10 Google Wave Invites
Yeah, it is serious 
I have 10 Google Wave invites to distribute to the first ten visitors to leave me a comment on this post. This is NOT a contest, I will be giving the invites to the ten first lucky people who leave a comment on this post requesting an invite. Please be sure to leave the comment with a working e-mail address, or the invite won't go through and you will lose your chance.
Comment away!
[UPDATE]: 8 invites left!
Google Chrome OS – First Screenshots! [UPDATE]
Here they are! The (supposed) first screenshots of what is to become Google's Operating System. The credibility and plausibility of those screenshots is actually flaky, but it's the best we have at the moment. Whether they are photoshopped or the real thing, time will tell.
The blog the images were taken from: here.
[via Engadget]
Update: The blog is a lie! Like I suspected, the leaked screenshots are actually fake. It didn't look so bad though!
Google Summer of Code – Payments Rolling In
Yep, the title says it all. Today I have received my shiny new VISA from Citibank with the initial $505 loaded on it. The other kewl stuff in the envelope included a neat, Google-branded, moleskin and two GSoC 2009 stickers. One's going on my laptop, if I can gut it!
Well, I'll leave you with some photos now!
Google Summer of Code 2009 – Part 2
Waaaaaaait for it, waaaaait for it....... YES PEOPLE! I was accepted for Google Summer of Code 2009 
This will be my smallest post ever but that is all I have to say I am friggin' ecstatic!
Google Summer of Code 2009
I know this post comes a little late and all but I still had to mention it on my blog. It turns out I am repeating the stunt again. After being turned down by Google last year, I decided I would try to apply once more this year.
Since last year I still had the change to get acquainted and get the logic of Apache Derby, I thought it would be wise to apply for the same project, and so I did. After all I do have an education on database management and also on Java, which are key for a project like Apache Derby. On top of it all there's also my tutor from last year; despite not having been chosen I still had a tutor who helped me all the way through. Kathey Marsden agreed to be my tutor again this year and that is a plus for me because I know upfront what I can expect.
So, the application period is over and my application is submitted. The results should be out on April 20th and I have my fingers crossed for me to get picked
What’s hot?
I am certainly not. My life's about to get shaken up a little and I am going from idleness to a rather busy period, or so I believe.
At this point I have decided I will be applying once more for Google Summer of Code. I applied last year and sadly, didn't get approved. Still, I stuck around an open source project and actually got to do some work on it. The experience was invaluable and I am going for the very same project again. My experience will be a plus and I really am looking forward to be part of GSoC'09.
At the same time, I am having to do research for my final school project: analyzing and proofing the eXplicit Control Protocol (XCP). As exciting as it may sound, it gets a little demotivating when the true goals of our project are, to say the least, blurry. Still, I am aiming to do the best I can.
Still on my thought currently are two school subjects:
- Decision Support Systems - The labs on this subject are turning out quite interesting. The definition of DSS is interesting and it is fascinating to get your hands dirty with data warehouses and with extreme load scenarios. The theory however is kinda boring and dull...
- Enterprise Information Systems - Good ole SAP. It looks like this subject will be extremely intensive and will require a lot of work but it is certainly a nice challenge. Having SAP in my CV will also be a massive stepping stone for the future as SAP consultants are not only very well paid, but the position is also always in constant demand.
For the near future I also have some extra-curricular plans. I have volunteered to be part of the FITEC event, so that should be interesting.
And that's all folks! I better go get some sle.....get back to work I mean! 
Gmail now has customizable themes – what about us?!
That's right, what about us, Google Apps users?
Google has recently released means for people to customize the looks of their GMail inboxes, but we, Google Apps users, are still in the blue. (That's my poor attempt at a pun)
Ever since Theming was released for GMail that I have been waiting and hoping to get the very same feature for Google Apps. After all, some of the G. Apps users are paying users, so one would expect the guys at Google to roll out the new features fairly quickly for their Apps users. That has not been the case. It was not the case with IMAP and it was not the case with Google Labs.
Now once more, it is not the case with Themes.
Sure, you can throw out all the excuses that there are a lot of users and that it needs a lot of work to roll out the features to everyone, but that just doesn't stick with me. Even recently we (Apps users) got our default theme changed to the default theme brought by the theming feature, however, the Themes tab is still MIA on the Settings page.
Clearly, part of the code has already been rolled out, but not all of it. The why is yet to be known, as Google won't give anything more than "soon, Themes will come to Google Apps". But how soon, Google?
A personal view at Firefox vs. Chrome
So, really, now that the hype is over, what is the browser of choice? Well, the out of the box answer for me is Firefox but let's have a deeper look at the contest shall we?
What plays in favour of Google Chrome?
I for one really enjoyed the looks. It has a clean and sleek interface without your regular toolbar menus and without a caption bar. I find this amazing. It's the first browser that was designed with true usability in mind regarding the menu paraphernalia. The guys at Google really are being serious about seeing websites as actual applications, and proof of that is the fact that you can create "application links". This also plays in Chrome's favour in my opinion. There are pages that I simply have open at all times and ones that I have to be able to access quickly; Google Chrome with this feature allows me to run GMail (or any other website) as a separate window, simply by leaving an icon on my desktop. This separate window is also special, it has kind of usability on steroids since it has no menu whatsoever. It does have a caption, which in this case is good because I might want to move the window around while not maximized.
Ok, now that we're done talking about the user interface, we go on to the actual features. For starters, let's face it: Google Chrome is fast. Actually, it feels faster than Firefox as far as browsing is concerned. How do they achieve it? I'm not exactly sure and if my suspicions are right, you can probably achieve the same effect with FasterFox or with a properly configured Opera, but I'm dealing with the facts here and that is that Chrome feels fast.
Google Chrome Released
Here it is, the browser made by the guys at Google. First things first, and a thank you to Pedro Sousa is due for having brought this to my attention as I had no idea that Google was even working on their own browser.
To be honest, I have been trying Google Chrome for a few minutes now and I was very impressed. It looked like and improved Firefox but now I've just logged into my blog and the rust started to show. Basically, in the admin panel of wordpress, everything is out of place and a real mess. Who is to blame? I have no clue. But all of this worked on Firefox...
I think that the major advantage I have found so far is the fact that each tab runs on a different process, which is the way things should be. That way, when one page crashes, it isn't your whole browser that goes down but just that very page. In a time where web exploits are at their peak, this is very important. Also kudos to the fact that you can easily detach tabs from a window into a separate window, and then add tabs to that window that you just created. It really is THAT easy!
The major disadvantage, is the fact that you can't switch dictionaries quickly and conveniently from the context menu inside a "textarea" which you can do on Firefox. For someone who has to alternate between Portuguese and English dictionaries, this is a major turn-down. Specially because it seems that you even have to restart the browser for the changes to take effect. Bad, bad Google. What were you thinking?!
Other than this I have also loved the seamless integration with Windows Vista. Chrome just integrates much better on Vista's look than Firefox does. Firefox barely supports transparency, whereas Chrome allows for transparency, even on the zone where the tabs reside.
In a nutshell, it's still a beta version, and that does show. Try it at your own peril, but try it nonetheless. I think you will be impressed.