We’re entering into the {dev:unplugged} contest sponsored by Microsoft! The purpose of this contest is to demonstrate the use of the HTML5 technologies supported by newer browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE9 that propel the web into more open standards and free it from being dependent on plugins.

Wavelength has always been made with the user foremost in mind: registration is annoying so we don’t require it, being tied to media formats is dangerous so we let you use any media format you want, having to jump through multiple hoops to start using a program is annoying, so any URL you can imagine beginning with “http://wavelength.fm/” is already a Wavelength room.

One of the biggest things that annoy us as users is requiring Flash for media: It just seems to take up a disproportionate amount of resources for the only thing everyone usually has it do: playing music and videos.

Thus, Wavelength can be used without Flash at all, demonstrating the new HTML5 audio tag technology. These design choices have allowed our website on many platforms through a small set of technologies, even work for playing music on the iPhone. Therefore, we think we’re a great fit for the {dev:unplugged} contest.

Support Wavelength and vote for us at http://t.co/WJ1IG9X!

This is primarily a test post as we figure out how to integrate Tumblr with our theme. Hopefully by using a Tumblr as a blogging platform, we can keep our users informed even if the site goes down. For commenting on entries, we are going to use disqus, which is a pretty well known commenting platform. We’ll see how everything goes.

Nothing too much to report on Wavelength, other than that thanks to a few articles posted about us in Japan and Italy, we’ve been getting regular visitors from there. It’s pretty heartening for us to be able to look at our main page and see people using our service.

Our plans are currently to work out any remaining bugs with our service, as well as perform some needed redesign work. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but there are some primary things I think we will work toward:

1. The YouTube video popup is too large and annoying. The window should be redesigned so it doesn’t get in the way as much.

2. Right now, it’s not obvious how to set the room privacy level to private (you have to click the room name and then it changes colors depending on if your room will be advertised on the front page or not). This needs to be improved.

3. We have a list of commands you can access by typing /help and /modhelp. We want to make a toolbar above the text entry so that users have more access to those kinds of hidden functionality.

Thanks for using Wavelength!