Google Wave - Discussion & Official Invite Thread

corkie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

What do you think?

Regards,
John.

>>>> This has also been posted here << comp and tech forum

Joseph

very impressive, very

Sposs

Very exciting new product, looking forward to see how it develops.

STBR

Yeah I was looking at all of this a few days ago.

It's unbelieveable.

It's just what Google do - make use of the resources at hand the the full of their potential.

Collaboration is the way forward for tools/applications like this.

Come on HTML 5!!!

tomED

I haven't watched the full thing yet. So far I've been blown away at some of the functionality.

I'm not convinced that it will replace email like everyone seems to be saying it will. Email has worked for 40 years because of one thing, it's simple and easy to use. You can't get easier than "reply to", yet in business we still get a lot of clients that don't even know how to do that! I can't imagine them let loose on Google Wave...

I just see this as a new way of interacting, but I don't see it replacing email - well certainly not in the near future.

On the other hand, I'm really looking forward to using it!

democrates

+1 tomED, there's too much going on in one screen for many users, some would need training...

The open source strategy may yield solutions to the clutter, eg. tabbed/collapsible panes so it can be customised by users to meet Einsteins maxim "as simple as possible but no simpler".

While open sourcing it to allow a choice of wave providers mitigates the monopolistic big brother charge, I think enterprise reluctance to cede storage or processes to the cloud will remain an issue, big companies will want their own installation, and generalising I find it hard to accept that "the cloud is the future" where sensitive data or code are part of the mix. This goes equally for gears et al, some business requirements are just redline issues.

Some other questions/reservations remain for me:

• Will they follow through on making the full platform open source?
• What open source license will they use and will it be GPL compatible?
• Will wave providers be required to call it "Google Wave"?
• If it is supposed to replace email, can we expect to see RFC's for the protocol - unencumbered by patents?
• What kind of security issues will arise (that whole topic was omitted from the main presentation)?

Don't get me wrong, they've done a damn good job putting disparate technologies into a unified interface and maximising their interoperability - credit where it's due, and it's easy to imagine lots of sites building plugins to elevate their presence in wavespace, expanding it's utility. It'll be huge and I expect I'll use it, but pervasiveness is a long haul, and a big ask given existing corporate investments.

STBR

democrates wrote: »

+1 tomED, there's too much going on in one screen for many users, some would need training...

The open source strategy may yield solutions to the clutter, eg. tabbed/collapsible panes so it can be customised by users to meet Einsteins maxim "as simple as possible but no simpler".

While open sourcing it to allow a choice of wave providers mitigates the monopolistic big brother charge, I think enterprise reluctance to cede storage or processes to the cloud will remain an issue, big companies will want their own installation, and generalising I find it hard to accept that "the cloud is the future" where sensitive data or code are part of the mix. This goes equally for gears et al, some business requirements are just redline issues.

Some other questions/reservations remain for me:

• Will they follow through on making the full platform open source?
• What open source license will they use and will it be GPL compatible?
• Will wave providers be required to call it "Google Wave"?
• If it is supposed to replace email, can we expect to see RFC's for the protocol - unencumbered by patents?
• What kind of security issues will arise (that whole topic was omitted from the main presentation)?

Don't get me wrong, they've done a damn good job putting disparate technologies into a unified interface and maximising their interoperability - credit where it's due, and it's easy to imagine lots of sites building plugins to elevate their presence in wavespace, expanding it's utility. It'll be huge and I expect I'll use it, but pervasiveness is a long haul, and a big ask given existing corporate investments.

What do you mean by "Wave Providers"?

corkie

http://www.waveprotocol.org/patent-license

Patent License
Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google and its affiliates hereby grant to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

Also trying to get whitepapers printed from that site can be difficult.
But at least they provide one pdf version:

waveprotocol :: whitepapers :: Generally verifiable waveprotocol.pdf scroll to bottom of the page!

The thing is, how much of video demo I wonder is actual operational code?

Some of the Wave Protocol is built on the HTML5 standards

Interesting reading from other review sites is the integration of Video Streaming into running natively in the browser possibly using open standards.

Regards,
John.

democrates

SirDarren wrote: »

What do you mean by "Wave Providers"?

Google say they plan to release the code as open source. Part of it is client side in the browser, but the server part in the middle which provides storage and instant messaging etc is also being open sourced so that you don't have to go to google, other companies can set up a wave server and thereby become wave providers. Does that make sense?

fintan

I agree with Tom, it wont be suitable for everyone, however, it will change how people communicate on the internet.

Also the spell checking & translation tool they used on there own are top class.

democrates

corkie wrote: »

http://www.waveprotocol.org/patent-license


Also trying to get whitepapers printed from that site can be difficult.
But at least they provide one pdf version:

waveprotocol :: whitepapers :: Generally verifiable waveprotocol.pdf scroll to bottom of the page!

The thing is, how much of video demo I wonder is actual operational code?

Some of the Wave Protocol is built on the HTML5 standards

Interesting reading from other review sites is the integration of Video Streaming into running natively in the browser possibly using open standards.

Regards,
John.

Thanks for roping me in earlier than I planned corkie! Famous last "I'll read them later", :pac:

Ok IANAL but that patent protection clause obviously has similarities with Microsofts "open Specification Promise" for OOXML and the FSF raised two issues there, 1) it only applied to the current standard and a future update may not be covered, 2) it didn't overtly clear applications beyond the scope of the standard. It'll take a legal mind to see if the same problems apply to the Google wave patent promise.

The security side of things looks encouraging, thanks for the link again. We've hash trees and public/private signing which take care of integrity and auth, and I suppose standard TLS (aka SSL) can provide privacy, which is handy since the TLS X509 cert can double up for signing message bundles. A lingering edginess remains about using it to centralise logons for email, blogs, boards, twitter, facebook etc., convenience v risk.

Clearly they've thought through the challenges of federated WSP's and put a lot of effort into flexibility, time will tell if our local ISP's will find it easy enough to offer WSP rather than the federation being a few giants using the cloud to further eat into regular ISP revenues and accumulate vast repositories of our private data.

Longer term my personal preference would be to take as much as possible off servers and leverage the browser/database a la Firefox/Sqlite on the client so it's more peer to peer and we store waves in part or in whole for as long as we like on our own pc's (that's where the X509 sig step may raise pki blues if it's required rather than optional) but maybe I'm just being a paranoid control freak

Still it's a good strategic weapon that in this interim cloud state can further reduce reliance on MS apps and allow people to do more with just a browser. The new HTML5 features you mention (native video - salivating) combined with the potential iPhone like appeal of wave will surely hurt IE (the Susan Boyle of browsers, without the talent), as a web developer that's further good news.

Cheers,
Tom

mewso

I'm frankly amazed at this. I can see it being absolutely huge. No mention of accessibility though, my one issue. I am assuming they had to do without on that front but who knows. If it's not accessible it leaves a lot of people behind. Stunning stuff though.

corkie

Link to a video that will play, without needing to have any plug-ins installed .

STBR

democrates wrote: »

Google say they plan to release the code as open source. Part of it is client side in the browser, but the server part in the middle which provides storage and instant messaging etc is also being open sourced so that you don't have to go to google, other companies can set up a wave server and thereby become wave providers. Does that make sense?

Yes,thanks for verifiying.

I had only watched 4/5ths of the video when I posted that.

p

democrates wrote: »

The open source strategy may yield solutions to the clutter, eg. tabbed/collapsible panes so it can be customised by users to meet Einsteins maxim "as simple as possible but no simpler".

Open Source rarely achieves that. If anything, open source usually leads to more clutter, more options because all disagreements are settled by compromise.

Chardee MacDennis

p wrote: »

Open Source rarely achieves that. If anything, open source usually leads to more clutter, more options because all disagreements are settled by compromise.

couldn't agree more, design by committee rarely works...

tomED

BastardPrince wrote: »

couldn't agree more, design by committee rarely works...

Reminds me of the old saying:

"A camel is a horse designed by a committee" - love it!

democrates

p wrote: »

Open Source rarely achieves that. If anything, open source usually leads to more clutter, more options because all disagreements are settled by compromise.

Settled by compromise! Sounds like a troll, but for the record, that's a new view to me and I think it's generally inaccurate.

I personally can't think of one open source/free software project where that element of diplomacy is put before meritocracy. On the contrary there tends to be little evidence of compromise when one hacker sees anothers code as wanting in merit, and it's one of the reasons I think female hackers working on such projects are a rarity, it's no persuit for those who need a controlled work environment protected by worker legislation.

As for feature sprawl, that can be a problem for all software regardless of license, and at times it's far more welcome than stagnation. It used to be necessary to decide what parts of the feature set were presented at what place in the interface. Since one size can't fit all users, the user can now often customise it to their preferences. Beyond that plugins provide even more choice, but only if the user wants.

I'm guessing we've a similar preference for wanting a simple interface to start, then if more options are needed I can add them in so I've an optimal clickpath for my workflow. It's taking time for this new way to become the default and in some cases like Ardour or Blender there's clearly a way to go yet, but the trend is there and I'm very optimistic.

In this particular case google get to decide what goes into the reference implementation and it's their record of simplicity first which leads me to expect them to be well disposed to innovations which make the default interface simpler whilst having more powerful features easily available to people inclined to use them.

The demo was pitched at developers so it may be the case that what we saw is the interface geared up for an expected power user, in any event when you first start waving you'll see a fairly spartan screen, only filling up as you use it so there'll be an element of learning as you go.

ocallagh

When I heard this was years in development from the team that came up with google maps and when I read the replies in this thread I was expecting something hugely impressive. Instead all I see is another IM service. I'd be surprised if the man hours put into this were even a 100th of what went into the google maps prototypes.

The question "What would email look like if we invented it today?" might have been answered a dozen times in the last 10 years it's just nobody was actually asking the question. The first IM service, or the first bulletin board would have more authority to ask that question than Google Wave.

IMO what we are looking at here is a next generation IM tool. Just like Apple re-marketed the mp3 player, Google are in a position to do the same with the instant messenger and it will probably work, but not due to amazing new technology but due to Google marketing power and infrastructure. If Skype came up with something similar it would not bat an eyelid.. and don't give them credit for making this open source or allowing 3rd party ISPs to host google wave servers for free, for them to take on email it was their only possible move

randombar

What I'm trying to think of is what's in it for the web developer. What will the api's etc do for me and my sites, ratemypub etc. etc. I'm sure it's a great tool to gather together a few sites I use daily, gmail, reader, twitter etc but as regards what it will do to help my sites I'm not really sure??

democrates

GaryCocs wrote: »

What I'm trying to think of is what's in it for the web developer. What will the api's etc do for me and my sites, ratemypub etc. etc. I'm sure it's a great tool to gather together a few sites I use daily, gmail, reader, twitter etc but as regards what it will do to help my sites I'm not really sure??

Yes it's a critical aspect. For one thing the same single signon convenience you see yourself using can also make users more inclined to set up an account on one of your sites since they can now use it through their wave interface instead of opening your full site in a tab.
But if your site depends on ad revenue, how will outsourcing a large % of user interaction to wave clients impact unless you can also present ads there? I don't know the answer but it's hard to imagine that google of all companies would miss this one, will have to keep the beadies on this, maybe they'll upgrade adsense to allow ads in blips...

democrates

ocallagh wrote: »

When I heard this was years in development from the team that came up with google maps and when I read the replies in this thread I was expecting something hugely impressive. Instead all I see is another IM service. I'd be surprised if the man hours put into this were even a 100th of what went into the google maps prototypes.

Did you look at the presentation for yourself? If not that will be far more clear than our reactions.

Wave pulls together a heck of a lot more than IM and will attract users beyond the existing IM base, so I wouldn't see it as just an evolution of IM. Also the implications of open source, open protocol, and federation would have taken a lot of time to think through and they feed into the design before you code test and debug.

ocallagh wrote: »

The question "What would email look like if we invented it today?" might have been answered a dozen times in the last 10 years it's just nobody was actually asking the question. The first IM service, or the first bulletin board would have more authority to ask that question than Google Wave.

Of course, but they didn't use whatever authority/advantage they had. The innovator has no guarantees, it's the exploiter of innovation that advances. We've seen "great idea for a website" here so often getting slammed for having '???' before 'profit'.

ocallagh wrote: »

IMO what we are looking at here is a next generation IM tool. Just like Apple re-marketed the mp3 player, Google are in a position to do the same with the instant messenger and it will probably work, but not due to amazing new technology but due to Google marketing power and infrastructure. If Skype came up with something similar it would not bat an eyelid..

As above there's far more than IM but I agree fully that it's their existing position of power that is the key enabler.

Even though wave, or better, could easily be cooked up on an Irish university campus with vc's on board, there's little chance that our new enterprise would be in a position to defend themselves if a big outfit sued them over patent infringement. Software patents in the USA have already tilted the field against small innovators with grand ambitions, lets hope the EU don't foist them on us.

tomED

ocallagh wrote: »

The question "What would email look like if we invented it today?" might have been answered a dozen times in the last 10 years it's just nobody was actually asking the question.

Exactly - the question wasn't asked before because email works fine. It does what it was made to do. Don't fix something that aint broke.

ocallagh wrote: »

IMO what we are looking at here is a next generation IM tool. Just like Apple re-marketed the mp3 player, Google are in a position to do the same with the instant messenger and it will probably work, but not due to amazing new technology but due to Google marketing power and infrastructure. If Skype came up with something similar it would not bat an eyelid..

I personally think it's a lot more than an IM tool and shows a lot more potential than IM ever did.

corkie

ocallagh wrote: »

IMO what we are looking at here is a next generation IM tool.

Wave is a new protocol, which has the ability to absorb all the other protocol's in to one (http, sms, stmp, IM etc)

Once people stop thinking in closed constraints of the above separate protocol's, what you get is a whole new way of interaction.

Look at the video demo and read the white papers on it, before you judge the abilities of it. There is a lot of assumptions, in the online media of what it can and what it will do to current services. Will it kill things like twitter, no because twitter will just become another part of it.

Regards,
John.

ocallagh

corkie wrote: »

Wave is a new protocol, which has the ability to absorb all the other protocol's in to one (http, sms, stmp, IM etc)

Once people stop thinking in closed constraints of the above separate protocol's, what you get is a whole new way of interaction.

Look at the video demo and read the white papers on it, before you judge the abilities of it. There is a lot of assumptions, in the online media of what it can and what it will do to current services. Will it kill things like twitter, no because twitter will just become another part of it.

Regards,
John.

I have watched that video and I have read quite a bit about it. The new 'protocol' is just an extension to XMPP which has been around for donkeys years. Also JSON-RPC and OpenSocial will be used which are far from new too.

The WAVE protocol is actually too complicated to replace/absorb all other protocols. It's not going to take over SMTP or HTTP IMO, they are far too simple and have their place on the web. Most content out there just sits there we don't need an XML bloated wave to display it.

Additionally many ISPs financially won't be able to support/implement Wave for quite some time and this will be a major issue for google trying to replace SMTP. It looks great at a google presentation but an ISP with 10 million customers is not going to be so easy to implement.....

A protocol is good for the product/medium it was designed for, trying to mash them all together under one roof is a bad idea. Let SMTP do what it does, and if your company requires Wave then implement it.

Joe Gregorio also makes a good point on the wave protocol and it's limitations:

The first is relating to the design of the protocol as fundamentally client-server with authoritative servers. I believe that the future lies with mesh-oriented, failure tolerant protocols that do not require a single entity, such as a company hosting a Wave server, to have high-availability and to exist forever more. Not only is this scenario ignoring the major issues surrounding archiving (we do not want a 'lost century' scenario), but they also do not match the trends towards mobile, ad hoc and brittle connections and networks. Granted, Waves do get copied to other servers, however once a group of participants splits it cannot be reformed. The Palimpsest algorithm (which has a startlingly similar data model to Wave) has the ability to cope with deltas coming out of order, common in scenarios with poor, intermittent connections and high-latency. Given the similarities between the models, I presume that Palimpsest was considered as prior work and I am curious about what problems arise within its model that cause Wave to have different properties. I've posted to the Wave protocol group, but have had no response so far.

So in summary, google are attempting to replace SMTP but due to cost/infrastructure (and not to mention some people might prefer the simplicity of email) it will be a long long time before we see any major changes. Additionally the new protocol is far from perfect albeit it is at an early stage of development. I do believe it will be a very popular next generation IM/version of gmail but I don't believe it will replace SMTP.

mewso

Whatever the motivations here it's still very impressive. There are many questions to be answered but seriously guys you can't look at that and say it's not a nice piece of work. I mean come on. Real time language translation, games within the message box, a small-scale source control - excellent for collaboration within a business. All in the one package. And you can install it on your own server. The individual pieces are nothing revolutionary but as a whole it's going to be very a useful package. I won't be surprised if it's huge compared to say my continuing confusion at how in the heck Twitter is such a phenomenon.

Hydrosylator

I think it's a fantastic piece of technology, and it displays the high levels of ambition and intellect that google look for in their staff.

I don't think I'll be using it though.
I simply don't see any functionality that it could give me, which i actually need, that I don't already get elsewhere. Simultaneous collaborative document editing? Whoop-de-doo. For what percentage of the internet population is that an advantage?

I think it will be popular in some offices when it comes out, and many will use it socially. It won't be a revolution.

Email is here to stay, it's a standard part of life, as much as the telephone.
Google saying that email is 40-year old technology is a bit funny coming from the people who made gmail, which I consider to be the best thing to happen to email since they started giving it away for free. The limitations placed on email, to my mind make good security sense.

I think that Searchy, Spelly and Linky are great, but must ask, why not implement these in gmail? Will they?

I also think that the ability to add Bloggy to a Wave could constitute an invasion of privacy.

Playback is cool.

I'm a big fan of Google technology, but I think they might be doing another google Chrome here. Innovative technology, a revolutionary approach, but in a way they can't make anybody care about.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

Kinetic^

Anyone get an invite? Got nothing

mewso

Nope.

Epic Tissue

Didn't get one either