A lot of people arent that keen on the current look of most Google applications—hence the popularity of redesigned user skins. On the other hand, many users really like the look of Google Wave, the newest invite-only service from Google. (See our first look, or just read the book.) If you happen to be one of the people who love Wave’s look, you’ll like this rumor: According to gadget weblog Engadget, the Google Wave interface may become the default style across all Google Apps.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Remember remember, the Fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot.
I know of no reason,
Why the gunpowder treason,
Should ever be forgot.

So, the time of year again. 5th of November, more commonly known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night. So, I shall give you a bit of backgroud information on the infamous plot and treason of the one Guy Fawkes.

On November the 5th, 1605, a man by the name of Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, in London.
(For those of you who don’t know where the houses of Parliament are, it’s where the Big Ben is.) Guy Fawkes had earlier infiltrated the Houses of Parliament, laying down more than 36 barrels of gunpowder in the undercroft of the house.

However, this plot apparently leaked out, and in the very early mornings of 5th November, Guy Fawkes was captured by the king’s guards. Far from denying his intentions during the arrest, Fawkes stated that it had been his purpose to destroy the King and the Parliament. Nonetheless to say, very brave man. He was tortured for a period of four days, where he revealed nothing but the names of the people who already have been captured as part of the plot. He was hanged, drawn and quatered on the 31st January, along with number of others implicated in the conspiracy.

A brief summary of the event which took place that fateful night.

Celebrations on this night involve fireworks displays and the building of bonfires on which traditionally “Guys” are burnt. Children are supposed to make a Guy doll, and then burn him on the bonfire. Jolly cheerful, ain’t it?

And now back to the question: Why do we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night?

One simple reason my friends.

Commonly, people celebrate this as the day that Guy Fawkes was captured and the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament failed.

They celebrate the fact that the Catholic church still ruled with it’s power ad the King didn’t get assasinated.
I know, highly happy occasion, isn’t it?

Me? I celebrate this for a different reason. I reckon this day should be celebrated by what it had hoped to achieve, a show of the people standing up against their parliament. It’s a show of rebellion, an idea that is passed down through the centuries.
We are told to remember the idea, but not the man because a man can fail where an idea cannot.
And four hundred years later an idea can still change the world.

Who knows? Maybe one day, someone might actually succeed in finishing what the Gunpowder Plot started.

Looking for an adorable and easily stealable way to consolidate the entire Beatles catalog? Have no fear, EMI has your back. The record conglomerate may still be at odds with iTunes when it comes a digital release for the fab four, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t, um, more creative distribution methods. Take this new Apple-shaped USB key from the company, which features 14 Beatles albums, 13 mini-documentaries, and all of the requisite art work.

The USB Apple is being released worldwide in a limited edition of 30,000 on December 7th (December 8th in North America). The 16GB Apple offers songs in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps. This key will set you back $279.99. You can pre-order it now from the official Beatles store.

(Via http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/ziffdavis/gearlog-ziffdavis.)

Got an interest in Google Wave but have absolutely no idea where to get started? Try out The Complete Guide to Google Wave, a new (free) book written and edited by my pal and Lifehacker emeritus Gina Trapani and yours truly.

Google Wave may not be available to everyone just yet, but there’s still a lot to learn about it and not that many places to do that learning. That’s where The Complete Guide to Google Wave steps in.

Wave is a young, complex, and frankly incomplete web application and technology. It’s also an ambitious project that has the potential to change how we work, collaborate, and communicate on the web. That’s why Gina and I decided to pour our time and attention into Google Wave and pull it all together into this book.

We’re calling it a book, even though right now its content is only available on the web at completewaveguide.com. It features eight chapters and two appendices, but we’re going to expand the book as Google continues to grow and expand Wave. (In fact, anyone can help us do just that by contributing to the guide.)

If you’d like a more permanent or convenient copy of the book, its first preview edition will be available for purchase as a PDF later this month, and the first edition print version will be available in January of 2010. Gina and I are planning to release four editions of the book throughout 2010 to keep up with the changing face of Wave, but the latest version of the book will always be available and free at completewaveguide.com.

Check out the book’s About page for more details on our adventure in publishing (including why we’re self-publishing), or just head to the home page to get started with your Wave education. For updates on book releases and various Wave tips, follow @gwaveguide on Twitter.

Note: Our server has had a little trouble keeping up with the traffic, so if you’re having trouble accessing the site, try this mirror instead.
The Complete Guide to Google Wave

(Via Lifehacker.)

What you’re looking at above is the computer that sent the very first email via ARPANET, 40-years ago on October 29, 1969. Simply put, ‘the message was sent from the UCLA SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the SRI SDS 940 Host computer.’ Click here for first picture in gallery.

Like most systems of the era, the latter machine had a tiny core memory allowing between 16 and 64 kilowords.

(Via Tech Blog.)

It’s October 2009 which means something very special for Linux fans: a 9.10 release of Ubuntu. Today we see the launch of ‘Karmic Koala’ featuring a faster graphical boot sequence (no more scary text scrolls), a revamped audio framework that improves sound control across multiple applications, and a new Software Center that visually simplifies the Add/Remove Applications tool. These are just a few of the user-centric improvements meant to have a ‘transformative effect’ on the OS experience and help bring ‘the world of open source closer to the user.’ It’s available in desktop, server, and netbook editions now so get to it, before you know it you’ll be updating to Lucid Lynx.

(Via Engadget.)

Whether your company is just starting out, just starting to turn a profit or already on the verge of an acquisition, as an entrepreneur you’ll be constantly evaluating the tools that will help get your business to the next stage.

Even if the ink on the business plan isn’t dry yet, you want to be armed with the social media tools that will play an important role in company communication, product and brand promotions, and business development for your startup. Some of the tools in this list will be familiar, but it’s worth taking a moment to reframe how they might become power tools in a business context.

10. Monitter

As an entrepreneur, you need to know what people are saying about your company as well as your competitors. Enter Monitter, a service that monitors Twitter mentions in real-time in a multi-column interface reminiscent of TweetDeck. Simply input a search term into a column, add or remove columns as desired, and get an automatically-refreshing picture of what people are saying about your brand or competing brands in your space.

Pro Tip: By default, the Monitter interface is gray on black, which can be hard on the eyes. You can switch to a more typical color scheme by selecting the ‘light’ theme in the menu at the upper right.

9. YouTube

You already know about YouTube, but have you thought about how it could help your business? Could your product benefit from an awesome video walkthrough? Could your marketing strategy include a viral video strategy that gets you lots of exposure at relatively low cost?

And now with Promoted Videos getting placement in AdSense units around the web, there’s even more incentive to think about leveraging social video as a brand exposure tool. If you can create interesting content that’s relevant to your brand or products, a positive visual association with your company can attract new interest, build company culture, turn inquiries into sales, and give back significant brand dividends over time.

Pro Tip: The most obvious and frequent business use of YouTube is for marketing and advertising, but don’t overlook other ways in which your company can leverage YouTube. Visual walkthroughs and FAQs can be a great boon to customer service. Videos of you and your team giving public presentations, speaking at conferences or engaging with the media can establish and enhance your company’s reputation as a thought leader. And don’t forget the utility of private videos for use in executive and new employee trainings and recording company events; access can be shared with only the people who should be able to see each item.

8. UserVoice

As a small business, it’s hard to juggle building and improving your products with supporting what’s already out there. That’s where UserVoice can help.

From bug reports to feature requests, UserVoice can help track and manage the feedback of your users and customers. Not only does it assure your userbase that you care about what they have to say, but it can potentially leverage the best suggestions from the people who are actually using your tool or service. Since users can vote on the ideas of other users, you can start to get a picture of the most-requested features and fixes for your app or service to feed back into your products’ lifecycles.

Pro Tip: You can also use UserVoice to get feedback on a limited release or beta version of a product by setting up a private forum or forums. You can send invites to specific email addresses, or limit your feedback to company-wide participants by restricting access by email domain.

7. MailChimp

Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.

The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress, Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.

Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.

[Disclosure: Mailchimp is a sponsor of Mashable]

6. Get Satisfaction

Great customer support is important, but it can also be time-consuming and costly. Get Satisfaction aims to help by leveraging the strength of your user community and cutting down on repetitive support costs.

Get Satisfaction provides a forum where your customers can get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your userbase.

Used by small businesses and large popular brands alike, Get Satisfaction gets rave reviews for human customer service and helping to build communities around brands and products.

Pro Tip: Embeddable widgets allow you to bring the conversation back to your own company’s site or even within your products themselves. Drop a searchable FAQ or a feedback tab or page right into your website or service to integrate the customer service experience right where your users need it.

5. Twitter

What would this list be without our favorite microblogging service? From best practices for brands to tips for executives to using Twitter for customer service, there’s no shortage of creative ideas for leveraging Twitter for your business.

Even if you’re not in a technically-oriented industry, you’ll want to know which influencers in your domain are on Twitter and which of your potential clients and customers are there (hint: probably a bunch). You’ll want to wrap your head around hashtags for business, and more certainly check out Twitter’s own guidebook for businesses (as well as our own guidebook, of course!).

Pro Tip: Try not to use Twitter as a purely broadcast medium; whether one person or several posts to your official account, make sure your company is listening and interacting as well as simply posting. Strive for authenticity in your company’s tweets and try to think of it as taking part in a conversation, not just another soapbox platform.

4. Facebook

Facebook is the other social networking giant you’ll want to be sure your business has a presence on. It’s another powerful tool for building relationships, raising visibility for your brand, and targeting your customer niche.

With a robust and relatively low-cost advertising platform, you can connect directly to the potential customers or clients who might want to know about you. Optimization tools help you fine-tune and target your ads more intelligently, and get detailed insight into who is responding to your ads.

Pro Tip: Authenticity is key here too for maximum impact. With changes that made Facebook Pages more like personal pages, your brand’s home on Facebook is no longer relegated to fairly static profile information. Since the Wall Feed is usually the main point of entry for your fans and visitors, think of it as an opportunity to provide some sort of utility to your visitors, whether it be information, entertainment, or relevant expressions of your company’s culture and mission.

3. Basecamp

If you’re like most startups, you’ve got a heck of a lot going on. You need to keep on top of your projects and open loops, not just internally but with your clients, partners, and customers as well. That’s where a good project management tool comes in.

Basecamp from 37signals is a great and cost-effective web-based tool for project management and collaboration. Featuring to-do lists, milestones for important due-dates, file sharing, blog-style messaging, wiki-style writeboards, time tracking, and integration with the excellent group chat product Campfire, basic plans for small businesses start at $24 a month.

Pro Tip: Add extra functionality to your Basecamp environment or integrate it with your existing systems in the extras and add-ons department. For example if you use Freshbooks, you can even invoice your Basecamp projects via Freshbooks.

2. LinkedIn

From hiring to networking with cohorts and potential clients to participating in groups and question threads, LinkedIn is a powerful social network for entrepreneurs and business professionals of all stripes. It’s a great place to both discover and research potential job candidates (with a reported 75% of hiring managers using it over Facebook and Twitter), as well as both keeping up with and extending your network.

Pro Tip: Although it’s not an overnight success solution, positioning yourself as an expert in the LinkedIn Answers domain(s) relevant to your business can be a great way to increase your authority and drive new interest to your business. Don’t underestimate the power of asking for advice here as well.

1. Google Apps for Domains

Startup costs for outfitting an office with networking and computing equipment are staggering enough as it is without even taking into account the software and maintenance components. One area for adventurous entrepreneurs to cut costs in the latter department lies in the realm of typical office staples: email, calendaring and the office suites businesses typically need to use to prepare documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Instead of paying an IT staff to set up, host and maintain your own mail servers, Google Apps for Domains can handle custom email addresses at your own company’s URL. As an alternative to Microsoft Outlook worth considering, Gmail also integrates nicely with Google Calendar for your group calendaring needs.

And whereas once Microsoft Office was one of your only choices in the office suites department, Google Documents now handles document, spreadsheet and presentation preparation with aplomb — all the while making it easy to share and collaborate with colleagues without having to email documents around or check items out of a central repository.

Pro Tip: For the truly frugal, you can even opt for the totally free Standard Edition which includes basic Gmail, calendaring, Google Docs and Google Sites. Premier Edition will run you $50 per user per year, but increases user email storage to 25GB, adds more security features and guarantees you uptime and support.

(Via Mashable!.)

Want in on Google Voice’s web-based, transcribed, custom-greeted voicemail, but you’re not quite ready to adopt a new number? Starting tonight, Voice users can choose to keep their number and still get Google’s upgraded voicemail features.

You’ll still need a Google Voice invitation to get started, which you can request for yourself or beg a friend for. Once youre in, you can choose to either pick up a new number for the full Voice service—voicemail, SMS, selective call forwarding, and more—or keep your number and walk through Googles forwarding setup for your cellphone, in what the search giant is branding as ‘Google Voicemail.’

Your voicemail will be routed to Google’s servers, transcribed and sent to you by SMS or email, if you’d like, and accessible from your Voice web page (or playable in Gmail). It’s a similar offering to what services like YouMail have been offering for some time for phones of all kinds, but with seemingly unlimited transcription and storage space. You’ll also be able to set up custom greetings for each caller to your voicemail.

Google touts those features, and their concept of helping you keep your voicemail consistent between carriers, in this just-released video:

(Via Lifehacker.)

DRM is almost public enemy number one on the Internet, and there’s certainly plenty of justification for people’s hatred towards it. Disney might be looking a way to make things a little easier for us, with a new content ownership scheme dubbed ‘Keychest’. If this turns out the way it’s planned, folks will be able to purchase the movie once, and watch it on any participating device, and you could even play it on more than one device at a time. That certainly sounds a lot nicer than whatever DRM we have around right now, but we’ll have to wait until the actual implementation kicks in before we can comment on such a thing. It looks like we’ll have to be patient and see what happens here.

(Via Ubergizmo.)

Web site iTunesLP.net details how to create albums in Apple’s new iTunes LP format. The site also offers free downloads of iTunes LP albums that aren’t already available in iTunes.

When they released iTunes 9, Apple introduced a new music format called iTunes LP aimed at bringing the album experience to your desktop. The catch: They’re expensive to buy (around $14+), especially if you already own the album.

That’s where iTunesLP.net comes in. Its tutorials step through creating your own custom iTunes LP (they’re mostly made up of HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript—the stuff that makes web sites go-round). Its probably not for complete novices, but the instructions will teach you to roll your own iTunes LP if you’ve got the patience and some background in web design.

If you don’t, your still not entirely out of luck: iTunesLP.net also hosts free DIY iTunes LP files for download—provided you’ve already got the music on hand. Currently their list of iTunes LP downloads is limited to Walt Disney’s Fantasia, but it contains ‘a faithful reproduction of the original 1957 3-disc LP and its 24 page full color program. This LP was the first release of the soundtrack of the 1939 Fantasia with specially commisioned artwork inspired by the motion picture.’ Not bad, but like I said, if you want to use it in iTunes you’ll need to already have the music for that album; you’ll also need to make sure that the album name is an exact match in your metadata.

The site’s still young, but we’re excited to keep an eye on it and see what kind of user-created iTunes LPs can enrich our iTunes library without breaking the bank.

(Via Lifehacker.)