Google Wave Preview Opens Up On Sept 30th

snitch writes with this snippet from InfoQ about the current state of Google Wave: "With the Google Wave Preview scheduled for public availability on September 30th, Wave API Tech Lead Douwe Osinga has posted on the Wave Google Group about what the team has been working on along with some future directions. Up until now, with the limited availability of testing accounts there have been complaints on the Google Group from users that wanted to get their hands on this new technology but didn't have access to the sandbox. As Douwe explains, the team has been busy all this time with stability issues and more."

Comments

What is it?

[harmonise]

Can someone tell me what Google Wave is? The video on the page is over an hour long which is a lot to sit through to just to find out what this slashdot article is about.

Re:What is it?

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you'd asked me to name one Internet technology that was likely to stick around in its current form for a long time, it's likely that I would have said "email". Google Wave challenges that for me.

Yeah, after using Gmail, I would've certainly predicted that something would come along and challenge email. I would've guessed that email would still exist, in its current form, mostly because of inertia.

I'd probably have picked ssh. The Unix commandline isn't going away for a long time.

there's something about email, for example, that forces a sort of linearity of conversation. That is, its structure is fairly limiting, even when you put threads into the process.

I haven't really found that -- especially among technical people, where you can refer back to an archived post in a mailing list, for example.

And everything is an attachment instead of being part of the communication.

Contrast to IM, where everything is a link instead of being part of the communication.

Which reminds me: One thing that's going to absolutely suck about Google Wave is those people who insist on using animated emoticons. Seriously, it seems like half the people I talk to on MSN do this -- for example, they type brb, and it becomes a big animated BRB that turns into a stick figure and runs away. Cute the first time, but just distracting after that.

Do I really want to give these ADD-afflicted people the ability to send me fully interactive, inane little widgets?

what I hadn't considered until the past couple years was how much the particular standard we follow or file format we use also imposes the same limits. You can only put into your web page what HTML supports, and you can only put into emails what the clients will support.

Perhaps, but there is power in these limits.

For example, Google Wave imposes the limit that you can only add relatively low-bandwidth (or at least low-frequency), reversible changes -- you probably couldn't play an FPS in it. In return, you get all these cool little tools to browse through the history.

HTML imposes some limits of its own -- sure, there are ways to get around them, but when a web page behaves the way you expect, there's power there. Examples are bookmarking, back/forward, open in a new tab, and Greasemonkey scripts -- these are the kinds of things that are only possible on a common, restricted platform. People developing native apps often find themselves having to add this kind of functionality back in.

What has me excited about Google Wave is not so much this exact approach, but that people are trying to figure out how we could change the entire paradigm of our current interaction with the Internet, changing the distinctions between IM, email, and documents.

I don't think that's new. I think what's new is that they've presented something that actually could do just that.

I have to think a bit more about the actual implications, though. For example, what types of documents make sense, and what types don't? Is it possible that people would use this for collaboratively developing code? I know I like to be able to take text back to the commandline and grep through it, and use real version control like Git, but maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Re:I'm looking forwards to this

[Enderandrew]

This is what I want, which is no small request.

* phpbb or some other fully-functional, fantastic open source forum software that allows people to post and respond like a typical forum.
* Wordpress integration (you can already integrate Wordpress into phpbb) or some approximation there of, so you can post articles/stories on a front portal, written by the staff of a site. Articles would have a link to a forum thread to discuss the article.
* Gallery integration (again already possible) for photos.

The problem is that no one packages this together neatly with a nice consistent theme, great integration, and the right blend of plugins to keep spam-bots off your site.

Now throw Wave into the mix.

A Wave requires that you invite people into the way to see it, or edit it. However a Wave robot tied into a good forum/CMS platform really interests me. Authors on a website can invite a robot into a Wave, which posts the results into their Wordpress/phpbb hybrid. The website staff/authors can instantly and easily edit/collaborate the article itself. The article isn't posted on the site until you invite the Robot, which allows you to work on drafts, or have a workflow process of an editor to sign off on the article.

The CMS/forum is there for end users to read the finished article, and respond with the permissions the CMS/forum gives them. But Wave provides a better means for authors to put content on the site to begin with.

phpbb/Wordpress/Gallery2/Wave would be a fantastic framework for a community portal. I wish I were a php-guru to put it together.