Google Wave

[jAQUAN]

http://wave.google.com

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

Looks pretty sick to me. It's like a gmail+icq+vcs+cms asynchronous real-time collaborative communication protocol.

[hanratty21]

Isn't this what Lotus Notes used to do?

Lotus Notes is a client-server, collaborative application developed and sold by IBM Software Group. IBM defines the software as an "integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail, calendars and applications on [an] IBM Lotus Domino server."[1].

[FlashLackey]

Hour and a half demo?

I'm excited to find out about this later, when I have time.

[argonauta]

Isn't this what Lotus Notes used to do?

I don't know how much Lotus Notes changed, but I used it until 2003 and it had some cool features (easy to develop flat database applications, you could program interactions between databases, all of them had access to email, calendar, etc, ability to provide different access to different users) but all in all, it was just a client where people could access a bunch of non relational databases.

I think the main point of gWaves is collaboration in real time. I see it like a mix of gmail and gtalk.

I don't think that any feature there is extraordinary or really impressive, but it is a cool implementation of features that at this point, one way or another, someone had to show: letting the recipient of the message view the message while you type is a real time saver, and it's a very simple 'why didn't anybody thought of that before' type of idea. Being able to drag and drop files is something that probably has been not part of browsers, but it's a very common feature in any other application. The 'history' player or however they call it is just a nicer way to display stuff that other software already has, like wikis.

The problem I see with it is that they said "it's what email would be if it was invented today", and it kinda is, as long as you only 'email' people you know and have in your contact list.

I think it's a really nice tool for group collaboration, but it's not something that will replace email or something that 'normal' people would use.

Now, the cool thing is that they are making it opensource, and trying to push it so anybody can implement the service, so it wouldn't be just a google 'in-the-cloud' service. I'm guessing you could have your own waves server, and maybe could interact or send messages to other waves servers (which only then could threaten email)

[jAQUAN]

All of your quandaries are answered in the video argo.
This is a dream for us OCD people. One centralized location for literally all the digital communication I do.
Extensions are treated like robots in that simply adding them to the conversation participants list enables their feature. They demo'd a real time chat between french and english and simply because a certain extension was part of the wave, the chat was translated in real time. Plus extensions live within the wave so no one needs to do anything to see a pie chart bot you just added.

The twitter extension allows you to completely participate in a tweet thread via a "twave".

Real time typing has been around since icq but I've always wanted to see a comeback.
Drag and drop only works with a google gears tool so far.
The vcr controls are awesome. Just being able to see how a conversation unfolded will clear up so much needless sifting.

The way the waves are displayed asynchronously to keep thoughts complete and the ability to edit a prior statement are very exciting. I just went through an email based conversation with a client and his wife that covered 3 threads each with the same repeated info. I could have saved so much time and explained myself far better with a wave.

Everything is rss which made the blog demo amazing. By adding a robot named 'bloggy' the wave was published to blogger. Even cooler, a comment being typed at the blog showed up in the wave in real time... both ways. I could chat with you from my wave client simply because you're visiting my web page.

A pubilc api is really pointless if the servers didn't communicate so they've ensured that your apps will be first class wave citizens and all we need to worry about is broadcasting a change and listening for one. So rolling your own wave client would be similar to creating your own rss reader. The feeds are the same feeds on any client.



...yeah I'm stoked.

[FlashLackey]

Finally got around to watching.

It's genius.