This article will recap the basic principles taught in “The Science of Getting Rich,” so that you can start practicing the science today, even if you’re a blockhead.
Here are the 4 major principles that the book teaches:
Principle # 1 – Visualization and Though Control
“Greatness is attained only by the thinking of great thoughts.”
The book tells you to take time daily to visualize what you want in great detail. The book states: …”do not do this as a mere dreamer or castle builder…,” but you must do it in faith knowing that your vision is going to become a reality.
The book requests that you do this whenever you have spare time throughout your day. It also asks that you be very specific and detailed in your visualizations.
My commentary: I recommend that you think about specific pre-meditated events that you want to occur in your life, and try to visualize them for at least 30 minutes a day. You have to pre-play your future. This will provide you with the motivation needed to accomplish your vision. Motivation is the fuel to any destination you want to reach.
You have to see it, before you can have it. As it is written, “without a vision, the people perish.”
Principle # 2 – Right Action
“Every day is either a success or a failure, and if every day is a success, you cannot fail to get rich.”
The book states that you should give 100 percent effort in your daily actions, and tells you to complete an honest day’s work every day. However, the book also states that you should never over work, because it’s not the number of items that you complete, but the importance of each item that matters. If you complete enough important items you will succeed.
My commentary: Whatever your goal, be sure to give 100 percent effort towards it every day. Complete the items that are sure to take you to your goal, postpone the busy work.
Never let a day go by without getting closer to the goals that you want to achieve!
If you have “a passion” to achieve a goal, then you have the power to achieve it. Passion is power.
Principle # 3 – Avoid Bad News
“If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.”
The book says you should diligently avoid all bad news.
My commentary: Avoid all negative media, videos, TV and movies showing poverty, doom, gloom and lack; you should also avoid conversations that include the above mentioned. There is no reason to fill you mind with all of the negativity in the media. Garbage in, garbage out! You will become what you constantly give your attention to. I recommend you give your attention to what you want to become, and to avoid that in which you do not want to become.
The book says that you should only talk of prosperity and the great possibilities when you speak. Speaking of lack and poverty only hinder your ability to create prosperity…
Principle # 4 – Gratitude
“…faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith.”
Finally, the book states that you must remain in a state of gratitude at all times; for everything that you have.
My commentary: Always speak, think and feel grateful throughout your day for all of the “good” that’s in your life. Place things in your environment which remind you to be grateful. A grateful heart will attract great things.
These are the four principles taught in the Science of Getting Rich, memorize them, and put them into action; they will change your life.
About the author: this guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; Mr. Self Development is a motivational author that offers a practical guide to success and wealth.
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Written by Lidija Davis
We live in a technologically rich and increasingly Web-savvy world. In this post, we celebrate the World Wide Web by selecting our top 10 international products of 2008. What do we mean by ‘international’? We looked for products that were developed outside the U.S., which showed innovation and support for global Web standards. We also tried to choose from a cross-section of countries, although obviously we couldn’t cover all the major countries. That said, we hope you enjoy our selections!
Of course with so many innovative products to choose from all around the globe, some exceptional non-U.S. products didn’t make the cut. So please let us know your own favorites in the comments.
This is the second in our series of top products of 2008, the first can be found here:
Note: the products listed below are in no particular order
1. Remember The Milk: Australia
Remember The Milk, the Australian startup that gave us our favorite task management tools, began when Omar Kilani, Emily Boyd and one stuffed monkey got together in 2004 with a simple idea. The idea grew and in 2005 they launched Remember The Milk.
RTM has seen enormous growth over the past couple of years. By October 2006, 100K people had signed up for the service, 200K by May 2007, 500K by March 2008, but it is only within the past year that RTM has had a significant impact on Web users globally. RTM now boasts over one million users, was named one of CNET’s Webware 100 Award winners in April, and in May ReadWriteWeb readers chose RTM as one of their favorite Web apps. More recently RTM created a gadget for Gmail and an application for the iPhone, pushing its reach further still.
2. Afrigator: South Africa
Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory for content from the African blogging community, similar in many ways to Technorati. Anyone in Africa with an RSS feed can use Afrigator to index their content and market it to the world.
Launched in April 2007 (alpha), Afrigator has seen a steady 25% month-on-month growth rate, launching beta in November of the same year. In September 2008 MIH Print Africa acquired a majority stake in Afrigator, giving the startup some breathing room to work on their new project Adgator, Africa’s first ad network. Currently tracking 4159 blogs across the continent, Afrigator is a great place to find content from the “Afrosphere.”
3. Zoho: India
Zoho is an Indian startup that offers a number of office tools, project management software and CRM solutions. It has made serious advances with its office productivity suite during 2008, reaching a milestone of 1 million users in August this year.
At the beginning of 2008, Zoho updated Writer to include support for the DocX file format along with several other features. In April, support for Visual Basic compatible macros was added to Zoho Sheet; macro record and playback rolled out four months later. October saw Zoho Mail emerge from private beta to being publicly available, offering at the same time offline support via Google Gears.
4. Netvibes: France
Members have created more than 50 million start pages spread across 200 countries on Netvibes since its launch in 2006. Available in 76 languages, Netvibes was named one of Times Best Web Sites 2007; but this hasn’t dampened the team’s enthusiasm to make Netvibes bigger and better, as evidenced by the launch of Netvibes Ginger in April 2008.
Ginger is a social version of NetVibes that allows you to share your new content from Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, blogs, etc. with friends; it also lets you follow the digital life of your friends. In November, Netvibes added a feature that allows content to be shared via integration with Facebook Connect and Twitter.
5. Dopplr: Finland / U.K.
Dopplr is a startup that lets you share travel plans with your friends, and “highlights coincidence,” giving you a heads up of which friends will be in cities you plan to visit. While the company has only been around since 2007, it has big name backers, and according to Compete has shown significant growth.
Last month Dopplr launched its new city pages, which include creative commons images automatically imported from the ‘interesting’ tag on Flickr – to provide a visualization of visitor activity for cities within the Dopplr database. If you’re not using it yet, you soon will be; we think Dopplr shows plenty of promise.
6. Maxthon: China
The browser market has seen many changes in 2008, with the introduction of Google’s Chrome in September, Mozilla’s Firefox 3 making the Guinness Book of World Records in June, and the slow decline of Internet Explorer as Firefox gains momentum. In Asia however, there’s another browser making waves. Maxthon, according to European web metrics company Xiti, is creating problems for its main competitor Firefox. It comes as no surprise then, that Mozilla recently released an edition of Firefox specifically for China.
Maxthon is a browser created in China and reported to be the second most popular browser in China today. While it doesn’t show up as a contender in most market share reports, it has had a staggering 174 million downloads at the time of writing this post. Using Internet Explorer’s rendering engine, Maxthon has over 1,400 add-ons, proxy switching capability, aggressive ad blocking, split-screen browsing to name a few of its innovative features. We said it two years ago, and we’ll say it again: this is one to keep your eye on.
7. Xing: Germany
Xing, the German social network for business professionals and the first Web 2.0 company to go public [December 2006], today has over 6.5 million members, and is now clearly in the race toward globalization alongside LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has over 30 million members, and according to Compete a 179.6% year-to-year change that beats Xing’s at 137.6%. It is important however, to note the financials, something we analyzed back in March this year, which may not be completely in LinkedIn’s favor. The data of particular interest concerns user engagement; visitors to Xing stay an average of 43.4 minutes on the site, while visitors to LinkedIn stay an average of 7.8 minutes – a whopping difference of 456%. We think Xing has made some good choices this year, especially the recent hire of Stefan Gross-Selbeck, as reported over on ReadWriteWeb’s Jobwire.
8. FreshBooks: Canada
FreshBooks, the Canadian online invoicing, time and expense tracking service for individuals and small companies, has been showing steady growth over the past year according to Compete, and claims to have over 500K new users since May 2004.
We compared FreshBooks with other online accounting services in August this year, and decided it was easy to use, includes a host of useful features, has an active forum, and offers benchmark data by industry to its users. More recently, we looked at FreshBooks Report Cards which provide an insight into how your business fares in relation to other businesses in your profession. Selected as one of the PICK 20 top Web 2.0 leaders in Canada in September this year, we think Freshbooks deserves a mention here too.
9. Mixi: Japan
Mixi, Japan’s biggest social network (only available in Japanese) was previously known for its closed platform. No more. In August this year, Mixi announced that it is acting as an OpenID provider – therefore bringing the global OpenID to millions of Japanese users.
While Mixi is not acting as a relaying party yet, allowing users to login with OpenID from other networks, the functionality of Mixi user profiles has now increased dramatically. According to the blog Asiajin, this opening up is pretty radical for Mixi standards.
10. Wuala: Switzerland
Swiss startup Wuala offers an unusual online social storage system: it uses the disk space of other members’ computers as part of the cloud. Wuala launched in August 2008 – making it the youngest of our international products.
Wuala differs from our other favorite online storage services in several ways. The advantages of this type of storage include no limits on file size and bandwidth. However the main disadvantage is that regardless of the AES-128 and RSA-2048 encryption, the idea of storing data on machines scattered around the world won’t appeal to all. Still, with 28 million files uploaded as of writing and growing by the minute, Wuala is definitely worth watching.
So, do you think we’ve picked the best 10 International Products of 2008? Please let us know what you think about our choices in the comments. Most importantly, let us know which international products you think are worth tracking.
from TechCrunch
With the recent iPod Touch update Apple has positioned and marketed the device as a new type of mobile gaming platform. Games have always been some of the best selling applications in the AppStore for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone. A recent advertisement for the iPod Touch carries the slogan “The Funnest iPod Ever” and features a number of games. We decided to try out and review each of the games featured in the ad and rate the ‘fun factor’ ourselves.
The Apple mobile devices have become decent gaming machines, with some of the newer games providing in-depth 3D environments and absorbing gameplay. We found a number of games that were extremely well developed and addictive, as good and better than most of the dedicated mobile gaming devices available on the market today.
We previously reviewed the best iPhone Apps so far this year. The following is our review of 12 of the new iPod Touch and iPhone games featured and highlighted in the recent Apple campaign.
If you have found any cool and fun new games for the iPod Touch or iPhone, or you have a particular favorite game, let us know in the comments.
Top Gun
TechCrunch Rating: 
Download: Rated 9+; $1.99
After watching Top Gun for the first time, who didn’t want to be a Navy Fighter Pilot – flying around shooting planes out of the sky to save your country, and being called awesome monikers like Maverick and Ice Man? With Paramount Pictures Top Gun iPhone app, you can get closer to this experience. The best part of it is, you can do it to the tune of Danger Zone.
The game features 10 missions, each one increasing in difficulty as you progress. The controls are balanced and the game is well designed for the most part. The graphics were crisp, and there was no frame lag when I played. It did seem odd though that the game had no throttle control: you are unable to speed up nor slow down, which meant I couldn’t use my favorite Top Gun quote, “You’re gonna do what,?!” while playing. The lack of a multiplayer mode keeps me from giving it a higher ranking, but for two bucks, you can’t really go wrong. Playing to Danger Zone adds another star to the rating, it just pumps me up everytime.
Real Racing
TechCrunch Rating:
Download: Rated 4+; $6.99
This is the closest an iPhone game has come to either Gran Turismo or Project Gotham. Real Racing is for the true racing enthusiast and gamer. There are 48 cars in 4 different classes, and the game boasts a massive 76 events in its career mode. The game offers automatic acceleration, as well as manual for those who truly want a challenge. Furthermore, the game offers a six person local multiplayer (through a WiFi network) so you can test your skills with all of your friends. On top of a global leaderboard, Real Racing has customizable leaderboards so that you can always hold your superiority over the heads of those closest to you.
Overall, this game is amazing. The graphics are awesome, the gameplay is crisp, and you can even post your best races straight to youtube! The only thing that seems to be missing is a non-local multiplayer so that you can challenge anyone around the world, but the upsides far outweigh this point. Definitely worth the $6.99.
Monster Trucks Nitro
TechCrunch Rating:
Download: Rated 4+; $0.99
The goal of Monster Trucks Nitro is to race down the eight different tracks as fast as you can while surmounting the obstacles which the game lays out. The game awards either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal depending on how fast you complete the races. Monster Trucks Nitro is a fun game and kept me engaged for a short while.
Unfortunately, I finished quite quickly and realized that there was no replay value to it other than simply going for all Gold medals. Also, there was no real sense of speed even when I used the Nitro. The graphics are decent, the framerate is adequate, and the multiple camera angles add a neat aspect to this game. However, the amount of content is definitely the shortcoming in this game and keeps it from a better rating.
3D Rollercoaster Rush
TechCrunch Rating:
Download: Rated 4+; $4.99; Limited Free Version
Looking at the description of this game, I didn’t think there was any way this game could be worth the $4.99 price tag, so I downloaded and installed the free and restriction version to try it out. Within minutes of playing the free version, I was hooked, and immediately purchased the full version for $4.99. The graphics are awesome, and I have yet to get past all of the levels. The carts can go faster or slower through the use of the accelerometer and the stunts which you can perform are, as the description describes, “insane.”
Being able to race the game designer’s time and demolish it is pretty satisfying, but I would still like a multiplayer function if I’m going to be shelling my hard earned(ish) cash. Overall, the $4.99 is a bit steep compared to other games, but worth it. At a slightly lower price, it would definitely be a 5-star ‘must have’ game. Try out the free version first to find out if you enjoy the game.
Touch Hockey: FS5
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $0.99; Limited Free Version
Playing this game brings back memories of being in an arcade and playing air hockey with my buddies. There really isn’t too much to say about Touch Hockey: FS5, as it is quite simple and intuitive. The gameplay is smooth and very responsive. The friends feature, where you can play a friend over WiFi, is very addictive.
The only problem is that in single-player mode the AI is way too easy, so unless you have a friend to play against over WiFi, the game becomes very boring very quickly. The only difference between the free version and paid version is the removal of ads, which for most won’t justify the purchase price as the ads are not very intrusive.
Homerun Battle 3D
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99
Homerun Battle 3D, previously known as Baseball Slugger, is a homerun. The batting controls are perfect and there is so much replay value with the online challenges. The graphics are clear and the stadium rendering excellent – it certainly looks and plays better than Wii Baseball. This has quickly become one of my favorite iPhone/iPod Touch games available today.
My only gripe is how, when playing alone, the computer can throw six 80 MPH fastballs in a row, and then come with a 104 MPH slider. That’s ridiculous. Other than that, this game is a must have for anyone looking for a casual and fun game.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour by EA Sports
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99
Like Tiger Woods, this game is a winner. It becomes apparently from early on that EA Sports has spent a lot of time developing and refining this game to mimic the classic console experience. While many games use a lot of the iPhone’s features simply for novelty sake, EA makes sure to use them to the users advantage.
The game offers actual PGA courses to play on, different difficulty levels, and upgradeable equipment and abilities. The graphics are as good as they get, the gameplay is on par with any other game out there, and replay value is high, especially for fans of golf. An online multiplayer would have seen this game receive an off-the-charts rating, and I hope we see that feature soon. This game is definitely a must have for anyone with either an iPhone or an iPod Touch.
Slope Rider
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $2.99; Limited Free Version
Based on the Mac game, Slope Rider was re-engineered to work on the iPhone/iPod Touch. While the game has crisp graphics and a good interface, there is nothing which truly stands out. You can either race via the alpine tracks, or do tricks via the freestyle courses. There are a multitude of tricks to master which are combined through the use of grabs, flips, and turns, which will in turn increase your points.
There is no multiplayer, and the only way to gauge how good you are is to check the global leaderboard. For this game, I would definitely recommend saving your three dollars for one of the other games on this list, and just downloading the free version.
Aqua Moto Racing
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $3.99; Limited Free Version
If you blinked during the Apple commercial then you might not have seen this game. Aqua Moto Racing brings back memories of Nintendo 64’s Wave Race, which is definitely a good thing. There are 18 different tracks to race from, and you are able to race these in reversed mode as well, which adds to the replayability of the game.
While this game doesn’t have true multiplayer functionality, it does offer ghost mode. Ghost mode lets you race against the times of those who have made the global leaderboard. While this game isn’t on par with some of the other stellar apps on this list, it is definitely worth the free test drive, especially for those nostalgic for the old Wave Race.
Finger Foos
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; FREE
On the Apple Ad, Finger Foos seems really cool and fun, but it really isn’t – it is terrible. The game is ridiculously simple and requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. The technology behind it is slick as you can see in the commercial, but the game just isn’t very fun.
It is a very very poor version of Touch Hockey: FS5, but does have the benefit of allowing more players to compete at once. It is a free game, so try it out yourselves to find out just how terrible it is and how misleading the ads can be.
2XL Supercros
TechCrunch Rating:
AppStore: Rated 4+; $7.99; Limited Free Version
If a game developer charges $8 for a game, it better be a very good one, especially since that price point is at the top end for games and it is the most expensive game on this list. 2XL Games, the developers of 2XL Supercross did not disappoint. This game has everything: the graphics are crystal-clear, the sounds of the engines are life-like, and the physics of the game are nearly perfect. A player can customize the look of his rider, ride in either a 125cc, 250cc, or 450cc bike, and race from four different camera views.
The controls take a little while to get used to, but once you get them, the game is a lot of fun. And if you don’t like the preset controls, no worries, as the game has eight different control configurations. This is another must have for any game enthusiast. Best of all, it has a free version to test-drive.
from Gizmodo
A tipster has dished up a number of photos and spec details on a previously unknown Gateway Tablet PC. Likely arriving on October 22nd (alongside Windows 7), it has a convertible 11.6-inch screen, and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
It’s believed the EC18T will support up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, and have Mobile Intel GS45 Express graphics (aka graphical blah). The design looks decent enough, though, and I’m betting it has multi-touch like the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s. [Engadget]
from The Next Web
The Kindle 2 is officially making its way out of the US and into over 100 countries.
According to an Amazon press release:
“We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”
The Kindle will cost $279 (international) and $259 (in the US) and will still be the American edition running on AT&T’s international network which therefore means costs to download books over the air will be pricey. That said, you can transfer personal documents to your Kindle via USB for free at anytime.
The Kindle will ship with a U.S. power adapter and a micro-USB cable for charging your Kindle via a computer USB port, so you’ll need to ensure you have an international adaptor to get it working for you. The Kindle currently has over 280,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines.
The kind people over at blogkindle have put together a table that lists every country where Kindle is available along with number of books, their pricing, wireless availability and more.
Here is a quick checklist of the countries where the Kindle is currently not available:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic Of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
Compare the pain of dragging three thickset Booker Prize candidates to the south of France with you with the 220g weight of the Sony Reader Pocket Edition and you’re halfway to understanding the appeal of eBooks.
But with Amazon’s Kindle arriving in the UK imminently, should you burn your bookshelves just yet?
Small, light and very good looking are three ways to accurately describe Sony’s gorgeous device. It’s just one centimetre thick and the screen is a pleasure to behold.
It measures 5 inches diagonally, and despite the low sounding resolution of 800×600, text displays much more crisply than it does on the finest LCD.
Better yet, because the Pocket Edition uses E Ink, it only draws power from the battery when it’s asked to refresh the screen. That means you can leave it on the same page almost indefinitely and the battery won’t die – Sony claims the battery lasts up to “nearly” 6,800 page turns.
The Pocket Reader is easy to use. Ten buttons arranged down the side of the screen allow you to make menu choices.
You also get shortcut buttons to return to the main menu, bookmark a page and, usefully, choose from three levels of zoom.
You can also scroll through the menus using the four-way direction pad at the bottom of the device, but this brings you up against one of the Reader’s inherent problems – the time it takes to redraw the screen.
Flipping to a new page takes a little under a second. This isn’t too bad if you’re simply turning the page. Eventually we found ourselves instinctively pressing the ‘Next’ button before we’d finished reading the last line of the page we were on.
The real drawback comes when you try to flick back a few pages to check something – it’s utterly impractical. You can flip to specific pages by typing in the page number with the menu buttons, but that assumes you know exactly which page you’re after. Overall, navigating a book is tricky. You can’t search your texts either.
That’s not the only problem. Although the E Ink screen is initially spectacular, after a while it becomes clear that it doesn’t have the high contrast of a normal paper page, and you need more ambient light to read it.
SOFTWARE
When you first plug in the Pocket Edition, it installs Sony’s eBook Library software, a kind of iTunes for books. Unfortunately that’s where the parallels end – click on the store and all you get are a set of links out to Borders, WHSmith and Waterstones.
Actually buying a book from Waterstones proved fairly easy in itself, although it’s disappointing that the 304kb download cost only around £1 less than buying the physical book. You can’t take it to a charity shop when you’re done, either.
Bizarrely, once we’d paid for our book, we were prompted to download Adobe’s Digital Editions software and informed that it was the only software that would work with our download.
In fairness, Adobe’s software works well and detected our Pocket Edition straightaway – dragging our new book on there was simple – but it seems odd that the Pocket Reader comes with software that booksellers don’t use themselves.
You don’t have to buy books, though. The Pocket Edition is compatible with PDF, RTF, TXT and Microsoft Word files, and has 512MB of internal memory.
Assuming 400kb per book, you could easily fit a few years’ worth of reading on, and its compatibility with non-DRM formats means it could serve a few other practical purposes, such as being a highly portable reference device.
And there are plenty of public domain titles around, many of them available at http://books.google.com.
Reading on the Pocket Edition Reader isn’t quite as stress-free as we’d like. Our main complaints are the length of time it takes to turn a page and the low contrast of the screen compared to normal paper books.
We liked:
Cracking design and easy to use. There’s a huge amount of material to read on the device as well.
we disliked:
Turning the page takes too long and navigating books is an exercise in frustration. Sony’s choice of software seems a little random, too.
Verdict:
If you take so many books on holiday that you rack up excess baggage charges, the Pocket Edition is an excellent compromise, thanks to its high capacity and low weight. But if you only flip through a few pages per night your bank balance will thank you for choosing paper over plastic.
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Written by Frederic Lardinois
Google just officially announced that it will send out 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave tomorrow. These accounts will go to developers who are already in the developers preview and users who signed up for accounts at wave.google.com on a first-come, first-served basis. tweetmeme_url = ‘http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/everything_you_need_to_know_about_the_google_wave.php’; tweetmeme_source = ‘rww’; A select number of Google Apps users will also get access to Wave. Google first unveiled Wave in May and since then the team has focused almost exclusively on making the system more stable and scalable.
What is Google Wave?
Even after using Google Wave for a few months now, it is still hard to describe exactly what it is. It’s as much of a real-time chat room as a platform for editing documents collaboratively. It can also be used as a Wiki, to replace email and IM within an organization, or just to organize a pub crawl, as Wave’s Lars Rasmussen points out in today’s blog post. There can be no doubt that Wave feels oddly familiar, especially because of its typical Google design, yet it also represents an alien concept for most users, as it combines so many services into one extremely flexible package but still remains deceptively simple to use.
We got a chance to talk to the core Wave team, including Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon, last night. They were obviously quite excited about the launch and told us about some of the details regarding the invitation process, Wave’s current features, and some of the team’s plans for the future.
Highlights
We will look at the details of the launch below, but here are some of the highlights:
- Google will send out more than 100,000 invites tomorrow
- they will go to three groups: current users on the sandbox server, users who signed up for accounts at wave.google.com over the last few months (first-come, first-served), and a few select enterprise users on Google Apps accounts
- more invites will be sent out as the team expands capacity
- users will not be able to invite their friends to Wave directly, but every Wave user will be able to ‘nominate’ 8 friends who will get to the front of the queue for new accounts
- all Wave accounts will move from the sandbox to the wave.google.com domain
- Wave’s contact management system will be integrated with Google Contacts
- the Wave team will highlight robots and widgets from a select number of vendors
- Internet Explorer users will be prompted to install and use Chrome Frame
Wave.Google.com
While the early Wave testers were on a wavesandbox.com account, starting tomorrow, all of these accounts and all the new users will move over to the wave.google.com domain. If you have tested Wave before, don’t expect any new features yet. The Wave team plans to add new features over the next few months, but the current focus in on making sure that the system can scale.
Nominate 8 of Your Friends
Unlike the Gmail beta, Google Wave users who get into the preview tomorrow won’t be able to invite friends directly. Instead, they will be able to ‘nominate’ 8 of their friends for accounts. As the Wave team plans to continue to send out additional invites as it stabilizes the system and adds capacity, these nominated accounts will move to the front of the queue and should get accounts relatively quickly.
For tomorrow, Google officially says that it will send out about 100,000 invitations, though as the Wave team told us yesterday, it will probably send out a few more than that.
Google Contacts
Google Wave will be able to tap into your Google contacts (the developer preview didn’t offer this feature). For now, it will only show contacts who are already using Google Wave, though.
Invite a Robot to Your Wave
On Wednesday, 100,000 users will also be able to use some of the robots and widgets that the developers in the preview wrote over the last few months. These range from widgets that allow you to play games with friends to sophisticated teleconferencing apps, with Twitter and blogging apps in between. We will have a close look at some of the more interesting applications tomorrow, but the featured apps will include a real-time, competitive Sudoku game, a Lonely Planet travel widget, and video chat from 6Rounds and a teleconferencing plugin from Ribbit.
For now, Google Wave will not feature an app store or marketplace for widgets and robots. Instead, every user will see a wave with a small number of featured apps in their accounts and be able to install these thanks to the new installer process the Wave team introduced just a short while ago.
Chrome Frame
When Google launched Chrome Frame, it’s Internet Explorer plugin that can replace the IE rendering engine with Google Chrome, the Wave team already announced that it would support this feature. And indeed, when you go to the Wave homepage with IE, you will now be prompted to install Chrome Frame. As Lars Rasmussen told us, the team is very enthusiastic about Chrome Frame, as it allows the developers to focus on features instead of making sure that Wave runs in Internet Explorer.
In our own experience, Wave definitely works best in Chrome. It will work just fine in Safari and Firefox, though for the most fluid experience, Chrome is currently the best browser.
Still Some Kinks to Work Out
The Wave team stresses that there are still a lot of problems to work out before Wave can really live up to all of its promises. While there was some doubt that the Wave team could actually get the system scaled up and ready for a wider launch earlier this summer, our experience with the developer preview has been very positive over the last few weeks and we definitely noticed that the system became fast and more stable. Now that 100,000 new users will join in, we will obviously have to wait and see how well Wave can scale up to this kind of demand.
For now, chances are that Wave will still crash at times. For major updates, the team will also have to take the whole system down for a few hours now and then.
Missing Features
Some features, however, still need to be implemented. Some of these are quite basic, like the ability to remove users from a wave, while others are a bit more complicated, like the ability to set specific user permissions on a wave. According to the Wave team, many of these missing features will be implemented within the next few months.
How Will People React?
Overall, it will be interesting to see how the Wave infrastructure holds up tomorrow and how people will react when they first see and use Wave.
Can social media make you famous?
Come on, you know you’ve thought about it. Who can resist dreaming about a post going viral and getting hundreds of thousands of visitors? Or having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter who follow your every move? Or checking your email and having hundreds of messages from your adoring fans?
It can happen. I know, because I helped make it happen for my friend Brea Grant.
In 2008, Brea called to tell me she had just been offered a major role on the third season of the mega-popular NBC show Heroes, and she wanted me to help her leverage the opportunity. I’d previously created a website to help her connect with casting directors, but now we both realized she was going to need a strategy to connect with fans.
A crash course in connection
Over the next few months, I gave Brea a crash course in social media. She learned how to use Twitter and Facebook, YouTube and Ustream. We also launched a blog.
The purpose of each tool wasn’t just to tell everyone what she was doing or what she thought about something. It was to help her connect directly with her fans and build a relationship with them.
It worked. Or, I should say she worked. Brea did everything I asked her to do and more, and the result is that she’s created a fan base that followed her beyond her character’s untimely demise on Heroes. The contacts she made online also led to the creation and contract with IDW to publish her first comic book We Will Bury You, due in early 2010.
And me? It’s safe to say I learned a ton.
How this applies to you
After his success launching a consulting service here at Copyblogger, Jon Morrow asked me to share some of the lessons I’ve picked up from working with Brea.
Through my work with my own clients, I’ve found that these are universal truths that work for small businesses, professional bloggers, hobby bloggers, and anyone who just wants to raise their online profile.
I hope you enjoy them . . . and be sure to read to the end to see how this applies to you, not just celebrities.
Lesson #1: Find your blog’s core purpose
Here’s a question that never seems to go away: what is a blog?
Is it a public journal? An online magazine? An extended way to connect with friends and family?
And the answer is . . . a blog is whatever your audience needs it to be.
People visit Brea’s blog to experience a personal connection with Brea. Visitors might receive this from chatting with her on Twitter, listening to the same music she listens to, or just getting a glimpse of her day-to-day life.
Whatever your topic, you need to get crystal clear on why people are there.
Is it to read the hilarious details of your personal life? Watch detailed how-to videos on watercolor painting? Hear your latest celebrity rant?
It doesn’t matter what it is, only that you know it and ruthlessly eliminate anything that gets in the way.
Lesson #2: Ditch the distractions
As Brea’s fame has increased, we’ve received countless offers to add bells and whistles that “polish” her site and social media presence. Many of these tools are very cool and cutting edge but would ultimately get in the way of our core purpose: a personal connection with Brea.
So we turned them all down.
I’ve seen lots of my other clients struggle with this problem too, although usually on a smaller scale. If you’re starting a blog, for instance, you might get distracted by polishing and re-polishing your blog design, learning about ad networks, or experimenting with dozens of the latest WordPress plug-ins. More likely than not though, all of those things are just distractions for both you and your audience.
Before you do anything online, always ask yourself: is this in line with the core purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish?
If it’s not, then ditch it. Too many useless bells and whistles don’t increase your fame. They just make it look like you have something to hide.
Lesson #3: Streamline your social networking
One day Brea called me and said, “You know I shut down my Facebook account, right?”
Well NO, I didn’t know, and she is supposed to ask me about these things first! But I agreed that it was the right move.
Why? Because Facebook had become an unmanageable beast rather than a fun place to connect with her fans.
I’m not saying to ditch social media if it’s confusing, because . . . well . . . it’s always confusing. But if you’ve made a genuine attempt to learn the culture of a site and engage with it and it just ain’t doin’ it for you, try something else.
Maybe your tribe isn’t there, or maybe it just makes you cranky. Either way, it’s not going to be effective. Move on.
Lesson #4: Focus on your talents
Brea loves Twitter. She likes the short updates, ease of use, and how easy it is to get into one-on-one dialogue with fans. She also loves blogging, especially sharing the music she’s listening to and books that she’s reading.
Surprisingly, she’d much rather write than video blog. Being yourself on camera is quite different than playing someone else!
You might love podcasts, or video blogging, or writing blog posts. Whatever your flavor, you’re going to shine in a space when you pick the one that is best suited to your natural abilities.
This is NOT a get-out-of-jail-free card for learning new skills! You’ll never know whether or not you thrive in a medium until you practice and get comfortable with it. The point is that you don’t have to do everything. Try it all, and then stick with whatever works best.
Lesson #5: Take advantage of your opportunities
Okay, let’s be honest. Did social media make Brea Grant famous? Or was it all about being on a mega-popular TV show like Heroes?
The honest answer: both.
Lots of actors land a role on a popular show, fail to capitalize on it, and then disappear forever. Lots of aspiring actors also try to build a following with social media and never make it.
To a large extent, success online (or in life in general) is about doing both. You have to work hard until the right opportunity shows up, and then you have to make sure you leverage it to its maximum potential.
Social media can help get other people talking about you, but first you have to do something worth talking about.
Want to learn how?
I’m guessing you’ve figured out that I have a course on how to use social media to generate buzz around your career or business. It’s called Creating Fame, and it builds on my experience in helping clients do exactly that.
But how about some free videos first?
In Creating Fame, I talk about the importance of giving away high-quality free content to create a greater connection with your audience, and that’s exactly what I’d like to do here.
Take a look at my Creating Fans Out Of Thin Air Video. If it looks like something you’re interested in, just leave your name and email address for more than two hours of additional free content, including a video from Brea.
Whether or not you’re interested in the course, I think you’ll learn a lot from the free videos. Click here to check them out.
About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media consultant and the founder of Creating Fame.
Alongside many of our Estethica favourites this season including People Tree, From Somewhere, and Makepiece, we were delighted to see some fresh fashion talent on these UK shores in the form of Bird Textiles from Australia. Their eye catching prints and popping colours certainly brought some southern hemisphere sunshine to the show. After Warren’s post on Bird back in 2006 it is great to see the brand going from strength to strength, not only on the fashion front, but also feathering our nests with their homeware collection.
Unique Organic Textiles
We love Bird Textiles totally unique prints on SKAL/CUC certified organic fabrics, which are all hand printed in Australia using water-based dyes. Designer Rachel Bending says that after starting the Slingfings brand she saw a massive opportunity to create her own printed textiles, as there was such a restricted range of eco-textiles available on the market. Her influences of Japanese wood block prints and Scandanavian textile design, combined with an Australian sensibility has created a distinctly upbeat fashion flavour, evident in Bird’s funky pop art styling.
Waste Not Want Not
Rachel Bending also spoke enthusiastically about running a fashion and homewares collection alongside each other. They work well together as the off cuts from the fashion designs can be used in a myriad of ways for the homewares collection, from cushions to tablerunners and napkins. While maintaining Slingfings Climate Neutral status with solar powered production Bird Textiles also has an absolute waste not want not culture, even the smallest scraps of fabric are used to create pretty brooches, one of Bird’s best selling products.
http://www.readwriteweb.com
Written by Richard MacManus
YouTube has come to define the new era of online video, so let’s take a look at their most popular videos of all time.
I was expecting something like lonelygirl15 or the original menthos coke video to be number 1. But no, the most popular video of all time on YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006 and has since gone on to attract 55.8 Million views. It’s had 60,476 comments, the first of which was: “That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks for sharing!!”. The comments for this video are still going strong today – the latest 10 comments have all come in the last 30 minutes, as of writing. Plus it’s been favorited 252,082 times (making it the number 1 Top Favorited video of All Time).
According to a SMH article at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance. In many ways this is your typical YouTube video – a funny, goofy, short and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).
Incidentally, on Laipply’s website there is an accompanying cat video – proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.
The next 3 most viewed YouTube videos are all music. Two of them professional, one amatuer.
2. Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video, uploaded by RCARecords 5 months ago, has amassed 50 Million views.
3. My Chemical Romance’s Famous Last Words is third, with 35M views.
4. Guitar, is fourth with 26M views. It’s 5 minutes of Queen-like guitar licks, by some very talented dude.
Rounding out the Top 10:
5. SNL – Digital Short – A Special Christmas Box (comedy)
6. Tuğba Özay ve 250.000ci GarantiArkadas. com Üyesi (I have no idea what this is)
7. My Chemical Romance – Teenagers (music)
8. xxx (the title and promo image give the impression it is porn, but in fact it’s a sappy Hong Kong pop video)
9. Beyonce ft. Shakira – Beautiful Liar (mv) (music)
10. Akon – “Don’t Matter” (music)
Conclusion: Music Reigns Supreme
So in all, 7 of the top 10 are music – with 5 of those being professional videos. And OK Go is number 11 with their famously clever treadmill dancing video for Here It Goes Again. Indeed if you look at the Most Viewed Channels of all time, a lot of them are music companies. Universal Music is number 1 and My Chemical Romance number 3 (CBS is number 2).
If you’re wondering where are all the ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’-like ones, there is a laughing baby video at number 12.
So music and comedy make up the most popular videos on YouTube. And we can also see from this list that professional musicians and entertainers remain more popular than the so-called ‘user generated’ videos – at least at the toppermost of the poppermost.
