Google's "Wave" Blurs Chat, Email, Collaboration Software 170
superglaze writes "Google has unveiled a distributed, P2P-based collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Developers are being invited to join an open source project that has been formed to create a Google Wave Federation Protocol, which will underlie the system. Anyone will be able to create a 'wave,' which is a type of hosted conversation, Google has said. Waves will essentially incorporate real-time dialogue, photos, videos, maps, documents and other information forms within a single, shared communications space. Developers can also work on embedding waves into websites, or creating multimedia robots and gadgets that can be incorporated within the Google Wave client." Jamie points out this more informative link.
Perfect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perfect... (Score:5, Funny)
Pride 'N Prejudice RPGs? I wanna be Mr. Collins he had his choice of babes.
Re:Perfect... (Score:4, Funny)
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Now pardon me as I go fondle my wife's breasts to banish the ghey that's creeping out of this thread.
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Pride 'N Prejudice RPGs?
A Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [wikipedia.org] RPG would be pretty sweet.
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Start a google code project for this, I'm sure you'll be surprised how much help you get. email me if there's anything I can do.
Public warning (Score:5, Funny)
Make the client Windows-only again and you'll feel my wrath!
(Reply by Google: What are you going to do, quit gmail? Ouch! )
Re:Public warning (Score:5, Funny)
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It will be in beta for 5 years. So you have no grounds to complain about anything for a long long time.
Not necessarily [slashdot.org]!
Re:Public warning (Score:5, Informative)
Screenshot here~ [blogspot.com]
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Make the client Windows-only again and you'll feel my wrath!
(Reply by Google: We know where you live. )
Fixed that for you.
Re:Public warning (Score:5, Funny)
There. Really fixed.
Re:Public warning (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you did fix it.
Google tracks you online.
Google knows what you watch, what you read, what medical conditions you search on, reads the emails you send to your mom, knows where you live and what color frisbee is stuck on your roof, and soon will track every phone call you make from the gphone.
Replace "google" with "the feds" and I bet we'd all... oh, no, nevermind, I just remembered, we all trust big corporations...
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Google tracks you online.
Oh yes, long live Microsoft sponsored FUD.
Noone forces you to use Google, if they know what porn you surf for, it's your own damn fault.
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I'm assuming this is a reference to Chrome, so I thought I'd share what one of the Chrome developers said in his talk about Chrome's internals at the same conference where Wave was unveiled. Someone asked the Mac/Linux question and the answer can be summed up in 5 letters...NPAPI. As explained, NPAPI is fairly windows specific and comprised a huge chunk of the engineering effort to get the Windows version of Chrome out to the public. But given that the Windows solution is almost entirely non-portable, they'
Groove ? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure but if google does it maybe it won't suck. At least we can be fairly sure it won't get bought out by Microsoft. Which, IIRC, is when the major suck set into groove.
Re:Groove ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that real-time collaboration is a flawed concept in most contexts. People are not at their best when they have to be creative, inventive, or thoughtful in real-time with an audience. Nor do people do their best analysis when they're sitting around a (virtual) whiteboard.
Asynchronous collaboration tools are always going to be more important than synchronous ones; synchronous is better for broadcast and one-to-many communication.
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Re:Groove ? (Score:5, Interesting)
People are not at their best when they have to be creative, inventive, or thoughtful in real-time with an audience.
I'd be interested for you to elaborate on why you believe this. There's plenty of counter-evidence to this point in that the following practices are time-tested ways of creative thinking:
- comedy writers bouncing ideas off each other to start penning a script or sketch
- group brainstorming for new names of products and advertising ideas
- new product ideation amongst engineers
I'm sure everyone is different, and some prefer quiet solitude to be creative, but it seems the exception rather than the rule in most organizations. I personally find that people tend to be much more cautious and defensive when they have time to craft a well thought out idea, as opposed to blurting out a potentially stupid/creative idea.
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I see that kind of environment creating superficially clever ideas at best, not deep rethinkings.
I can't imagine any of the great artists, authors, poets, or even engineers doing radical work, partially because of self-censorship and the performative nature of group ideation. It's good for sitcom writing and for creating a "product" - it is poor for revolutionary research, rigorous engineering, or profound insight. I can't imagine a Proust, a Joyce, a Beckett, an Ionesco - a Tarkovsky, a Fellini, a Godard -
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It's strange that you think that - real (actual physical) whiteboards are great for engineers and scientists. There is still a division between people who are happy thrashing ideas out on a board, and those who feel that they need to nurture something in private. I have to ask whether your comments about the environment being poor for research and insight are limited to virtual whiteboards or if they extend to their real-life counterparts?
So where do you think virtual whiteboards break down? Is it the lack
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I think you're right that most creativity comes asynchronously. But I find synchronous collaboration useful because it helps to define the problem and find additional issues that I might not otherwise realize were there. The solutions often then come asynchronously. But distributing the problem is probably better done synchronously to avoid people having wildly different views of what the problem actually is. Something that I have found is often the case in these situations.
Devon
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Ha.
Groove + Google = Grovel.
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It wasn't Shawn Fanning, it was the dude behind Nullsoft (whose name escapes me right now), of Winamp fame. Wonder what happened to it (WASTE) and him?
Gmail (Score:2, Funny)
Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
It's like email and twitter and instant messaging and facebook all in one.
Disgusting.
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Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Except maybe it will be what something like Twitter, Facebook, and IM should have been from the beginning. For one thing, it sounds like it will be open and decentralized, meaning that I can set up my own Wave server, and you can set up your own Wave server, and our users can talk without any problems.
You can already do that with IM so long as we're all using Jabber, but otherwise it can get a little problematic. But I can't set up my own private facebook or twitter server, and even if I do, there's not support for my server to let people befriend and network with people on the real Facebook and Twitter.
To me, that's always been the #1 problem with social networking sites on the Internet. You can't set up your own, but instead your left to make a new account on whatever site is cool this week. Like what if instead of being able to set up my own webpage, I had to set up a webpage on whatever hosting company was trendy, and then rewrite it based on that host's protocols?
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By setting up your own you're destroying the networking aspect.
A private site for friends will never have the pull of a world-wide LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE site.
If that's what you want, great, go for it. But I seriously doubt that's what Google has in mind. They want all of your data, and this is just another tool for them to get at it.
Maybe you'll be able to set up your own wave "servers' (be they on your hardware or Google's), but they'll all tie in to Google's master server hive (of scum and villainy)
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
By setting up your own you're destroying the networking aspect.
A private site for friends will never have the pull of a world-wide LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE site.
Accurate, insightful.
If that's what you want, great, go for it. But I seriously doubt that's what Google has in mind. They want all of your data, and this is just another tool for them to get at it.
Controversial point. Trying to spread fear, whether or not it's justified. The following couple of paragraphs present some interesting speculation.
Regardless of function or intention, my comment still stands (despite being modded troll by Googs) - the layout shown is hideous and provides nothing but total information overload.
If there's anything in your post to warrant a troll mod, this is it.
You post here a lot, and you don't trouble yourself to be terribly civil. Not that that's uncommon, but I think it's a shame. Your ideas seem generally worthwhile, but your attitude probably limits their discussion. Geeks and engineers are probably more likely than most to pay attention to the factual accuracy of any statement instead of the emotional context; the opposite is the rule in other circles. If I may offer some advice: if you're going to be callous, be right, and even if you are right, don't bitch about the troll mods.
Respectfully yours,
-T
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I'm not bitching about it, someone else commented on it.
I don't give a shit about being civil or whatnot. I see bullshit and I call it out.
I have an idea and I put it out there.
I have an opinion and I state it.
Wave is ugly as shit.
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You mean the picture and the video that wasn't up yet? Yeah, saw that.
You mean the words saying "omg you can do this and this omg"? Yeah, so what?
Google chose to show off a messy, cluttered, layout. This Jesus is the son of God! Disregard the fact that he is poor and disheveled.
Fag? LOL.
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I can set up my own Jabber server and talk to people on Google's GoogleTalk or Gmail chat. In fact, that's what I do except I'm using jabber.org's server. Of course, Google still gets your conversations with those people, but not if you use OTR.
This sounds like the potential that Jabber/XMPP has always had, but no one seems interested to implement.
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Informative)
By setting up your own you're destroying the networking aspect.
A private site for friends will never have the pull of a world-wide LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE site.
Er... no. You could set up social networking standards and protocols that would allow various sites to enable their users to build profiles which could then be shared in a manner very similar to facebook. You'd want some kind of common authentication (OpenID) if you don't want all the profiles to be public. If anything, I'd say that by keeping a private little proprietary system, they're limiting the networking aspect.
They want all of your data, and this is just another tool for them to get at it.
...except that it sounds like they're making it all pretty open. From TFA, "The code will be open source, and developers intending to build on the platform are being given access to APIs, according to a post on the official Google blog."
So you can build your own implementation, and the whole thing is going to be P2P, so Google won't necessarily have access to your data unless you're specifically using their server.
the layout shown is hideous and provides nothing but total information overload.
Well first, I don't agree that it's so awful. Second, it's pre-release and not even a public beta. Third, it's going to be open source so you can skin it or completely rewrite the interface.
Sounds good to me.
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But I can't set up my own private facebook or twitter server,
Twitter -- I see no reason why this couldn't be just Jabber to some sort of broadcast channel.
Facebook -- XFN, OpenID, and friends.
even if I do, there's not support for my server to let people befriend and network with people on the real Facebook and Twitter.
That's the real problem.
There's a whole set of open standards that pretty much covers all of what social networks do for the user. But for some reason, most users are still in the gated community of Facebook, so even though the open communities could theoretically be bigger, better, and freer, right now they're smaller, because they're not Facebook.
But what makes you think this
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Why is the parent marked as a Troll? It is an opinion.
From the picture given, it looks extremely busy. Are we trying to raise a seizure-proof human by overloading one's senses until one completely shorts out by having no attention span at all?
Yes, I see where people feel the need to group apps into one container; it is our nature to try to tidy things up. But really, do we need that much data anyway?
Seeing people walking or driving or whatever they're doing while looking at a tiny screen reminds me of th
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Re:Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
Uhhh. SIP Anyone? Anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, they use SIP to chat and handle voice. There's a protocol for presentation that's rolled into some SIP servers. You guys have no idea how powerful the SIP standard is. There isn't a client that handles it all yet.
Besides the very un-special nature of the application, I'd be interested to see if the Telcos will litigate Google on their gigantic pool of obvious patents. Either that or Google's paying them a 'vig' already.
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...if the Telcos will litigate Google
Sadly, you won't be able to find said Telcos on the Internet... :-/
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Well, given that it's all XMPP-based, and XMPP has standardized methods to negotiate an out-of-band video/voice session, this could dovetail quite naturally.
quite needed... (Score:4, Insightful)
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But...
Information wants to be free!
Firefly (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't get it. Could someone explain the reference?
Re:Firefly (Score:5, Informative)
Here: http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/CortexLexicon
Scroll down to "wave".
Patent License? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's this [waveprotocol.org] I find most interesting:
Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google and its affiliates hereby grant to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm reading this right, it looks like patent MAD. Basically, Google is saying, "If you sue anyone for patent infringement about this spec, you give us the right to sue you. If you don't sue anyone, we're cool."
The implicit threat is, of course, that Google will own as many patents regarding this spec as anybody, but as long as nobody exercises them, it doesn't matter -- they're still allowed, for this spec.
Which is both very cool, and raises some interesting questions -- like, what if I implement the spec as part of a much larger app, and someone sues me for infringement of a different part of the app? Or, what if I want to create a modified version of the spec, or create a wholly unrelated application that infringes on patents related to this spec -- do I open myself up to lawsuits then?
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It's more than just that... read it again.
It says that by implementing Google Wave, as long as you don't sue other people for patents relevant to it, Google won't sue you for patents relevant to it.
There is the implication -- though certainly not explicit or required -- that if you do start suing people, Google could sue you. But so long as you don't, you're safe.
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Messyboard anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of a PhD thesis I read about a few years back. Adam Fass' Messyboard [messyboard.org]
MessyBoard is a networked bulletin board that allows people to share notes, pictures, files and other content. Everyone who looks at a MessyBoard sees exactly the same thing, and all users see changes in real time. It runs as a Java applet inside your web browser, so no software installation is necessary. Text and images from other applications can easily be posted on MessyBoard using drag-and-drop and cut-and-paste. Each board has a URL that is easy to remember, so you can access it from any computer on the Internet.
MessyBoard stores a complete history of all activity, allowing users to go back in time and recover old content simply by clicking on a slider bar.
Coincidentally, Fass now works for Google in WA state.
Google is also... (Score:5, Funny)
Physics humor :) (Score:2)
Ahh, I see you slipped a cute physics joke through one of the slits.
Re:Physics humor :) (Score:5, Funny)
Traffic Cop: Mr Heisenberg, do you have any idea how fast you were driving?
Heisenberg: No, but I know exactly where I am
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>> which will be the same service with different properties.
Except for the new LightWave(tm) protocol, which will have features of both the Wave and Particle protocols.
-dZ.
Sounds good for playing RPGs online (Score:3, Interesting)
This could be a cool tool for playing RPGs (of the pen and paper variant) online.
Use the chat or Skype for talking, and the Wave functions for posting maps and stuff, and clients for rolling dice and such.
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Use the chat or Skype for talking, and the Wave functions for posting maps and stuff
because Google has created a spec for voice over XMPP (used by google talk), it is definitely possible that wave clients and apps could make use of voice. [google.com]
A lot of potentially good uses (Score:2)
On a personal level, we just planned a large camping trip for 19 people on Memorial Day Weekend through email, and it would have been a lot easier had we been able to conveniently embed maps and such into the conversation, and had it flow a little more real time.
On a business level, we have employees on two coasts and this might be a useful tool. Though how much of this is really P2P and how much of the data resides in the cloud? The encryption issue stated by a poster above is also a big one, and I woul
Hotline all over again (Score:5, Funny)
countdown to this being used for warez and porn ... 3 ... 2 ... 1
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Hello, this is the Internet we're talking about. If there were any service, protocol, or application which wasn't used for porn in some way, I'll eat my hat.
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SNMP ? (uugh ..)
Easier! (Score:2)
Serious threat to Facebook, Twitter, et al (Score:5, Insightful)
The decentralised nature of this system will directly threaten Facebook, Twitter et al.
The DNS system works, and scales, because everyone publishing information to the DNS is responsible for the upkeep of the nodes that publish their own records.
Facebook and Twitter, however, have scaling and financial problems. Facebook, so far as I am aware, continues to make a substantial annual loss despite its enormous success, and I have yet to hear that Twitter has managed to turn a profit.
More importantly, the privacy of everyone publishing much of their personal, private correspondence using a small number of centralized agencies is directly threatened -- and it could get particularly messy if, in a few years time, $SOCIALNETWORK fails to become profitable, goes into receivership, and the vast databases of private information are identified by the administrators as the organisation's most valuable asset.
In contrast, a Wave infrastructure, like DNS, will distribute the upkeep and storage of private information to many (hopefully) locally trustworthy systems. Because of social engineering / hacking attacks, leakage of private information can and will still occur, but the impact should hopefully be minimized if the Wave protocol and its implementations have been suitably well engineered.
This is going to be interesting.
Please kill "One Note" (Score:4, Insightful)
If this could kill Microsoft One Note that would be so nice. :)
There goes my plan for world domination (Score:2)
Which is a good thing, because my priorities have moved on anyway.
All I ever wanted the never really started TransForum 2.0 for was a tool for communication and collaboration about other, potentially media-rich, projects.
Now a decade on from when TransForum [transforum.net] 0.99 was momentarily state-of-the-art, I have a dozen projects ready to try surfing this next Southern Ocean Wave ... as always too much choice.
Now if only Google will finally complete what has long been their obvious mission and provide a guaranteed per
Whiteboard (Score:2)
Am I the only person who thought about Netscape 4's whiteboard and wondered why this technology is still 10 years behind?
At this rate my D&D campaign will never end.
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10 years? I remember PowWow [wikipedia.org] (circa 1995) had a whiteboard feature. Apart from the single time where everybody starts doodling concurrently just to see what it's all about, I don't think anybody ever used it.
-dZ.
Re:first (Score:4, Insightful)
Would be great if Google had added encryption into the protocol by default, it would make it so much better. Its a nice step to P2P the chat network, but its just stupid to send all the conversation unencrypted specifically in corporate situations.
Muddying the waters... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think I must be getting old, but I'm having difficulty seeing a whole lot of functional difference between this and Facebook. I can understand why Google might want to claw back some advertising revenue, but that's about all I can see here.
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I'm having difficulty seeing a whole lot of functional difference between this and Facebook
Well, it's just vapour at the moment, so all we have to go on is the Google blurb and their marketing demos. From these, there appear to be significant functional differences with respect to Facebook/MySpace. Quoting from TFA:
"One principle behind the project is that Wave has to be an open network, with anyone having the ability to become a wave operator and interoperate with the public network."
So instead of material being hosted by Google or some other central respository (like Facebook etc.), you can
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If you don't see the difference between this and Facebook, you must not have watched the demo.
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
From my reading, they're requiring TLS on the XMPP stream, which pretty well covers encryption.
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
PFS and deniable encryption (Score:3, Interesting)
TLS sounds about right.
The protocol also provides a verification protocol (see http://waveprotocol.org/ [waveprotocol.org]), so actions performed by any participant in a hosted conversation can always be verified by other participants in that hosted conversation, regardless of their provider.
What this means for you: encryption (TLS), and your contributions can't be tampered with.
What about PFS and deniable encryption so things can't be used against you in the future?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy
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Sounds like they're going for business-like non-repudiation, rather than private-citizen-like anonymity.
html 5 and encryption? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:html 5 and encryption? (Score:5, Funny)
yeah, with HTML5, encryption is easy. You just surround any content you want encrypted with <secure>credit card number goes here</secure> and the magic of HTML does the rest!
Re:html 5 and encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
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Agreed but I would take it a step further. Each client should, by default, have the option to allow or deny content according to the clients attached to the wave. For instance, if 3 people are on a wave (persons a, b, and c) and another joins (d) users a, b, and c should individually receive a message "do you want to accept content from d" and an additional message "do you want to allow d to see your content" or a single message with the two messages and a checkbox for each. Also, user d should have the
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"The network protocol between federation gateways and proxies is called the Google Wave Federation Protocol. It is an open extension to the XMPP Internet Messaging protocol. Some of key useful features of XMPP that the wave federation protocol uses are the discovery of IP addresses and ports, using SRV records, and TLS authentication and encryption of connections." http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/google-wave-architecture [waveprotocol.org]
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Re:Windows Only? (Score:5, Informative)
They always release their software for Windows first. Will this be the same? I wonder...
Considering Wave is an online service, it would be pretty difficult for them to make it Windows-only. None of Google's other Web pages are Windows-only.
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I find it kind of odd that they call it the wave. Maybe its inspiration is from the TV movie [imdb.com] of the same name?
Hopefully their motto won't be "strength through community."
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Judging by the tags, and because it would be awesome, I'm going to say it's more like Firefly.
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Based, BTW, on a real world incident. [wikipedia.org]
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Well, no, it is completely different, other than having avatars and thumbnails. photophlow are flickr photos with a javascript chat. Wave are XML documents which are kept in sync via collaborative editing "protocols", and those documents can be text conversations, maps, videos, gadgets or any other thin.
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You use safe search? You must be part of that Australian censorship cult........
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