Google open sources Wave components

Google has open sourced two components of its Wave project, as part of a drive to get third-party developers interested in the communications and collaboration platform.

In a blog post on Friday, Google Wave engineers Jochen Bekmann and Sam Thorogood said Google had released two components of Wave under the Apache 2.0 licence: the Operational Transform (OT) code, and a basic client/server application prototype based on the Wave protocol.

"While these are still early days for the federation protocol and open-source project, our vision for Wave recognises the importance of encouraging and promoting third-party implementations, so users and businesses are able to customise and manage everything from the ground up," wrote Bekmann and Thorogood. "We've also Creative Commons-licensed the protocol specification, the white papers and the Google Wave APIs documentation."

Wave, announced in May, is a set of technologies and software designed to combine email, instant messaging, social networking and document collaboration. In Google's terminology, a 'wave' is a conversation including aspects of all these different types of communication.

Waves are intended to be viewed as live documents that can be edited by multiple users in real time. They can be accessed via a dedicated client or embedded in websites or social-networking tools via Wave application programming interfaces (APIs).

Of the two components being released, the OT code is the primary algorithm that manages the collaborative experience inside Wave, Google said. The version that has been released as open source is more highly developed than the algorithm implemented in Google's own servers, according to Bekmann and Thorogood.

The client/server application prototype, the other code released, is intended as a basic implementation to encourage experimentation with the Wave Federation Protocol, the underlying network protocol for sharing waves between wave providers, they said. In total, nearly 40,000 lines of Java code has been released, according to Google.

The source code was released as part of a Google-hosted event on 21 July, according to Bekmann and Thorogood. The event, called Federation Day, brought together 150 developers interested in contributing to the Google Wave Federation Protocol.

The code is available from the Google Wave Federation Protocol website.

Google has said it plans to release Google Wave to about 100,000 beta-test users on 30 September.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39696234,00.htm

Google Wave – set to revolutionise online communication?

When Google Wave was released at Google's I/O Developer’s Conference at the end of May it sparked considerable excitement. Now the novelty factor has worn off it's time to start considering the potential of this revolutionary communication tool.

The application itself is impressive, but the use of its API in allowing the possibility to create bots/extensions is what could really pave the way for a new ’wave‘ of web applications, and even the advent of Web 3.0.

Google Wave is a real-time collaboration tool, where you can experience changes to a conversation, character by character, by multiple users and with added functionality through extensions. It falls into the ‘collaboration tool’ category due to the many uses it offers - from straight communications such as email and instant messaging - to installing the wave on sites like wiki's, forums and blogs, creating content and encouraging interaction. So rather than having a set of emails, threads or instant messages; there will be just one ‘wave’.

A good way of describing how you would interact with these waves would be to imagine you’re sharing a word document with some of your friends simultaneously, where you can edit an itinerary, decision or line-by-line conversation with them - in real time. Doesn't sound too revolutionary does it? Google has put their own spin on it though, by introducing intelligent formatting, real-time translation, and integrating external tools like Google Maps, images, and soon, developer’s own creations. It wasn't so much of a product launch, but rather an API launch so they could educate the developers that will be producing these extensions for when Google Wave is officially released later this year.
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Want Google Wave Now? PyGoWave’s the Next Best Thing

Google Wave Test

This is a test post which is trying to integrate Google Wave into my Wordpress blog. Basically, Google Wave is awesome. Check out the video from that link. Oh, and if you’re keen to see what it looks like on the inside, check this out: http://www.earngey.info/wave/wave_base.png.
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Can’t Wait For Google Wave? Try These Two Nifty Tools Instead

The Google Wave video might probably be the most watched 1 hour plus video on the web this year, discounting pirated movies of course. That it is now considered the most revolutionary thing to hit the web in recent times is a word that’s been going around since the moment people got a whiff of what Google plans to do with how we communicate. So since the time they announced the 100,000 free invites that is going to go out, September 30 might well be the most anticipated day this year, at least on the virtual world.

However, among many of us exist that curious few, and removing those who were lucky to get their hands on a beta test for Wave, they must be itching to enter the wave world. I don’t have free passes however, I do have links to two tools that are probably the next best things to wave at the moment.

First Up: PyGoWave

I read about it first on Mashable, and was immediately unimpressed by the name.

As the blog post there explains, there isn’t much to take home about PyGoWave, except the fact that all the Wave extensions available in the Sandbox can be used and even downloaded using this tool. Created using the Google Wave API Source Code, it doesn’t come anywhere close to the way Google Wave looked in the monster video Google released or the screen shots they presented. However, the fact that it is widgetised and pen source gives you enough of a playground to test and then wait with bemused eyes what Google Wave might actually be like.

In short it is the perfect way to while your time away creating new forms of communication and thus send your expectations sky high with what Wave can do.However, the team behind PyGo has put in enough effort to what doesn’t seem an easy project by any standards, and again at least till Wave comes out this isn’t an open and shut project at least for the team behind it.

Second: Shareflow

Now this is something I like better and one that deserves more than a passing mention. Shareflow by the looks of things would seem almost everything Google Wave speaks about. It does almost everything to make communication move out of emails. And though it is essentially a paid product, the basic plan comes to everyone for free with 25MB storage and 5 flows though there is no cap on users.

According to ReadWriteWeb,

Shareflow is a granular version of a flow-based collaboration; you can either view all flows or just single projects. In terms of content, it handles threaded comments, files of most types can be uploaded and previewed through Scribd’s iPaper interface, there’s Google Maps integration, images, and video.

However unlike Google Wave, there is no real time Chat and document collaboration.

While many might consider it an opportunistic imitation of Google wave the way it handles work flow, there are many reasons I refuse to brand it thus. Let’s say for any reason they might have been inspired by Google Wave at all, if they can put a business ready product that at least looks great 2 months before Wave comes out then one might as well use this one than wait for Big G. Even the Shareflow blog sounds somewhat similar in what was their defence of the acquisitions floating around. (All the more reasons for startups and companies in general to have a blog)

So go check PyGoWave here and Signup for Shareflow here till we wait in anticipation for Wave, which we are all sure to check no matter how good these two turn out to be.

http://www.watblog.com/2009/07/27/cant-wait-for-google-wave-try-these-two-nifty-tools-instead/

My attempt to install Google Wave Federation Protocol on a Ubuntu server(http://en.dogeno.us)

As part of Google Wave Federation Day, we have open sourced the Operational Transformation (OT) implementation, which is the primary algorithm that manages the collaborative experience inside Google Wave, as well as the underlying wave model. To encourage early experimentation with the federation protocol, we also built a basic open source client/server. Check out the source code and get started with the introductory documentation.

It was Friday. Finally, I got it working. Thanks to jjgod and many other comments on the Installation page.

Basically I follow what has been described on the Installation page.

1. Install Java 6 by

   sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-fonts

2. Install openfire by

   wget http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloadServlet?filename=openfire/openfire_3.6.4_all.deb
   sudo dpkg -i openfire_3.6.4_all.deb
   sudo /etc/init.d/openfire restart

3. Configure the openfire server by entering http://remotecomputer:9090. It is a remote computer, but I confiure it as ‘localhost’.

   
   replace “acmewave.com” with “localhost”

   

   

   
   it is “admin@localhost” as the Email

4. Restart the openfire by

   sudo /etc/init.d/openfire restart

5. Login openfire with admin and new password. Configure openfire as

   
   my shared secret for wave subdomain is “foobar”

   

   Go to Server -> Server Settings

   -> Registration and Login.
   * Disable “Inband Account Registration”.
   * Disable “Change Password”.
   * Disable “Anonymous Login”

   -> Compression Settings
   * Enable server-server compression

   -> File Transfer Settings
   * Disable file proxy transfer

6. Set up certification files (Instruction is here.)
   make-cert.sh

   #!/bin/sh
   NAME=$1
   if [ "$NAME" == '' ]
   then
    echo "$0 " 1>&2
    exit 1
   fi
   openssl genrsa 1024 | openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -nocrypt -out $NAME.key
   openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 -days 365 -key $NAME.key -out $NAME.cert

   execute it as ./make-cert.sh testwave
   check the certificate and key match by

   openssl x509 -modulus -in testwave.cert -noout
   openssl rsa -in testwave.key -modulus -noout

   same modulus value shown up

   I did not get the certificate.

7. Download wave-protocol from the source

   hg clone https://wave-protocol.googlecode.com/hg/ wave-protocol

   Copy the testwave.cert and testwave.key files into wave-protocol folder.

8. Edit the run-server.sh file. Mine is like

   #!/bin/sh
   PRIVATE_KEY_FILENAME=testwave.key
   CERTIFICATE_FILENAME_LIST=testwave.cert
   CERTIFICATE_DOMAIN_NAME=localhost
   XMPP_SERVER_HOSTNAME=$CERTIFICATE_DOMAIN_NAME
   XMPP_SERVER_IP=$XMPP_SERVER_HOSTNAME
   XMPP_SERVER_SECRET="foobar"
   java -jar dist/fedone-0.2.jar \
    --client_frontend_hostname=127.0.0.1 \
    --client_frontend_port=9876 \
    --xmpp_component_name=wave \
    --xmpp_server_hostname=$XMPP_SERVER_HOSTNAME \
    --xmpp_server_ip=$XMPP_SERVER_IP \
    --xmpp_server_port=5275 \
    --xmpp_server_secret $XMPP_SERVER_SECRET \
    --xmpp_server_ping="" \
    --certificate_private_key=$PRIVATE_KEY_FILENAME \
    --certificate_files=$CERTIFICATE_FILENAME_LIST \
    --certificate_domain=$CERTIFICATE_DOMAIN_NAME \
    --waveserver_disable_verification=false

9. Compile the protocol

   ant dist

   Run the server

   ./run-server.sh

   The very first screen outputs are

   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:37 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.waveserver.WaveServerImpl 
   INFO: Wave Server configured to host local domains: [localhost]
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:37 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.ServerMain$RpcInetSocketAddressFactory 
   INFO: Starting client frontend on host: 127.0.0.1 port: 9876
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:38 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.federation.xmpp.WaveXmppComponent initialize
   INFO: initializing with JID: wave.localhost
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:38 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.federation.xmpp.WaveXmppComponent start
   INFO: connected to XMPP server with JID: wave.localhost
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:38 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.ServerMain run
   INFO: Starting server
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:38 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.federation.xmpp.WaveXmppComponent processPacket
   INFO: received XMPP packet:
   
    
   
   Jul 26, 2009 3:02:38 PM org.waveprotocol.wave.examples.fedone.federation.xmpp.WaveXmppComponent sendPacket
   INFO: sent XMPP packet:
   
    
      
      
    
   

10. Edit run-client.sh (I noticed an update today of this file, using which I succeeded). Mine is like

    #!/bin/sh
    WAVE_SERVER_DOMAIN_NAME=localhost
    WAVE_SERVER_HOSTNAME=127.0.0.1
    WAVE_SERVER_PORT=9876
    if [[ $# != 1 ]]; then
     echo "usage: ${0} "
    else
     USER_NAME=$1@$WAVE_SERVER_DOMAIN_NAME
     echo "running client as user: ${USER_NAME}"
     java -jar dist/fedone-client-0.2.jar $USER_NAME $WAVE_SERVER_HOSTNAME $WAVE_SE
    RVER_PORT
    fi

11. Ready to go!

    connect user user to the server by

    ./run-client.sh user

    connect user good to the server by

    ./run-client.sh good

    they are making noise …
    http://en.dogeno.us/2009/07/my-attempt-to-install-google-wave-federation-protocol-on-a-ubuntu-server/

Google Open Sources Google Wave Code

Google programmers have ‘open sourced’ two components of the Google Wave messaging and collaboration prototype

Google programmers continue to advance the Google Wave prototype application, which strives to put email, instant messaging communication and file-sharing collaboration functionality in one palette.

Google said last Friday it released to open source the Operational Transform (OT) code – the framework that enables multiple people to edit a single document in real time across a wide area network (WAN) – as well as a basic client/server prototype that uses the Wave protocol.

Google Wave programmers issued the code under an Apache 2.0 license during an event hosted for 150 developers who desired a deeper dive into the software and possibly even to develop code for the Google Wave Federation Protocol.

The Google Wave Federation Protocol is an open extension to the XMPP core protocol, geared to allow near real-time communication of wave updates between two wave servers.

Google Wave programmers said the OT code comprises the "heart and soul" of collaboration functionality in Google Wave, and is intended to encourage experimentation using the Google Wave Federation Protocol. The release included roughly 40,000 lines of Java code, which Google expects to evolve into the reference implementation.

"While these are still early days for the federation protocol and open source project, our vision for Wave recognises the importance of encouraging and promoting third-party implementations, so users and businesses are able to customize and manage everything from the ground up (features, data, etc.)," wrote Jochen Bekmann and Sam Thorogood, software engineers for Google Wave, in a blog post.

The programmers said the Operational Transformation algorithm for Wave is ahead of the algorithm implemented in Google's servers in production. Accordingly, the Google Wave team is working to bring the new Operational Transform code up to speed in the company's own production systems. Google is also opening up the federation port on WaveSandbox.com.

Major companies continue to leverage the open-source XMPP messaging technology. Cisco acquired the Jabber, whose instant messaging client is based on XMPP, in the hopes of adding real-time instant messaging and even Twitter-like status updates to its WebEx Connect collaboration suite.

XMPP is also considered by Anil Dash, vice president for blogging software company Six Apart, to be one of the precursor technologies to what he calls the Pushbutton Web.

The Pushbutton Web is basically a technological direction Dash characterises as any site or application that "can deliver real-time messages to a web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost and without relying on any single company like Twitter or Facebook."

Google Wave specialises in delivering real-time instant messages using open-source technologies, so it falls into Dash's Pushbutton Web. Indeed, Daniel D. Shaw responded to Dash's blog post with the connection: "Actually, I think the Google Wave protocol will go a long way toward enabling these types of interactions."

Federation Day and the open-sourced Wave code come one day after the Google Wave API Hackathon, after which some 6,000 developers were able to test the application. Several testers wrote favourably about the software in their blogs, but noted the app was still quite rough.

Google plans to open Google Wave to 100,000 non-developer users 30 September, so the company is doing a lot of work to fortify the application for the general public.

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/google-open-sources-google-wave-code---1471

Shareflow: It's Google Wave, But Available Now

It was inevitable really. Ever since Google Wave burst on to the scene as the next hot thing, someone, somewhere was going to beat Google to the punch and release something comparable. That something is Shareflow, a new SaaS play by New York City-based startup Zenbe.

Up until now, Zenbe has been focused on simple productivity tools like a webmail client and collaborative to-do lists, and this is really their most ambitious project to date. Though the folks behind Zenbe deny any claims that they created Shareflow to explicitly imitate Google Wave, not even they can deny the obvious similarities.

Google Wave Knockoff?

Despite plenty of accusations, Zenbe's team is vehemently denying any notion that Google Wave was the direct inspiration for Shareflow.

It's honestly hard to say how much of the product was copied directly from Google Wave, conceptually speaking. A great deal of the functionality is equivalent, but they were released quite close together. Zenbe's evidence to the contrary is the video they produced (watch it below) in early March prior to Wave's public launch, and a blog post from April that suggests Shareflow was in private beta previously.

How it Works

Whether or not Shareflow is simply an imitator is really beside the point. What matters is that it's available here and now, and it works.

Shareflow is a granular version of a flow-based collaboration; you can either view all flows or just single projects. In terms of content, it handles threaded comments, files of most types can be uploaded and previewed through Scribd's iPaper interface, there's Google Maps integration, images, and video. Like other Zenbe products, email integration is also a big component of Shareflow.

Part of the reason this doesn't look like an imitator is that the two major features that Shareflow doesn't really do very well are real-time document collaboration and chat, both of which are key parts of Wave.

Not A Wave-killer

It's doubtful Shareflow will be the game-changing tool that everyone has predicted Google Wave will be, and that's only natural, considering Zenbe isn't Google. Even if it was, the fact that Shareflow is proprietary means it will never get near the crazy level of adoption and interest that Wave will.

But open source or not, if you're desperate to start working in a manner that is similar to Wave, Shareflow might just scratch your itch until the big day arrives.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/shareflow-its-google-wave-but-available-now.php

First impressions of Google Wave

After spending a few hours using an early version of Google Wave today, it’s clear that in its initial incarnation it won’t be ejecting existing enterprise collaboration tools from the workplace any time soon. It’s not that it isn’t impressive, far from it, however Wave’s complex interface and open-ended feature set provides an unexpectedly steep learning curve, particularly from a company that is famous for simple, powerful user experiences.

That said, Google Wave holds considerable potential for bringing next-generation Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to organizations looking for best-of-breed solutions.

For those that didn’t see the unveiling two months ago, the vision of Google Wave is one of online communication completely reinvented for the possibilities — as well as the expectations — of the Facebook/Twitter era.

After all, e-mail itself is decades old and even highly successful Web 2.0 communication tools like blogs and wikis have gotten somewhat long in the tooth, at least in their most common forms. With browsers capable of doing more than ever and tight integration with existing information assets becoming more and more critical to users, Google Wave attempts to up the ante by combining many of the features and capabilities we come to expect in modern Web applications.

These advancements include truly social conversation, simultaneous multi-user editing, connection to external Web/intranet apps through extensions and embedding, and much more. In fact, as we’ll see, Google Wave has virtually all of the key ingredients to comply with my FLATNESSES mnemonic for identifying effective, Enterprise 2.0-capable applications.

The end result is something that comes across as a distinctly sophisticated Web application clearly made up of many elements that sometimes behave somewhat unpredictably precisely because it’s designed to be highly extensible and freeform. Admittedly, my experience was with the developer sandbox for extensions, but this is exactly the intent of Google Wave: to be the center of integrated communication and collaboration in a dynamic and immersive yet safe experience.

Here are some of the observations I made during my use of Google Wave. Note that this is an early version of the software that will undoubtedly be richer and more complete upon release, though experience shows that Google rarely makes major changes to products once they are shown to early audiences.

Observations on Google Wave

1. The basic interface looks a lot like Gmail. This is generally good since Gmail is widely used and understood by millions of people. The biggest obvious difference is that the inbox/content area that takes up most of the page in Gmail is now split in half, with a list of waves on the left and an active wave on the right. The rest of the page is taken up with a Contacts pane, just like in Gmail, and some standard boilerplate links on the upper right. In fact, it’s so consistent with the Google experience (including Google Accounts) that it seems quite likely — to this author anyway — that Google Wave capabilities will be added to Gmail at some point. Upshot: Other companies can and will make their own front end editors/viewers for waves and this user experience has few surprises. It is very much what you’d expect from Google with a user interface/navigation consistent with their other applications.

   
   Screenshot of Google Wave: Strong similarity to Gmail

2. Google Wave works better with groups of contacts.While this seems obvious, the issue is that online conversations tend to work better when they can involve a wider range of people than just those that you think of immediately. The tedium of starting a wave is that you have to add all the participants than you’d like to have in it. Auto-joining groups are supported at this time in a fairly interesting fashion (if slightly unexpected, see below in robot participants), but will be critical to create easily and quickly en masse in order to make Google Wave useful and time efficient. One potential issue: Supporting cross boundary waves and simultaneously supporting Google Accounts, Active Directory, and other user account databases. This will be a complex issue for enterprises that want to have waves that extend outside of their organization, as many will, at least until trusted extensions are created that deal with it.
3. Simultaneous live conversations create new collaborative patterns. In my conversations within Google Wave, the real-time capability of the tool changed the nature of the conversations themselves. Unlike the post/response pattern of classic and 2.0 tools both, including e-mail, IM, blogs, wikis, forums, etc, where you get to complete a thought privately and then dispatch it for others to view when you’re done, the default in Google Wave is for others to see what you’re typing, live. This can have a disconcerting effect and tends to change what is captured by the tool since respondents can start answering before you’ve even finished, altering what you’ve typed or making you inclined to abandon the thought completely. In contrast, one of the most important aspects of Enterprise 2.0 apps is that they can capture complete questions/inquiries and the subsequent answers so that the network learns as a whole from the distilled, uninterrupted interaction. Google Wave has the potential to disrupt this valuable pattern that builds collective intelligence, though the feature can certainly be turned off as well. Organizations are encouraged to monitor and remediate this (possibly through usage guidelines) to ensure they get the full value of the platform.
4. The notion of participant as either user or robot works well, making the social fabric of conversation both novel and broader. With Google Wave, participants aren’t just people, they are often software extensions monitoring the wave that can then independently add to the conversation (such as performing real-time language translation, injecting views of Web/enterprise data, or even whole applications.) This is true of the initial group creator and Web publishing capabilities of Google Wave in particular, at least in its current form, and takes a little getting used to. This is also where the implicit assumptions of Google Wave may lose neophyte users. Whether they will be able to understand the significance of adding robot participants (non-human software extensions) to a conversation, including that they can cause unintended consequences including unexpected and significant security implications, remains to be seen. However, from a usability perspective it might actually make a lot of sense for users to add a person or a piece of software to a Wave in the exactly the same way, with largely the same meaning.
5. Waves are strongly conversation-oriented instead of result-oriented. Because each contribution has a visual boundary associated with it and cannot be made to blend into a finished work product, Google Wave cannot replace, for example, the classical wiki as a group editing tool. In the Google world, Google Docs is a better example of a service that can help multiple people create a unified artifact. With Google Wave, the default central artifact being created is a threaded conversation. Note that extensions and gadgets make it possible for 3rd parties to change this, further increasing the potential for multi-modal confusion as users try to understand what interaction model they’re engaged in. This open endedness is a boon and a barrier both; Google will have to be careful to balance this aspect of Wave so that users can access the most value without cognitive dissonance setting it.
6. Public waves will make Google Wave easily distributable and viral. Unlike Gmail, Google Wave can expose conversations publicly if desired, allowing them to be moved to wherever the conversation/information needs to be exposed on the Web/intranet. It will also likely cause Google Wave to be adopted more virally than most of Google’s other applications since users can encounter waves all over the network, wherever users want to put them. This leverages Jakob’s Law nicely and is one of the more powerful aspects of modern Web application distribution that Google Wave clearly gets right.
7. Google Wave supports virtually all the key elements of Enterprise 2.0. Google Wave is very strong in all of the FLATNESSES components except possibly for signals. As you would expect from Google, search is extraordinarily good within Google Wave, making it possible to quickly find the waves containing the information you’re looking for. Tagging, which has been particularly important for many Enterprise 2.0 deployments, is also present in Google Wave as well as extensions, social capabilities, and all the rest. The largely missing element signals (which you can actually argue is present in the form of the inbox) means that Google Wave doesn’t seem to have RSS/ATOM feeds, e-mail notifications, etc. to let users know when conversations they care about are updated. In my opinion, however, this will almost certainly be remedied in the near future.

Google Wave is shaping up as a compelling and potent collaboration tool that promises to boost productivity, help increase levels of integration with existing IT systems, and capture/share greater amounts of institutional knowledge. So too, however, can most of the off-the-shelf Web 2.0 tools that most organizations already have today. One of the biggest differentiators is really the rich 3rd party market for high-value extensions that’s clearly beginning to form around Google Wave, creating considerable potential to realize the vision for enterprise mashups. That and it’s darn enjoyable to use after the initial learning curve.

The bottom line: If one can live with the potential for Google lock-in, Google Wave will be a compelling option for many organizations looking at adopting Enterprise 2.0.

Note that Google Wave is still only available as a developer preview and will start opening up to the public in late September, 2009.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=560

Shareflow Emerges as Competition for Google Wave

Zenbe, promoter of enlightenment and inner-peace via e-mail overload solutions, operates under this belief. Their newest offering is called Shareflow, and is described as an answer to the question: What if we could create a separate conversation, invite a specific audience to that conversation, and make it accessible on the Internet?

Basically, it’s a real-time collaboration service that combines e-mail, instant messaging and social networking. Sound familiar? Probably.

It Starts with a Flow

Say you're at work and your co-worker e-mails you about a project that involves you and a handful of other people. It's a juicy e-mail full of innovative and eloquently articulated ideas, and it's apparent that the rest of the team would greatly benefit from reading it. In order to spread the word, you, the smart one, then create what is called a "Flow."

Zenbe encourages users to think of a Flow as a folder for any and all chit-chat or documents related to the Flow's assigned topic. Each Flow comes with its own e-mail address, so, in our hypothetical situation where you're the smart one (don't worry, you probably are in real life too) you forward the juicy e-mail from your co-worker to the Flow and bam, there's your conversation starter. The next step is to invite everyone else from your team to join the Flow and watch as they start chatting real-time about the genius ideas contained in the original e-mail.

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Google Social - The New WaveThe new direction is Google social and the guys over at the Silicon Valley company are putting a heavy emphasis on making

The new direction is Google social and the guys over at the Silicon Valley company are putting a heavy emphasis on making their search engine more community and social friendly because they see the trend. The web is headed to a more social place and you need no further evidence than the growth of Facebook, Myspace, and twitter. Clearly this is where people are flocking in droves and Google wants to get their share of the social networking pie.They’re jumping on the bandwagon connecting all their different services with Gmail being the central hub that holds it all together for you.
http://www.edgewaterchamber.com/business/google-social-the-new-wave/

Google Wave coming, could change communications as we know it

In case you haven't heard, those Google geniuses are at it again. In September, you'll be able to browse to Google Wave, called a "personal communications and collaboration tool." This open-source, web-based wonder will let you combine your e-mail, instant messaging and social networking onto one personalized page on the web. Soon, you'll be communicating in "waves."

After the jump, take a look at the ten-minute presentation (it's well worth your time), and you'll see what makes Wave so revolutionary. It simply changes the way email, instant messages and social networking work, and gives you new ways to communicate with each other. It even lets you share files by dragging and dropping, and give any of your contacts access to them. It also works on mobile devices.

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/google-wave-com.php

Want to Join the Google Wave Testing Movement?

Hey, remember when Big G revealed Google Wave at this year's Google I/O? The uproar the announcement caused in the blogosphere was so great that unless you're a cave-dweller, then yes, you probably remember. The highly anticipated ecosystem for communication and collaboration has certainly turned many heads with its innovative nature, but whether or not it'll make waves or become a natural disaster, webverse style, no one knows.

Today, we're a teensy bit closer to finding out. After 6,000 active developer accounts and 20,000 more reportedly rolling out over the next month, the job is yours. Google plans to pass the baton to 100,000 users on September 30th.

So Far

Developers have been working like crafty little mice. Some early examples of how Wave's being shaped by the pubic can be seen over at the Google Wave Samples Gallery, which includes source code. Some highlights are:

• Groupy-the-bot: A robot, written in Python, that enables users to create groups and manage their own subscriptions.
• Floodit Game: A competitive gadget game where users take turns capturing as many squares as possible.
• Waves in WordPress: A neat use of the embed API that makes it easy to put waves in a post or page on WordPress.

• If you're a developer who wants to get in on the action, you can do so by requesting a sandbox account here.

  A Piece of the G Pie

  As for all you users out there, here is an instance in which good karma affords ye the gold. That is, if you are among the hundreds of thousands that signed up on wave.google.com to offer help reporting bugs, then your chances of landing an invite are pretty good.

  September is still a few weeks away, and believe you us, the Wave development team won't be twiddling their thumbs in the interim. Leading up to the invites, Google will reportedly focus on improving the speed, stability and usability of Wave by addressing issues pointed out by developers.

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Developer Impressions Of Google Wave: “Real-Time Email On Crack”

What is it? Google’s answer to Twitter? Email and IM replacement? Personal communications and collaboration platform? These were questions and characterizations that emerged as Google announced Wave at the company’s May developer event in San Francisco. (Here’s a bit more context from my related post at the press conference.)

It’s a shapeshifter, a new species and something of a rorschach test for people because it crosses boundaries and isn’t easily defined.

Google Wave’s API has recently become available to developers. And now some first “hands on” impressions are out. Ben Rometsch wrote about his initial experience with Wave — “real-time email. Oon crack”:

Trying to describe it to my wife last night I came out with “It’s a cross between Messenger, Email and Facebook”. I still think that’s accurate, but it didn’t really help her! Once you start actually using it things slowly fall into place in your mind, but until you do so, it’s pretty hard to explain or understand.

I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s a bunch of shared IM conversations that are organised like email messages and stored on the server for time immemorial. The upshot of all this is that you can use it in a variety of different ways depending on what you want to achieve. It serves as an IM, IRC and Email server, but you can also do things that you might not necessarily first think of, such as using it as a simple Wiki with shared editing and history . . .
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Google Wave Public Beta Confirmed

The hype around Google Wave has been somewhat lost after the announcement of Chrome OS but given it aims to revolutionise how we use email and comes from the brains behind Google Maps we should sit up and pay attention - especially now...

The search giant has confirmed that public beta testing will begin in the next two months:

"We plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th," said Google Wave product manager San Peterson. "This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate "sandbox" instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com."




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Get in line for Google Wave

Google Wave, the multimedia collaboration and conversation tool, will be opened to about 100,000 users starting September 30th. Participants will be drawn from those who sign up and agree to report bugs.
Google Wave, announced in early June, is intended to permit new forms of computer-enabled communications.

Rather than communication taking place only by e-mail, instant message, or exchange of files, a "wave" aggregates ongoing conversation in multiple formats into what has been called a "true multi-user distributed online version-controlled collaboration ."

So far, the Google Wave team has distributed around 6,000 developer accounts and are fielding a further 20,000 requests from developers.

But the team is getting ready for a much wider test, involving about 100,000 users.

A post on the Google Wave Developer Blog reads, "we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com."

The form for getting notified when Google Wave is available is here .

Check the box to promise you'll report bugs and give feedback, and you could be one of the lucky thousands who get to see what a "wave" really is in practice.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26455/53/

Google will send out 100,000 invites to its Wave platform in September.

Google Wave will be unveiled to 100,000 users at the end of September,

Announced in May, the real-time communications platform is expected to roll social networking and other web activity into one Google-owned place. At the moment, it's open to just 6,000 developers.

In a blog post on its Wave developer blog, Google said it would open that up to 20,000 more developers over the next month or so, and add 100,000 invited general users by 30 September - you can request an invite here.

"In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com," wrote Google Wave product manager Dan Peterson.

On that date, Google Wave will also move out of its testing "sandbox" and onto its own domain at Wave.Google.com, the post said.

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Signup for Google Voice

Signup for Google Voice invite
Signup to be notified of Google Wave

What’s The Deal with Google Voice and Google Wave?

Google’s product blog is now in the top 10 at Technorati (#6 at time of this post). What’s driving this traffic? First is Google Voice which comes with a free phone number and digital voice mail. Second is Google Wave which is a real time collaboration tool yet to be released to the public.
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Google Wave Opens to Select Users this Fall

Are you looking forward to the day when Google Wave, Mountain View's all-in-one communication and collaboration tool, goes public? Well, for a select group of users, that day is coming this fall. Google announced in a blog post earlier this week it will open up Wave to 100,000 people on September 30. To get on the early bird list, you have to volunteer to be part of the Google Wave testing community.

Google didn't say whether it's too late to sign up now, but if you're interested you might as well try. Just head over to Google Wave's Website, provide your e-mail address, and make sure you check off the option that says, "Enlist me! I'll report bugs and give feedback (e.g. user surveys)." You also need to let Google know how you want to use Wave, and then write a short message to the Wave development team -- Google says haiku, sonnets, and ASCII art submissions will be accepted.
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Google Wave Sandbox Update

Google Wave Sandbox Update

ZenBe releases Shareflow, seems similar to Google Wave

We all went ga-ga over Google Wave when it was announced back at Google's I/O conference in May, but except for a very fortunate few, we really don't know what it will be like to use. Today online productivity suite developer ZenBe released a new product called Shareflow, which has a number of similarities to Google Wave.

Shareflow is a collaboration tool that ZenBe says is not email, IM, social networking, or instant messaging, but has elements of all of them. Sound familiar? The idea is that you can organize conversations around topics by creating "flows" and inviting people to collaborate on them..
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BIGWIG Showcase: Google’s New Wave Changes Everything

Jason Griffey explains Google Wave


At the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase July 13, eight presenters gave brief talks on trends in social software in a “speed-dating” format, where each presenter had 10 minutes to talk to a roving audience. I was most interested in hearing Jason Griffey’s talk on Google Wave, a product that, I admit, I hadn’t paid much attention to until his presentation.
Griffey introduced Google Wave as a completely new communications protocol, which combines chat and email for “synchronous and asynchronous communication that’s both public and private.” Griffey conceded that it’s difficult to explain and points to his presentation and to Google’s for a good start. “It’s like email if email were invented in the 21st century,” he said.

We have four different types of online communication today, according to Griffey: email, chat and IM, forums, and Twitter. Among these communication protocols, email is the oldest, with wireless email transmissions as we know them today dating back to 1971. Since then, we have created better, prettier, and more sophisticated ways to handle our email, but the raw transmission and the protocols to transmit the information have changed little.
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Google Wave:Redefining Communication

Ride the Google Wave

Ever wondered what email would look like if it was invented today?


What new tweaks and tools would email have if it were invented now or re-invented?

Well Google gives you that glimpse into email re-invented. From the creators of Google map, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, comes the highly anticipated Google Wave.

Starting with a simple question, what would email look like if it was invented today? Lars and Jens re-imagined email and instant messaging by merging both in a connected world. Thinking of email not as game of sending a message from one place to another then waiting, but as a live conversation in the ‘clouds’, effectively a wave of messages and communicating tools.

Starting with a set of tough questions:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication-email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

• Could a single communication model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum and how simple could we make it?

The answers simple: with the re-invented communication there is no need for divide, there will be a merge of the two worlds of instant messaging and electronic mail. Allowing the user to send both messages in real-time threaded and delayed messages, where with the addition of edition tools makes the process very interesting. The single communication model is known as a ‘Wave’. With cool extensions added for easier interface, the wave lets you posts items such as blogs, youtube links and there is even a tweet feed where you are able to tweet into and out of a wave!

Though still not fully developed this technology is promised to not only use an instant messenger technique but also combine a social network feel to communicating by email.

Google’s relentless focus is on bringing the online experience closer and closer to our real world experience of face-to-face communication.
http://www.drsavi.com/google-wave-the-reinvention-of-email/

Google Wave: Good News or Bad News for Carriers?

The recent launch of Google Wave generated a lot of attention, and for good reason. It's recently crossed my path in a few different settings, and while the news is still fresh, there is a lot here for service providers to be thinking about. At a high level, Wave is Google's entry into the real time collaboration space, and being Web-based, is poised to disrupt the status quo, not just for vendors, but service providers as well.
This column is not the place to explore how Wave works—I'll leave that task to you, and you won't have to look far to find detailed examples and step-by-step screenshots. Instead, I'm going to focus on some of the things that Wave is and is not, as service providers need to understand first and foremost whether Wave is friend or foe.
I'm going to begin by taking a step back to note that Google Wave is yet another innovation that comes not from just outside telecom, but outside the software world, where you might expect things like this to come from. What pedigree does Google have to disrupt spaces dominated by powerhouses like Microsoft, IBM, and even business software players like SAP? Very little—but that may actually be the point. Let me explain.
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Code Review + Google Wave = Code Wave !

Doing some exploratory thinking about the possibilities opened by Google Wave, I came up with this very early idea of something that could turn out to be pretty interesting. In explaining it, I’ll assume you’ve watched that huge 1h20min video they have about it (it’s worth every minute, but there’s an abridged — 10min — version).

Motivation

People have been doing code review through email for ages. It’s the easiest, dead-simple way of doing it. Just add a post-receive-hook to your repository and make it email a diff of every new commit to a mailing list. People answer to that email, inlining comments where needed. Great, you say. But… It’s not 2.0. Bummer.

You know what is 2.0? Review Board. Very pretty web interface, AJAX, all that goodness (seriously, it’s awesome, I’m even working on it myself). But… It’s not Email.

You know what is Email and 2.0? You’re absolutely right! Google Wave*! :)

So how do we tie it to the code?

Code Wave

The idea so far includes developing four separate pieces of software — one wave robot, two gadgets and one stand-alone web application which will use the embed API — , but the basic idea is to map every commit and every file to its own wave. Think of it as a code browser on steroids.

The Robot
The robot handles creating, linking and updating the repository content, access control and custom markup.

It creates one “absolute” wave for each version of each file and directory, plus one “relative” (HEAD) wave for each, which gets updated with every new commit. This way, one can look at a particular version of a file using the absolute wave, but also use the Playback functionality on the relative wave to watch it evolve as new changes are committed. Since waves can be linked to one another, besides being able to make directory listings, we can also have a header on each wave, linking to the usual previous/next/head commits. This is the “code browser” part.

When new commits arrive, they each also get their own wave, with the commit message, diff content and a link to each file changed. As with any wave, people can comment inline on any part they want, even chat about it, effectively doing (possibly live!) code review. The conversation history will be kept (and “playbackable”) in the wave, and people who are participants will be notified of the changes and can also come and chip in.

The robot also handles access control. Apparently waves, at least so far, don’t allow one to say “nobody can edit the content, only add comments.” If I’m right about that, the robot will need to watch and overwrite any changes to the content itself (the content must always reflect the repository), leaving only comments. On the web interface (which we’ll talk about in a sec), people can decide to “watch” certain (or all) files or directories, being notified about changes in them (much like in Review Board). The robot accomplishes this by adding these people to the commit waves where these files/directories are changed, so the wave pops up in their inboxes. The original committer always gets added, so she gets notified about any comments on her changes.

Another cool thing to have is special markup, so the robot watches for stuff like revision numbers/sha1s and turns them into links to the appropriate wave. It can also be configured through the web interface to turn ticket numbers and the like into links.

The Web Interface
It serves two main purposes: store settings and provide a way to browse the repository and comments.

Settings to be stored are repository path, privacy levels, groups of users, change watchers, robot behavior, etc.

Since waves can be embedded into normal web pages, this is also a nice way to make all that content (files, diffs and reviews) available online without needing a wave client. We could even think about indexing everything and making it searchable.

Gadget Number One
Syntax highlighting, plain and simple. Highlight code, skip (wave) comments, allow raw copying, etc. Could also be used to fold and unfold comment threads, so you could have a look at the diffs without the cruft. Maybe we could borrow some things from Bespin?

Gadget Number Two
Link helper. Like the Google button, that lets you search for something and drag results into the wave, this helper would allow you to refer to other files in the repository, searching them by name/path and dragging them in. Not sure how useful this really is, just thought it was a nifty idea.
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Google's Wave: 'Rethinking How People Work'

gle Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.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.

Google Wave a new Buzz word in IT world, Goo
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Google Wave New Challenges for Service Providers

The recent launch of Google Wave generated a lot of attention, and for good reason. It’s recently crossed my path in a few different settings, and while the news is still fresh, there is a lot here for service providers to be thinking about. At a high level, Wave is Google’s entry into the real time collaboration space, and being Web-based, is poised to disrupt the status quo, not just for vendors, but service providers as well.



This column is not the place to explore how Wave works – I’ll leave that task to you, and you won’t have to look far to find detailed examples and step-by-step screenshots. Instead, I’m going to focus on some of the things that Wave is and is not, as service providers need to understand first and foremost whether Wave is friend or foe.

I’m going to begin by taking a step back to note that Google (News - Alert) Wave is yet another innovation that comes not from just outside telecom, but outside the software world, where you might expect things like this to come from. What pedigree does Google have to disrupt spaces dominated by powerhouses like Microsoft (News - Alert), IBM, and even business software players like SAP? Very little – but that may actually be the point.
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The Gilbane Lecture: Google Wave as One Environmental Factor

Author’s note: In early June 2009, I gave a talk to about 50 attendees of the Gilbane content management systems conference in San Francisco. When I tried to locate the room in which I was to speak, the sign in team could not find me on the program. After a bit of 30 something “we’re sure we’re right” outputs, the organizer of the session located me and got me to the room about five minutes late. No worries because the Microsoft speaker was revved and ready.
When my turn came, I fired through my briefing in 20 minutes and plopped down, expecting no response from the audience. Whenever I talk about the Google, I am greeted with either blank stares or gentle snores. I was surprised because I did get several questions. I may have to start arriving late and recycling more old content. Seems to be a winner formula.
This post is a summary of my comments. I will hit the highlights. If you want more information about this topic, you can get it by searching this Web log for the word “Wave”, buying the IDC report No. 213562 Sue Feldman and I did last September, or buying a copy of Google: The Digital Gutenberg. If you want to grouse about my lack of detail, spare me. This is a free Web log that serves a specific purpose for me. If you are not familiar with my editorial policy, take a moment to get up to speed. Keep in mind I am not a journalist, don’t pretend to be one, and don’t want to be included in the occupational category.
Here’s we go with my original manuscript written in UltraEdit from which I gave my talk on June 5, 2009, in San Francisco
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Will Google Wave Eliminate the Need for PR as Media Relations?

New media has already reminded up that PR stands for public relations and not just media relations. This is still something that many organizations are navigating at the moment. Now Google is giving us yet another Wave of innovation and showing us what is possible in the browser. t was developed by the team that gave us Google Maps. From the site:

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 andadd participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyonerewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live.With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can havefaster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions inreal-time.

Note that Wave is an open protocol that will allow third party developers to make their own Wave servers - just like they did with email. What seems nice about it is that it treats media as a process, where truth could emerge from many voices and forms. Is this going to spell the age of news in the cloud?
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Google Voice, Wave may pose threat to Cisco

Cisco is not taking Google's current foray into voice and collaboration lightly and the networking giant said it will update its product line rapidly to meet the challenge, according to Computerworld. Google Wave and Google Voice could eat into Cisco's share in collaboration and IP telephony by providing free or low-cost alternatives to Cisco's equipment and software, according to analysts' statements.
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