You can choose the frequency of the notifications between instantly to daily updates, you will only get one update for each Wave so at least you won't get drowned in notifications.

To enable Wave Email Notifications hover over the Inbox in your wave sidebar and click "Notifications"

source:xxxxx
You can use source: followed by "friendfeed", "twitter", "reader" or "buzz" to search for buzzes from a certain source. Replace "xxxxx" with the source.

author:xxxxx
You can use this to search for a certain author. Replace "xxxxx" with the author's name.

commenter:xxxxx
You can use this to search for a certain commenter. Replace "xxxxx" with the commenter's name.

has:xxxxx
You can use this to search for buzzes containing either a video, a link, or an image. Just replace xxxxx with "video", "link" or "image".

Don't forget to Friend the charity BullyingUK's Buzz Profile.

So after a few days of Buzz, a rant and then time to think and experiment and actually Buzz shows a fair amount of promise. Google have been quick to roll out fixes and new features in response to the community including a revamp to the way privacy and discovery of buzz contacts will work.

In my Sunday ramble this week I wanted to share some observations I have made over the last few days about Google Buzz.

What works on Twitter/Facebook works on Buzz

If I ask people to show their support on Twitter by retweeting they will and we get more followers, the same works perfectly well on Buzz. Ask your Buzz followers to LIKE or Comment an Update and they will, alerting all their friends to your existence! Went from 34 friends to 52 friends yesterday using this.

Twitter feeds in Buzz SUCK!

Seriously annoying seeing Twitter updates in your Buzz stream and feel like noise instantly, turned @BullyingUK 's Twitter feed to Buzz off as have many other buzz users. Either Google need to fix it or Ettiquett looks to say NO Tweets in Buzz.

Buzz A fusion of Forum and Status Updates

With Twitter or Facebook the message always seems to be keep it short but on Buzz much much longer and more detailed conversations seem to break out even around short updates, the speed of the comments and the way your main Gmail inbox keeps track of threads you are interacting with is very clever and actually not as annoying or "OverLoad" as you might think.

Interestingly I have yet to see any meaningful conversations around automatically posted Twitter Tweets into buzz streams... see above.

Mobile.Buzz could Kill Foursquare dead.

If I thought Google Latitude was great before now that its rolled into Buzz it becomes the killer feature of Buzz on your phone, updates you post can be tagged with your location data flicking to the Map view will show you updates of every Buzz user around you geographically and that of your friends!

Foursquare and other location based services are going to have to innovate fast or take my advice and pull the Buzz api into your services fast, Buzz is the service that is going to make Location Based games and services explode in the minds of the general public over the next 12 months.

Please note that the profile must be completed in your charities name not the name of the person who manages your account. We want the @BullyingUK's not the @JohnCarnell's on this list please.

Notice I'm using the @ID convention created by Twitter, this is because Buzz supports @Replies your @ID will be taken from your Profile URL which should look like this: http://www.google.com/profiles/Bullyinguk

Remember Google wants Buzz data public so it can be included in Real Time Search and it's main search index. Be careful what you share!

Ok here is how, Scroll down to the bottom of your Google Mail  box and look for the turn off buzz link.

Clicking that will remove Google Buzz and you can be safe and sound social free again, although why you would want to do that is lost on me :-)

Google have released two videos to demo their new social network baked into Gmail, check them out below.You can read about teh feature we know of so far in my Google Buzz post.

Google just announced that Gmail is getting a big upgrade, Google Buzz which at least at the moment looks like a social network that runs on open protocols and talks to a wide range of service like Flickr and Twitter.

The goal would appear to become the central platform for all Social Communications from Email to Status Updates and allow you to keep on top of all of your friends and associates updates.

So far we know it will have the following features:

• Auto-following
• Rich, fast sharing experience
• Public and private sharing
• Inbox integration

A link will be appearing shortly in the side bar of all Gmail accounts that will give access to Google Buzz for now Google have released two videos, and within Buzz you can access external content and your friends updates, they seem to be drawing on community created ideas as well @Replies a popular feature of Twitter will be supported.

Buzz uses algorithms to help surface only the relevant posts and ignore the spam and noise, sounds like page rank for social interactions to me :-)

Mobile Buzz
You will be able to access buzz from your mobile phone in the same way you access Gmail or Google Wave now thorough their own link buzz.google.com

Mobile appears to be a big part of Buzz and looks like it features location aware features similar to latitude but tied to social updates.

Any changes after the restore point will be removed, perfect for those times when some one makes a big mistake or goes Gadget mad. Your access level needs to be Full not the readonly mode that Google just added.

This is a really smart move by the Google Wave team and should really help to bring order to the chaos of Wave collaboration. I know a few people were really avoiding Wave until Google added some sort of access control, hopefully this should be just what they were waiting for.

When you add a new contact to a Wave you now get a drop down menu to select the access level for that invited user.

Now I know I'm rightly biased but I love @BullyingUK's new iPhone application, not just because it looks great and works wonderfully but also because it was cheap to create using AppMakr. I will have a full HowTo guide to building your own charity iPhone app using AppMakr this weekend.

Key features of the Bullying UK iPhone app include:

• All our advice for young people, parents and teachers in the palm of your hand;
• Native application running on the iPhone / iPod Touch;
• Socially aware - Twitter and email our advice directly from the app;
• Always Live - Advice is updated in real time from www.bullying.co.uk so you're always up to date.

Handy for those public wave moments when you accidently delete someone's gadget or mess up their blips. Changes are still tracked however!

Disclosure: CouponChief.com invited me to peruse their vast supply of coupons in December and compensated me for my time. As you all know I love a discount and judging by the number of visitors to my charity discounts page so do a lot of you.

CouponChief noticed and asked if I would like to take a look at their huge range of discount coupons and write something for the site in return they have compensated me for my time. (Which helps me pay the server costs)

Clipping Digital Coupons

Most online retailers these days offer a way to enter a discount code when your about to pay for your goods online, problem is how do you know where to get a discount code from its not like they advertise them that widely or make them easy to find.

Usually I spent time trawling forums trying to find up to date codes (frustrating) or asking friendly bricks and mortar staff if they know of any. Having signed up for CouponChief.com now I can simply search for a coupon or browse through a list of merchants till I find either the service I want or a store carrying the product I need.

You don't need to register to use the site but I thought I would go for the full experience so I could Tag and Share discounts with the community.

My view is simple as charities / non-profits if we can save even 1% we should and CouponChief makes the process so quick and easy, select the relevant discount, copy it and then visit the site using the button next to the discount code.

When you have finished shopping and get to the checkout page keep your eyes open for a Voucher Discount field, it might of been filled in already for you if not paste in the code you copied earlier.

Check out as normal and your discount will be applied.

I was going to put up a list of merchants but just in A alone theirs about 200, what I will say is I've found discounts for everything from Web Hosting to Computers, Car Rentals to Printers struggling to find services they don't cover. (Have a try yourself)

As many of my readers will know I have been championing QR technology in the UK for the last 12 months, the first charity in the UK to use QR was @BullyingUK as part of their Anti-bullying poster creator a project I am very proud of.

I'm also advising a few other charities looking at this technology and how they can apply it to a huge range of charity services from just giving sign posts a digital make over to enabling advanced contact services QR is changing everything and charities are leading the way.

If you would like to talk QR with me @JohnCarnell on Twitter or email me john@technicavita.com

How to go public

The reply button will create a reply to that blip however if you double click a word inside a blip you want to reply it will create a collapsible thread at that point very handy if you want to keep the wave tidy.

Say this is a master blip and I would like to add a note or reply to this message at this point here.

This means I don’t have lots of extra blips under here but can keep the focus of my comment related to the first sentence, these inline blips can then be collapsed saving space and keeping the wave tidy

This is very useful if you want to keep a separate note about a particular blip or if you want to include a co-worker in a side discussion without impacting the conversation still carrying on.

You can even invite an additional person from outside the main wave who can comment in your private blip and view the parent blips content but not the entire wave.

Clicking the New Wave button at the top of your Inbox will create a new Wave and open your first blip, it's customary to make the first blip the page Title so go ahead and create a page title and using the H1 button set the size to H1 a nice big Title. You can also add a short description about the purpose of the wave or any instructions to other wave members.

Inviting others to join your Google Wave

To invite other people to join your wave and assuming you already have some contacts, click the + symbol at the top of panel 4 (The Wave) it will be to the right of your Avatar (account image) click each of the people you want to add to your wave and the wave will be sent to their Google Wave inbox ready for them to take part.

Receiving a Google Wave

When another person adds you to a wave it appears in your Wave Inbox automatically and within moments of you being added to the wave, new waves appear at the top of your inbox and can be opened by double clicking on them, if a wave already has activity it will have a green indicator with a number in it to show how many unread blips are present.

To send a ping click on a contact in your contacts list and click the PING button. This will open a PING drop down at the very top of your Google Wave Interface.

If you ping someone from inside a Wave the ping blip will occur inside that Wave not in a new window, in effect it becomes a private reply that only the person pinged and you become members off. Note at this time you can’t delete these types of private blips!

When a Ping is minimised you only have limited features no full edit bar your limited to just typing and replying, to restore the full editor just maximise the ping into a full wave Pings are useful if you just need a quick word with someone while working in another wave or to send information snippets to one another, honestly Ping feels a bit pointless but it’s useful to help replicate a more slimmed down Instant messenger communication window.

Those lovely people over at iolo dropped me an email to tell me about version 9.5 of their award winning PC Maintenance software. As an added bonus they have given me a discount code that will get you a $20 off the website price. Just use TECHNICAVITA as the discount code when checking out.

Windows 7 and Vista: PC Health Status

Designed for both Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines, System Mechanic's PC Health Status Gadget provides real-time status reports on your computer's health, with drill-down access to any detected problems and system warnings you should know about.

You can also keep track of how your PC is being maintained through a running feed of the repairs and optimizations performed by System Mechanic. And finally, the gadget gives you a quick and easy way to access the most commonly used functions in System Mechanic, such as Memory Mechanic® and EnergyBooster.

Additional Tweaks for Windows 7

The PC Cleanup PowerTool¿ has been enhanced with additional junk file patterns, so System Mechanic will be able to detect and remove system clutter from Window 7-specific locations.

Behavior patterns and errors in Windows 7 will be detected and resolved with System Mechanic's updated registry cleaning and repair technology. This technology can be found in System Mechanic's Registry Tuner as well as the Total Registry Revitalizer, which repairs, compacts, defragments, and backs up the registry in one step.

You can purchase System Mechanic 9.5 and download it right away no waiting for the postman, tune your PC up now!

Recover lost data from your PC or digital device. Get back missing documents, music, photos, videos, system files, and even entire folders. Rescue deleted email from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, and Thunderbird. Recover calendars, contacts, and tasks from Outlook.

Search and Recover rescues deleted data from hard drives, floppy disks, CDs-DVDs, cameras, MP3 players, USB flash drives, and other media and devices.

It can even restore the files you lost in a PC disaster years ago! Search and Recover's data recovery is intuitive and easy. Step-by-step wizards guide you though most tasks.

Robust recovery features combined with bonus tools for system backup and secure file destruction make Search and Recover a comprehensive program for managing critical data.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 32-bit Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Search and Recover supports all drive types (IDE, SCSI, USB, etc.) and most portable digital devices such as digital cameras, music players, memory cards, and flash drives.

The mobile web is about to explode thanks to the rise of smart phones and social media but one of the biggest challenges for charities is how to make it cost effective when traditionally the mobile web has been a slow burner as far as ROI goes.

Twitter on mobile phones has changed all that and now the mobile web is coming alive with lots of new users hungry for information in the palm of their hands. This sudden growth spurt in mobile web access didn't go unnoticed by Google who is a huge player in online advertising as well as Search.

I will be talking about Mofuse Mobile Website builder in this article as well, charities can get a 20% discount from this details page.

Monetise your Mobile Website from day one!

Using Google AdSense for mobile is easy and more importantly gives a Cost Per Click (CPC) much higher than a usual adsense advert, in my experiments I would get around 13p a click on a traditional AdSense advert but on a mobile adsense advert its £1.42.

Yes you read that right well over £1 per click on mobile AdSense, the reason for this is simply because there are so few mobile web users proportional to desktop web, advertisers will pay more to acquire a click from mobile users.

Build a mobile website and monetise it in a day

Using MoFuse premium it's simple to pull in your content via RSS from your full size site add Google Analytics and generate a mobile sitemap to help the search engines find your mobile site and send you visitors.

You can add the Google Adsense mobile code directly into a section of the Mofuse site and select if you want the advert to appear top or bottom of your site.

It will probably take you less than 6 hours to do all that and that's with ample playing around time. I built two mobile websites in 24 hours it really is simple.

Advanced Redirection for Mobiles

If you want to redirect any users from your main website that are using a mobile device automatically to your mobile site you can use a bit of code that you add into your main websites template.

Mofuse provide code for both PHP and ASP to suit your development environment, this is a very effective way to boost views of your mobile website and if it's an exact copy of your main site (via rss feed) users will appreciate the easier to read presentation of the content compared to your full size site.

I will update this page over time if you have one I've missed email me john@technicavita.org

Chimp Mail

Chimpmail provides a free account perfect for charities that only have up to 500 people they want to mail and want to send a maximum of 3000 email a month.
Sign up is as easy as selecting the FREE option on the sign up screen.

Verticle Responce

VR provide 10,000 free email credits per month and no list size, to qualify sign up and contact them with your charity registration details. They will ask you to email a copy of your charity deed.

MoFuse

The Mobile Website builder offer a free version of their service for smaller orgs with limited features or a premium account with a 20% off discount use NPO20 when signing up. If you want to use more than 2 RSS feeds into your mobile site you will need premium.

SalesForce CRM

10 free Enterprises licences for their CRM platform as well as discounts off partner services and discount training through the Salesforce foundation. The requirements for obtaining a grant has now changed and a little more involved than when I did it. See details here follow all steps!

Google Grants

Your charity can receive $315 dollars a day of free Google Adwords advertising, Read all about the Google Grant and apply here and note it can take a few months to be approved. A Google Grant is a big commitment and you must ensure you have staff who will actively monitor and work with the adwords system or you will loose the grant!

Google Apps for Domains - Email, Calendar and more!

If your organisation is currently running Outlook / Exchange or another client / server email service you should give Google Apps for non profits a look, the non-profit version is free for up to 3000 users!! and includes email and loads of other great services like calendar and document creation all in one online package.

Because its Google everything is done in your web browser making your email  and other services accessible from where ever you have an Internet connection. If your a new charity there's no reason to spend £££ on Microsoft email solutions use Google Apps instead!

You can now access the entire TechnicaVita site on your mobile phone, either point your mobile browser to m.technicavita.com or snap the QR code above using your phone barcode reader and it will take you right there. (Get one here)

You can read more about how you can use QR codes and also how to build a mobile website for your charity in those articles.

Remember that depending on your mobile phone tariff you may be charged for accessing the web on your mobile phone.

You will notice it is very similar to the Microsoft Word Tool bar or any other text editor you may of used keep that in mind when using Wave and you won't get too lost.

Going from Left to right:

• Bold - Make the currently selected text Bold
• Italic - Make the currently selected text Italic
• Underlined - Make the currently selected text Underlined
• Strike Through - Make the currently selected text struck through
• Text Size - Make the text Bigger or Smaller
• Font: Set the font style of the text (limited to web safe fonts)
• Text Colour - Make the Text a different colour
• Highlight - Highlight the current text
• Headers - Set titles as headings - this uses the H1 - H3 you may be familiar with from web development
• Bullet List - Everyone loves bullet points!
• Justify Left - sets the text to the left side of the page
• Justify Right - sets the text to the right side of the page
• Center - Centers the text
• Link - Add a n external link into your page (copy and wasting works ok as well)
• Attach - Attach an image, document or file to your wave (Only images currently)
• Google Search - Search google for anything and import it into your wave
• Add Gadget - Add a Google Wave Gadget to your wave like maps or a whiteboard
• Yes / No Poll - Adds a Yes no Maybe poll to your wave for others to vote with
• New Extension - Add new extensions to Google wave
• More Actions - show any items that wont fit on the bar at its present size

Any waves you are sent by other users or that you view in the public wave search will also appear in your inbox.

The Inbox Tool Bar includes the following options.

•    New Wave - Creates a new Blank Wave
•    Search Box - Shows the current search term default ' in:inbox '
•    Archive - Sends currently selected wave to the Archive
•    Mute - Stops the currently selected wave from showing if it has updates
•    Inbox - Sends the currently selected wave to the inbox
•    Spam - Flags a selected Wave as Spam and removes it from inbox
•    Read - Marks the current Wave as Read
•    Unread - Marks the current wave as Unread
•    Trash - Moves the Wave to the Trash folder
•    Move To - Allows you to move a wave to a folder of your choice

Mofuse have been in contact with me and would like to offer any charity a 20% discount off any of the premium Mofuse packages, you can also use Mofuse Standard for FREE but you only get a couple of RSS feed inputs which for some won't be enough if you want to split sections down.

To get a discount code please tweet me @johncarnell or email john@techvita.co.uk

The easiest way to think of Google Wave is as a fusion of Email and Instant Messenger services with a Wikipedia edit anything philosophy, starting a Wave and inviting other users to join the wave can be thought of as the first email you would send starting a new conversation with one or more users.

Once other users join your wave the system really becomes a real time instant messenger programs like MSN or AOL with the only difference being that replies and conversations happen in "threads" with replies appearing under the previous message.

Due to the ability to edit any part of a Wave the system has a more open presentation like Wikipedia where anyone can change or update the content of a Wave they are a member of.

The open nature of Google Wave means that developers can create Gadgets and Robots that can interact with a Wave to add new features or extend the functionality of a Wave in new ways.

I think many people who look at Wave without experiencing it have a bit of a "Meh So what!" approach or find it overly complex, their certainly is a learning curve to Wave but if you have in your mind that you are using a Many to Many service where you will be more used to email One to Many or blogging again One to Many.

In Wave everything is open to be collaborated on, from the words you write to the images you add and the formatting of the entire wave can be edited by any Wave user with access to your Wave (either by you inviting them or by placing the wave in the public search)

Mix in video conferenceing, voting and other Gadgets and the possibilities for fostering open communication is huge.

Google Wave is every communication service you have ever used, rolled into one platform and wrapped in a collaboration layer that allows multiway communication to occur across a diverse information set.

That is the best in a nut shell definition I could think of, can you do better? Comment below

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

It's taken a long time to get to this point but now more and more users are getting Smart Phones like the iPhone or Android it's more important than ever to provide content that works well on mobile browsers.

Bullying UK has had a mobile site for a number of years but it always had one big difference with our main site, we could only deliver a small subset of our advice.

This was down to size of screens, download considerations and the huge amount of content we would have to update on the mobile site with each change on the main site.

I recently stumbled across Mofuse mobile website builder and not only does it create mobile sites that work across all mobile phones but it's so quick and easy you will be done in a couple of hours as long as you have RSS feeds for your main sites content.

The Project - m.cyberbullying.co.uk

When I realised how easy Mofuse was going to be to use I decided to have a go at one of my projects in a day, this basicly involves taking a project from concept to launch in 24 hours using only tools from start-up businesses and for a low cost of £0. Yes I like to stack the deck against myself from the get go. :-)

I fired off an email to Mofuse with a really brief outline of what I thought I was trying to do and asked them if they would donate an account, they emailed me right back saying they would love to and upgraded our account.

This is why I love working with start-ups they are always very happy to help and the benefit to a charity of working with cutting edge tech as you will read is huge.

Ok first things first create a site in the Mofuse dashboard once that's done and before I do anything else I need to make sure the DNS for m.cyberbullying.co.uk is setup and pointed into the Mofuse servers, instructions to do that are on the SETTINGS > DOMAINS page.

You do get a Mofuse subdomain (sitename.bxs.mobi) for testing your site but I needed the entire thing live in 24 hours so setting up the DNS now was inportant.

The reason to do this first is it can take up to 24 hours to be updated around the world, the way I have our DNS setup means changes are reflected in just a few minutes but depending on your host it may take up to 24hours something to be aware of. (I use Nettica for DNS by the way)

It involves creating a CNAME record in your main sites DNS settings (Ask your ADMIN) I would suggest using m.mycharity.com the M stands for Mobile and is the general convention the web is using to identify a mobile site as part of a main domain.

Pulling in your content to Mofuse

Remember I mentioned that one of the major problems is keeping content up to date across two sites your main one and your mobile, well thanks to the Mofuse RSS import feature it makes it really quick to pull your sites content in.

First off go to ADD ELEMENT and create a TITLE and save it then find the RSS option and add the RSS feed to the content you want on the site and save. Then go to Site Layout add both the items you created to your site layout (click the arrows) on the site layout click the RSS item and drag it to the RIGHT so it appears INDENTED under the TITLE.

This will mean a user has to click the title to arrive at the content contained in the RSS feed, with your content added your done. Now anytime you update your main website or add a new page the mobile site will be updated automatically.

Setting up your RSS feed or Feeds

Ok this is really important most RSS feeds only contain between 20 and 50 items and may only include a snipit of the content, make sure you set your RSS to include every word.

Depending on the size of your site you may need many more items in the feed to cover your entire site or the sections of the site you want to represent you also need to change the settings in Mofuse when you add the RSS feed so it will include all the items in your RSS.

Bullying UK runs an RSS for each section of the site and a master feed that tracks every page and every word on the page this is not a feed you should expose to your users its really only for purposes like this.

Making it look pretty and adding more content

You can make your site match the general colours of your main site or brand using the colour pallets drag them to the colour you want or if you know the #colour enter it and click save. You can tweak the backgrounds, header, links and text.

Mofuse has a few extra content options like maps and images you can also add static text you have written yourself if you don't want to go down the RSS route.

Stats, Mobile Sitemaps and Advertising

Stats are the life blood of a charity its how we measure success and prove the value of our work, Mofuse offer a basic stats screen that shows you visitors per day but also Google Analytics so you can see mobile site traffic in your Google Analytics dashboard

Mobile Sitemaps can be added to your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and help Google to index your mobile site quicker and well as link in data. (You are using Google Webmaster Tools for your main site aren't you?)

I know some like to have a way to monetise the platforms you operate and Mofuse have you covered with Adsense and other advertising services just follow the instructions and your adverts will be integrated.

The end results

The entire time to create m.cyberbullying.co.uk was 3 hours and that included the learning curve which is very gentle, I really have to give much kudos to Mofuse for creating a toolset that is so easy to use I was able to create TWO mobile sites in 24 hours! :-)

I said at the start I love to stack the deck against myself when working on one of my Projects in 24 hours, I was completely blown away to be able to also get m.bullying.co.uk online at the same time and it really does show how easy it should be for any charity to convert their main website to the mobile web.

It's not just the ease of building the sites that really impressed me but also the care shown towards the more advanced tools that people like us need to measure our impact.

So there you have it, two projects launched in under 24hours for the cost of £0, in the first three days m.cyberbullying.co.uk was online over 300 people accessed the site from a multitude of different mobile phones.

The end result is more people being able to get access to Bullying UK's award winning advice at the very moment they need support, it is one of the organisations founding stones we call it "In Time Support" the advice you need at the time you need it on what ever device you have to hand at the time.

I will be speaking to Mofuse to see if they will provide a discount rate for other charity / non-profits please leave a comment below and I will pass along your desire to use Mofuse to them.

I really hope you enjoyed this look at the mobile web, Bullying UK and Mofuse.

Adding a contact to Google Wave is easy, all you need to know is a users @googlewave.com address this is based on each users Google Account name and if your a Gmail user it will be the same username just with @Googlewave.com for the address.

To add a contact to your Google Wave contacts list click on the + symbol at the bottom right of the contacts panel this will open a popup window with a text box, enter the new contact address in this box and press enter.

An example Google Wave address

Name: Joe Blogs
GWave id: joeblogs@googlewave.com

You will use your @googlewave.com address to allow others to find you and add you to their contacts list so they can invite you to their Waves.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

You will then arrive at wave.google.com you will be asked to enter your Google account details and your invite will be complete you will arrive in your Google wave Dashboard... Welcome to Wave!

It really is as easy as that just make sure you already have a Google Account before you click the invite link.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

A classic from the Gamboy era and now brought into full colour on your iPhone Tetris has stood the test of time as one of the first and greatest video games ever invented.

Swipe your fingers on the screen to move blocks down, tap to rotate and you can even side store a block for later use.

Get your Tetris on at the iTunes store now.

Ahhh when I was a lad I remember spending more than a few quid playing The Simpson in my local Arcade.

Well EA seem to of realised that this little bit of  Arcade gold was crying out for an iPhone make over.

The game has changed a fair bit from it's original Arcade version, now you play only as Homer and the rest of the family act as cool special powers you can activate along the way.

Combat is the usual BeatEMup style side ways scrolling game play of old and the on screen joypad and action buttons work well with only occasional bit of air punching becoming a problem.

The graphics are very nice to look at with detailed animations and are in the usual Simpsons style, the frame rate holds up well but theirs not a lot here to stress your phone.

Special mention has to be made to the cut scenes and use of The Simpson's huge cast to create a really fun game and a great little Simpson's story.

You can get it now from the iTunes Store.

This list of search commands for Google Wave may be useful to you to use them enter a command followed by a keyword it into your Google Wave search box above your inbox and press enter.

Example: with:public Twitter - would show you any public wave that mentions the word Twitter

Details of what the command does is directly BELOW the command and some commands have more than one way to trigger them.

Search Commands for Google Wave

creator:name

from:name

Finds all waves created by name.

participant:name

with:name

Finds all waves where name is a direct participant (name may be a user or a group).

contributor:name

by:name

Finds all waves where name edited at least one message.

to:name

Finds all waves where name is a participant, but not the creator.

onlyto:name

Finds all waves where name is the only participant, beside the creator.

onlyby:name

Finds all waves where name is the only contributor.

onlywith:name

Finds all waves where name is the only participant (name is either your own, or a group you belong to).

dfrom:name

Finds all waves with a direct message from name or waves with only two participants, where name is a contributor.

dto:name

Finds all direct messages to name, or waves with only two participants, where the other participant is also a contributor.

is:note

Finds all waves in which you are the only participant. Note: The keyword me can be used with all of the above operators to search for yourself. Use Google Wave account address for name.

is:read

Finds all waves where all messages within the wave (including all private replies) have been read .

is:unread

Finds all waves with at least one message that has not been read.

is:filed

Searches over waves that have been filed into one of your folders.

is:unfiled

Searches over waves that have not been filed (and are either still in:inbox or only in:all )

is:muted

Searches over all waves that have been muted.

is:unmuted

Searches over all waves that have not been muted.

has:attachment

Finds all messages with an attachment.

has:document

Finds all messages with a document attached.

has:image

Finds all messages with an image attached.

tag:name

Finds all waves with the tag name.

title:term

Finds all waves with term in the title.

in:inbox

Find waves in the inbox.

with:public

Finds public waves.

onlyto:me is:unread

Finds waves sent only to you and still unread.

in:folder

Finds all waves moved in a specific folder. Like, in:office

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

Google Wave has many possibilities here are just a few simple ones to get you started, remember everything that Google Wave does is based around a collaboration platform. In the future collaborating on a whole host of different types of activities or requirements will be possible as developers extend the Google Wave platform to suit the needs of the users.

Collaborate on a document

This one is obvious but some people still don't realise that Google Wave at it's heart is a collaboration platform. Any member of a Wave can edit any part of it including correcting adding or deleting information added by another user, the Playback feature makes it easy to see who changed what.

Plan a meetup or a trip

Create a Blog Post

Yup using the Wave platform its possible for you and other members of a wave to collaborate around a blog post and then by adding a Robot (an automated addon for Google Wave) have the content of the top blip posted directly to Wordpress or Posterous (Tumblr and others are bound to be in the works)

Make your Wave public

When you create a wave only you and those you invite to the Wave will be able to edit or add to the wave, however if you add easypublic@appspot.com as a member of a wave it will add the Wave into the public search so anyone can join and edit your wave (Obviously use caution)

Embed a Wave into a web page

Bet you didn't know you could take a Google Wave and embed it into a normal web page? Do a search in with:public and you will find a few different ways to make it work. You can see a Wave that I have embeded into this site. This has limited usefulness at the moment but in the future will be a great way to display Waves inside your main website.

You can also check out my Google Wave Advice Squidoo page that has links to loads more Google Wave resources

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

One of the issues with Google Wave right now is that its closed off to the majority of web users, enter Waves Archive to give non users a little taste of Google Wave.

The archive pulls in the top blip from any Google Wave that includes the Archive Bot as a member.

wavearchive@appspot.com - Add this bot as a contact and the Archive will pull your Wave into it's site in just a few seconds.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

Google Wave works ok on these phones

• Apple iPhone (3.0)
• Google Android 1.5 /1/6
• Nokia 9000 (untested by me)

If you come across any other phones that are working with Google wave please let me know in the comments below

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

Provided by the Google Wave developer site, I know many of you are Keyboard warriors that love shortbut keys so here is a list of ones that work with Google Wave

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

Google Wave is currently an invite only service this means you will either receive a Prime Account from Google or been sent an invite from a Prime Account, this is currently the only way to access Google Wave.

The only difference between the two types of accounts is a Prime Account has eight invites to send to friends and a non-prime accounts get none, other than that all functions are the same.

This helps Google to manage the growth of Google Wave during the first few months of testing, over time it’s expected that all accounts will be able to invite friends.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

At the Google Wave London meet up on Monday Wave's lead developer Lars Rasmussen spoke a little about the future of the Google Wave platform, including the intention to open up a Wave Application store similar to Apple's App store to iPhone.

The Google Wave App Store would allow developers to create Gadgets or Robots for Google Wave and charge a fee either to own the add on application or on as needed basis like renting a Video Conferencing service.

What this does signal is that Google is very serious about seeing Wave expand beyond the basic features of a collaboration framework by creating the app store it give developers the opportunity to take bigger risks for greater rewards.

After all the iPhone is not a phone its a smart platform that just happens to feature a phone, the same is true of Wave while collaboration is a feature (like having a touch screen) its the bottom layer of a much bigger platform that developers can build all sort of cool things on top of.

If you want to hook up with me on Wave add bullyingukonline@googlewave.com as a contact.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

Enjoy this look at Google Waves advanced user interface controls, I would recommend pressing the HD button so you get a nice clear picture.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

The Blip editor bar has been given a bit of make over and now features a drop down arrow on the right side of the bar, if you have alot of gadgets any that wont fit on the edit bar will be included in the drop down neat!

However with every update comes the odd glitch and this update has changed the way you search for public waves, their may also be an issue with public waves not updating searching using the new Groups: tag and repoening the wave seems to fix it.

To search for public waves you need to use the following from now on:

group:public@a.gwave.com ***

Where *** is the search term you would like to use.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

If you are already logged into Google Wave you will be able to see the content of the wave below.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave purchase my Ebook The Unauthorised Guide to Google Wave, it contains a good look at Google Wave Preview and some of the more advanced features included in over 20 pages.

You will be forgive for thinking, "What has a video game got to do with Social Media?" Well as it happens rather a lot, you see Champions Online the follow up to the hit MMOG City of Heroes/Villains is the first AAA game title I'm aware of to integrate Social Media features directly into the game.

What is Champions Online?

CO as it's known to the players is a Superhero themed, Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) where users create their own Superhero and battle evil villains, as players gain skills and defeat the bad guys they level up and earn perks and other in game items to help their super hero progress and take on bigger villains. The games setting comes from a Pen & Paper role playing game from the 1980's that has  proven to be very popular over time.

Setting up Champions Online Social Features

To get started you will need to use the /Slashcommand in your chat box type in /socialmedia and hit enter, a new window will appear with four social sites in columns the first two are Twitter and Facebook the ones we all care about. Click on the COG symbol above each column will start the setup process for that Social Network. Follow the on screen instructions you will usually need to use your Alt + Tab keyboard short cuts to minimise the game and load a web browser.

The Social Features use Twitter Oauth and Facebook Connect which both require a browser to authorise, Twitter is quick and easy Facebook will require you to Alt+Tab back into the game to continue each stage of the setup in total it takes just a couple of minutes to setup both Twitter and Facebook.

Being a Social Media Hero

The world of Social Media has opened up a lot of very cool possibilities and Champions Online takes advantage of Social Media in a very unique way, any major action or reward your character receives in game can be automatically pushed to Twitter or Facebook (or both) as a status update. So when I defeat FoxBat (An in game villain) a Status update will be sent to Facebook that looks like this:

"ForceKitty has completed the perk Vanquished Foxbat! - in Champions Online"

Sorry should introduce ForceKitty my crime fighting Super Hero, here is a picture of him taken using another of the Champions Online social features.

Social Screen Shots

If you use the /Slash command and enter /socialscreenshot into your chat box and hit enter the game will take a picture of that moment and upload it to Facebook and Twitter. It's not just your achievements in game but also the story you would like to tell your friends as you play.Over time and as ForceKitty levels up these features provide an almost comic book story of my own that I'm sharing with friends along the way.

Here is a shot of FoxBat face planted thanks to my awesome crime fighting powers :-) You can also use /socialstatus to push a status update to your social network just type in /socialstatus Your status update and hit enter.

The future

I believe Champions Online will be the first of many to integrate social media into their games to help the game experience to continue out of the game, of course its a great way to advertise a game to friends and friends of friends. I hear that both World of WarCraft and StartCraft 2 will feature Social Media integration in the future as well.

Thinking ahead

It's clear that over the next 12 months Social Media is going to continue to be integrated into anything and everything that moves, from Video Games to TV Remotes if your currently in the development stages with a new product or service you could do worse than look to social media as a way to extend the reach of your service and create new ways for users to interact and discover the work you are doing.

If you have an iPhone 3GS (The latest one) then you can take full advantage of Real Time Scanning, simply hold your iPhone up to a QR Barcode with QuickMark running and it will keep "Scanning" until it detects and reads a QR code. No more taking a picture of the code and praying you got the angle right this time. Now just wait a few seconds and bingo code translated.

It's also packed with advanced features allowing you to share translated codes directly to Twitter, and even create a QR code on your phone so a buddy can snap your phone number or other important bit of data. No bluetooth Syncing to mess about with create, snap and save.

QuickMark is in the Store now and priced at $1.99/£1.29 a real bargain and works a treat.

A few years ago I started to look at how the offline and online worlds could be bridged using mobile phone technology for a project I was working on @bullyinguk , I decided to extend one of our most popular projects Click, Create and Print by adding QR and mobile technology into the mix.

Enter the QR

QR is exactly as its full name suggest Quick Response, It's ideal for anything where you want to quickly allow a user to access information contained in the code (Address, Phone Number, URL) or on the web via a mobile phone.

In Japan more users access the web and information via mobile handsets than a fixed computer, QR was developed for use in that market about 10 years ago and along with Datamatrix is the most popular form of Data Barcode system.

QR has limitations in the amount of info you can encode into it, less is better. A web address or phone number is ideal but anything more than a few words (15-30 characters) and the code becomes too complex to work reliably across a wide range of handsets and media.

Me being me I never want to just do a run of the mill reinvention of what the corporate world would come up with so I set to work inventing a solution that would hit my goal of uniting the Offline and Online worlds.

Here is the Wheel - No Reinvention needed lets Innovate

I settled on using QR with @BullyingUK's Online Poster Creator allowing a copy of the user created poster to be downloaded to the phone and shared via MMS. Bluetooth or what ever other options the users phone may have. I believe we have one of the most complex implementation of QR in the world because we handle it all on the fly at creation time, @MattBindoff and I had to invent our own proccesses to handle creating the QR code, adding it onto a posters graphic and then generating a viral widget and uploading all that information to internal and external sites like Flickr and Twitter.

The Anti-bullying Poster Widget is created at the same time a user saves their poster to the gallery, their widget can be emedded onto over 80 social sites like Facebook or Myspace and has a small Chiclet that opens up the QR code in the widget.

This creates a complete circle around the offline and online use of the codes, Each code ties directly to the users poster and allows the mobile phone to download a copy of the poster and share it with friends.

Each poster also includes a generic QR code that allows access to the our mobile site  a slimmed down version of the main BullyingUK website.

Over 23,000 QR enables posters and their coresponding widgets have been created generating over 75,000 views in just 6 months!

If you want to have a play with reading QR Codes checkout reader.kaywa.com or for the iPhone try QuickMark featuring Real Time Scanning

Enter TubeMap it's simple but very effective, allowing you to plot which tube stops you need to change at and alerts you to delays or cancellations on the network, a real time saver.

You can get TubeMap from the iTunes app store now.

Login with your Twitter Username and Password and then turn your iPhone on its side, up pops the video recorder and you can start recording. When you stop recording 12cast will send your video to the 12seconds.tv server and Twitter. The app will also create an account at 12seconds.tv login with your Twitter ID to admin your videos on 12seconds.tv COOL!

You can find 12Cast in the iTunes app store and its free

AroundMe uses your current location to show you what is near by, so for instance if your in a city you don't know well and need a coffee shop or a cash machine fire up AroundMe and it will show you exactly where they all are.

I have lost count of the number of times I've been in London and needed a cab or had to get some more money, not only do you get a phone number and address but with one button click you can see all locations plotted on a map along with your location as well.

Tap the Share arrow and you can send the location to Twitter or plot a Route to your new destination, very handy if you need to switch a meeting point at the last minute. Around Me is free and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store

You can listen to all your stored voice notes by pressing the speaker grill, bottom right. Simplicity is the key forhte this app so don't expect any bells and whistles but everything it does it does very very well.
Check out the Notes another default app on the iPhone

Notes is free of charge and comes installed on your iPhone right out of the box. Throw away the pen and pad and go digital.

Check out Voice recorder another iPhone default app, and I highly recommend Quick Mark of iPhone

On your iPhone open Safari (the web broswer) and visit Google Latitude you will need to have a Google account so sign in and you will be presented with a contacts list, add your close friends email addresses and send them an invite.

Every time you open the Latitude web page it will automaticly check your location and update your friends with where you are. Clicking the map option will show your current position on a map just like in the first screen shot above.

Privacy is always going to be a concern that's why Google has included controls, if you want to turn Latitude off for a short time or turn off the auto location update when you load the app each time.

It is worth adding Latitude to your home screen by using the + symbol and the Add to Home Screen option, this will create a nice icon on your iPhone instead of having to load the webpage each time click the Latitude Icon and it will load up and update your location.

Everyone will find this very helpful when trying to meet up with other folk in strange towns or for road warriors who want to let a family member know they arrived safely without a phone call or email. I can see in time this being of great use to social workers and community based volunteers to let the office know where they are.

If there is only one app you download for your iPhone make sure it's the Google iPhone app. Developed to intergrate all of Google's best services right onto the iPhone making it easy to check your Gmail or do a Google Search.

Google Mobile also provides those non-profits and charities using Google Apps easy intergration with the calendar, email, docs and chat.

Probably best feature of Google Mobile is the Voice Search, click the Mic button and speak the keywords you are searching for and Google will do the rest and you never had to touch the keyboard. All searches voice or typed can be location aware so when you say "Taxi" or "Delivery" Google will show you results closest to where you are first very cool!

Download Google Mobile  now from the iTunes store

There is only one way to keep up with the latest news on the iPhone and that's with the Sky News iPhone app, offering not only text of the latest stories but also full video and audio making this one of the best all round multimedia news apps on the iPhone.

Tabs along the top of the interface provide access to news sections with the flick of the finger and the overall look and feel of the app is slick and well thought out & shares some similarities with the Facebook app in how it's presented.

The crown jewel in this app is the "Your Report" option on the lower right. This allows you to file a news report directly with the Sky News Desk right from your iPhone, compose your words add a photograph of the event and hit send.

You can download SkyNews from the iTunes App Store

@BullyingUK is the first charity in the UK to use the technology you can see it in action on their Anti-bullying Poster Creator, create a poster, save it to the gallery and then print it. Each poster has two QR codes one to access their mobile site m.bullying.co.uk and the other to download a copy of the poster to your phone.

The Barcode app can be downloaded via this iTunes link, once installed open the app and take a picture of the QR code follow the on screen prompts and the code will be translated.

Note that scanning codes works best on the new iPhone 3GS as older iPhone's have a fixed focus on the camera lens that makes it difficult to capture the code with high enough accuracy.

Here is a handy app for the iPhone, Battery Status will show you at a glance how much time in Hours and Minutes you have left to Talk, Surf or use Multimedia services like Music,Video & Games.

I have already found it useful on long trips to charge up my phone before I set off on the next stage of my journey with enough juice to reach the other end. You can download it to your iPhone using this iTunes link to the Battery Status download page.

Facebook is without doubt the hottest social network in town, with over 250 million users it's become a core part of social interaction in the digital age. As Facebook has grown so to have the ways to access the site.

iPhone your Friends

The iPhone has really been embraced by Facebook and it's native application available for free via the iphone Appstore and iTunes software makes it quick and easy to stay in touch with your supporters on the move.

The look and feel of the App resembles the clean white and blue of the main Facebook.com site and Tabs allows quick access to every part of the Facebook experience. You can even upload pictures to your Facebook account directly from the App.

Notifications, Chat and Facebook messages are all intergrated and easy to use with the iPhone Keyboard the only thing missing is Push Notifications but I'm sure Facebook will be updating the app in the near future with that feature.

As a free application Facebook for iPhone is one of the best mobile apps around, Facebook for iPhone Download it now on iTunes

TweetDecks Core features (Taken from Tweetdeck.com):

• Tweet directly from TweetDeck and share photos or web links
• Manage conversations with @replies and direct messages
• Create Groups to easily follow friends, colleagues or other interest groups
• Keep a finger on the pulse with Twitscoop and
  local trends.

• Follow topics in real-time with saved searches
• Update Facebook and view your friends’ status updates
• Preview short URLs from the comfort of TweetDeck
• Manage multiple Twitter accounts easily
• Keep your TweetDeck safe with sync and
  back-up

• View photo thumbnails directly from TweetDeck
• Record, share and watch video clips within TweetDeck
• Avoid Twitter spam with TweetDeck’s
  spam button
• And many other Twitter favourites including Stocktwits and much more

For Non-profits the features packed into TweetDeck can save you a huge amount of time and make keep track of 10,000's of followers a snap. Using the Groups feature you can add followers you want to keep a closer track of into a group with just a few clicks.

TweetDeck will give you a special column or Deck as they are called that constantly tracks those users in the group.

@replies and Direct Messages are quick and easy as each is assigned their own column (Deck) which you can see side by side making at a glance checks of your Twitter feed really easy.

A host of other more advanced features like Link Shortening, image preview and even Spam Reporter make TweetDeck one of the best all round Twitter Clients for Non-profits.

If your a iPhone user you can even have TweetDeck for your iPhone and using the TweetDeck Sync you can update columns between computers and your phone (VERY COOL)

Oh and the price of all this is FREE yup it rocks and it's free so there is no excuse for not becoming a Twitter Addict.

Oh yes you read that right Earth Worm Jim is back and now he's in your pocket, this 90's classic is remade for the iPhone with all new graphics and sound effects but that same insane brand of Worm humor.

Earth Worm Jim retains all it's charm and humor and a fair amount of it's difficulty but it's still a total blast to play.

You control Jim using an onscreen joypad most of you will be familiar with by now, three action buttons allow you to perform Earth Worm Jim's signature moves from using the hand blaster to the head whip (seriously head whip)

The controls work well better than some iPhone releases in recent memory well worth picking up if you fancy some nostalgia mixed with worm food :-)

Grab Earth Worm over at the iTunes store now.