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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 (most of which we answered in our Google Wave guide), 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.

Tags: Google, Google Wave

AT&T filed a scathing letter with the FCC earlier today complaining that Google's exhibiting a blatant double standard with Google Voice by blocking customers' access to numbers hosted by carriers that charge higher interconnect fees — something that's specifically forbidden for traditional telephone carriers under so-called common carrier laws. The argument essentially revolves around the fact that Google's move helps it compete unfairly against AT&T and others by arbitrarily blocking calls to numbers that'd cost it too much to connect, which AT&T says puts Google in an "intellectual contradiction" given its "noisome trumpeting" (ouch!) of support for net neutrality.

It is pretty interesting that Google wants a free, open internet with the left hand while it’s blocking certain telephone calls with the other, but Mountain View wasted no time in responding to the communication, posting an quick blog piece where it says there are “many significant differences” that should exempt it from common carrier legislation (some sound reasonable, though the argument that “Google Voice is currently invitation-only, serving a limited number of users” makes us think they’re digging pretty deep to come up with reasons they shouldn’t have to pony up the cash to get these calls connected).

If there's a bright side to the bickering, it's that both AT&T and Google can agree on one thing: rural carriers' continued ability to charge high connection fees hurts everyone — it's a "badly flawed" system, in Google's words, and it'd be great if the FCC would do something about it. Whether this whole spat ultimately influenced the outcome of the Google Voice iPhone app debacle is unclear, but it's obvious that AT&T's been stewing about this for a while — so let it all out, guys, mommy FCC's here for you, and one way or another we suspect GV's going to have to end up going legit if it wants to grow its user base by any significant measure. Check out the gallery for AT&T's letter and follow the read link for Google's shorter, slightly less aggressive response.

Filed under: Wireless

AT&T, Google trade barbs over Google Voice while FCC listens in originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel just did a pretty impressive demo of its new Light Peak optical device interconnect, driving a greater-than-HD display while saturating an SSD RAID all over one cable, but we couldn’t help but notice the monster Frankenstein test rig on stage was running OS X — looks like someone’s violating their EULA! Video after the break.

Continue reading Video: Intel’s Light Peak running an HD display while transferring files… on a hackintosh

Filed under: Peripherals

Video: Intel’s Light Peak running an HD display while transferring files… on a hackintosh originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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