Google Open Sources Wave Protocol Implementation

eldavojohn writes "Certainly one of the most important steps in adopting a protocol is a working open source example of it. Well, google has open sourced an implementation of the wave protocol for those of you curious about Google's new collaboration and conversation platform. It's been reviewed, skewered and called 'Anti-Web' but now's your chance to see a Java implementation of it. The article lists it as still rapidly evolving so it might not be prudent to buy into it yet. Any thumbs up or thumbs down from actual users of the new protocol?"

Comments

Oh, well, if there's a Java implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

It clearly can't be anti-web.

Re:Oh, well, if there's a Java implementation

[Smegly]

It might be pro-GoogleOS. I would not be surprised if it becomes a communication hub for Google's netbook OS.

Yay for open sourcing

[cytoman]

Google is definitely taking the right step in open sourcing Wave. Now, if only I could get an invite to participate in the Wave beta....

Re:Yay for open sourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

I got one, and its not as exciting as I thought it would be. spelly isn't there, rosy isn't there, and there just doesn't seem like much to do.

Re:Yay for open sourcing

[megamerican]

What is The Wave's motto?

Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action!

Google chose a very fitting name.

Re:Yay for open sourcing

[Yogiz]

I assume you've tried signing up? You should be able to develop something however if you want to get a peek.

Re:Yay for open sourcing

[William Ager]

That takes a while. I'm still waiting for mine, since I thought they would actually read the proposals, instead of just slowly giving out accounts first-come-first-serve, and so wasn't part of the initial rush.

Obligatory...

[bennomatic]

Too confusing. Requires a browser. Won't run on my iPod. Lame.

Re:Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

More like: Requires graphical interface. Won't run on my hand-rolled 64-bit 2.6.31-rc4-git2 kernel. Lame.

Re:Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it runs ok on the iPod. The Wave client is a big ball of jscript and it makes an iTouch nice and toasty to hold, but it runs...

Re:Obligatory...

[tolan-b]

Heh :D

Joking aside though, I loved the demo of the curses interface :)

Re:Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

A new product isn't lame just because it doesn't work on your 'pocket pool' device.

This isn't just email.. What you saying is like calling Photoshop a piece of crap because you can't use it on an I phone.

If you took the time to watch their product demonstration you would have seen 2 portable devices with it working. I'm sure there will still be some issues to iron out but it hasn't been released yet.

Think before you type.

Re:Obligatory...

[xouumalperxe]

You must be new here.

the announcement

[neonprimetime]

here from 4 days ago

OK, now what does it do?

[pestie]

I realize that this is Slashdot and a certain amount of technical knowledge is assumed, but I don't necessarily keep tabs on every little thing Google says or does. So would someone care to explain, even very briefly, what the hell the Wave protocol is for? Even a few words in a sentence in the summary would have been appreciated.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[MozeeToby]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_wave#Product

That wasn't so hard, now was it?

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Raffaello]

this

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[jtdennis]

I've read reviews of it as real time collaboration. Think of it as private e-mail, IM, and document collaboration all in one system.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

at the moment its alot like gmail + gtalk + google docs in a unified web UI.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "Google's new collaboration and conversation platform", as noted in the summary. And since that phrase is a link in the summary, you can click it to get more info on Wave.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[jolson74]

I realize this is Slashdot... but if you would have simply clicked on the first linked article in the summary, you would have found exactly what you are looking for on Ars Technica.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Jugalator]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave_Federation_Protocol ?

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Many people have responded to your post with links, but I know people are really, really, really lazy. So Google Wave is kind of a nifty new communications paradigm designed to replace e-mail, IM, IRC, and other collaboration tools. The basic idea is to create communications centered around a conversation with as many participants as needed, rather than trying to take a two way communication like a letter and expand it to sort of work for more people.

If you're the only person in the conversation (or wave) online, it works like e-mail. As soon as a second person is online at the same time, it works like IM. It is sort of timestamp version controlled so you can rewind conversations and see how the conversation branched and you can embed the conversations in generic Web pages. It's extensible so you can add additional communications to it, and they've added a way to post images and host them as photo galleries.

In short it's new, but similar in ways to IM and e-mail and it's fairly cool, but watching a video makes more sense than reading a lengthy explanation.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[iluvcapra]

It defines a protocol that allows servers to publish documents with threaded conversations, and allow users on different servers to edit those documents and append to the threaded conversations in real-time. It also defines an API that lets developers extend the kind of media that can be placed in the documents, and make documents interactive with the user or other services. It also uses a messaging semantic based on operational transformation, that allows users to browse the complete editing history of any document or thread, and allows agents observing a document to resolve their local state by reading a document as a stream of deltas (it's more complicated than this, but I have yet to wrap my head around OTs completely).

People say it's like email because it lets you do messaging in non-real-time, and has threaded conversations, and documents and media attachments, and it's an open standard. People say it's like IM because conversations are posted to threads in real-time, keystroke-by-keystroke. People say it's like Google Docs (or other such things) because it allows collaborative editing of documents, except this lets you edit the document contemporaneous with other people, since the server protocol merges all updates to the document keystroke-by-keystroke.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google plays it right it will be Google's next BIG thing. Check out their vid - yes, it's about an hour but very interesting throughout, one of the coolest things happens near the end.

It has the potential to revolutionize how people communicate through the internet as it combines features or email, messaging, blogging, social networking and webpages all into a single open source product using open standard protocols. Which basically means is that what this tool is capable of is only limited by the minds of those writing code (i.e. potentially anyone) on it.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[asCii88]

What about http://www.google.com/search?q=google+wave

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Tekfactory]

Whatever you do, don't read this

http://sites.google.com/a/waveprotocol.org/wave-protocol/draft-protocol-spec

I tried reading it and its like the South Park episode with the Marklar, only replace Marklar with Wave as the only Noun/Verb in the language.

Its an adressible service like email or newsgroups, users have usernames @ domains and can subscribe to or send content to lists/groups.

It has a collaborative aspect, parts RSS feed/Twitter/Wiki and I think it will be easier to understand when there is more content availble. I do wonder how the providers are supposed to keep these documents like newsgroup retention, with conversations dissappearing after a retentionwindow ends, or like hosting wikis. I don't see where I would download any waves that I was participating in or monitoring, but I'd have to see an implemented client I guess.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Starayo]

I wish I could use my mod points to mod you a lazy bastard. I mean COME ON, it's a google product. GOOGLE. JUST FUCKING GOOGLE IT!

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[aesiamun]

Malkovich, Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich....MALKOVICH!!!

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

View the tech demo, it's quite impressive: wave.google.com.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[draggie3k]

reminds me of facebook...a lot.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[rs79]

I was gonna say it's like mail, usenet, facebook and cvs all rolled into one.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

So....it's a threaded discussion that checks for and displays updates in real time?

Why the hell didn't somebody just say that?

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[shervinemami]

Sort of like Slashdot with an auto-Refresh feature!

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"So Google Wave is kind of a nifty new communications paradigm designed to..."

Nope! It is designed to give Google an advantage in the market place and take market share from competitors.

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[agentultra]

It's basically a multi-user real-time text editor.

It's a federated asynchronous OT protocol.

From the paper:

"Waves are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications.

To provide this live experience, Wave uses Operational Transformation (OT) as the theoretical framework of concurrency control."

http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform

Re:OK, now what does it do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the correct link to publish should be http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google+wave

Re:When does the Litigation Start?

[d3l33t]

I for one feel bad for the helpless telecoms. They have done everything in their power provide nothing but exceptional service to customers over the past 30 years, including protecting our privacy and investing in infrastructure ~/sacrasm. Regardless of 'infringing' business models, we should be rejoicing the opportunity to compliment the current, and broken, communication model. By providing an alternative protocol with specific functionality it's not replacing current technology, simply enhancing it. Let's just hope it's not a product of the PR machine.

Write only code?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a variable name...
                                          return org.waveprotocol.wave.protocol.common.internal_static_protocol_ProtocolWaveletDelta_fieldAccessorTable;

Re:Write only code?

[Temporal]

As indicated in the comment at the top of that file, that code was generated by the Protocol Buffers compiler, protoc. You aren't supposed to edit that -- edit the .proto file instead and regenerate. I'm not really sure why they checked the generated code into VCS -- normally only the .proto would be checked in and protoc would be invoked at build time.

Re:Write only code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably someone was tired and didn't get a good code review...

miscommuncation?

[Anonymous Coward]

waits for "lips move, but I can't hear what your saying" jokes

Reminds me of Croquet

[argent]

It seems to be a different approach to the same problem, with Croquet using distributed synchronization of computation rather than synchronized distribution of updates.

I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Briden]

a neat idea, for collaborative brainstorming or throwaway conversations perhaps, but i hope that nobody is planning on using this for any communication that is mission critical, in it's current form anyway.

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to if:
-the service is up and functioning properly
-you have the required hardware and software
-there are no connection issues between you and the server

if your internet goes down, suddenly you've lost access to even internal communication at your office, as well as all archives and logs of past communication. Without local storage, you cannot do efficient search and retrieval of your own information.

there are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even. google has agreed to censorship in foreign markets over the years, does it really make sense to let them hold onto your data in this way?

then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[maxume]

If I can look at it on my computer screen, I can tell my computer to make a log of it.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[oldhack]

Is it necessary to use the Google server? Can't you use your own server to run this thing?

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Waves are exactly as local as email is. WFP sits atop XMPP (the protocol that runs Jabber). Waves do not reside "out there"; they reside on your XMPP server. I would expect any organization using Waves to maintain its own XMPP server or 3 (but I have seen stranger things).

WFP isn't perfect, but if you're going to complain about it not residing on your local machine, you'd better be prepared to make exactly the same complaints about email. Personally I think email has proven itself to be a plausible communication medium, even occasionally for mission critical work. WFP has the same potential in a few years time when it's stabilized.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[myxiplx]

Err, try again. The whole point of wave is that google are open sourcing the spec, and plan to release an open source *server* reference implementation.

The concept of wave servers appears to be similar to that of smtp email. Companies can run their own internal servers, and configure links to the outside world as needed.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[mattcasters]

I hope you do realize that all your complaints apply to e-mail as well. In the case of IMAP/Exchange that even goes for the persistence.
And they also apply to wiki, to IM, etc.
The fact that you can run your own server for your company/organization was actually demoed during the initial Google announcement.
The protocol is open, the source is open.

So why the hostile reaction towards Wave? Where did the knee-jerk come from?

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear, I was about to post the same thing.

OP must be management...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[religious freak]

No, it is not necessary to run on a Google server, you can run your own server. Check out http://wave.google.com/ for info. Wave looks awesome - seriously awesome

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Yogiz]

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to if:
-the service is up and functioning properly
-you have the required hardware and software
-there are no connection issues between you and the server

You can set up your own wave server, just as you can with e-mail.

if your internet goes down, suddenly you've lost access to even internal communication at your office, as well as all archives and logs of past communication. Without local storage, you cannot do efficient search and retrieval of your own information.

Companies can set up their own wave servers and communications between members of the same server will never leave the network.

there are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even. google has agreed to censorship in foreign markets over the years, does it really make sense to let them hold onto your data in this way?

Yeah, they can - on their own server which will probably become the most popular one but you can use alternate servers to those of Google.

then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.

Not somewhat but pretty much equally to e-mail.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to...

So far the only implementation is a Web app. Is there any reason you can't store waves locally using a desktop client when someone writes one?

here are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even.

Similarly, you shouldn't use e-mail or Jabber for conversation because Google's free implementations are harvested for marketing data?

then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.

Even before they open sourced their implementation they had open, published protocols so others can write interoperable implementations. Having an open source reference implementation is obviously a boon to this process though. I see this just like GTalk. It's based upon the well known XMPP protocol and corporate america will probably implement internal, interoperable servers or outsource service from someone and the results will be just as private as e-mail and Jabber servers are now.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[religious freak]

I think the whole idea of wave is AWESOME. My one question is ... how is Google going to make money off of it???

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Briden]

yes i know, did you read the last line of my post?

"it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat."

running your own server would mitigate all those issues, and i think it's good that it's open sourced and available now so people can do this.

or the first line?
"a neat idea, for collaborative brainstorming or throwaway conversations perhaps, but i hope that nobody is planning on using this for any communication that is mission critical, in it's *current form* anyway."

by current form, i mean, hosted on googles waveservers.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[myxiplx]

By yet again re-enforcing their brand image as being synonymous with the web.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an excellent question! Wave is different from Google or Google Mail or Google Talk or Google ... because everything is necessarily encrypted end-to-end on the client side. That makes it rather difficult to pick up advertising keywords :P

Mind you Google does use a web client for its own implementation of Wave, right? If it's all on the web client then maybe Google to pull out some advertising data before it gets encrypted.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that any different than email?

You can only access email in the very same circumstances, unless you run your own mail server. If only Google would open source the protocol so we could have our own wave server too.... oh wait... they did.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, but that didn't stop you from writing the rest of your highly negative post. Its like you knew your complaint wasn't valid, but decided to complain anyways.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can save a copy of a conversation locally on my computer and read it without access to the server? If so, then it is indeed exactly like email. If not, sorry, it's not as useful, accessible, and reliable as email.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Ephemeriis]

a neat idea, for collaborative brainstorming or throwaway conversations perhaps, but i hope that nobody is planning on using this for any communication that is mission critical, in it's current form anyway.

Aside from some folks at Google and a few folks who got beta invites, nobody is using it in its current form. It is beta (alpha?) software in its truest form.

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to if:
-the service is up and functioning properly
-you have the required hardware and software
-there are no connection issues between you and the server

The requirements appear to be bandwidth and a web browser. Nothing more. And with Google Gears, you might not even need bandwidth.

if your internet goes down, suddenly you've lost access to even internal communication at your office, as well as all archives and logs of past communication. Without local storage, you cannot do efficient search and retrieval of your own information.

I'm not certain that anyone will be getting rid of local storage... It is entirely possible that you'll have some kind of offline cache of waves - much like what is done with IMAP. And I'm not certain why you think on-line searching would be any slower than searching a local store... I know Google can process a hell of a lot more data than my desktop can.

there are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even. google has agreed to censorship in foreign markets over the years, does it really make sense to let them hold onto your data in this way?

then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.

The whole point of this project is to develop a completely open communication system - much like what was done with email and SMTP. The message formats and protocols are documented, so you don't have to run any particular piece of software. Exchange, Sendmail, Qmail, whatever... They'll all send and receive email with everyone else.

The idea is that this new "wave" thing will be as open and interoperable as SMTP... So you might very well use Google's hosted wave service... Or you might get a wave account through Yahoo... Or your company might install its own wave server... Or maybe your ISP would provide one...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Ephemeriis]

I think the whole idea of wave is AWESOME. My one question is ... how is Google going to make money off of it???

I doubt if Google will make much money off of the wave protocol or message format... Much like SMTP, it'll just kind of be out there for other people to implement.

I'm sure they'll offer a free (ad supported) Wave service however, much like they've got Gmail now... And they'll probably offer a paid subscription to business users, like with Google Apps right now...

Of course, they're spearheading the whole thing... So they could probably get an actual wave server (hardware/software/whatever) to market long before anyone else can. They could sell that, but it doesn't really sound like Google's way of doing things...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Briden]

no, it is valid, as it's aimed at the current google service.

the point of my post was basically to say that, trusting google to host your mission critical "waves", is just as insane as trusting gmail, or amazon S3 or any other hosted service to hold your mission critical information.

i'm specifically talking about businesses here. I happily use a gmail account for personal correspondence. I do not use gmail in my corporate office, as it doesn't make sense.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[crabboy.com]

Where did the knee-jerk come from?

I'm more interested in knowing how the knee-jerk got modded up...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first source release of the server is called 'FedOne', i.e. Federation One.

The intent is for anyone that has the need for their own email infrastructure would probably have their own wave infrastructure. It can be intranet or internet depending on you set it up. The clue is in the name :-)

Also, Gears is used even in the current browser client to allow offline browsing, but that isn't quite what you meant.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[That's Unpossible!]

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere, that you can *probably* get access to...

What you're saying makes as much sense as saying you can't get to your mail if you're using IMAP, because IMAP mail is *out there* somewhere.

You clearly have not read any of the technical information about Wave.

Waves are comprised of "Wavelets," the pieces that make up a wave. You could absolutely write a client application that downloaded and cached everything locally, and most clients probably will. I imagine Google itself will have some HTML5 local caching (google gears, etc) to allow you to retrieve existing stuff when offline, as long as you previously synced it up.

I mean, they already have offline Gmail support. Wave is along the same lines.

Wave is absolutely going to catch on. I think in 20 years you're going to be saying the same thing about email that we're saying now about things like Gopher vs. Web.

The real news here is not that it's open sourced -- Google said that from the beginning. Everything about Wave will be completely open. The news here is that there is some code shipping.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[pwfffff]

Really? You have to ask?

Even if there wasn't a 'Save to Disk' button it's freaking OPEN SOURCE and you could just code your own. Or did you think this was magic data that turns into 0s when it arrives on computer that hasn't been enchanted by the Google wizards?

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[pwfffff]

It's not currently a service, so you're point still isn't valid. Yes, they have ONE server up. It's a BETA. An INVITE ONLY beta. Where did you get the idea that someone is putting mission critical things there? Now that this reference implementation is out you can even have your own server running NOW, before Google's even hinted at running their own service.

Troll harder please.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[sam.haskins]

Well, it's *out there* pretty much in the same sense that newsgroups were out there... Or, like IMAP email is out there... Given that the Google client supports gears, it doesn't even go down if your internet goes out, so, I think we're all good.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[mattcasters]

Well, it's getting a bit off-topic, but is hosting anything in the cloud really that insane?
Is your average internal mail or file server better with respect to uptime than Google or Amazon?
Or is your Internet and backup-Internet connection that bad? Would your company survive is it didn't receive any e-mail for a few days? What would the damage be?
Is your local mail server as redundant as the Google gmail servers?

I think these are all valid questions to ask and I think that for a *lot* of companies with a non-backed up Internet connection, non redundant mail server the risks are a lot higher with the local infrastructure.

Personally I think you can perhaps see it a trust concern, not really an availability issue. The evidence is not really there to support it either way.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[mattcasters]

FWIW I was actually genuinely interested.

I've been using Android with gmail, maps, calendar and all in the cloud for a month now and I absolutely love it.
It's so much easier and faster to NOT have to download any mail and just keep it on the server.
It's so much more fun to be able to see my calendar on-line wherever I go, edit phone contacts on-line, etc.

I had a different perception of that experience earlier on and it changed completely with the HTC Magic & Android. Hence my request for feedback on the negativity towards Google and/or Wave. If there are any actual negative experiences to share I would still love to hear about it.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[crabboy.com]

Sorry, wasn't trying to hijack your original post. The OP seemed to be so patently wrong I figured I'd interject a gripe about the mod system sprinkled with an attempt at humor. I agree with you completely about Android; have one as well. :-)

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[iluvcapra]

how is Google going to make money off of it???

Keep an eye on the various "Robots" and "Extensions" they'll be offering as services.

Also, destroying the competitive advantage of Exchange and Lotus Notes will have certain long-term strategic benefits.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[magister159]

While the OP is obviously misinformed, is there an offline spec in the wave protocol? Does there need to be? I could all be handled by the client I assume.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[edmicman]

Hadn't thought of it that way yet, but hellz yes! The possibility to get rid of Exchange/Outlook for the email mess that is 90% of its usage would be great. Can Wave do scheduling/task management? If so, then *finally*, we may have an Exchange/Outlook killer...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your issues apply to anything that's on the internet. I'm sure back in the early days of telephone, people say the same, they probably kept a couple of pigeons around just in case.

Very soon I believe most people will not think of owning their own computer. The stuffs are just out there, accessible from anywhere with whatever device at one's disposal.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, the current google service isn't even available for businesses, or anyone else not officially invited to participate. Your original post was a piece of good advice, disguised as a complaint.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[djMouton]

I love that the demo Thinkpad is running XP.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have think that they will implement Gears functionality into it at some point. Then your point about the "cloud" and having to have internet isn't valid anymore.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen if Google's client does this. I have a hard time believing any native client wouldn't do that, though. I mean is there an XMPP client today that doesn't do this?

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[rbenech]

Also, destroying the competitive advantage of Exchange and Lotus Notes will have certain long-term strategic benefits.

True! But I can't wait to get waves + notes apps working together... I'm still curious about how waves resolve conflicting offline edits outside of the wave with just XML... hrm...

Lotus Notes can probably interact with the wave much more easily than Exchange's collection of apps (sharepoint - yuk). Notes 8 is built on Eclipse, so all you really need is someone to wire up the right kind of plug-in or extension and you should be able to interact with all those great Notes apps directly with the wave. That's the great equalizer of waves, a 'robot' can interact automatically to 'do the right thing' to get two very disparate systems to seem to work together. Watch the video to see how a the view can interact directly with Blog post replies...

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Zerth]

By default, no more advanced than using a wiki-page to schedule a meeting. But it'd be trivial to write a robot to match schedules, allocate resources, pop up reminders, etc.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[styrotech]

Also, destroying the competitive advantage of Exchange and Lotus Notes will have certain long-term strategic benefits.

And Sharepoint too.

Google's success (for it's applications at least) lies in reducing peoples dependence on non web applications. The more people are happy to use web apps for their everyday computing needs, the more Google stands to benefit as they have the scope to dominate the market for webapps.

Anything that provides alternatives or improvements over existing apps helps their overall goal, even if that particular app isn't profitable by itself. In terms of Googles overall revenue, releasing these little projects isn't expensive.

Another possible goal: MS (and to a lesser extent Yahoo) are probably the only companies that can threaten their search ads gravy train. If Google can hurt their competitors other revenue streams by commoditising and/or open sourcing them - then their competitors have less resources to attack Googles search ad business.

If Google can make their competitors have to respond to these developments and play catch up, then that helps. Joels old article "Fire and Motion" talked about that as a MS strategy in the early .NET days - but Vista seems to have hurt their momentum over the last few years, and now Google seems to be using it against MS now.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[DragonWriter]

just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer, but rather *out there* somewhere [...] if your internet goes down, suddenly you've lost access to even internal communication at your office, as well as all archives and logs of past communication.

Since both the spec and the reference server implementation are open source, its quite possible for "waves" to reside on a local network under your control (and the same is true, though less relevant to the present thread, for "clouds", for instance Ubuntu Server now includes tools for serving "cloud" apps.)

Yes, if you don't have your own datacenter and IT staff to manage it, you could rely on someone else to host your waves in their cloud. But for many small businesses, the choice isn't between that and locally-hosted online collaboration, its between that and and no online collaboration tool.

there are serious privacy issues as well, no doubt google will be surfin the "waves" looking for terms to market to you, but perhaps it is more shady than that even. google has agreed to censorship in foreign markets over the years, does it really make sense to let them hold onto your data in this way?

This thread is about them open sourcing the implementation. This is, then, all about the fact that they aren't forcing you to let them hold onto any of your data for you to get the full benefit of the technology. So what are you complaining about?

then again.. it's cool technology, and now that it's being open sourced, it means feasibly you can run your own "waveserver" and mitigate the issues above somewhat.

Somewhat? I think you understate that...somewhat.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[DragonWriter]

So I can save a copy of a conversation locally on my computer and read it without access to the server?

Yes. When you first open a wavelet from the server, the server provides you the complete serialized state of the wavelet (future updates are sent as deltas, not full states, but applying a delta to an existing state fully specifies the new state); so at any time the client will have a complete state of the wavelet (including all documents that are part of the wavelet) at some point in the past to reference, which means that a properly configured client application (including an browser-based app making use of Google Gears or HTML5 local storage) could work with any document that is part of a wavelet without any remote connection. A remote connection is only needed to send or receive updates to or from the server.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[jopsen]

how is Google going to make money off of it???

They will be the only ones who can send SPAM :)

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens if an update made offline conflicts with an online update? Is that possible? Don't you then run into the usual problems with synchronization that you get in things like source control systems? How will that be handled? You can't expect Joe Sixpack to be able to deal with a problem that even developers can't find a good solution for.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Chang]

Why wouldn't you just use the timestamps and let the most recent win. Even if an offline client had a bad timestamp and something got stomped you could just replay back to a "good" state and copy paste your way back to normal. Anyway - there are smarter minds than I working on this at the wave federation protocol site.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[infinityxi]

Google wave is a platform, they aren't planning on making money directly on the platform so much as offering premium services and integrating all their previous offerings with it. Right now Google is in the web advertising game and the more people who use google the more people who are on the web, looking at ads. Google also makes money off of their google apps service and I am sure for those customers there will be a premium wave service just as there is a premium google email setup. Just like many of google's services, the app itself isn't the money maker but what they can do with it and by any indication of google over the past decade, they are doing pretty well for themselves with this strategy.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[complete loony]

Wave doesn't have to directly generate a profit to be useful for google. If they can make it harder for their competitors to generate profit in their key market segments, they still win. See this post to an earlier Wave article from a google employee.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Undoing accidental mis-mod; you made me laugh so hard I picked the wrong item.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Wave as being about making money for Google, as much as denying competitors. Once the server implementation starts to gather speed, there will be fewer Sharepoint implementations, for one.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you just use the timestamps and let the most recent win.

Because that's destructive, and users don't like it when their programs are destructive.

Anyway - there are smarter minds than I working on this at the wave federation protocol site.

There have been smart minds working on ways of letting users work on a shared resource offline for decades. None have found a perfect solution yet. If wave is not designed correctly, it will not be as simple as email.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

They are more or less going for a full reboot of email, and are bringing the whole world along for the ride. They fully intend to just take the GMail-type niche (they have the coolest interface, and everyone uses them anyway), along with credit for the protocol. You can use Microsoft Interchange from Office 2020 and some sort of XMPP-Wave server to do it.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

Sure, but probably not on a web-based client. Don't you think there might be a desktop client developed by someone someday?

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

I believe the updates are included synchronously. Ideally, of course, you'd be working with it online, but offline your deltas would probably merge alongside the other users' deltas rather than replacing it. You would have the two edits side-by-side with namestamps and datestamps.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

Yeah, they are offering a free Wave service (wave.google.com would be the client analagous to GMail). And it's part of Google Apps for Domains, too (Developer Wave Sandbox is hosted using Apps for domains on wavesandbox.com).

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

Yes, Microsoft Interchange 2020 will have that built into its proprietary extension to the Wave Federation Protocol. ;-)

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[mcvos]

how is Google going to make money off of it???

Lie they do with everything: magically.

The entire business plan of Google is: give people lots of free, cool stuff so they'll use it a lot and do funky new things with it, which Google can then analyse and use for cleverly targeted advertisement.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[omnichad]

Well that's a stupid distinction to make. Wave in its current form is only open to a limited Developer preview. For a business to use it in a mission critical application, they're going to have to bribe a bunch of devs for their account credentials to get enough accounts to be useful.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[mcvos]

or the first line?
"a neat idea, for collaborative brainstorming or throwaway conversations perhaps, but i hope that nobody is planning on using this for any communication that is mission critical, in it's *current form* anyway."

by current form, i mean, hosted on googles waveservers.

But currently you can't use Google's wave servers yet, because they haven't even gone live yet. You can play around on the dev sandbox, but that's really not the same thing.

And by the time Wave goes live, every ISP should put up their own wave server, and within a year, I bet there will be some choice in various servers and clients.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

"[...]just like "clouds", "waves" do not reside on your computer[...]"

Unless, of course, the wave server in question is your computer.

My main objection to the whole "cloud" crap isn't so much that it's not running on the piece of hardware that I'm sitting in front of, but that everyone assumes that it has to be running somewhere "out there", instead of running on a piece of hardware under your own direct control. Admittedly, I think that's why so many people are all hot and bothered about it - "It's almost like I'm running my own server, except I can abdicate responsibility for maintaining it! Wow!" (Yeah, I'm kind of cynical about people's motivations here, I'll admit it.)

Google Wave appears to be explicitly designed so that, just as with XMPP ("Jabber")-based IM, or email for that matter, anyone can run their own system and still have it interoperate with everyone else. A company with interest in maintaining possession and control over "Wave" communications can just plug in a box within the walls of their buildings and use it. The fact that Google is openly promoting the "anyone can run this themselves if they want to" aspect of the project is encouraging to me.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[kamatsu]

The protocol provides federation. If you want, you can implement your own wave server and be master of your own data.

Aside from the fact that this solves your problem, Google Gears also will be able to save your waves to disk automatically.

Re:I hope this doesn't catch on.

[That's Unpossible!]

Because most people using Wave will just use the original Google Wave, which will eventually have ads.

They will also make money from businesses that want Wave collaboration -- just another reason to move your mail to Gmail for Businesses (and all the other apps), which they sell at $50/user/year.

Re:First Post!

[wozzinator]

I almost pissed my pants reading those anagrams. That was a truly epic troll post.

It's too early, but...

[SebaSOFT]

I think that every web developer that misses this out, will pay it hard.
Experts say that true innovations are hard to detect. I would say, keep an eye on this, or you will regret it.

Re:It's too early, but...

[Colonel Korn]

Experts say that true innovations are hard to detect.

What a bizarre statement. Who are these experts? What is their area of expertise? When did they say this? Are you just trying to use vague language to give extra gravity to your statement?

I would contend that innovation is relatively easy to detect, while innovation that will make a lot of money is hard to detect.

Re:It's too early, but...

[SebaSOFT]

I've recently attended to a Soft skills workshop on Innovation. So I would say that there are experts that study innovation over the years. When I say detect I mean not just happen to be in front of an innovative idea, but to actually detect it as a game-changing, so yeas, they are rarely to be adopted.

SPAM control?

[tburt11]

I read the description on wikipedia. I do not see where this replacement for email and IM has accomodations for SPAM control. Can anybody give a synopsys on how WAVE will protect me from unwanted commercial solicitation?

Re:SPAM control?

[istartedi]

I'm watching the demo now. Obviously it can't stop spam when it's used as regular e-mail. However, it appears that once the wave is established, conversation can be limited to whoever you invite. Also Bob and Alice may know my e-mail address, but they don't know that I'm having a conversation with Cathy, or where I'm having it. There's probably some potential there too. It seems like it would be difficult to spam a conversation which has a lifetime of perhaps a few days.

Re:SPAM control?

[jesset77]

One way in which Wave > SMTP right off the bat is in user authentication.

If I wish to post in a wave which has been opened to public invite, or if I wish to start a new wave and invite people, I must first have an account on a wave server somewhere.

Sure, the wave server could be an ameture one, but when there is abuse other wavemasters (forgive me Sheppard!) can assign responsibility directly to the rogue server for allowing a spammer on board, who then can trace the matter back to an unspoofable abuser on their own network. Spam detection technology perfected in the SMTP jungle can be used as early warning of abuse which becomes much harder to replicate and repeat.

Furthermore, gateways from wave to Twitter, SMS, SMTP, and other IM services would need to be outfitted with their own spam filtering technologies to clean the crud they introduce into the system (which, if they do a bad job the gateway bot itself, acting with no more power than a simple user, would suffer diminished reputation).

Don't confuse me with an expert or anything, but this is simply how I extrapolate the differences between this protocol and the failures of SMTP.

Re:SPAM control?

[Braino420]

Can anybody give a synopsys on how WAVE will protect me from unwanted commercial solicitation?

From what I gather from their wave-protocol-verification whitepaper, it seems that wave has built-in callback verification.

Alot of the spam we see today in email comes from forged sender addresses. Email wasn't originally designed to verify sender addresses and alot of hacks have been developed to try to fix that but none of them are perfect (as you can see from the wikipedia article). Google Wave should do better since it was built-in from the ground up.

There are other ways to send out spam, but those seem to be easy to blacklist since they will all point back to the spammer's address.

This seems to have been covered during "Federation Day", but I haven't been able to find anything that was actually said during it...

Re:SPAM control?

[mcvos]

Users are authenticated. You can't wave as anonymously and untraceably as you can email. I think.

Money?

[religious freak]

Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing? It looks amazing, but how do you make money off of this if it's open sourced, free, and took a ton of development time to build (and presumably support in the future)?

Re:Money?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing? It looks amazing, but how do you make money off of this if it's open sourced, free, and took a ton of development time to build (and presumably support in the future)?

Obviously they plan to make money the same way they do with GMail. They'll offer a free in the cloud service to normal users and either provide ads alongside the client and/or robotically harvest the conversations to better target online ads to their users. They might even sell corporate Wave hosting services to corporations or sell servers with it pre-installed and ready to go to corporations.

Re:Money?

[Ephemeriis]

Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing? It looks amazing, but how do you make money off of this if it's open sourced, free, and took a ton of development time to build (and presumably support in the future)?

Well, look at DNS and SMTP and HTTP... Those are open, documented, universally available protocols. Anyone can implement them. I don't know how much anybody made simply by inventing SMTP... But plenty of people have cashed in on it since then.

Some people rent hosted mailservers... Other people sell the server software... Other folks sell support for free mailserver software... And then there's all sorts of add-on things like spam filtering and web front-ends and email clients and everything else... The protocol itself might be too open to cash in on, but all the assorted tools that make use of that protocol are making people plenty of money.

I'm sure Google will offer some kind of hosted Wave service. There'll probably be a free (ad supported) version as well as a paid (Google Apps) version. And they'll likely be one of the first to have a functioning Wave service, so I'm sure there'll be lots of people rushing to try it out.

If they wanted to they could probably roll up a piece of hardware or software to sell to people, but that doesn't really seem to be the way Google operates.

Re:Money?

[Krneki]

Google is winning because they are as smart on technical stuff as they are on getting money from advertising without pissing of users.

Make no mistake, whoever is in charge of ad marketing in Google is a pure genius.

Re:Money?

[js_sebastian]

Perhaps they make money by commoditizing some of the products of their potential competitors in the online advertisement arena. Social networking sites, blogs, messaging, email, etc, can all be reimplemented in a cool, interoperable way on top of wave. If this takes off, it will take a bite out of closed playgrounds such as facebook et al.

Re:Money?

[DragonWriter]

Anyone know how on earth Google expects to make money off of this thing?

Its technology that (when released as open source) has the potential to revolutionize and commoditize collaboration, opening up a huge market for a well positioned service provider with a reputation for providing online services and a global network of data centers to provide services to small-to-medium sized businesses that don't have their own datacenters, and to enterprises that would prefer to outsource collaboration, while providing commercial support to businesses that prefer to keep collaboration in house. Currently, that market is locked up by a few proprietary (Exchange, Notes) systems because no one has provided a system that goes beyond that those provide while being backed by a big enough name to be credible with business.

Re:Money?

[complete loony]

This isn't about google making money. It's about taking something their competitors are making huge profits from and reducing marginal profit of these services to zero by turning it into a commodity. See this post to an earlier Wave article from a google employee.

Personal opinion.

[Yogiz]

First of all, anyone who has not yet seen the video of the presentation, I recommend you to do that.

I'm usually the first guy who worries about privacy when using Google's systems and I do not buy easily into new fads. However this time I think Google is on the right track.

I can easily think of tens and tens of use cases for the waves. You can aggregate news, RSS, e-mail, IM, twitter, blogs, forums and comments all into one place and not have to worry about having to open up five different clients and find tens of different sites every time you want to drop a comment. But this is not the main thing that will make Wave popular. Wave will become popular, because it is independent of Google. Every company, every ISP and even every small group of people who might not even want their waves to leave their LAN can set up their own wave server. The protocol is open. I do not know about you guys but this time I have pretty high expectations.

Re:Personal opinion.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wave will become popular, because it is independent of Google. Every company, every ISP and even every small group of people who might not even want their waves to leave their LAN can set up their own wave server.

I'd say Wave and Jabber are in similar situations in this regard. Both are open (even sharing the same protocol partly) and people do run their own Jabber servers, but as with Jabber there are already entrenched server vendors and service providers for communication and that's a lot of momentum to overcome. I'd like to think that major vendors like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, AOL, and Yahoo will all jump on the Wave bandwagon and expand their existing clients and services to use it interoperably with Google and a magical new era of efficient and cool communication will emerge. That said, when Google got behind Jabber with GTalk I hoped for the same thing, and it is has been slow in coming. Apple jumped on board partly dragging AOL with them. Corporations jumped on board in limited but noticeable numbers. Everyone else decided they would rather stick with their existing business plans and technologies and that interoperability was not in their best interest. Wave brings a bit more to the table, especially as it will work as an embedded HTML5 application in Web pages, but there are a whole lot of gatekeepers to block the way here.

I do not know about you guys but this time I have pretty high expectations.

I've become a cynic. There is hope, but I'm not as optimistic as you are.

OT?

[onemorechip]

At the risk of sounding off-topic, that "Operational Transform (OT)" in the protocol is too close to "Operating Thetan (OT)" for my comfort.

Also obligatory...

[MadJo]

yes, but does it run on Linux?

My feelings on Wave

[recoiledsnake]

Wave is surely an interesting concept and application, but if there's any web app that just makes you want to scream for a native implementation, it's Wave. There's no way even the fastest web browser running on a Quad core or Octo core with 8 gigs of RAM will leave you satisfied with the experience. Just as I typed that, my browser froze in Slashdot.2.0 for like five seconds.

Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively? They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X. And open source it so that the enthusiasts of other OSes can port them. And they can still have a web implementation for people on other platforms or those who do not want to install a native app.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wave is surely an interesting concept and application, but if there's any web app that just makes you want to scream for a native implementation, it's Wave.

I think focusing on making one cross platform Web application that can be embedded into Web pages is probably the most effective use of their resources. No one is going to bother downloading a client unless there is some significant use of Wave first or it is being deployed in a corporate/large organization setting. Google needs to get it out there and a Web app makes a lot of sense as a first attempt.

Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively? They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X.

Again, I disagree. For geeks, maybe this would make sense if Google had the resources to accomplish it at the same time as creating the Web application, but for normal users this isn't going to happen. Most users just don't install things like this or they'd have a Jabber client by now. How many people with Jabber clients right now do you think have ichat compared to all the other clients out there. What Google needs to do is push this as a Web app and then partner with other companies to get them to develop native clients to be pre-installed on their respective platforms and Web services. By open sourcing the Web client Google potentially gets AOL, Yahoo, and MS to expand their chat and e-mail clients both on the Web and the desktop. By talking to Apple they might get this on OS X and/or the iPhone by default. Someone will write a native Linux client no matter what Google does. There will eventually be clients for Windows and OS X, but very few people will use them if they aren't pre-installed with their computer or unless Wave really takes off on the Web first.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[xororand]

I definitely agree with you. A rich client, maybe implemented with C++ and Qt4, would be very useful. The demo video actually shows a native command-line client for Wave. If that's possible, you should be able to develop any kind of interface. If Google doesn't release a thick client, maybe that's a business opportunity right at your doorstep.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[That's Unpossible!]

I've used Wave on a semi-decent iMac, and it works just fine, even in beta without them ramping up on their end yet. So I'm not sure why you think the way you do about its speed.

But Google is not tying this concept to the browser at all. It's completely open and you can absolutely implement a wave client natively if you want, and people will do that.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[Achoi77]

Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively? They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X.

Perhaps the team doesn't want to have to constantly maintain 3 seperate codebases for the same app whenever an OS goes thru a major revision.

Or perhaps because they want users to use it "right now" instead of having them go thru the install process considering almost every machine has a browser on it.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[Anonymous Coward]

You bumbling fools! Google is giving us a gift! We can go out and code our own os native wave client, and sell it! Imagine being able to get into the email client business when email was still new in this world. Well, now we can! Google didn't keep it for themselves, they gave it to us. Is this slashdot or isn't it?

Re:My feelings on Wave

[crazybilly]

Isn't that part of the reason it's open source? So that you (or somebody you pay) can build a native client for it?

I tend to agree--I don't particularly care to have my email/IM/collaboration software all tied up into my browser (particularly in FF or IE). I want something that does one thing and does it well. But if the protocol is open, as far as I can tell (note: IANAD(eveloper)) there's nothing stopping anybody from building a nice lean, writing-focused Wave client.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[dragonworks2050]

But isn't that what Chrome OS is for? Ultimately, Google wants the browser and the OS to be identical.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[jesset77]

Why develop for three platforms and let geeks port that to many when you can develop as open source for one platform (DHTML) and actively encourage the geeks to port that to 3, and then to many?

Hell, if I worked at Google the last thing I would want would be to get involved in GNOME/KDE turf wars, piss off apple fanbois if it doesn't look precisely like a macintosh app or really develop anything for the Windows desktop. Like, ever. So instead, Google puts it on the Web where everyone can get at it from any modern platform (even/especially smartphones, and if you want a native copy then you or some hobbiests are free to write one (and thereafter support it :P)

Seriously, do you recall their last attempt at a Jabber desktop application, Gtalk? It even worked well, but then they dropped it like a bad habit in favor of the web-based version.

Additionally, one of their main design goals was to make Wave conversations embeddable into web pages. They would like this to be used for CMS, to replace forums, to replace blog comments, essentially they wish people to mash up Wave content with their own web pages. If they focused their deployment first to the desktop, they would miss out on that opportunity.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[cuppett]

And if you want to call it "surfboard", I'll let you! I mean c'mon, if you want to look really cool on a Wave, you have to have a surfboard!

Re:My feelings on Wave

[MarkWatson]

I received a Google Wave sandbox account 8 days ago and I have been kicking the tires mostly in developing robot extensions. However, to answer your concerns about being browser based: the Wave team used GWT and the client side user interface is very nice. If you have not done so, watch the demo video.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[denmarkw00t]

It is open source, so it can be implemented in any myriad ways, not just in a browser.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[DragonWriter]

Wave is surely an interesting concept and application, but if there's any web app that just makes you want to scream for a native implementation, it's Wave. [...] Why is Google spoiling good concepts by tying them to the browser exclusively?

Its a published protocol built on top of XMPP, with a defined data model; nothing is stopping people from building native apps that produce and/or consume wave updates. Certainly, Google is doing nothing to prevent this.

They just need to develop for the three major platforms, Windows, Linux and OS X. And open source it so that the enthusiasts of other OSes can port them.

Or, you know, they could just publish the specs and leave implementation of native applications, which are far less relevant to Google's business than web applications using the protocol, to people who have an interest in and use for native applications.

Re:My feelings on Wave

[mrogers]

Additionally, one of their main design goals was to make Wave conversations embeddable into web pages. They would like this to be used for CMS, to replace forums, to replace blog comments, essentially they wish people to mash up Wave content with their own web pages.

Which in turn will make it easier to extract semantic information from blogs and forums (like who replied to what, when), making web searches more powerful... there are some smart people at that company. :-)

sure you can

[Briden]

but what good would that do you, if it's an ever changing document, like a conversation between multiple people?

Re:sure you can

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Briden if my office ran an email server offsite and the network went down I would probably lose all my emails if i was using a web client too. However, as the summmary says as well as the wave demos, there can be and actually are clients that can interface with google wave. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if somebody writes a Microsoft Outlook plugin that jacks into a wave server. Also if I am a moderately sized corporate office I would probably run my own Wave server in house and I am sure they are going to support google gears for offline access just like Gmail Offline has.

you can install the server on lan

[Tei]

like a mail server, you can have this installed inside your organization, so any exisiting backup strategy /protection strategy will work.

and off-course, run this "off-line" (withouth internet access).

Single Google Wave Users = Meh

[wintermute1974]

Unlike something like Google Mail, offering a single user access to the Google Wave experimental servers just doesn't make sense at all. This is a collaborative tool. The magic is in working on waves with others.

The people at Google are pretty smart. I've been following Wave progress in the news and on blogs, but so far no one has answered this question.

Re:Single Google Wave Users = Meh

[andre_pl]

What question?

Re:Single Google Wave Users = Meh

[MarkWatson]

There a several thousand developers who have sandbox accounts so there are opportunities for shared editing, asking other people to try your test robot extensions, etc.

Also, you get 2 accounts with an invite: 'regular' and 'test'.

Re:Single Google Wave Users = Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't have a slashdot account. But I do have a wave dev account.

Basically you are by default subscribed to quite a few waves and the dev user group, and can make waves public on demand. Thus there are about 100 public waves that anyone can enter and use at the moment.

Also, when you get sandbox access, you are given two accounts. This way you can test robots and stuff that require collaboration to work.

Re:Single Google Wave Users = Meh

[Inda]

What is a question?

Do I know?

Do I know what a rhetorical question is?

Jabber vs Wave

[js_sebastian]

I'd say Wave and Jabber are in similar situations in this regard. Both are open (even sharing the same protocol partly) and people do run their own Jabber servers, but as with Jabber there are already entrenched server vendors and service providers for communication and that's a lot of momentum to overcome

Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc? Wave OTH is a totally new concept and, if people like it, and if the entrenched players do not provide it, they will lose users pretty fast. Also you can easily implement a wave robot that basically acts as a proxy to wave for your IM of choice (so long as the IM protocol is public or has been successfully reverse engineered)

Re:Jabber vs Wave

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc?

As you mention jabber is open and interoperable which addresses the biggest problem people have with IM today. But you can make the same argument with regard to Wave. Why not just use your existing and already in use e-mail, IM, and photo services in conjunction? I think Wave does bring some compelling features to the table, but I don't think compelling features are enough in our current walled garden climate.

...if people like it, and if the entrenched players do not provide it, they will lose users pretty fast.

How? If it isn't not pre-installed and easy to use from the default setup on people's computers and phones, it won't go anywhere. Who's going to switch to it if their friends are still using AIM or MSN and they won't be able to talk to them anymore? Users might like the features of Wave, but I don't think that will trump access to actual people. There might be gateways, but unless those are already set up to work with the services offered over the Web, they might as well not exist for 90% of people.

The real hopes I have for Google Wave are the Web service embedded in pages becoming a popular tool and partnerships Google makes with other companies to get this implemented for existing IM services (AOL IM via a partnership like they did with Jabber) and software providers (built into ichat as Jabber was). Beyond that the normal person isn't going to decide to abandon their existing IM and e-mail client/service and walk away from their contacts and established workflow until Google gains significant traction and market share with Wave. That's the tricky part for Google.

Re:Jabber vs Wave

[Ilgaz]

"Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc? "

It is open, documented, decentralised, future ready, extensible. Ask the companies and people shaping the future of internet (Internet2) why they have chosen it as the default IM protocol to rely on.

Google Wave could be something really nice but Google really have to clean up their "we want to own all your data", "you use our software freely but here are the terms which are privacy breaking" image which has really reached beyond "high tech tinfoil hat" community to general public.

As result, the number of Google software on my systems dropped down to zero. I didn't like their "we sudo software update every 2 hours or don't install google earth" attitude. Oh really? I replied " Get the hell out of my machine." with rm -rf

Re:Jabber vs Wave

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Google Wave could be something really nice but Google really have to clean up their "we want to own all your data", "you use our software freely but here are the terms which are privacy breaking" image which has really reached beyond "high tech tinfoil hat" community to general public.

Umm, Google open sourced the protocol and client. What more do you want? You will soon be able to run Google Wave on your own server with your own client and never touch anything Google runs. I don't see the problem.

I didn't like their "we sudo software update every 2 hours or don't install google earth" attitude. Oh really? I replied " Get the hell out of my machine." with rm -rf

Why don't you run Google Earth for you amusement but limit it so it can't sudo update, ala ACLs, sandboxing , SELinux, VM, etc? It seems like OS's should make this easier, but it is doable now. Aren't OS's supposed to be giving users control over what applications running on top of them are doing?

Re:Jabber vs Wave

[Bob The Cowboy]

...if people like it, and if the entrenched players do not provide it, they will lose users pretty fast.

How? If it isn't not pre-installed and easy to use from the default setup on people's computers and phones, it won't go anywhere.

Facebook/myspace/twitter/etc are not pre-installed, and they seem to be doing ok for themselves.

I hate this move-the-client-into-the-browser as much as the next person, but part of the reason that Wave could work (for normal everyday user-types) is that it works in webbrowsers. Safari, Firefox, and Chrome... who knows maybe even IE8 will eventually work. It'll even work in phones - the demo showed an iPhone and an Android phone.

Who's going to switch to it if their friends are still using AIM or MSN and they won't be able to talk to them anymore?

As another post pointed out, writing "robots" appears to be pretty easy, and I don't imagine it'll take long at all for a robot gateway to be written to these other services (it may already exist).

Re:Jabber vs Wave

[Yogiz]

"Jabber is a nice open IM protocol. So it's interoperable, but other than that what big advantages does it have over Skype, MSN, etc? "

It is open, documented, decentralised, future ready, extensible. Ask the companies and people shaping the future of internet (Internet2) why they have chosen it as the default IM protocol to rely on.

I believe the GP's point was that freedom does not provide that many pros for the users who might not feel compelled to swich based on that alone. Wave has it easy here, it doesn't have competition.

MS response?

[Julien Brub]

I wonder how Microsoft will call it's clone of Wave... Bang? aLive? Sharepoint?

Re:MS response?

[mjwx]

I wonder how Microsoft will call it's clone of Wave... Bang? aLive? Sharepoint?

Nah, Microsoft would have several separately licensed and managed components. They'd call them something like Exchange, Live Communications Server and Sharepoint.

been writing Wave robots - may not install this

[MarkWatson]

I received a Wave sandbox invitation 8 days ago and since then I have been spending a lot of time writing test robot extensions, installing them on Java AppEngine, and then inviting my test robots to participate in new waves I create.

Very cool. Very fun. Huge time sink. You know how it goes :-)

I would like a completely local development setup, but I don't know if it is worth the effort right now. Installing new versions of a robot on AppEngine is very quick, as is creating a new Wave in the sandbox - about a 90 second cycle to test code changes. I set my logger for DEBUG, and keep my AppEngin console log viewing page open -- not a bad setup.

Anti-web?

[shish]

I hope anti-web is a compliment -- this trend for replacing the OS with a comparatively limited browser, drawing commands with HTML widget hacks*, IP with XML over HTTP over TCP over IP**, local file storage with cookies and clouds***, etc, is really quite depressing...

* woo, html canvas! It's just like a native canvas, but 1/10th the speed, and you can only use javascript, and only in some browsers! yaaaaay!

** woo, web sockets! Just like native sockets, except crippled, and you can only use javascript, and I'm not even sure if any browser even theoretically supports them yet! yaaaaay!

*** woo, google gears! Just like native storage, except less flexible, and still only javascript, and you need to download a third party add-on! yaaaay!

I wonder how long until people start thinking "hey, the browser could be more efficient if we focus on the core parts, the 'kernel' if you will... and javascript would be more efficient as some sort of 'binary' (with other languages that could be translated into this 'binary' by some sort of 'compiler')... maybe we could even give these 'binaries' access to some sort of high-performance 'local file system' through some 'standard library'...". And then oh joy, people realise that rather than move the industry forward, they've been walking in circles, and the core concepts of computing haven't really advanced at all since the 60s...

Re:Anti-web?

[cnvandev]

There's a lot of reasons Javascript (and other client-side scripting languages) are limited in the ways you described, most are for security & privacy reasons (and yet things still get through).

Re:Anti-web?

[omnichad]

I know it's sarcasm, but that last paragraph describes ActiveX very well. If you're going to have a binary, just separate it from the browser. It's called an application.

Spam

[the real chahn]

Can anyone comment on how the Google wave protocol deals with spam? Does it have a method for dealing with the problem, or is it vulnerable in all the same ways that SMTP is vulnerable?

Re:Spam

[MarkWatson]

As an end user, you invite "people" to participate in each Wave that you create. New "blips" added to a Wave can have restricted access rights. If you only invite/work with people you know, then hopefully no problems.

It may be a problem that spammers can waste your time inviting you to waves that you are not interested in - I am not sure how this will be handled. I am interested in Wave as a development platform, and I would hope that small work groups can voluntarily work in peace. When I get time, I would be very keen on learning to set up a private Wave server. The developer's support for writing Wave robot extensions is very good, so I am hoping that setting up local private Wave servers will prove to be as easy.

Re:Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

What does an invitation look like? Do users need to register? Enter data?

How do they get invitations? email?

What about if I'm a user on another server... how do my friends invite me? How do I log in? How do I connect?

Re:Spam

[ChrisLang]

First off, I am a Google Wave beta tester. Second, Google will issue the first user invites on September 30th. Third, just like anything else Google these days you log in with your Gmail account. Your friends list comes from your Gmail account just like Google Friend Connect friends do. Hence Google Wave is what will tie Google Friend Connect together into something useful. It is the final piece of the pie. Not to mention just like anything Google there is a much greater plan than meets the eye. I just hired a programmer to get to the bottom of what all the API hooks can do. Finally, Google Wave is real confusing, it is not easy to use. Lastly, the most attractive thing on Wave is the ability to use the Twitter app to turn Twitter into a conversation that rolls by in real time. If I could use Twitter more efficiently and be able to follow the conversation even if I came in days later that would be worth using Twitter heavily. Right now it just sucks the life out of my day. As far as Wave being email, or IM, think email of IM but with 50 recipients and being organized into a conversation and all being social friends and interested in discussing the topic. To bad it will never penetrate Facebook, Ballmer screwed that with Facebook Connect and the FB investment. Another issue and not for this discussion. But a closed loop. Like I said it is confusing and hard to understand in it's extreme beta format. Just hang tight and if you signed up for the release hope you are in the first 100K and watch your email on September 30th. If you have questions that are best not asked here, I am available off list, just check my profile. Chris Lang

More comments on writing robot extensions

[MarkWatson]

As an end user, you can invite other *humans* to participate in Waves that you create. Waves can contain text and multimedia.

When I write a test robot, I install it on AppEngine (I use the Java version, but the robot support libraries are also available in Python). I can then create a new wave and invite my robot, just as I would invite a human participant.

My test robots watch for new invites or changes to the text in waves, perform some processing on that text, and then add their own 'blips' to the end of the wave.

I have been thinking about the web applications that I have developed in the last 10 years, and thinking in particular about which ones could be implemented on the Wave platform.

Another summary that isn't

[GodfatherofSoul]

Would it kill you to add a few words to the summary to describe what you're talking about? Christ, you probably don't document your code either.

Interfaces???

[jonaskoelker]

What, it requires a user interface? Screw it if it can't run on my elevator controller chip! Who needs printf anyways?!

(I can't believe I'm making C standardization (in-)jokes... I should go out more often)

I tried installing wave protocol + OpenFire

[MarkWatson]

The installation was easy (on OS X) but it does not do much. You can run OpenFire, install Google's open source wave protocol project, and run server + client scripts. The client script lets you create new waves and add other participant IDs.

However, when I try adding my robot that is running on AppEngine as a participant, I get an error on my local server. It looks like I need to re-install everything on a public server so my app on AppEngine can communicate back -- but, I am not sure what the problem is.

Hopefully, if I wait a few days, the community may publish examples of creating local waves and invite robots on AppEngine to participate.

May I be the first to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, wut?

Meme

[bigngamer92]

1. Create new way to communicate on the web
2. Open Source it so anyone can run it
3. ???
4. Profit!

Re:Meme

[omnichad]

Google's whole business model pretty much exists almost entirely in the spaces between those ??? marks.

Re:Spam [anonymous mod]

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have access to wave itself, just the video. My understanding is that, for one, email is not needed for wave at all (it is designed to replace it by providing richer functionality). Also, after you register on a single server, you can participate in a wave on any server: that is what they call "federations". Wave servers talk to each other to make this happen. I suspect (and hope) that inviteableness (for the lack of a better word) is an account-wide setting. You should be able to choose among rejecting all invites, whitelisting and/or blacklisting invites, or welcoming all. So wave would allow you to have a collaboration-only account via whitelisting or an email-like account via accepting all invites and having a robot (a technical term :) to do the Bayesian filtering for you. I, for one, cannot wait to start auto-rejecting spam by invitation reason alone.

Leaves me wanting more

[Chang]

This demo text client is pretty spartan. I can't wait to get my hands on the HTML5 client. I was able to get this running on Debian Lenny on EC2 pretty quickly. I got two instances to talk to each other across the Amazon net and I could invite people from the 2nd instance to participate on the 1st instance's waves. So the fundamental server stuff seems to be working. Has anybody tried this out with ejabberd?

All your base belong to "Pay-per-use"

[keneng]

Use Google-WAVE and you embrace the dependence on WEB-SERVICES and eventually all the tasks on the devices you buy will be available only through "pay-per-use". You've been warned.

GOOGLE, ORACLE, MICROSOFT and IBM have all been intending to confuse all computer/mobile internet device/PIM/smart phone users into a state of dependence of web-services through VERY SUBTLE steps. THEY LURE with the WORM(office, maps, sketch, wave, voice), WE WANT THE WORM, WE EAT/install the WORM, and voilà VENDOR-LOCKED-IN CATCH! But the LURE for it sounds like a miracle tincture to heal everything that ails you...we must have it:
Google Wave is "a personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009.[1][2] It is a web based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking.[3] It has a strong collaborative and real-time[4] focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages[2], and numerous other extensions.[4]

The subtleties of forcing people to go web-service are there. The younger generation know only the web browser/twitter/QQ/MSN/SKYPE. WAVE is asking everyone to move from the simplicity of thunderbird for email and firefox for browsing, open office for editing docs/spreadsheets/etc..
to the complex jack-of-all-trades WAVE. If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.

I choose not to use WAVE. GOOGLE and MS are both too big now. They control too much of the world's knowledge. They must be kept in control by limiting our use of their product. For example, you can use their search engines and MS/GOOGLE can display their advertisements, but THAT's all you want.
Don't install their office products on your device. Don't use their mapping products on your device. Just use/install simple open-source software on your device. This will reduce everyone's probability of being "vendor locked-in" to one alternative(risk of dependence to one-sole company GOOGLE/MS).

It's so important for people to understand how "vendor lock-in" is so evil. It's so important for people to understand that GNU/Linux and all it's flavors provide alternatives to "vendor lock-in" NOW. Whatever happened to the "one tool, one job" philosophy? This wave stuff seems to add complexity everywhere. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the server. It's adding complexity in the maintenance of the devices that connect to the server. If WAVE breaks, everything breaks. Not a nice situation to be in. Worse even, if WAVE asks us to pay for using it then we won't be able to use our devices for anything. LINUX is becoming almost essential for digital freedom.

SEE THE LIGHT PEOPLE!
-Google and Microsoft will eventually reach a point of no return in terms of complexity. Move to simpler Do-It-Yourself strategies if these techie big boys don't get their act together.
-Create your own ways of collaborating together in order to further increase your independence from IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE in your lives.
-Constrain your google/baidu/yahoo/bing/QQ internet diet: view anything with advertisements via the browser, but don't install stuff via the browser as a general rule of thumb. This will make the internet experience safer with no chance of vendor lock-in from the big IBM/MS/ORACLE/GOOGLE/FLASH/ADOBE/MOVIE COMPANIES/MUSIC COMPANIES.

Re:All your base belong to "Pay-per-use"

[omnichad]

How do you get vendor lock-in with a free protocol that anyone can implement (without Google). I hope the amount of paranoia in your post is some form of sarcasm or satire, because you certainly don't sound sane or rational. Ok, you're probably just a troll.

Re:All your base belong to "Pay-per-use"

[Anonymous Coward]

that would be caps lock-in

Re:When does the Litigation Start?

[mcvos]

First of all, it's been done already. Obviously google couldn't use the standards already in place.

It hasn't and Google does. Wave is based on XMPP, but extended to do stuff that hasn't been done before.

Metaverse

[kwerle]

Am I the only one who wonders if this might be the true precursor to the Metaverse?