I’ve had my eye on the Symfony 2 framework for quite some time. I plan to continue following its development and perhaps make a few contributions on Github.

While I’m thinking about it, Symfony 2 would make a good starting point for the web projects I plan to begin this summer. One of these projects is actually a series of sites for a local non-profit organization. I will be working on it with some of my friends who have amazing artistic talents: It is going to be awesome!

Of course I have to visit SeaWorld: Shamu has a new show One Ocean that promises to be just as breathtaking as Believe. I will definitely speak with some of the trainers I know there.

On the same aquatic note, I have to keep up my swimming endurance: SCUBA classes for the Fall semester require a 500 m swim and 10 minutes treading water. I will try to swim two times each week.

I also find that I write long blog posts every once in a long while. In order to boost my blogging habits, I will try to post short, meaningful posts at a greater frequency, so I’ve also been looking for a theme that makes the most out of a little content. Full-width themes with small fonts make my blog feel empty, and adding links to the sidebar and footer to take up space make the site feel like “information overload”.

I believe I have finally found what I have been looking for: The Erudite by Soma Design fits my taste perfectly. I can’t wait to start writing!

Google brings up a good point: email has been around for 40 years, which is older than the World Wide Web!  Therefore they posed the question: ‘What would email look like if it were invented today?’

Enough introduction, let’s get to the good stuff!  Waves start out as a shared document: when you create a wave, you put some initial information (text, pictures, and attachments, etc.) on it and invite people to view it.  You can invite as many people as you want, and it will show up in each person’s inbox.  People can then add pubic comments or replies, send direct messages to certain users, make changes to the original text, and “instant message” with other users in real time (online users can see other people typing on a character-by-character basis).  In this sense, a wave becomes more than a shared document: it can take on the role of an email, a blog post, a chat room, an instant system, and a photo/file gallery.

A user can choose to make a wave public by posting it to Blogger or embedding it on a website.  Embedded waves have all of the same features that they would if they were on the Google Wave site: users can see real-time updates and all edits are immediately synchronized with all places where the wave might be located.

Google Wave is currently available to invited users only.  One may request an invite on the Google Wave homepage, but don’t expect any immediate reply.  Wave is supposed to go public by the end of the year, and I look forward to using it!