A while ago there was a clamour among people to get an invitation into Google wave, and of course I applied and promptly forgot about it.

Now I have an invitation!! And 20 more to give away (though they are slow I think in replying).

All excited I logged in and watched the how-to video, only to be greatly disappointed in realising I don't know anyone else with an invitation...so I had no one to 'wave' with! It is not fun to try out a new communication tool with yourself.


I took a guess on the one guy I thought would have it, and he did, but he is in a different timezone....

Anyway, check out the interface - there are three main panels. The far left one looks like the YahooMail navigation, which I love.

The middle panel is like your email panel, where it lists the 'waves'you have got going on.

Finally, the far right one is where the wave you choose is displayed. Each of these panels can be minimised and put up the top.

So far I like it better than Gmail interface, which is too cluttered, the action buttons not easy to see, and the history too confusing.

You can embed images, video, gadgets. You can even manage your twitter account through here with an appropriate gadget (called Tweetie), and it looks like it will be massively customisable with API's.

They say you can drag images straight from your desktop into a wave, but I can't make that work right now. I can't even make things get deleted.

Can't wait to try it properly...

Ok, that is a bit of a mouthful. Google Local Social Search. What does that mean?

Basically, it means that in the future, Google could be using social networking information to influence the local search results you see in Google.

How this will work through people's privatised settings? I am not sure, so let's assume for now that it is only going to work on you if your settings are public, and only on those of your connections whose settings are public.

So, what could potentially happen is - if I am searching for a local hairdresser in Sydney, and one of my Facebook friends is a fan of the Facebook page of a local hairdressing company - then this hairdressing company could receive a bump up in the rankings for my search, and appear on the Google Map part of the search results.

This would require that the hairdressers profile was public, that their profile had relevant keywords, and also that it had good location information in there.

So basically, it means that if you are reaching out in the social media sphere, this could help your local seo campaign as well. By extending your social media network to mutliple sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn), and to multiple people (friends, their friends, colleagues, fan groups, niche interest groups, country/city/area groups), you are increasing your potential to influence people's local search results in Google.

This is another step forward for the 'trust economy'- being recommended things which are already trusted by people you know (or people they know).

Of course there is a big opportunity for spam to happen, however you can try and minimise it by making sure you are only friends with people you trust. With groups it is harder, as often they will let anyone join, so a spammer could join the same 'Melrose Place' fan group as you and perhaps influence your results that way.

The Webmaster Central site announced today a new 'discovery' method to help them find out about new pages on the web.