I’ve been preoccupied with Google Buzz recently, even more so than Twitter, and at times, Facebook.

I wonder why, I’ve always been a fan of Facebook and once I’d tried Twitter, I became an overnight supporter. I know the BuzzBoss has said that Buzz won’t, and isn’t meant to be, a Facebook/Twitter killer, but I don’t know.

Aside from the fact that more people have Buzz account than Facebook or Twitter accounts (put together), it just seems to be a little better thought out. But then, it is a late comer to the game, so it had a lot of time to learn from the mistakes of others.

One thing I have to say, I hate the Twitter import. It’s slow (I just saw tweets sent by Freecycle yesterday fall into the test Freecycle Buzz account about two hours ago. It also bunches stuff together, and it makes me have to work harder.

Bottom line, anyone who I followed, and then they only imported a Twitter feed, nothing else…I unfollowed.

Now, that said, the rest I really do like. I’ve been buzzing my butt off with Google Maps which geo tags the post by default, throw in a photo you’ve just taken…it just seems to work a little better than Facebook Mobile or any of the (many) 3rd party Twitter apps.

I love the fact that I’ve already found myself connected to a whole bunch of fellow buzzers from Hartlepool (all of whom seem relatively sane…so far); it really seems to be hitting the ‘Social’ nail squarely on the head.

I’ve just connected my WordPress account to my Buzz, so I’m hoping that this update will appear in my feed pretty much straight away…but we shall see.

If anyone out there is using Buzz, I’d love to hear the good, bad and the ugly from your experiences.

For those of you who follow The Freecycle Network‘s Twitter account (@Freecycle) you may have seen the #FreecycleFriday tag going out over the last few weeks.

So, what is it?

‘Freecycle Friday’ is a Twitter based community involvement project. Much in the same vein as ‘Follow Friday’, where you tell your followers which Twitter accounts you recommend, ‘Freecycle Friday’ is a ‘pull together’ of Twitter users all tweeting about the same thing.

Freecycle encourages users to use ‘Freecycle Friday’ to introduce someone to Freecycle (just tell them about your experiences and direct them to freecycle.org) and/or to offer something on your group.

It gets Freecycle known to people who perhaps haven’t come across it before and helps you clear out some stuff you don’t need or want any more. How cool is that, right?

So go ahead and tell @Freecycle what it is you’re doing for #FreecycleFriday. They retweet some of the messages, so you might just get your Twitter account a little bit of exposure while you’re at it.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to try Freecycle for yourself, check out freecycle.org.  Freecycle is a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

Membership, as well as everything offered, is free.  So, with nothing to lose, check it out today.

Google appear to have released their hold on invites.  We can only hope this means that they’re catching up with the backlog as I’ve already sent out some invites today, and I’m telling people to allow 48hrs for them to come through, and I don’t want to be made to look an already bigger idiot.

Who ‘Waves’ out there?  If you do, and you’re creating exciting content, why not add me using  jamesdotlane @ googlewave.com [scrunch] so I can see what it is you’re up to?  If you’re not, but you’d like to, I have some invites still available; those I know that were interested have already been sent, and the remaining are therefore up for grabs; let me know if you’re interested, and what kind of thing you might be working on with your account.

I’m still very excited about Google Wave and what it can mean to how we interact on the Interweb; however, being involved in a process like this from early on, it becomes abundantly clear that without other people generating content, testing your content and just…interacting, the whole thing (Interactive content, not Google Wave specifically) really is rather pointless.

So, come on, if you think you can do special things, or perhaps you’re just enough of a geek to get in there and get your pixels dirty with the rest of us, let me know in the comments below and we’ll see if we can’t get you all ‘Waved’ up.

UPDATE: All invites are now gone.  You’ll hear again when more are available.  Congratulations to all those who received one, they went pretty fast on Twitter, Facebook, WordPress & IAFCMods.  Preference is always given to those who connect in some way, so if you don’t follow me by one of the methods above, you should & also join your local Freecycle group (http://freecycle.org) as this will shoot you up the list.

Calling all [hard core] campers.

Andy told me about a challenge the other day, something that I’m becoming increasingly more excited about.  The 84km Bivvy Challenge is pretty much self explanatory, it’s 84km (52miles), you sleep in a bivvy and it’s challenging.  So what more can you need to know?

You need to be out for a minimum of 48 hours, so if planning a weekend, leaving Friday evening works for a Sunday evening return.  There is an ultimate version which is principally the same thing, but 168km (104miles); I think I’ll be attempting the “regular” version this time round.

I’ve mentioned it to some folks at the county DofE meeting, and there seems to have been some interest, I also spoke to family about it, and I think we may do it together.  42km a day is very doable, but sleeping outside, in a bivvy is something you may like to try if you haven’t done it before; it’s not necessarily for everybody.

At the very least, you’re going to need a [decent] sleeping bad and a survival bag (those orange plastic ones will do).  Upgrading to a better bivvy may well be an option, but as ‘better’ kit will [probably] both increase the weight and the feeling of being comfortable, be sure to do both in balance.

For those of you in England (although, this applies to other places too), you’ll need to have a plan for camp, you can’t just drop site anywhere, permission is often needed.  The challenge isn’t about breaking the law, so be careful, and follow the wild camping code.

So, take a look at the site.  I find it all really very exciting, but it begs only one question…are you up for it?

Well, if nothing else, any blogging platform that boasts the ability to publish your post directly to Twitter is automatically going right to the top of my list of ‘things I’m loving’.

If it saves me having to deal with TwitterFeed or RSS Feeds in Hootsuite etc…..bring it on.

Now, in all fairness, I really now have to go a file this under the category of “Geek” & “Nerd”; this shouldn’t be enough to get me excited.

As I make my personal début into WordPress blogging, I am starting to see what people like about the platform.

I consider myself quite the Google fan boy, gravitating toward Google Mail, Calendar, Docs, Talk, to name but a few; I have always been quite content on Google’s Blogger platform, and it is by far one of the best for those that just want to create an account and blog.

For those who want more control over how the blog works and the ‘power’ settings, WordPress seems the way to go.  If I wanted, I can even install WordPress onto my own server (in under 5 minutes apparently).  Well, I don’t know if I’m that impressed (yet), but I certainly like the idea that I CAN do it.

It’s taken me most of the evening (amidst some movie watching) to get this working how I like need want.  But now it is where it is, I can quite see why the professional blogs are so often members of the WordPress club.