Google Wave Invite Giveaway!

For starters, you could make your RSS subscription a more obvious button/link!

Thanks!

I think you have a decent blog here. One thing that popped out at me right away was the text logo. You have some css3 effects on it, which is cool, but I think you should design yourself a more distinct image including an icon.

Also, the “things I am reading” section is pretty sweet. I like that idea.

- Will

I’ve been writing various code in Artificial Intelligence mainly using search algorithms such as A*, ant colony. I want to develop an API for Google Wave.
Oh, and the other reason I want Google Wave – because its new and I want to experience it first hand rather than read what it’s all about.
My email is sid.zidane@gmail.com

I thought the RSS button was plenty noticeable – it’s big! I also liked the ‘things I am reading’ and ‘you also might be interested in’ – but the posts are best because I learn stuff I didn’t know, like no more double posts on twitter and Apple & Verizon discussing an iPhone deal.

I did subscribe, by the way.

Thanks!

Hi! I have subscribed as well!

Your blog template looks really good to start with, but one thing that could be fixed would be the ‘Geekshed – Error room not found’ button above. Otherwise the theme and overall style looks brilliant! Well done for using Wordpress!

Thanks in advance…

Wow, thanks for all these comments! I love it :)

Chris – thanks for the suggestion, I didn’t have time to answer right away but I have made a nice BIG rss icon. I like the idea.

Will – I think that is something I need to work on but alas I am artistically challenged. It is in the works however because I do agree that what is there is pretty plain.

Sid – thanks for reading, I hope you grabbed my RSS :)

Beth – Hehe, you probably connected here after I changed it due to Chris’ suggestion. Thanks for subscribing, and it really makes me happy to hear that you are learning something and enjoying the articles.

Tekked – I KNOW! That Geekshed button is cool but when I am not in the chat room it looks like a horrible error :P I am going to remove it from the main page.

This is rocking… now you all need to tell a friend to come :)

Geek on!

Great blog!
i love your layout gives a cool feel to the site.
i also love your name the sleepy geek its kinda retro and awesome kinda deep o.0 :D.

i think you should update your about and add your hobbies and stuff to it.

i also love the social me page :).
oh yeah one more thing you should invite more people to live chat or add a button like “look who is online today” when you are online in chat just my suggestions :P.

I like your blog and the layout makes everything easier to find (especially for older guys like me)!

Nice and clean, great graphics… subscribed!

Please INVITE ME!!!!

RSSed.

Make your icon higher scale, it looks blurry.

I like the template of your website, you cannot miss the RSS icon though…lol, but nicely rendered. It could use a bit of rescaling but I like the overall layout, everything is easy to find and follow. Categories are a nice addition since they are helpful in navigating. Thanks and Good Luck..!!!

I like your handle….”the sleepy geek”….that in itself is sufficient enough to pique interest

the layout is simple and clean….I am not a big fan of tinkering, especially if things aren’t broken….

Anyhoo :) Hope to get an invite…and yes…I’ve subscribed

I like all the content you have on the RSS feed. I subscribed via Google Reader. I’m kind of a quiet geek myself, I found myself stopping to read some of your oldest stuff. Really informative and helpful. If you still have some wave invites count me in.

Thanks

Just subscribed . . . looking forward to digging through your site for a few good reads. The layout appears to be nice and clean, and it should be easy to find multiple topics of interest to my inner geek!

Not a big fan of your site, except for black color that you choose… I love it.

I found that “You might also be interested in…” is just bit annoying, cause it have long list. I like a simple but “interesting”…

Just my thought… btw I hope I get the invitation… thanks.

I just subscribed–I am begging for a Google Wave invite!! Pleeeeease!! philip.edelstein@gmail.com

I enjoy your site. Was just reading the post from 10/20 about the updated Apple products – When that 27 inch iMac came out…My jaw dropped.

Added you to my Google Reader. Looking forward to any future postings!

Nice blog but there is a lot of unused real-estate on my screen that your format tweaked a bit could fill up. :)

Am I too late for this? :(
Anyway, just drop down my email in case anyone changes their mind and help me:
nmchau88@gmail.com
Thank you in advance!

This is great guys. I am really glad you are liking the site and happy to have an invite to give out. This is not closed by any means.

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I do take it to heart, and I may or may not make a change from it but I really like to know what readers are thinking.

Tell your friends about me. I am on a drive here to get more readership. Thanks for coming!

I subscribed and am about to take a look around. Thanks!

Hook me up stranger!
And here’s my constructive criticism, widen the comment column if possible. It would allow easier viewing of multiple comments at one time, and would cut down on the amount of scrolling I needed to do to peruse the comments!

Cool blog. I subscribed in my Google Reader. Please consider me for a Google Wave Invite.

RSSed !

I think its ok, maybe write a little more about what you’re reading and tips/tricks.. that kinda stuff… But the most important thing: keep updated! :) Pls googlewave me lol

grabbed your RSS.

As for feedback – first, I love the little icon man that represents you. cute. Second, my only criticism sort of shadows one of the others. The header is a little bland. I don’t mind the layout of the page or the prodimence of gray, but the title could be a little…zestier. :)

I love the Avator.
Thanks,

WOW you have so many comments, what’s the point. Giggle. Great way to drive traffic, so cheers!

Love you icon, you have already heard the rest-header does not grab me but neither does my own giggle.

How about some videos walking folks through hwo to use google apps since that’s lots of what you have listed-google. I bet with some bizzare humor they would be informative and fun.

p.s. how about adding splash of color-not a lot, red is good action color and a little goes a long way.
Thanks for the consideration for the google wave invite, next time I will come to the party sooner.

I’ll keep this short and simple for you. Great site and interesting stuff here. I’m a tech guy myself and find your sight informative and funny at the same time like the article about seeing yourself on Google street view. One thing I would like to see is more guest posts or interviews. These always add to a web page and draw new people to read. An original content interview will get lots of new viewers especially if you can get it on digg front page!

Read your blog every update via Google Reader.

The content is great, however when I do visit the site everything seems a little squashed and I am scrolling a lot. It’d be great if you could widen the theme a bit.

Other than that, great site :)

Hi there. Just subscribed to your RSS feed.

One thing I think you could improve is reduce the amount of blank space on each RSS post: in Google Reader, big posts tend to take up the entire list are and thus you have to keep scrolling up or down to close it or view another post.

Otherwise keep up the good work!

I found interesting things in several of your posts and I’ll be back! Thanks for considering me for a Wave invite. I’d like to show my HS students what’s new…

Your blog is good. I’ve never been a fan of ads, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

As for the content, I completely agree about google street view! It is a huge time waster! One day at work, I drove from my house to 3 of my friends houses using the program. It was like I was back home again.

As for another area of interest, the Verizon iDon’t Ads. Those are hugely disappointing on their part. As a Verizon phone user, I’ve been counting on the iPhone coming to Verizon for a while. I like to have the latest phones available and right now the iPhone is all the hype. But it looks like I’ll be sticking to my Blackberry for a while. Boo.

Can’t wait to see what you post next! Hope I get some google wave soon ;)

Very nicely designed site. I like the title’s text effect (as someone above posted, admittedly, but it is really cool).

I also like your post on Google Docs’ Export feature. That will come in really handy, and I’ll have to tell my family and friends about it. I use Google Docs on a regular basis, and having the ability to export it to a format which can be opened offline has the potential to be really useful.

Keep up the good work! I look forward to seeing which cool things you post about next.

Your design is good, thats how a blog should be, font style and size is good too, easy to read, color combination is also nice, i can stay on this site without hurting my eyes, however as i am visiting your site for the first time, i wanted to find out what do you write about, i looked up categories, but they dont help at all, so if you can have more specific categories, it can help browsing through your blogs, tags are also too generic to help me go to certain blog, then i dont see archive widget, sometimes, i would love to read your historic posts.
Except these few things, everything is great.

I think your blog is good and I like the layout. I liked the post about google docs and the info will really come in handy for me. I will pass it on to friends and co-workers as we all travel and are on the road quite a bit.

I would also love to have a google wave invite as it’s an app I’ve been dieing to try out. Many of the programs I currently use individually and I can’t wait to see how google has integrated them all together.

Anyways, I don’t have anything particularly critical to say about your site/blog, I think it looks great! Keep up the great work and I look forward to reading more soon!

Dear sir:
it has been my life long dream to obtain a google wave invite. I would consider it a high honor if you would bestow one upon me.
moracpet@gmail.com thanks

What I like:

Your posts! always a fun read
Site design: Not too cluttered, simple, nice
This contest

What I would change:

Layout of “What else you might be interested in”, with posts like this it ends up creating a HUGE gap before the comments. I would change it to possible have more than 1 column, moving the comments closer to the article.
Possible make this column wider as well, since on a big screen 70% of the page is empty when I scroll down to the comments.

Why I want Google Wave:

University Student, lots of projects for school and personal projects, would make life easier and streamlined.
I also had a steak for dinner, that makes me qualified I believe.

Peter.Zenger1@gmail.com

I just thought I’d point out that while your new RSS icon looks great, the background is white rather than transparent and so you may want to change it to fit in a little more with your non-white theme.

(hope you read this :D)

(28-Oct-2009 – 8:30ET)

I am going to leave this open until 3:00pm ET today. Then the CHOICE! But don’t fret… if you don’t get chosen I will be coming up with another draw scenario to get another wave invite :)

One of the more common things I see is people’s desire for a wider view. This makes sense to me but I never looked at changing it so that people with low res can still read. I have done some work looking at my analytics reporting and noticed that there is a very small percentage that have lower than 1280x???. And so thanks for that suggestion. I am not sure how it will work out with this theme but I am going to give it a go.

Have a great day everyone!

On one visit to your page it looked like you had changed the width of the columns. Maybe it was a mistake in my browser but it looked better. Still had some formatting of icon’s and the like to do but overall it looked good.

1 Hour to go folks! I am excited :)

Adam, for sure I was testing it out. The theme that I use for Wordpress has a HUGE css so it wasn’t working out with a quick and dirty edit. That’s why I put it back and will tackle it later. I am also going to give a look at the dev site for the theme, perhaps they have a guide or have made an update that incorporates the wider view.

Geek on guys! I am pumped for my first giveaway.

Oh, and I just saw this: “Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick. ”

That means you will get the invite if you win, just not right away I suppose.

Hey Aftab,

I have been giving your categories suggestion some thought. I was curious how you would see them being more specific. Most of the stuff that I blog about is technology based. So do you think I should try and keep to some general categories such as “hardware”, “open source”, “cell phones” or would you see it more specific such as “motherboards”, “ubunutu” or “blackberry”?

I agree that the categories are too general, but I don’t want to make them too specific so as to make them useless in the other extreme.

Thanks, Geek on!

I agree with Aftab about changing the categories and would say that the more general approach would be best. Maybe as subcategories to your welcome page. I think if you had specific categories they would eventually add up with few topics under each one.

Just my 3 cents…

Hey guys, I wanted to say thanks for all the comments on this thread and all the good advice. I actually was trying quite hard to work on a site change to make the columns wider but without help from the theme designers it’s like trying to breathe in water.

I probably spent too many hours fiddling with the details and images and in the end it wasn’t possible myself. I have submitted a request for an option and hopefully they consider it.

Thanks again for the suggestions and sticking around on the RSS subscriptions!