The EU Parliament has on several occasions stated that access to the Internet is one of basic human rights. Now, Finland has become the first country to actually declare fast (broadband) Internet access a legal right.
In practice, this means that telecom companies in Finland will be required to provide all Finnish citizens – all 5.3 million of them – with broaband Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps, starting in July.
That’s not all. According to the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications Laura Vilkkonen, the plan is to provide all the citizens with even faster broadband speeds (100 Mbps) by 2015. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” she said.
This task is easier to achieve in Finland than most other countries, since its broadband penetration rate is among the highest in the world. In the US, the FCC may need as much as 350 billion dollars to expand broadband coverage throughout the country.
This decision by the Finnish Government is in contrast with the often heard proposals (especially in France and the UK, but also – surprisingly – in Finland) about the possible introduction of the three-strikes law, under which illegal file sharers would be disconnected from the Internet after repeated offenses. Making something a legal right doesn’t mean it cannot be taken away, but the government’s stance that broadband Internet access is similar to “banking services or water or electricity” should mean that net access should not be taken away from people lightly, if at all.

If Twitter added the ability to post video clips to the service, would you use it? That feature may be coming, according to a short and unsourced article today by Britain’s Telegraph. If true, such a service would compete with many existing Twitter video sites, including Twiddeo and Vidly.

The details, however, are suspiciously sparse, with the Telegraph merely citing discussions by the site’s founders:

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter’s founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.

There’s been plenty of discussion about how Google, Microsoft, and other players in search are going to address “the Twitter problem” – the service’s ability to unearth breaking news and links far quicker than traditional search engines.
In fact, just last week, Google launched a new search option that allows users to filter search results to show only links that are new within the last hour.
However, competition might not even be necessary. According to The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, Twitter is talking to both Google and Microsoft about licensing deals that would allow them to integrate Twitter data into their search engines.

From the report:

“According to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.”

Continuing, All Things Digital says that such deals would be worth “several million dollars” to Twitter and potentially include ongoing revenue sharing.
There are of course plenty of search engines that already utilize Twitter data, and Bing actually already launched one. Twitter could conceivably provide added value in the form of a truly full feed that includes all tweets (currently, Twitter search only goes several days back).
It’s certainly an interesting new twist on the evolving Twitter business model story, that points towards the company’s desire to remain independent and become financially viable, as opposed to get acquired by someone like Google or Microsoft. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if this actually happens, or gets filed away with the seemingly dozens of other Twitter business rumors we’ve seen pop up in recent months.

How do you say “What are you doing?” in Spanish, French, Italian, or German? That’s what Twitter wants to know, as it’s asking users to volunteer for a new project to translate the site into multiple languages (it’s currently available in only English and Japanese).
The project sounds quite similar to what Facebook has done to translate its site into more than 70 languages. Facebook, however, is a far more complex site requiring many more translations than the Twitter project will likely entail.

Here’s how Twitter describes the translation project:

“We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we’ll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.”

Clearly, translations are a huge opportunity for Twitter to expand its reach. Facebook has grown quickly around the world on the heels of its Translation project, and is even starting to make inroads in regions dominated by other social networks, like in Brazil, where Orkut remains top dog.

We’ve known this was coming for a while (some of you shared your GeoCities memories back in April), but Yahoo today sent out a final closure notice with the date of GeoCities’ demise: October 26.
Back in the proverbial day, GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth. After a spectacular dot com purchase of $3.65 billion and an equally spectacular dot com bust, its closure marks the end of one of the earliest ages of the social web.

Yahoo, of course, has been busy slimming down and cutting costs under CEO Carol Bartz. With the company’s focus elsewhere, it makes sense to shut down what is essentially an internet relic. Still, to those who look back with nostalgia, October 26 could well be a wistful day. Check out the full farewell letter below, and let us know if you have any memories from the heady GeoCities days to share in the comments!

Most Gmail users are familiar with Google Labs, a nifty set of experimental features which aren’t quite ready to be rolled out to all users, but are good enough for a select subset of users who like to try out new things.
According to Cnet’s Natali DelConte, Twitter is planning a similar feature for the near future. At the FOWA conference in London, Twitter’s user experience and front end engineering lead Britt Selvitelle said that it’s coming “soon”. The idea behind it seems to be a bit different from Google Labs; while Google is using it to test their own ideas, Twitter will let developers create add-ons for the site.

While tech-savvy users can already browse through the hundreds of available third party Twitter apps, various add-ons, plugins and scripts to try out something new, Twitter Labs could help the rest of the user base, who don’t have time to do that much digging.

Google Wave has arrived. The real-time communication platform has been one of the hottest and most anticipated products in the tech and social media space for months. Soon around 100,000 people will be messaging each other in one of Google’s most ambitious projects to date.
So what if you’re one of the lucky ones to get an invite, or just want to understand exactly how this new tool works?
While not comprehensive, our guide on getting started with Google Wave will help you quickly learn the interface and important keyboard commands that will open up the full potential of Wave.

General Interface

The Google Wave interface is divided essentially into four boxes: Navigation, Contacts, Inbox, and your current Wave. Here’s a rundown of each of these core pieces of Wave:

Navigation: This is not your standard left-hand navigation bar. Yes, it has similarities to Gmail, but navigating Wave is definitely a new experience. Each of the items essentially filters your inbox for waves that fit what you’re looking for. “Active” refers to waves that have new activity, “History” checks for old, archived waves, and “Settings” lets you manage things like your extensions. You can also add custom searches (i.e. waves that discuss your company) and add folders. Adding a wave to a folder is as simple as drag-and-drop.

Contacts: Your contacts are more prominent in Wave. That’s because you drag and drop them to add them to waves, rather than type in an email address or a username. You can search through your contacts and manage them via your Google account. It’s still a bit buggy – Wave will tell you some people don’t have accounts when they do – but overall it’s smooth.
Inbox: The inbox in the middle of the Google Wave interface doesn’t work like an email inbox. The key to navigating the inbox are search and search commands. It’s the easiest way to filter different waves. We have a list of key search commands below.
Wave Box: This is the box on the right hand of Wave. This is where conversations happen. Add participants, discuss what you’d like, and add multimedia through Google Wave gadgets and extensions (for more on Wave Extensions, check out Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

This is the pure overview of the interface. However, if you want to learn more about the features and the terminology, we suggest checking out Google also created a quick YouTube video tutorial of Wave, courtesy of Wave’s mascot, Dr. Wave:

Starting a Conversation

Getting a conversation started in Google Wave is rather easy – it’s understanding all of the available conversation features that’s difficult. Let’s explore a few steps to get started with a new wave:

1. Click on the “New Wave” link. This will start a new conversation.
2. Drag and drop friends you’d like to have join your wave from your contacts box into the top of the wave.
3. Start typing.

Remember, Wave is different than email. You can reply to messages as threaded conversations and, more importantly, you can edit the text of anyone in the conversation. These options become available when you click on the downward facing arrow at the top of any message (a blip) within a wave.
Also note the top bar, with “Reply,” “Playback,” “Archive,” “Mute,” “Spam,” and “Read.” While most of these are self-explanatory, the feature you should be using liberally is “playback.” If you join a wave in progress, always start by playing back the wave to see how the conversation transpired.

Wave Search Commands
A big part of navigating through your Wave inbox are the search commands. They help you find public waves, your archived messages, or just waves related to work. Here are some of the most important commands to keep in mind:

is:read and is:unread: This will help you find all of the waves you have or have not read. is:active is the same as is:unread currently.
is:mute and is:unmute: The same type of deal – This helps you find conversations you may have muted or unmuted.
title:(keyword): This command helps you find waves with a specific word in their titles.
caption:(keyword): This helps you find waves with a keyword in the captions of attached images and files.
from:(address): This command will help you find waves from specific people. On the same token, from:me finds waves from you. to:(address) finds waves where it’s just you and the person you’re searching for.
past:(date), previous:(date), after:(date), and before:(date): These four commands help you search for waves in time periods, based on days, weeks, months, and years. Use “d” for day, “w” for week, “m” for month, and “y” for year. So, if you want to find something from before 3 months ago, you’d type “before:3m”. Yes, it’s complicated.
has: The has command will search for whether a wave has an attachment, a document, an image, or even a gadget (has:gadget).

There are actually a lot more commands. To read them all, we suggested checking out Google Wave’s advanced search terms list.

Wave Navigation

There are an abundance of keyboard shortcuts that make using Google Wave a more streamlined experience. Thanks to a list first created by Google’s Greg Dalesandre in the development version of Google Wave, we can bring you a full list of keyboard shortcuts, which we’ll update periodically.
First, here are the commands for Wave Navigation:

Up/Down Arrows: As you might expect, use the arrows to navigate messages.
Tab/Shift-tab: Same functionality as the Up/Down arrows (outside of edit mode).
Home/End: Moves you to the first or last message.
Space: Go to next unread message (note: it doesn’t have to be within the same wave).
Left/Right Arrows: Switch focus between digest panel and wave panel.
Page Up/Down: Currently doesn’t work properly due to a bug.
Ctrl-Space: Marks all messages as read.

Messages in Wave

Enter: Replies to messages. Your reply will appear just below the selected message. If it’s the first reply, it will not be indented (but otherwise it will be).
Ctrl-R: The same as enter.
Shift-Enter: Replies to messages at the end of a thread. Replies of this nature appear at the bottom with the same indentation in almost all cases.
Highlight Text + Enter: Creates an inline reply. Your reply will be indented inside the current message.
Ctrl-E: Edit a message.
Ctrl-Enter (while editing): Inserts an inline reply at the caret.

Text Editing


None of these commands will really come as a shock, but they’re still good to know.

Ctrl-B: Bolds text.
Ctrl-I: Italicizes text.
Ctrl-G: Adjust the color.
Ctrl-L: Currently links to another wave if you hightlight the text and put in the URL or Wave ID, but the keyboard shortcut will be changing soon according to Google.
Ctrl-C: Copies text.
Ctrl-X: Cuts text.
Ctrl-V: Pastes text.

Structural Formatting

Once again, not too many surprises here:

Ctrl-<#>: Changes the current line to a different-sized heading – 1 is biggest, 4 is smallest.
Ctrl-5: Adds bullets.
Ctrl-6: Normalizes text/removes bullets and headings. Does not remove italics, bold, or text edits.
Ctrl-7: Left alignment.
Ctrl-8: Right alignment.

Much, Much More to Come
Google Wave is far from a complete product. They will add new features, tweak the interface, and change entire chunks of it based on user feedback and the data they gather from this initial release. Because of that, we will continue to add to this guide and tweak it.

The web is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In less than 24 hours, Google Wave will launch to 100,000 early adopters. The real-time communication platform has been making headlines ever since it was announced back in May as a result of its potentially game-changing features.
And while we’ve received our fair share of questions about Google’s newest product, one keeps popping up time and time again: how do I get an invite to Google Wave?

There Are Four Ways to Get an Invite

Google clarified things earlier today with an update to their blog. They specifically highlighted the four key ways you can secure an invite. Here are the methods and what you need to know:
1. You signed up early on for a Google Wave account. Google put up a request form for Wave invites not long after Wave was announced. Most of the invites arriving tomorrow will go to people on that list. Your chances improve if you signed up early on and wrote a message to the Wave team.
2. You have an account on the Developer Preview of Wave. The Sandbox version of Google Wave has been active for a select group of developers for several months now, allowing them to test Wave, report bugs, and build Wave extensions. They will all get accounts.
3. Some paying users of Google Apps will get accounts. It’s likely several companies asked Google for invites when the real-time tool launched. They will get accounts. Some schools that use Google Apps will also get early access.
4. You are invited by someone currently using Wave. This is the most intriguing revelation made today by the search giant. Here’s how Google explained it:

“We’ll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations — Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too. This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well we will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave.”

Do you know what this reminds us of? Gmail. Do you remember when it first came out and there were a select number of invites users could send out? I remember that people were willing to pay cold, hard cash for one of those invites. You might see the same type of frenzy over Wave.
Regardless, these are currently the only four ways to get an account on Wave. So if you don’t get an invite tomorrow, you still have hope. You’ll probably have to beg someone for an invite, though.