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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Wave Preview Opens Up On Sept 30th 118

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."
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Google Wave Preview Opens Up On Sept 30th

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  • by Norsefire ( 1494323 ) * on Saturday August 15, 2009 @06:56PM (#29079593) Journal
    There are some bugs [theintersect.org] I don't want them to fix.
  • What is it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by harmonise ( 1484057 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:03PM (#29079635)

    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.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:06PM (#29079647)

      It's the future man, the future!

      • by ian_po ( 234542 )

        Wave is the future, but does anybody know the transition plan to move the entire planet from email/IM to wave? Whats the migration path? Is wave backward compatible with email or IM?

        • by Inda ( 580031 )
          If it is not backward compatible with email or IM then someone will have to write a bot to handle that side of things.

          I see the bot-writing thing as Google's, or any other vendor's, main earner.
    • by auric_dude ( 610172 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:10PM (#29079673)
      You must be new here.
    • by Norsefire ( 1494323 ) * on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:10PM (#29079675) Journal
      It's sort of like email only instead of errors it gives Firefly references.
    • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:12PM (#29079681)

      Google Wave allows people to collaborate offline or in real-time on documents. The waves appear in a list like e-mails. Waves can be hosted on and synchronized between various servers. The history of changes of a document can be played back.

      The system also allows for small web apps to be embedded in waves and shared between participants in the wave.

      I'd really watch the demo video though.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's also both incredibly cool and incredibly scary. I love Google Docs and gMail, but I'm well aware that Google have access to lots of private info because of them.

        In the same way that it is illegal for telephone companies to listen in on your calls there needs to be a law that makes it illegal for online service providers to do the same in anything but a fairly anonymous and entirely automatic way (for the serving of ads which keep said services free, for example).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Well, that sounds astoundingly useless. In a decade of being in "the real world" of work and corporate brouhaha, not once have I ever said "Working on this document sure would be easier if I had a bunch of other people trying to hog the keyboard at the same time and bickering with each other about whose revisions are better and whose turn it is to change something."
      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Google Wave allows people to collaborate offline or in real-time on documents. The waves appear in a list like e-mails. Waves can be hosted on and synchronized between various servers. The history of changes of a document can be played back.

        To simplify things for our Microsoft audience,

        Google Wave is like Exchange, Sharepoint and Live Communication Server rolled into one and better (a lot better then sharepoint).

    • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by xzaph ( 1157805 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:13PM (#29079687)

      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.

      Try this overview page: http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html [google.com]

    • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fastolfe ( 1470 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:13PM (#29079695)

      Here's an abridged video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itc4253kjhw [youtube.com]

      Essentially it's a cross between collaborative documents (e.g. Google Docs), a container for JavaScript gadgets, e-mail, and IM (changes, even in gadget state, occur in real-time). Participants in a wave can be human, or robots hosted elsewhere (e.g. Google App Engine).

      • "(e.g. Google App Engine)"

        I read that as "Google ____ Empire" Had to look again, to see "Google App Empire". Says to myself, "Self, WTF is wrong with you?" I got it right on the third read.

        To many people posting about evil google, I guess. LMAO

    • Re:What is it? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Francis ( 5885 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:13PM (#29079697) Homepage

      Google Wave is a bit hard to describe, but it's completely worth your hour to watch the video.

      It's a new communication/collaborative medium. It combines functionality from email, instant messaging, blogs, forums and wikis into a single idea.

      I think it's quite clever. I actually think it has a chance of being part of the future of communication. Like Faxes were in the 80s, and email was in the 90's, Wave might actually come of age to this generation.

      • by lewko ( 195646 )

        Google Wave is a bit hard to describe, but it's completely worth your hour to watch the video.

        Not a good bit of advocacy. Can you imagine any other sales pitch starting that way?

        Hi, I have this great product. It's a little hard to explain, but why don't you just come to this free seminar...

        I'd really like an "Elevator Pitch" for this technology.

        • by Francis ( 5885 )

          Haha :) I'm not a salesguy, I don't work for Google, and I come from a technical background. I'm not trying to sell you anything.

          When I asked about google wave, my colleague said about the exact same thing to me. It's an interesting idea, and for a lot of technical people, just the reassurance that something is interesting enough to investigate is all you need :)

        • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday August 15, 2009 @11:40PM (#29080957) Journal

          Difficult to do.

          What I gathered from the ten-minute abbreviated video is:

          It's a document that can be edited live by many people on multiple servers. ("Live" means "character by character".) It can be extended in interesting ways. Each edit is kept by the server, and can be rolled back.

          This allows it to be used for an absurd number of things -- the demo showed a photo album, a blog, a live chat, email, a bug tracker, a really nice spellchecker and translator, support for mobile devices, etc etc. (When I say "email", I mean "meant to replace email.")

          It's difficult to create an elevator pitch because, while the idea itself is deceptively simple, the implications are not. For example, what's the "elevator pitch" for the Internet, or even (perhaps especially) the World Wide Web? "You can connect to a server and view any document, which can link to any other document, you can submit information back to the server, and it can be scripted."

          O...k... but does this actually encompass everything the Internet has done, or why you should care? No, you'd need a seminar for that. Even e-commerce -- hell, even dynamic pages -- aren't necessarily obvious -- HTTP, for example, was clearly designed for static things, or at least manually-updated things. Certainly the idea of actually building an application with the Web browser and a Web server as a platform seems laughably implausible -- and some people still laugh, to this day.

          So, the primitive for Google Wave is a document that can be simultaneously edited by a number of people, with scriptability and version control. The implications, I don't fully grok yet, but they look damned impressive.

          • So, the primitive for Google Wave is a document that can be simultaneously edited by a number of people, with scriptability and version control. The implications, I don't fully grok yet, but they look damned impressive.

            I don't think any of us grok what the Internet will become yet, and this is just a sign of that. 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.

            It makes me wonder, because... I hadn't thought much about it before, but there's something about email, for example, that forces a sort of linearity of conversation. That is, its structure is fairly limiting, eve

            • Re:What is it? (Score:4, Interesting)

              by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Sunday August 16, 2009 @01:23PM (#29085035) Journal

              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.

        • A combination of real-time editable collaborative IM, E-Mail and forums - and a whole lot of other awesome stuff.

          Personally, I can't wait.

        • It's a communication protocol that integrates the best aspects from email, wiki, twitter, and instant messaging, in order to provide you with a communications platform that offers stability, versioning, rollback, multiple concurrent edits on "documents" (although the concept of document is getting a bit vague in Google wave) etc.

          Or more philosophical: IM, twitter, wiki, editing documents and email are all forms of communication. Google Wave integrates all of these things in one communcations platform that s

      • call me silly but can someone explain to me how using this is better than using git, IM (shudder) and email?

        I just fail to see how making everything dependent on an always on an internet connection and browser is 'beneficial'. Modifying documents properly should take time and thought, and review from others on a team project before changes being accepted into mainline doc.

        • A good point, and all I can think of is that Wave isn't meant for all types of communications. A cop-out, I know, but nobody is suggesting using this to write code in a bazaar environment.

          There are at least as many types of projects that instant feedback and collaboration are a boon, however. For instance, I see this easily replacing IM and email for "light" conversations between friends and family.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 )

      Take email, instant messaging, wiki functionality, and roll it into one, but only better.

      Even better, this is an open protocol with code already released that would let you host your own Wave server.

      It used to be back in the caveman era that email wasn't a standard protocol, so seperate email systems couldn't talk with each other. I've been wanting one open protocol for IM for ages, so that anyone on any network can talk easily. But again, this is just so much better.

      The video is really long, but I found th

      • Re:What is it? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:22PM (#29079749)

        If it's basically a "mashup" of a bunch of random Internet and marketing buzzwords, you must have forgotten to mention Twitter.

        • Re:What is it? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@@@gmail...com> on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:30PM (#29079775) Homepage Journal

          If it was anyone other than Google, I'd be skeptical of the hype. But this isn't buzz-words. This is a (mostly) working protocol and platform to honestly really change the way we work and communicate.

          Watch the video. Drink the Kool-aid.

          What I'm really curious about is whether or not Facebook will fully embrace Wave, which is an open protocol. They can use it without giving Google a dime, but it still would be Facebook (partially owned by Microsoft) helping to adopt and steer a Google protocol.

          Yet, if Facebook ignores Wave, I think Wave could be the "killer-app" that helps drive the next social network to tne mumber one spot.

          • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @09:56PM (#29080443)

            I'd be skeptical of the hype. But this isn't buzz-words. This is a (mostly) working protocol and platform to honestly really change the way we work and communicate.

            I can probably name over twenty-five distinct products released in the last decade that marketers touted using the EXACT same phrase to the letter, and so far, none of them have replaced the telephone and E-mail to any substantial degree.

            /Maybe IM... MAYBE.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              To be fair, I've also heard the Internet, the World Wide Web and e-mail touted using the EXACT same phrase to the letter.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by MindStalker ( 22827 )

              Google is releasing the specs so that others can create their own servers.
              I can not name a single product that Google has really pushed (many many they have released they haven't pushed) that hasn't changed the way we work.
              Google Search, Google Maps.
              Things they copies from others but have done well in,
              Google email, Google calendar, Google docs.
              I can't think of a single product of theirs that they promoted that has bombed (yes plenty of lab products they haven't promoted have bombed).

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by styrotech ( 136124 )

              I can probably name over twenty-five distinct products released in the last decade that marketers touted using the EXACT same phrase to the letter, and so far, none of them have replaced the telephone and E-mail to any substantial degree.

              Yeah but the hype is not coming from marketers so much as from people who have watched the live demo, and played with the bits and pieces that have been released so far and can see the potential.

              If Wave was just a Google product and wasn't a set of open/federated protocols,

            • True, but the presentation video made me think otherwise - with this feature set, I'd say a lot of things are possible... including widespread adoption a la E-Mail or at least, say, ICQ. The only thing I'm missing so far is a standalone app (although apps like Pidgin will probably be adding support pretty quickly)...

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Deanalator ( 806515 )

              google maps completely changed looking up directions online
              gmail completely changed the free email landscape

              I'm keeping a healthy amount of skepticism myself, but from what I have seen this has some solid potential.

              If they do it right, they could make the entire wave system cryptographically sound, and completely eliminate spam, forgery, and cleartext communication. This is google though, so I am expecting a nice UI, extremely useful features, and a big fat security fail.

            • by jbr439 ( 214107 )

              I can probably name over twenty-five distinct products released in the last decade that marketers touted using the EXACT same phrase [change the way we work and communicate] to the letter, and so far, none of them have replaced the telephone and E-mail to any substantial degree.

              You obviously are not taking into account Jabberwocky. It's going to change the way business is done.

      • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)

        by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday August 15, 2009 @11:43PM (#29080975) Journal

        I've been wanting one open protocol for IM for ages, so that anyone on any network can talk easily.

        It's called Jabber, and Google Talk already uses it.

        The problem isn't creating that standard, open protocol. The problem is getting Yahoo, AIM, and MSN to use it -- or worse, getting the general public to abandon those networks and sign up for Gmail instead.

        I'm somewhat shocked someone didn't just cut it up into a 5-10 min video on YouTube though.

        Someone did [youtube.com].

        • by Daengbo ( 523424 )

          I think I would go into orgasmic spasms if Yahoo!, MSN, and AIM switched to Jabber. Wouldn't it be nice to talk to anyone no matter the service that person was registered on? If Skype would adopt SIP, then the revolution would be complete.

          Conversely, imagine if you had to register for Hotmail just to send e-mail to someone else who was a Hotmail user. Would e-mail ever have become as big as it has?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            If Skype would adopt SIP, then the revolution would be complete.

            Well, the difference is, Jabber is actually superior in many ways to the protocols used by Yahoo, MSN, and AIM.

            Skype is far superior to SIP -- Skype can tunnel through firewalls, whereas SIP, last I checked, was worse than FTP, needing dozens of ports forwarded to be useful.

            Conversely, imagine if you had to register for Hotmail just to send e-mail to someone else who was a Hotmail user. Would e-mail ever have become as big as it has?

            It actually used to be that way, back before ISPs "got it" about the Internet.

            The problem is, these days, people "solve" the IM problem by using multi-clients and multiple accounts -- for extreme laziness, they'll just use Meebo, for exa

            • Skype is far superior to SIP -- Skype can tunnel through firewalls, whereas SIP, last I checked, was worse than FTP, needing dozens of ports forwarded to be useful.

              Depends on how old the implementation is, newer ones (and the sip implementation of the N95) can go through firewalls just fine.

              • can go through firewalls just fine.

                Ok, to be clear: Say I've got a SIP phone, and you've got a SIP phone, and we're both behind NAT firewalls.

                How do we connect to each other? How do we even address each other?

                Because Skype solves this rather elegantly, and peer-to-peer, with UDP hole punching -- thus, Skype's own servers only establish connections, they don't have to pay the bandwidth for the actual calls.

                I haven't looked at SIP in a long time, but I definitely didn't see any tricks like that. Has that changed? And if so, how does it work?

                • It uses STUN which is a lot more recent invention than SIP, (STUN is Simple Traversal of UDP through Nat protocol). Most modern sip implementations use STUN.

                  Here is how I use sip on my n95 to another n95

                  Register and setup sip account on phone for ekiga (can be whoever but used ekiga since it's free etc) friend with second phone do the same

                  call them by their blah@ekiga.net number, and it magically works!, very simple

    • Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tyroney ( 645227 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:16PM (#29079715) Homepage
      I'll try to give a real answer:

      The goal was to replace email. The result is a cross between email, threaded discussion, wiki, and instant messaging. (no, really. Live concurrent collaborative editing, along with a rewind feature so you can review the chronology in a more logical fashion) One can make gadgets that show up in a wave and allow you to interact in ways besides just typing, and there are also bots that interact with waves much like a normal user. Instead of adding some spell check the way you might normally think of it, they have a spell check bot that uses the wave collaborative editing features to highlight and potentially change your spelling. (which means someone else in the conversation could finish up doing the editing the spell check highlighted in a sentence earlier in your paragraph)

      It works somewhat like email, as in once things settle down whoever can run their own wave server. And it could be integrated with, say, a blog where the comment section of a post would be a wave. (and have all that functionality, and stuff)
      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by MtViewGuy ( 197597 )

        Google Wave sounds like an interesting idea but the need for an always on broadband connection to make it work could be a problem in parts of the world where such connections aren't so readily available.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Google Wave sounds like an interesting idea but the need for an always on broadband connection to make it work could be a problem...

          Umm, what need? From the demos it works just fine for people who are sporadically online, much like e-mail in fact.

        • Google Wave works fine off-line (with google gears or html5-compliant browsers). Once all the browsers are html5-compliant, there won't even be a need to use Google Gears as a workaround.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Twinbee ( 767046 )

            Once someone creates a native GUI app for it, there won't even be a need to use a browser as a workaround.

            • However, Google Wave has many aspects which does require online access--especially the collaborative features. In short, despite a lot of offline features Wave is designed for situations where you can get "always on" broadband access fairly easily, whether through a cable, DSL or fiber connection or through a Wi-Fi connection.

              • Like instant messaging?

                Well, tell everyone who doesn't have it yet to get broadband. They're going to need it.

                Time to invest in dark fiber :)

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by tolan-b ( 230077 )

              It would have to be a native GUI app that supports HTML, for the widgets. Wait a minute there is one... a browser!

      • by dbIII ( 701233 )
        Sounds like an odd mashup but if it kills all desire for MS Exchange (the older odd mashup) I'm all for it.
      • by bbtom ( 581232 )

        I have had a Wave Sandbox account for a few weeks. I don't know why. Something to do with going along to two Google developer events in London.

        I don't buy that it's going to replace e-mail. The great thing about e-mail is that it is already massively distributed and established. There are e-mail clients already existing for every platform. Pretty much the first application that gets written for any operating system these days is an e-mail client or a web browser. E-mails are sent in an extremely easy-to-und

        • by tolan-b ( 230077 )

          Wave has a stronger concept of identity, it should be much easier to close down spammers quickly.

    • Good question.

      I got my sandbox account this morning and am trying to figure out what it is and what it is good for.

      My initial drunken impression is that it is a free form, real-time, google apps mash-up sort of thing, with bots written by smart people.

      Still messing with it...

    • What is a wave?

      A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

      A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

      A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extens

    • Google Wave is basically what started the Google Grid. [youtube.com]

      Well, that's before the Terminators came when Skynet took over.

      And of course... AFTER Starfleet was established. But I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
    • Call me a cynic, but the Wave format reminds me of a Word doc with "Track Changes" turned on. My first thoughts were that the most used features of Wave might be "ignore contributions" and "de-contextualize contributions and list as a change history instead". Otherwise, they could be as hard to read as a coherent thread as...Slashdot.

      • by Cheney ( 1547621 )
        Cynic.
      • In that sense, it's more like a wiki.

        When you're invited to an existing wave, nothing in the existing text appears highlighted. You only get to see the highlighted diffs in different colors if you hit the rewind/replay button and flip through the previous versions. I think that's probably what you saw. Also, when people are contributing to the wave at the exact same time, only their cursor (with different colors and with their names on it) appear ahead of the text they're typing. It doesn't actually highli

      • by Inda ( 580031 )
        Forget Google's web implementation. It will be nice, clean and usable but I'd think most people would use a proper client with bells and whistles. Much like hardcore email users do today.
    • It's today's Lotus Notes, with all the quirks and "hard to explain but you have to use it" bruhaha.

    • Google Wave is like subethaedit [codingmonkeys.de] and etherpad [etherpad.com], whereas subethaedit and etherpad are just applications that can't even talk to each other, Google is banking on the idea that these kinds of applications will one day become ubiquitous, and at the very least, it's trying to set itself up as the new leader of the pack in that area.

      Now Google Wave is not going to replace email (thought, it may help decrease the actual number of emails in some situations). And Google Wave may not even be the final winner in this ar

    • by D Ninja ( 825055 )

      The Google Wave Abridged YouTube Video [youtube.com] (10 minutes). In short, Google Wave is the way online communication should have been done.

  • Bugs... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Will it be less glitchy by then?

    • What are you talking about? There aren't any bu"Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret!" Unfortunately, you'll need to refresh.
  • But... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @07:16PM (#29079711) Homepage

    Can it be used to control a botnet?

  • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Saturday August 15, 2009 @10:36PM (#29080623) Journal
    They could adopt the slogan "The wave starts now"...
  • I am amazed and inspired. To think, some people go on boat trips with their work colleagues. Awesome!
  • Online desktop move (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cenc ( 1310167 ) on Sunday August 16, 2009 @12:45AM (#29081199) Homepage

    So, is this suppose to be Googles first attempt at sort of online ajax desktop?

  • Easily GoogleWave makes healthcare documentation, sharing and maintenance incredibly integrated in a manner that traditional manual (computerized) record keeping cannot

  • At the risk of sounding bewilderingly behind the times, I was surprised to see no mention of Adobe Connect, and a comparison of what Wave has over Adobe Connect (a.k.a. Macromedia Breeze).

    First of all, I am currently serving in the U.S. Army, so I can make this anecdotal claim with a fair amount of certainty: Adobe Connect is a big deal for the Army and is quickly becoming as indispensable as e-mail for a means of collaboration. If a briefing involves a distributed audience, then it is probably going to b

    • I have newer used "Adobe Connect"* but a major difference is that Google wave is a protocol.

      This mean that anyone can make their own wave server**, and you can make your own graphics interface to the wave, so you don't need to use whatever google make. (I think that this will be importent, because in the end someone will make a much better "non browser" gui to wave).

      *So this analysis is based on 2 minutes wiki reading

      **Your own wave server can still talk to all the other wave servers. This is importent beca

      • I don't think there is much point in making a native app for Wave. It's easier to embed the protocol in the browser, it's not like the browser doesn't implement everything else you could possibly need on the client side.
    • Adobe Connect is a big deal for the Army and is quickly becoming as indispensable as e-mail for a means of collaboration.

      Is it replacing e-mail? Part of the point is that Wave merges the capabilities of e-mail with those of IM and group chat and collaboration tools all into one protocol and program. Further, Wave is free, can be used from the Web without a plug-in, and is an open protocol so that it can freely interoperate with any other Wave tools/clients anyone makes for any platform. By contrast Adobe Connect cost $40/month and limited to 15 users per chat. It requires Adobe Flash and can't interoperate with any other clie

    • and a product that is entrenched in the U.S. military has a good foothold in the climb to becoming a standard.

      True, but a foothold is only a foothold. If the rest of the world doesn't like your standard because it has found something better, it won't help them much. And from what you're writing, Adobe Connect looks like a better Powerpoint while Google wave looks like a much better communications platform. If it gets off the ground, Adobe will probably make Adobe Connect compatible with it.

    • So, what does Wave have to offer that Adobe Connect does not?

      A well-documented, open federation protocol.

      One thing is certainly the ability to edit documents in real time.

      That too.

  • You gotta hand it to /....to say they were able to /. the wave.google.com site, is pretty amazing.
    So what do we have here, in the google ache, its the wave.google.com site Here [74.125.47.132]

    Gotta love google, and gotta love /.!!! : )

The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.

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