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Google's "Wave" Blurs Chat, Email, Collaboration Software
superglaze writes "Google has unveiled a distributed, P2P-based collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Developers are being invited to join an open source project that has been formed to create a Google Wave Federation Protocol, which will underlie the system. Anyone will be able to create a 'wave,' which is a type of hosted conversation, Google has said. Waves will essentially incorporate real-time dialogue, photos, videos, maps, documents and other information forms within a single, shared communications space. Developers can also work on embedding waves into websites, or creating multimedia robots and gadgets that can be incorporated within the Google Wave client." Jamie points out this more informative link.
for PNP RPGs!!! I'm going to write a dice throwing app. God, I'm a nerd. :-\
Make the client Windows-only again and you'll feel my wrath!
(Reply by Google: What are you going to do, quit gmail? Ouch! )
Would be great if Google had added encryption into the protocol by default, it would make it so much better. Its a nice step to P2P the chat network, but its just stupid to send all the conversation unencrypted specifically in corporate situations.
This makes a lot of sense for those of us that read the news for the comments. I'm looking at you /.ers
(ps i love reading comments too!)
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
Somehow I can't shake the feeling that this is a similar product as 'Groove' from a few years back...
Barely out of beta, and now it's obsolete.
I get the feeling this could blur quite a few distinctions regarding protocol-based traffic monitoring (shaping, legal persecution, etc.). What if some dastardly person occasionally put a video stream or audio stream into the workspace, for instance...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It's like email and twitter and instant messaging and facebook all in one.
Disgusting.
Since Google's stock price peaked at $700 (give or take) and is currently $400 (give or take), they're a boring company now. Make sense for them to release software on boring Windows rather than cool Mac. :P
So, they use SIP to chat and handle voice. There's a protocol for presentation that's rolled into some SIP servers. You guys have no idea how powerful the SIP standard is. There isn't a client that handles it all yet.
Besides the very un-special nature of the application, I'd be interested to see if the Telcos will litigate Google on their gigantic pool of obvious patents. Either that or Google's paying them a 'vig' already.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
From my reading, they're requiring TLS on the XMPP stream, which pretty well covers encryption.
i cant wait for this app... its so hard for people on tight budgets to collaborate on projects due to the high software costs... sure one can argue that there are many free alternatives out there but there really isn't anyone that has it quite right yet. One on one collaborations are okay but it is still quite impossible to have a decent meeting on line if you have three people or more, for free...
It doesn't appear that there's any "Voice" in it inherently... it's just a method for retrieving and modifying XML documents in a shared setting. I wouldn't think that putting Voice data in there would be very efficient.
I can not believe this was tagged Firefly so quickly. I am truly among my peers here on Slashdot.
Note that this app uses (or going to use) HTML 5. Not sure if it already contains a tag for encryption.
TLS sounds about right. The protocol also provides a verification protocol (see http://waveprotocol.org/), so actions performed by any participant in a hosted conversation can always be verified by other participants in that hosted conversation, regardless of their provider. What this means for you: encryption (TLS), and your contributions can't be tampered with.
As long as it's not Dot-Communism.
It's this I find most interesting:
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.
This reminds me of a PhD thesis I read about a few years back. Adam Fass' Messyboard
MessyBoard is a networked bulletin board that allows people to share notes, pictures, files and other content. Everyone who looks at a MessyBoard sees exactly the same thing, and all users see changes in real time. It runs as a Java applet inside your web browser, so no software installation is necessary. Text and images from other applications can easily be posted on MessyBoard using drag-and-drop and cut-and-paste. Each board has a URL that is easy to remember, so you can access it from any computer on the Internet.
MessyBoard stores a complete history of all activity, allowing users to go back in time and recover old content simply by clicking on a slider bar.
Coincidentally, Fass now works for Google in WA state.
Google is also introducing the new service "Particle" which will be the same service with different properties.
This could be a cool tool for playing RPGs (of the pen and paper variant) online.
Use the chat or Skype for talking, and the Wave functions for posting maps and stuff, and clients for rolling dice and such.
On a personal level, we just planned a large camping trip for 19 people on Memorial Day Weekend through email, and it would have been a lot easier had we been able to conveniently embed maps and such into the conversation, and had it flow a little more real time.
On a business level, we have employees on two coasts and this might be a useful tool. Though how much of this is really P2P and how much of the data resides in the cloud? The encryption issue stated by a poster above is also a big one, and I would want all business related traffic encrypted.
Good stuff though, can't wait to play with it.
countdown to this being used for warez and porn ... 3 ... 2 ... 1
Great, nothing like a good wave to help get some height. Should make it considerably easier to jump the shark with.
Mods have no sense of humor whatsoever today. Maybe they're Google shareholders. :P
I find it kind of odd that they call it the wave. Maybe its inspiration is from the TV movie of the same name?
Hopefully their motto won't be "strength through community."
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
The decentralised nature of this system will directly threaten Facebook, Twitter et al.
The DNS system works, and scales, because everyone publishing information to the DNS is responsible for the upkeep of the nodes that publish their own records.
Facebook and Twitter, however, have scaling and financial problems. Facebook, so far as I am aware, continues to make a substantial annual loss despite its enormous success, and I have yet to hear that Twitter has managed to turn a profit.
More importantly, the privacy of everyone publishing much of their personal, private correspondence using a small number of centralized agencies is directly threatened -- and it could get particularly messy if, in a few years time, $SOCIALNETWORK fails to become profitable, goes into receivership, and the vast databases of private information are identified by the administrators as the organisation's most valuable asset.
In contrast, a Wave infrastructure, like DNS, will distribute the upkeep and storage of private information to many (hopefully) locally trustworthy systems. Because of social engineering / hacking attacks, leakage of private information can and will still occur, but the impact should hopefully be minimized if the Wave protocol and its implementations have been suitably well engineered.
This is going to be interesting.
Well, no, it is completely different, other than having avatars and thumbnails. photophlow are flickr photos with a javascript chat. Wave are XML documents which are kept in sync via collaborative editing "protocols", and those documents can be text conversations, maps, videos, gadgets or any other thin.
Ahh, I see you slipped a cute physics joke through one of the slits.
Well, given that it's all XMPP-based, and XMPP has standardized methods to negotiate an out-of-band video/voice session, this could dovetail quite naturally.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
TLS sounds about right.
The protocol also provides a verification protocol (see http://waveprotocol.org/), so actions performed by any participant in a hosted conversation can always be verified by other participants in that hosted conversation, regardless of their provider.
What this means for you: encryption (TLS), and your contributions can't be tampered with.
What about PFS and deniable encryption so things can't be used against you in the future?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy
Judging by the tags, and because it would be awesome, I'm going to say it's more like Firefly.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They always release their software for Windows first. Will this be the same? I wonder...
Considering Wave is an online service, it would be pretty difficult for them to make it Windows-only. None of Google's other Web pages are Windows-only.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
If this could kill Microsoft One Note that would be so nice. :)
If I'm reading this right, it looks like patent MAD. Basically, Google is saying, "If you sue anyone for patent infringement about this spec, you give us the right to sue you. If you don't sue anyone, we're cool."
The implicit threat is, of course, that Google will own as many patents regarding this spec as anybody, but as long as nobody exercises them, it doesn't matter -- they're still allowed, for this spec.
Which is both very cool, and raises some interesting questions -- like, what if I implement the spec as part of a much larger app, and someone sues me for infringement of a different part of the app? Or, what if I want to create a modified version of the spec, or create a wholly unrelated application that infringes on patents related to this spec -- do I open myself up to lawsuits then?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Which is a good thing, because my priorities have moved on anyway.
All I ever wanted the never really started TransForum 2.0 for was a tool for communication and collaboration about other, potentially media-rich, projects.
Now a decade on from when TransForum 0.99 was momentarily state-of-the-art, I have a dozen projects ready to try surfing this next Southern Ocean Wave ... as always too much choice.
Now if only Google will finally complete what has long been their obvious mission and provide a guaranteed permanent URI for everything ever worth citing.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
...if the Telcos will litigate Google
Sadly, you won't be able to find said Telcos on the Internet... :-/
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
We will end up with a history teacher making one of these things and using it to emulate Nazi Germany in the classroom without the students' knowlage.
Hostes futuri sint socii.
You use safe search? You must be part of that Australian censorship cult........
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually, I simply cut all the crap from the URL (including my browser etc) to provide simply the search term. And as safe search defaults to on, that what you get. It doesn't really alter my point though now does it?
there was this virtual world app that was windows only
xb0x
I thought you had to write robots.txt on your roof in foot high letters.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
Well I do now some online services that are IE only, and therefore windows only
Agreed but I would take it a step further. Each client should, by default, have the option to allow or deny content according to the clients attached to the wave. For instance, if 3 people are on a wave (persons a, b, and c) and another joins (d) users a, b, and c should individually receive a message "do you want to accept content from d" and an additional message "do you want to allow d to see your content" or a single message with the two messages and a checkbox for each. Also, user d should have the option of what content should be seen/visible to the other users attached to the wave on a per user basis. This would eliminate the potential of a spammer or troll to abuse a wave.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"The network protocol between federation gateways and proxies is called the Google Wave Federation Protocol. It is an open extension to the XMPP Internet Messaging protocol. Some of key useful features of XMPP that the wave federation protocol uses are the discovery of IP addresses and ports, using SRV records, and TLS authentication and encryption of connections." http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/google-wave-architecture
-=Maggie Leber=-
Based, BTW, on a real world incident.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Am I the only person who thought about Netscape 4's whiteboard and wondered why this technology is still 10 years behind?
At this rate my D&D campaign will never end.