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Google Wave Reviewed
Michael_Curator writes "Developers are finally getting their hands on the developer preview of Google's Wave, which means we can finally get some first-hand accounts of what it's really like to use, unfiltered by Google's own programmers. Ben Rometsch, a developer with U.K. Web development firm Solid State, blogged that, it's 'probably the most advanced application in a browser that I've seen.' Wave is like giant Web page onto which users can drag and drop any kind of object, including instant messaging and IRC [Internet Relay Client] clients, e-mail, and wikis, as well as gadgets like maps and video. All conversations, work product and applications are stored on remote servers — presumably forever. 'It's like real time email. On crack,' he wrote. And unlike the typically minimalist Google UI, 'It feels a lot more like a desktop application that just so happens to live in your browser.'" User molex333 has already written a Slashdot app and shares his initial reactions here.
Does the expression "on crack" mean, "better"? And if so, why?
I always interpreted that phrase to mean "way more hyper and totally unpredictable". So in my mind, anyway, that's a "no".
#DeleteChrome
I've participated in a wavelet writing hack-a-thon and was impressed by the scope of the collaboration that it provides. I saw it as an email, shared docs, blogs, instant messaging, photo sharing in one protocol. It certainly wasn't perfect and some parts were rather underwhelming but overall it seemed like the beginning of a new way of doing things. I was talking with one of the devs in the Sydney office and he said that they use it internally and are surprised by the way that the more they used it the more they discovered new ways to use it. I took that as a good sign that it was a technology/protocol that was at the beginning of the discovery rather than one that is released with every usage known. Would I use it commercially - not yet, but I can imagine it becoming a core tool to organising/interacting my social circle. I could easily see it being a great tool for collaborative programming and/or a new generation of remote role playing (build a dice rolling tool, a mapping tool etc.)
I just can't be bothered.
It's a fairly common American expression, or at least it was. Generally anything on crack is something supercharged. Bigger, faster, better. I have no idea where the saying originated from. It's best not to think about it, I guess.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
And here's the obligatory hour long video to show the potential of the thing:
http://wave.google.com/
Some new and interesting concepts if you have the time to spare.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Are you kidding? Again, Google has cobbled together existing technology and instead of learning the lesson that SMTP taught US 25 years ago Google is content to have something else that will live in beta for years. Why create new technology when you can duct tape existing things together?
If something taught us SMTP is that is not panacea, there is a big hole in that specification and is called "real time" (well, if you want, add spam to the mix). Wave goes directly to the heart of it, having communication between one or several people (like smtp), but in real time, adding authentication, easy to use and powerful web interface, multimedia and more things that will be disclosed/developed in time. And takes on instant messaging/xmpp if you want too, adding things that are more from smtp realm.
Could had done it mixing and matching existing protocols? Maybe yes, maybe not. And maybe those alternatives dont have the flexibility needed for wild evolution that this could have.
While I'm teetering on the brink of ranting, so Google is releasing an OS, while they continue to overload the web browser with javascript and flash in an effort to turn it into an operating system. Again, we've already done this. We have these tools already. It's called a Native Application. Write some C for christ sake, or hell, even a Java SE app. Maybe some QT/OpenGL? Writing all these applications for the browser is putting a square peg in a round hole.
Considering how safe proved to be the most used operating system around, taking most of the responsibility into something that they could control and fix is not a very bad move. Native Applications could be faster (faster than all the push google and others had done to have a very fast javascript engines, but not for so much now), but could pass easily the ball to the underlying operating system, and of course, not be future proof (future as in other architectures at the very least, both because be totally new or gains more popularity alternative ones).
And maybe you could be right... for local, very cpu intensive applications. But for writting internet applications building them over existing internet clients (i.e. browser, you have there all the portability, all the security, etc) looks reasonable.
I wasn't really seeing her, it was more of an one-nighter.
Maybe the guy is a crack addict and he means that it's really really great program that he'd happily steal and lie to get some more of.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
The demo video at http://wave.google.com/ actually shows a command-line client, around the hour mark.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
First of all, it's very difficult for corporations to not be sociopathic, but in my experience, Google management does try to avoid most of the pathological problems of modern corporations. "Don't be evil" has been getting pretty rough treatment in the press, but from my inside perspective, the whole company perks up and pays very close attention if it looks like the company might be reneging on that statement. Upper management keeps on trying to be transparent, which also helps a lot.
In this case, the behavior is a rational response to an aggressive competitor known for doing underhanded things to eliminate competition. I don't mean to make excuses, as Google's behavior is not defensive in nature, but in the (sometimes, occasionally) free market, competition is rough business and Google is willing to step up, even if our culture does put some big ethical boundaries around what we will do. Microsoft has been famously big on much shadier tactics. Starting acquisition talks with competitors to get strategic information, then screwing them over. Google won't do that.
The value of Google's behavior is a situation where the consumer spends less and less for more capabilities until they only have to pay for the marginal value of the hardware to do just about anything a computer can do.
Next sub-question: who's at risk? Without needing to ask anyone inside Google, any organization who can throttle or put a toll on Google's services is at risk. Speculatively, telecommunications companies, mobile carriers, governments, etc. are all vulnerable to various tactics intended to minimize the chance that they'll be able to cash in on or otherwise interfere with how Google makes money.
This is missing the point of Wave. It's not patented. It's open sourced. It's federated (with no central authority). There is nothing preventing a company, or an individual, from setting up their own wave server (either the one given away for free by Google, or another one developed by a third party), and not sharing one piece of data with Google.
That's what makes the proposition so compelling. Google is not trying to lock in your data. It's doing everything it can to do the opposite actually.