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A Curmudgeonly Look At Google Wave

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-cynic-on dept.

rsmiller510 writes "For those of you who think Google Wave is all that and a bag of chips, I put on the brakes and give you a few questions to ponder."

11 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. First Wave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    First Wave

  2. Rebuttle by Norsefire · · Score: 5, Insightful

    * What happens when you have conversation with more than say five people.

    It becomes harder to manage, just like an IRC, IM or real-life conversation with more than 5 people. It gets noisy, confusing and you will probably miss quite a bit. Wave isn't magic, it will have limitations just like anything else does. Or perhaps I am wrong and it will have tools to manage this, either way it's a non-point.

    * Key Stroke by Key Stroke View Could Be Annoying

    Could be useful too. Turn it off if you don't like it. Another non-point.

    * Editing Ability Could Get Out of Control

    There is a history bar. Presumably there will be a history tab/page. What exactly do you want from Wave? Something that allow the entire playerbase of WoW to interact in a single document or something to allow collaberation between 1-20 people working on a FOSS project, or in a business?

    * Too Complicated for the Masses

    Email is too complicated for the masses. The Internet is too complicated for the masses. The ones that picked up email and internet will pick up Wave, if they have to.

    Essentially, this "look at Wave" made me remember this comic (the bottom one).

    1. Re:Rebuttle by patro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It becomes harder to manage, just like an IRC, IM or real-life conversation with more than 5 people. It gets noisy, confusing and you will probably miss quite a bit. Wave isn't magic, it will have limitations just like anything else does. Or perhaps I am wrong and it will have tools to manage this, either way it's a non-point.

      It's non-point also because he criticized the default, reference implementation interface. No one said this the only possible way you can look at waves. I can imagine an interface which is much more stripped down, maybe even by disallowing some features of the protocol to keep it simple.

      Since the main point is the protocol I expect several different GUIs developed for it, each with a slightly different philosophy. The most important thing is the protocol right now. A good interface is not here yet, and it will surely require several trial and errors until someone finally gets it right.

  3. Re:Please repost your article. by bconway · · Score: 5, Informative

    NoScript.

    --
    Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
  4. 40 minutes by MindStalker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does everyone keep saying to watch the first 40 minutes. The most exciting part and rarely mentioned in articles comes at the end. They plan to make the entire protocol and the majority of their implementations open source so that anybody can install their own wave servers. Thus it can be a full replacement for email as you can have your own corporate wave server independent from google with all the features and people on your system can send out a wave to someone on google system just as they can with corporate email.

    1. Re:40 minutes by Etylowy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Come on - 40 minutes attention span for the twitter folk is already impressive ;-)

  5. What about spam? by Etylowy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I am really concerned about is SPAM.
    Real time bayesian filtering? Not really. And that's the most common solution.

  6. Waste of time by slustbader · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does slashdot allow people to submit stories about their own blog posts? It seems like that bypasses an important filter - someone else finding the story and deciding it's important. Clearly, this story wouldn't have made it to slashdot if the author hadn't submitted it, because 90% of it is just nitpicking at minor details of a system that hasn't even been released yet.

  7. Re:Too integrated by malefic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For teams working on projects within an organization I can see this being a killer app. Keeping the documents together with the discussion of those documents is useful (I know other office type apps attempt this, but more as a hack bolted onto a word processor or something, as opposed to part of the original design as it is in Google Wave) The question will really be adoption. Which, I imagine, is part of the reason Google is open sourcing it. If it becomes something that people find useful in a business environment, then it'll become common enough that it'll get used at home as well. And although the 40+ crowd will likely have problems getting used to it, the upcoming generation who grew up with email, IM, online photos, facebook, etc... won't have a hard time adapting to this.

  8. He lost me... by sglewis100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Finally, at the behest of one of my online friends I looked at the first 40 minutes of the 1 hour and 20 minute presentation from last week's Google I/O conference, and I finally had an inkling of the potential.

    I tuned out right after the opening where he talks about not even bothering to watch the whole presentation. I can form my own poorly researched opinions.

  9. You damn kids! by nilbog · · Score: 5, Funny

    This guy is like and old man standing on his lawn shaking his fist as the future drives by and lobs a large bowling ball into his mailbox.

    I, for one, have always missed keystroke-level chat. That's how it used to work in the old days of dial up BBSes and it WAS more efficient. I didn't have to wait for some slow-typer to finish hunting and pecking before I could start calling them retarded.

    --
    or else!