Earlier this week, 30th September 2009, Google opened up their Wave preview to about 100,000 people.  Salesforce.com, with their interest in the service cloud , are naturally one of the first to demo Wave integrated with their CRM.  In a Salesforce Force.com Blog entry called “Getting in Front of the Wave” you will find background details on Google’s Wave and a YouTube video  (see below) on how the Wave platform might be integrated with Salesforce.com …

I use it so I must recommend it.  But, actually I do think it is the best of breed platform for Blogging, and probably the most popular blogging platform.

Now a Blog is your Real Estate,  your property that is fixed in location, on the web.  Your blog’s content is not like your content in LinkedIn, Facebook, or even Twitter – for it’s accessible by search engines, and not closed like those other forms of social media – you don’t have to login to view the full content.  So to be fully visible on the web you must have a Blog, and your choice of Blogging platform is critical.

So, here once you’ve got WordPress installed, are two links to get you started.  From Lifehacker (tag line:  Tips and downloads for getting things done) is The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog, and from Mark Ghosh’s WeblogToolsCollection Schwag is WordPress for Beginners.

Of course, you must then install the All in One SEO Pack (SEO: search engine optimization) for a properly “executed SEO techniques will bring your website increased exposure, recognition, and will generate free traffic“, and Google XML Sitemaps a plugin that generates a XML-Sitemap of your blog that supports “Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.”

Then it’s just a matter of regularly generating interesting content, and “they will come” … easy – in’it.

Earlier this week Google acquired reCAPTCHA (16th September 2009).

CAPTCHA tests are those squiggly letters that are displayed when you are buying items online, or accessing some sites.  Already more than 100,000 sites use reCAPTCHA, but Google is more likely interested in reCAPTCHAs experience in OCR (Optical Character Recognition)  -  a process “that converts scanned images into plain text [and] powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search.”  For more on Google’s once again contentious book-scanning programme see this article by Reuters.

Salesforce uses reCAPTCHA, and you may have already experienced it when accessing some Salesforce resources.  There’s also a brief introduction to understanding CAPTCHA on the Salesforce developerforce site, some of which is copied from the reCAPTCHA site.

So, what’s all this to do with salesforce leads?

Salesforce allow you to very easily generate the code for capturing lead contact data entered into a web site form.  The so called Web2Lead functionality.  But there’s a problem with the default code.  Essentially your organisation Id is exposed and unscrupulous coders could easily use you Web2Lead details to propagate SPAM (see the Salesforce Ideas entry).

reCAPTCHA to the rescue!  As a proof of concept I have created a web page to capture lead details.  I’ve extended it to include extra custom fields (e.g. a picklist: prefered method of contact), immediate (a fully configurable) validation of the data entered, and reCAPTCHA to prove your human …

You can test all this functionality on my other site: http://www.bdgreen.it …

Note: The web page also makes use of the another reCAPTCHA function that enable you to obscure (again to prevent SPAMMERS) your contact email address.

I’ve been listening to several of Leo’s podcasts over many years now.  His TWiT podcast has proven to be essential listening for me at the gym.  So when Leo started TWig – This week in Google (and the Cloud) – I new it would be worth downloading.

Take for example This Week In Google 4: Filers vs. Pilers, it’s probably one of the most accessible of the current series.  The cast is usual suspects: Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis and the guest, for this session, Kevin Marks (Google: Open Social, and now BT).  It’s talking heads at its best.

Kevin introduces the word phatic, a social scientist term, in relationship to much that is Social Media.  According to Kevin, Social Media is “full of social gestures that are like apes grooming each other.”  That is, full of expressions that only function to perform a social task, rather than to conveying information.

Other nuggets from TWig#4 are that:

• there is a limit (i.e. accessible by API) of 3200 tweets on Twitter
• Google Wave, is best viewed as tool that will support collaborative editing of a stored document – rather than a new email paradigm (Kevin)
• TWig’s has a friendfeed at http://friendfeed.com/twit-twig

Just came across this very good video on YouTube: