Codecademy Revisited

I recently received an email notice in my inbox "Announcing Python at Codecademy". Well, it's about time. I reviewed codecademy's learn to program tutorial about a year ago (featuring JavaScript), but the lessons ended and there was no place to go, so I stopped visiting their site.

A year passed and I pretty much forgot about Codecademy until I received their email. Curious, I decided to browse the site.

The home page looked the same as I remembered it. "Learn to code". "Get Started (it's free)". I clicked the big, green button and the page dimmed except for the field with the active cursor and the prompt to type in your name with "quotes" around it. I was taken through the beginning of the JavaScript module, the "teaser" for the course, by putting in my name, finding out its length, and doing some elementary math computations. Once I got through the intro, I was prompted to start the next section.

What I was trying to find out is if the JavaScript tutorial had gotten past "while loops". It was difficult to tell what the whole JavaScript course consisted of since each lesson forces you to go step-by-step rather than skipping ahead. As far as I could tell, the JavaScript tutorial had been significantly re-worked and ended on variables after about five sessions.

I wasn't interested in going through the JavaScript tutorial at that point and clicked the "Learn" button at the top of the page. What I found was that after a year, Codecademy has a lot more to offer:

• JavaScript Fundamentals
• Python
• Web Fundamentals
• JQuery
• Code Year

It didn't look like the different offerings were necessarily interdependent, but you could go through the JavaScript Fundamentals course and then hit Web Fundamentals to learn HTML and CSS, progress through JQuery as your JavaScript library, and then conclude with Code Year to learn how to build websites with JavaScript. I know Python doesn't seem to fit the path, but it is (or seems to be) the newest module as it's "beta" tag discloses.

It will take a little time go to through a significant portion of the tutorials in order to learn enough to update my original review, but I did want to let anyone reading this know that Codecademy is back on my radar after a year.

I'll post subsequent blogs and let you know what I think about the details.

A Book Review of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction

Author: William E. Shotts Jr.
Format: Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: No Starch Press; 1st edition (January 14, 2012)
ISBN-10: 1593273894
ISBN-13: 978-1593273897

Linux has been struggling to become a "desktop darling" of the home and small office user for years and has yet to succeed. I don't know if it will ever succeed. One of the biggest hurdles Linux has to cross is its reputation as being command-line driven. Most people fear the command line and if you're old enough, you remember (with dread) the arcane DOS interface or struggling to remember what command syntax to use with the now ancient Apple IIe. Users love Windows because the GUI is easy.

Ubuntu, of all the Linux distros, is about the best in terms of a user-friendly GUI, and yet even when Windows users abandon the Microsoft "mothership", they almost always turn to a Mac and not to Ubuntu (or any other flavor of Linux). Face it. Linux may never succeed as a desktop operating system and may have to "settle" for being the king of the server and embedded device markets.

But is that such a bad thing?

Ironically, the power of a Windows machine is on the command-line, but unless you're a system admin or network guru, that doesn't even occur to you. And absolutely, the power of Linux is in the command-line shell. Why fight the nature of what Linux is? Instead of trying to avoid shell commands, embrace them. That's where The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction comes in.

The hardcopy of this book should be on its way to me for my review right now, but I couldn't wait. The publisher kindly allowed me to also download a PDF version of the Shotts book, so here I am, tearing into it (metaphorically speaking) and getting ready to devour its contents. What secrets does it hold and for whom shall they be revealed?

Scrolling through the beginning of the PDF, I discovered the "Who Should Read This Book" section. According to the author, this book is for the rank beginner in the Linux world who is likely a Windows "power user" and who, for whatever reason, must learn Linux management skills. That's a rather amazing statement since, having scanned the table of contents on my way down to page 29, I discovered a rather impressive list of skills to be learned. Among them were "A Gentile Introduction to Vi" (my favorite editor), "Package Management", "Regular Expressions", "Compiling Programs", and "Writing Shell Scripts". Any one of these topics is worthy if its own book (and they're out there) and certainly they will be intimidating to the Linux novice.

But first things first.

The end of the introduction to the book gives rather brief instructions for how to install Linux on a computer or how to use a live CD, so the reader is presumed not to even use Linux on a regular basis (or at all). On the other hand, there are no links or instructions as to where to find a Linux ISO file for download or how to burn a bootable CD or DVD, so I guess the reader is expected to know something. Oh, in case you're wondering, I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) to write this review and practicing commands in the default bash shell.

The first section of the book is called "Learning the Shell", which is pretty basic. The first chapter, "What is the Shell" offers the reader a little bit of a history lesson on the shell and how to use very basic commands, such as "date", "cal", and "df". It's a very short chapter and fortunately gets the reader into opening and using the shell right away. It's a gentle beginning. When does the book get "rough?"

Technically, the hardcopy of the book is only 480 pages long, so it's not an encyclopaedia (remember them?). Yet, for not being a massive tome, the Shotts book probably best works not only as a linear tutorial but as a reference. After all, even veteran shell users don't remember everything and I've seen Linux developers with decades of experience still have to look up commands they don't use very often (although they almost always do so using Google rather than grabbing a handy book).

I called this book "a linear tutorial" because the first section is written in just that manner. One skill set builds on the previous ones presented and the more the reader goes through and practices what they're reading, the better they should get at navigating the directory tree, copying and moving files, locating files, and using man pages.

Although there are no exercises or labs at the end of each chapter, there are notes encouraging the reader to pause and to practice what they've learned as well as experimenting and adapting on commands they've been using. The reader is also encouraged to refer back to the help and man documentation on commands, which is a further exercise in using the shell, since these tools are the first ones a system admin or programmer turn to when they're trying to recall that rarely used command switch.

Actually, the book doesn't really need a separate section for exercises since each page in the chapters directs the reader to try out various commands. This is a book that needs to be opened alongside a Linux machine where the reader is simultaneously working in the shell.

It would take too long to review the content in each chapter and section, but there are a few notable mentions. In Chapter 12 "A Gentile Introduction to Vi", the reader is treated to a Vi primer (sorry, Emacs users). It's probably just about as much as a new user will need to edit files on a Linux machine and if need be, books such as Learning the vi and Vim Editors by Robbins, Hannah, and Lamb are always available.

I did wonder about introducing the reader to Regular Expressions in Chapter 19. For the average computer user, even the average Linux computer user, Regular Expressions can be a real "migraine maker". This may be your first clue that not everyone who will use this book will use all of it, at least not right away. Although this is a great skill to acquire, not everyone may be up to the challenge. When reading this book, assess whether or not you want or need to learn everything it has to offer.

Chapter 23: "Compiling Programs" is another chapter that may not always be useful to all readers. The content goes quickly from "What is Compiling" to downloading source code from the web (specifically ftp.gnu.org), examining the source tree, and building a program. Note that the reader isn't expected to know how to actually write a program, so the general purpose of this chapter is to introduce the power of compiling in the shell and, like vi and Regular Expressions skills, is something that can be built upon using other resources if the reader so desires.

All of the fourth and last section of the book is devoted to "Writing Shell Scripts". If the hypothetical reader of this book is someone who wants or needs to learn Linux server management skills, everything presented in the book up to this point is not only useful, but required. Certainly writing shell scripts (and again, there are entire books available on this subject), is a necessary skill set for the Linux systems admin or even for people who just like to "get under the hood" a little.

After a brief introduction, the reader is lead through the "rudimentaries" of their first shell script which is about as basic as echo 'Hello World!' The reader must dig back into what they've learned before about using vi or vim, creating a file in the desired directory, making it executable, and saving it (none of these instructions are presented again in the shell script chapter). The last bit in the chapter gives the reader a tip on how to configure vim for shell scripting by turning on syntax highlighting, highlighting search results, and using auto indent. The rest of the section takes the reader through building a scripting project and pulls together previously learned skills to develop more complex scripts, including teaching the use of loops and arrays.

The final note in the final chapter addresses the reader, "Well, we have completed our journey. The only thing left to do now is practice, practice, practice. Even though we've covered a lot of ground in our trek, we barely scratched the surface as far as the command line goes."

I can agree with that. There's a reason why the book's subtitle is "A Complete Introduction." That's not a contradiction in terms, it's the literal truth. Part of the power of the shell is in its almost infinite potential, which most shell users never master, but if you buy and then use The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction to its fullest extent, your "introduction" to the shell will be very impressive.

Review: Kindle Fire Web Experience

I've already reviewed the video and book reading capacities of my Kindle Fire. Time to turn to the web experience. How is it?

One of the things I was looking forward to when I got my Kindle Fire was being able to wirelessly surf the web while not being tied down to a desktop or laptop computer. I expected the experience to be somewhat slower but wasn't prepared for how much longer it seemed to take for a webpage to download into Kindle's Silk web browser. Not quite as bad as dial-up, but I wasn't used to waiting for (by today's standards) ages for a webpage to appear.

To get to a webpage, you can select Web in the overhead menu or select amazon, IMDb, or Facebook from the shortcuts at the bottom of the main page. Selecting Web opens the last webpage you visited, which in my case was marvel.com. I admit that one of the ideas I had was to be able to read comicbooks digitally using my Kindle Fire. I figured buying an annual subscription at Marvel would let me read all of the old comicbooks I loved as a kid but not take up any valuable storage space in the home (or costing me billions of dollars to replace everything I had when I was young).

But first, the general web experience.

To go to another site by typing in the URL, tap the URL bar to make the keyboard appear. Depending on your relative "texting" skills (mine are awful), you can type in the address of the site you want to visit. There's even a .com button so you are spared entering the suffix as individual characters. As you type, the history shows the URLs you've most recently visited, and you can select any of those if it's where you want to go.

While my fingers aren't overly fat, if there are a lot of links or buttons on the page I want to press, I tend to tap and miss the mark. Changing the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape helps a bit, but of course, I sacrifice the length of the page. When I do "fat finger" the wrong link or button. I have to hit the back button, wait for the previous page to load, and then try again. I don't know if this is a problem in Silk, the website in question not being well designed for mobile web devices, or me being clumsy. It's just my experience. I do find that using a very gentle tap seems to work better in these delecate cases.

Now on to comicbooks at Marvel.

This one I blame on whoever designed Marvel's website.

I'd love to read 1960s vintage comicbooks. It was the silver age and my childhood and Marvel was just a lot of fun back then. You can read the first few pages of any comic for free, so I thought I'd try my Kindle Fire out by trying to read the beginning of an old Spider-Man comic. Here's what happened.

When the cover of the comic loads into the browser, there are two green arrows (no reference to the comicbook character intended) at the bottom of the screen for forward and back. To advance to page one, I have to successfully tap the right arrow. But nothing happens when I do. Or I get a white screen with an exclamation mark in the middle and have to hit the browser's back button. Unlike a book on Kindle, I can't just use a sliding finger motion to move to the next page.

I tried changing to landscape orientation to see if that helped. After multiple taps, page 1 finally appeared. Changing back to portrait orientation makes the page readable. At this point, I can use my finger to drag the page and move to page 2, but there's an annoying tendency to snap back to page 1 when I remove my finger. Frankly, the entire experience is more frustrating than it's worth. I don't want to have to sit at my desktop to read comics. It's something best done sitting in a living room chair or reading in bed late at night.

I don't know if Kindle Fire could improve this problem or if it's something the folks at Marvel.com have to fix. However, the Silk web browser, though passable, still leaves a lot to be desired. Or maybe mobile web browsing still needs to be perfected. In any case, as of now, browsing the web with my Kindle fire is not the main reason I'll be using the device.

Review: Kindle Fire Book Experience

I like to read. To that end, I own a lot of books. My wife complains about the amount of space all my books consume in our home. Occasionally, this results in my having to clean out the shelves and remove the books I don't think I'll even read again. Trouble is, I think I'll always read them at some point in the future. Instead, I donate them to the local library. But then I get more books.

In the Star Trek original series episode Court Martial (1967), Jim Kirk is facing a general court martial for apparently sending a fellow officer to his death in a non-emergency situation (it's a trick, since the officer faked his own death to implicate Kirk as revenge for a problem that happened between them years before). Kirk's attorney is one Samuel T Cogley (played wonderfully by the late Elisha Cook Jr.) who has his own system of practicing law based on old fashioned, hardcopy books. When Cogley is explaining his system to Kirk, he asks, What's the matter? Don't you like books?" Kirk's reply is, "I like them just fine, but a computer takes less space." That's my theory behind reading on the Kindle Fire.

I'm actually a bit torn. Like Cogley, "I like books". I'm old enough to still think that a "real" book is better than an electronic copy, but I have to balance desire with practicality. The Kindle Fire will never be able to replace the feel or the smell of an old book, but the content and the magic will still be there on each page I swipe (instead of turn). The Kindle Fire has a 6.5 GB storage limit on its hard drive but Amazon offers free unlimited cloud storage for anything purchased at Amazon (you can store non-Amazon products in their cloud free too, but only up to 5 GB...to upgrade to 20 GB of storage for said-files costs $20.00 a year), so "book shelf" space doesn't seem to be a problem.

I was intriqued by Amazon's free lending library for Amazon Prime users. Since I have a month's free trial of Prime, potentially, I have access to thousands of library books which I can borrow from Amazon for free. This sounded fabulous, but there's a catch.

I fired up my Kindle (pun not intended) and on the main page, tapped "Books" and then "Store". On the Books page, there's menu on the right side and I tapped "Kindle Owner' Lending Library". A list of various categories (Fiction, Nonfiction, Comics & Graphic Novels, etc...) appeared. Once I made a selection (Fiction) I saw a list of books, some available through Prime for free, but nothing to indicate that they could be borrowed. I selected one at random and when the book's "details page" appeared, there indeed was a button that said "Borrow for Free". I scrolled down for awhile but didn't find anything that looked appealing (in spite of the number of books I own, I'm actually picky about what I read).

I decided to try "Comics & Graphic Novels" and received a bit of a shock. The "graphic" part has to do with sex. A huge percentage of this collection is virtual porn, with titles such as "Wicked Desires: Steamy Sex Stories Volume 1", "My Sister Bestfriend", and "Sex Messages, Social Networking, and BDSM". The actual comic books were neither DC nor Marvel and seemed to be rather seedy, off-brand tales from the 1950s and 60s. Anything worthwhile (Batman, Green Lantern, Watchmen) cost about $10.00 each. I also noticed DC but no Marvel titles, which was quite a let down.

I did discover one cool thing. Lots and lots of pre-1923 books that are out-of-copyright are available for free..not to borrow, but to own. I immediately downloaded a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and burned through the first two chapters. And at the risk of sounding like a TV commercial huckster, that's not all. Amazon also points you, via their website, to numerous library projects that offer over a million free titles. Projects such as archive.org and gutenberg.org, complete with instructions on how to access their content from Kindle Fire. I haven't tried this part out yet, but believe me, I will.

As with movies and TV shows, the number and type of books you can borrow or get for free through Amazon Prime or the Kindle Owner's lending library is limited. The comic book and graphic novel selection was particularly wanting and I was severely disappointed. I really think there needs to be an online archive project specifically for older comic books, since their physical copies won't last forever and the originals held by the publishers are reproduced and distributed at the mercy of those companies. I guess that's my problem, though and I suspect that availability of book and comic book titles is limited by licensing costs. Besides, Amazon and the various publishing houses have to make a buck somehow.

In spite of the roadblocks I encountered, I still discovered that I have access to a large selection of reading material. Not everything I want, but books that I can't find, even at my local lending library. Speaking of which, I can't wait to see how to actually borrow a digital book from my public library for Kindle Fire. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily making my way through Treasure Island. "Yo ho and a bottle of rum, mateys."

Oh, and if you liked this review, make sure to catch my other Kindle Fire review on my experiences with movies and TV shows.

Review: Kindle Fire Video Experience

Recently, I was given a Kindle Fire and after registering it and setting up WiFi at home, I decide to try it out. Since I've got a free month of Amazon Prime service with my new Kindle Fire, I thought I'd take the video experience for a spin last night. I found out that not all movies and TV shows are free with the Prime service (alas) but some really good ones are. All old Twilight Zone episodes are free with Amazon Prime. I watched the very first Twilight Zone ever, starring Earl Holliman (points if you know who that is without Googling). Steaming via WiFi was fast with no service interruptions, so I could really lose myself in the show. Image was crystal clear but you might want to keep low lighting in the room because reflections are a problem.

I made an interesting discovery watching that episode from 1959. It was filmed at the same Universal Studio backlot as the town square scenes from the Back to the Future (1985) films. The courthouse with the clocktower was a high school in the TV episode and Mel's diner (later a gym) was a police station. The incredible irony is Marty goes back to 1955 but the place existed for real as early as 1959 (and probably before). Great stuff for a trivia nerd like me. There's more tidbits I found in other episodes, but they're kind of obscure unless you're into old science fiction films.

The two other classic TZ episodes I watched starred the wonderful actors Burgess Meredith and Agnes Moorehead (one per each episode). Then I decided to watch the two-hour premiere episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I haven't seen in years. I really had a lot of fun with the scenes I remembered and particularly with the scenes I didn't (I completely forgot Patrick Stewart guess starred).

The 7 inch screen is a little small, but the video experience was still OK. Sound via ear buds worked fine. I did notice feeling a little vertigo when I moved the Kindle closer and then further away from my eyes during the shows. I don't recommend walking around while watching as it gets to be disorienting. I finally put it on the bed so I had a stable platform for the Kindle.

Searching for shows and films worked well, The search feature has an auto-complete, so you don't have to do a lot of typing. I did notice that auto-complete would generate search results (such as "return of the creature", which I mistakenly thought was Revenge of the Creature [1955]) that when selected, produce no actual result (the film doesn't exist in the Amazon archives, apparently).

I'm sure there's a reason for it, but I couldn't figure out why some shows were offered via Prime and others weren't (probably licensing, but who knows?). For instance, all old Twilight Zone episodes were available but no old Outer Limits shows were offered through Prime. Just for giggles, I tried to find the original premiere episode for Lost in Space but it's not available through Prime, either.

Except for the small screen size and the need to keep the Kindle Fire pretty still while viewing, I can't complain about my video experience. You can control the volume of the show and pause and play at will, just by tapping the screen to show the controls. Despite the limitations on selection, I still found plenty of interesting viewing choices. Very nice for my very first tablet experience. I'll have to try out the lending library next.

Oh. Does anyone know a good way to read comic books on a Kindle Fire? Just asking.

Learn to Program Online at Codecademy.com

My friend Judah Himango suggested that I look at the Codecademy.com site. It's just about the easiest way to learn JavaScript anyone could imagine, and it's relatively fun, too. There is a bit of a hook involved. Although you can start the lessons without creating an account, after a few lessons, you are offered the opportunity to either create an account (it's free) or lose your work to date. I created an account.

Once I did, I could continue with the lessons, quit with I got tired/bored (my work was saved automatically), and then sign in later to continue with my saved work. On signing in, you are shown a summary of the lessons you've completed and which ones you have yet to start. After you successfully finish so many lessons, you "earn" achievement badges. For making it through the first four of eight lessons, I earned two achievements.

The lessons are fun, easy, but inflexible. If you deviate from the lesson in the slightest way, you will get an error message. While a hint is provided with different steps in each lesson, if you get stuck, you don't get any other help except to offer feedback about the lesson. There's no way to just get the full solution presented to you. That's good on the one hand, because you aren't tempted to give up too easily and it "forces" you to try and figure out what went wrong. On the other hand, it you truly get stuck...you're stuck. Lessons build on one another (which is a good idea) so if you can't figure one part of a lesson out, you won't be able to just skip it and move on.

The scope of the course, "Getting Started with Programming", only spans eight lessons, ending after the lesson on "while loops". There's no obvious way for me to tell after lesson eight if I'll be able to continue with what I've started to learn. I clicked the "Courses" link in the header menu expecting to see extended (possibly for pay) courses, but all that appeared was the eight lessons for the basic course.

Once you log out, you're returned to the start page. The other options on that page include subscribing to an email newsletter, and sharing your experience with your lessons on twitter and Facebook. Presumably, this is part of how Codecademy plans to market itself. Oh, there is a section called "Create a Lesson", so the Codecademy folks are interested in external participation in expanding their project.

Codecademy seems like it's a project in the making. Since they harvest your email address, both as a condition of creating an account, and during the pre-account lesson when you're asked to enter your email address, I expect that once Codecademy has a sufficient database of names, they'll advance to the next phase of whatever their plan happens to be. That could either mean further lessons will be for a fee or they may continue to offer more advanced lessons without charging.

I'm hardly the first blogger to post a review. About two weeks ago, TechCrunch published their write up on Codecademy, including a talking to Codecademy co-founders Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski. Sims commented several times on the TechCrunch blog including, "Hi everyone - we might be a little slow right now but we're working on getting things faster. Thanks so much!"

Other thoughts: The "subtitle" of the course "Getting Started with Programming" is "Time to become a coding ninja". That sounds as if Codecademy's intent is to encourage its students to become proficient and even expert at coding. Three things will have to happen. The first one is obvious. They'll need more lessons. A lot more lessons.

The next two points I take from my own experience. You can't really learn something unless you do it all the time. People don't learn to read and write when they do it only occasionally. They need to practice reading and writing all of the time until it becomes second nature. Even if you teach someone the basics of programming, if they don't have any way to apply it on a frequent basis, they'll lose those skills again. Building in some form of continual practice with periodic refreshers of material covered previously will help.

Finally, students will eventually have to learn to "build" something practical. Learning how to determine the length of a string is fine and dandy, but so what? How does that figure into writing a program that actually does something? Lessons will eventually have to lead to practical projects so that at some point, the students will be able to program independently.

Of course, the real power in any programming language is its libraries, so learning JavaScript will have to turn into something like learning jQuery. Another things to consider is whether or not JavaScript will be the only programming language Codecademy chooses to teach. A lot can be done with JavaScript but hardly everything. A server-side language such as PHP might make a good addition. Beyond that, it just depends on what sort of long-term goals Codecademy has for its project.

Presently, although Codecademy has gotten a lot more attention than they expected in the short amount of time they've been online, I'm sure they'd love more. If you know little or nothing about programming but would like to learn in an interactive environment, go to Codecademy.com and try it out.

Review: Goggle Wave so far

I got this in my Gmail inbox the other day:

"Thank you for signing up to give us early feedback on Google Wave. We're happy to give you access to Google Wave and are enlisting your help to improve the product".

Since I'm all about making improvements, I clicked the link to accept my invitation to Google Wave. Once I signed in with my handy dandy Google account (OK, so I'm going a little overboard here), Google Wave opened in my Firefox browser.

I clicked on the first welcome message (there were two) and got this:

Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

Happy waving!

Gee. Who would I wave with? I took a look at my contacts and saw that four of them were already on Google Wave. Still, I should read the other welcome message before continuing (linear or anal, I don't know which).

The second message lead me to a YouTube video of "Doctor Wave". Volume was up full blast, so it almost blew my head off. Took me on a nice tour on the GUI, just to orient me (all of us who are using Wave so far). The video is a sparse 2 minutes, 12 seconds, just enough to point out all of the major areas of the UI but not enough to bury the audience in details. Below the playback, is a small group of links that lead to further content.

Now I felt free to check out my Contacts to see if anyone was around I could "wave" with. I clicked on a name and the YouTube video in the wave panel vanished and was replaced by a text editor. I created the message, clicked "Done" and waited. Nothing happened, but then, I didn't know what to expect. Also, all of the nifty links that were below the YouTube video on the wave panel vanished, and I had no idea how I can get them back.

Thought I'd try out the navigation panel and clicked from Inbox to All. More messages became available, including two unread ones; more introductory material. I clicked on the "Welcome to Wave" message again, and the YouTube video and the aforementioned links came back to the wave panel.

I must say, I'm probably the perfect person to try this out and review it. I'm experiencing Wave from a total "end user" perspective, having not read up on it previously, so the whole thing is new. Also, I'm still working on my morning coffee, so I can't promise my brain is as agile as it should be if it were fully caffeinated.

I sent out a cry on twitter for more Wave people and then continued to explore. One of the messages in the "All" folder (already read) listed Extension Settings, which I could uninstall or remove. Basically, these are Google Gadgets, like the ones I used to pimp out my Google home page. I looked around, but the "under construction" message from Google let me know that more Gadgets for Wave weren't available yet, so the pimping would have to be postponed. The noticed "Unfollowed" appeared by the message title. Apparently, you can follow and unfollow specific waves. I found an unfollowed wave that said Profile and decided to "edit" my Google Wave identity.

I was surprised that it wasn't imported from Google proper. My Google av was as I could see it in the Contacts box and by all of my waves, but it wasn't available in my actual profile. Nevertheless, I clicked Edit Profile and see what was what. I inserted the URL to my blog and updated my av photo and that was about it. There was a field for "status" but I have no idea what it's used for. Is it like updating one's "status" in twitter or Facebook?

Just for giggles, I followed the "unfollowed" waves in my All box, then continued to explore Navigation. The rest of the folders were not surprising. By Me is like a "sent" folder, Requests was empty and must contain waves relative to receiving invitation requests. Spam and Trash are self explanatory and Settings held the waves related to the customization of my Google Wave.

No responses to my message that I possess Google Wave invitations yet (has it become that passe' already?). Doctor Wave was right. Without someone to Wave with, this isn't much of a power surge. Of course, if a new message arrives, will I know? My Google page automatically refreshes, and so does Gmail, but I don't know about Wave. I did notice that the number of messages changed in my Inbox from time to time. I don't mean that new messages arrived, but that the messages disappeared and reappeared. Sometimes they all vanished and the all returned. Then, about half of them vanished. Of course, this is a beta, so you can expect the occasional glitch.

While waiting for anyone to respond or to care, I continued to nose around. Under Navigation, you can expand Searches and Folders. Folders just lets you make more you-know-whats and Searches is like searching Gmail, only with a few more options. You can also search your Contacts, though with only four registered in Wave, that's hardly a chore.

Within the Wave window itself, you can click Reply, Playback, Unfollow, Archive, Spam, and Read (which is only active for an unread Wave. It's nice to finally have the option to Unfollow an Gmail/Wave, since an unending conversation in Gmail can sometimes get annoying. Playback?

When you click Playback on a Wave that's not a video or audio file, you get the controls but they affect nothing. I found myself wondering if the Playback button shouldn't also be inactive on all Waves that don't actually play. A minor point, but Google is asking for suggestions.

While waiting, I decided to see if my Google Wave profile was able to work and play well with CredMe. I found out that not only it did, but there were a set of instructions (apparently written by a developer and not me) telling me how to insert the CredMe URL code. I've been playing with CredMe for awhile, so I didn't really need to RTFM. I quickly verified my Google Wave profile with CredMe and was back to the Wave.

Oh, I did get a reply from a friend of mine in the UK. His new job won't let him get online as freely as he could in the past, so I had to wait for the workday to end in that part of the world. Message arrived automatically. When I revisited Wave on a break from my own job, it was just there. Somebody please tell me how this is an "email killer". It's nice, it's smooth, it's slick...it looks like the next generation web-based email interface...but it's email. What makes it "Wave"?

To be fair, I've only been on Wave for a few hours and have only exchanged messages with one person. Probably not a fair test of Wave's abilities. While I'm going to post this article now, I'll be back with updates on Wave as (or if) they develop.

Oh. One more thing. You can reach me on Google Wave at james.pyles AT googlewave.com.