Google Wave Preview

I must admit that I'm pretty hyped about the upcoming Google Wave. After seeing the video preview and some screenshots I realized how primitive are the communication tools that we are using, and how far advanced could user-interaction be, in Lars Rasmussen's words: "...if email was invented today."

It looks like Google is really decided to release an online all-in-one application that will run on the browser, with all the data being stored in the cloud. It will be a long road to travel but Google started with the right foot. Wave will open a closed beta of their system on September 30. With an official release later this year.


Given its wide range of possible applications and flexibility, it may not happen very fast but I am sure that it will certainly replace email and IM over time.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a communication tool that will enable users to interact in different ways, taking advantage of the best of each of the current systems. Imagine the best features of email, IM, document edition, search and social networking, and try to mix them into one single product that allows you to do all of the above. And now imagine if that product was open source and any company could host it, without it being tied to one mega corporation. And also imagine being able to be able use it cross-platform, cross-server and for free. If you can imagine all that, you begin to have an approximate idea of what Google Wave is.



Using traditional technologies when you need to communicate with somebody over internet, you would do one of two things: 1) If that person is online then you would IM that person. 2) If not, you would use email to communicate and wait until that person checks email. Google Wave eliminates that differentiation. When you need to communicate you start a new Wave, an object that is remotely stored in the server and will handle your interaction and the activities associated to it. You will also add people to the Wave, and those would represent the recipients of the email or IM. The recipients are not online? it doesn't really matter, Waves are stored in the server and anyone of the people involved in it can see it from any device that uses the Wave protocol.

Google came up with this amazing idea of mixing all forms of communication together and making them one. But what makes it so amazing?
Well, nearly all the communication methods that you can imagine are available for your Waves, you can embed maps on them, videos, links, search results, images, collaborative edition. They are not separate services anymore, they are all ready to use within your Wave and you can get them in and share them with no more than a few clicks.

Google Wave Highlights

Open Protocol

You won't need a Google account to use Waves, by the time it is released it will be an open and well documented protocol that any development company can use to set up a Wave server. You will be able to send waves to anyone and your messages will not be stored in the Google farms. This independence also ensures the fact that a lot of interfaces will be built for it, and it will not be attached to one operating system, browser or specific hardware. Soon you will see it integrated to most social network systems, email and IM clients.

Enhanced Talk

Google Waves introduces "responding in context", when you receive a reply you will no longer get a copy of the previous message as a block of text as if it was email. Actually, messages are no longer plain blocks of texts, with Wave your messages will be true objects that can be analyzed, parsed, modified and displayed in many several ways. This improves interaction between people by reducing the gap between a real conversation and a virtual conversation.

You can respond to a certain part of the conversation only, and respond to the rest in a different message. The UI will display the responses and organize them accordingly.

Improvements in messaging systems, widgets and extensions

Have you seen the preview yet? no? go check it out! I'll mention a few that you can see in that video:

• conversation history,
• on the fly spell checking,
• dictionary suggestions,
• on the fly text transmission and language translations,
• games,
• integration with Media, Maps, and other services,
• instant image transmision, automatic thumbnail generation and transmission on a different connection thread

What makes all this worth is the fact that they are pushing us forward. Every step being made is for our benefit and I will be very glad to see this technology working on my computer soon.

Keep it up Google!

Dialogg with Google's Marissa Mayer

Kevin Rose from Digg interviews Google's Vice President, Search Products & User Experience: Marissa Mayer.



The top questions submitted and voted on by the Digg community are:

• Do you ever get disturbed at what you see as most searched topics? (+441 diggs, submitted by Abbeygargoyle)
• With products like Google Docs, Voice, Wave as well as Chrome OS, Google seems to strongly encourage the move to the cloud. However, a lot of users do not have fast internet access and have relatively low bandwith caps. Do you consider Internet Service Providers as a major bottleneck in the user experience of a cloud-oriented system? If so, what do you think can be done fix or circumvent that potential problem? (+418 diggs, submitted by Nephersir7)
• What are you going to do with all the data you are collecting on your users? (+362 diggs, submitted by Inceptious)
• What happened to the 10th to the 100th promise Google made on its last birthday to put $10 million into the best ideas submitted to Google and winnowed by a vote of the public with final selections made by a panel selected by Google? The initial decision-making was to have come in December, then it was delayed due to the huge response... and now it appears to have gone by the wayside. (This is very disappointing for all who trusted Google to honor its funding promise.) (+280 diggs, submitted by ClayT2)
• How do you feel about Bing? I believe the search engine has some very positive features. Does Google plan on implementing any significant changes in response to Bing's release? (+279 diggs, submitted by Rujtu)
• What product that Google has in beta are you most excited about at the moment? (+239 diggs, submitted by bamafun)
• What do you think of Wolfram|Alpha? (+223 diggs, submitted by seanieb)
• Who do you think is Google's biggest threat? (+191 diggs, submitted by DingoMD)
• Could you please take us through a day in the life of "the boss"? (+190 diggs, submitted by bzaks)
• Is Google Skynet? (+182 diggs, submitted by sjbdallas)

MS-Yahoo! Alliance: Bing Engine to be Used in Y! Search

During very long and hard negotiations, Microsoft and Yahoo have been trying to reach an agreement that would allow both companies to form an alliance to take advantage of each one's strengths and represent a more solid competition against Google, the so far undefeated internet giant.

Some progress has been made in such negotiations and they have agreed upon some terms, at least in Search Service matters. The Yahoo! search service is going to be powered by Microsoft and its brand new engine Bing, while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

You can read the full details at the new press release from the Choice - Value - Innovation website, which is the public face on behalf of the MS-Yahoo! alliance.

Firefox 3.7 to Improve UI and Visual Effects

Long before the release of Firefox 3.5, developers at Mozilla were already working on v3.6, v3.7 and even 4.

In the next 2 updates of Firefox (3.6 and 3.7) we are going to see several interface improvements, being the most impressive the addition of Vista/W7 Aero effects. Check the screenshot below for a sneak peek:



As you can see not only the Aero effects have been activated. XP and non-Aero users are going to see improvements too, since this version also features several changes in the buttons positioning, menus and tabs navigation.

Visit the Firefox UI discussion page to see the UI changes as it progresses.

There is also some interesting progress, although still experimental, being worked on Firefox 4. It seems the designers are trying to implement a Chrome-like tabset. Take a look at the mockups, but keep in mind, these are mockups! and not the definitive look of Firefox 4.

Download IE8 or the Kitten Dies

It is a well known fact that Microsoft is losing ground in the web browsers market, specially in Europe where the laws are harder against the monopoly.

This plus the fact that the worldwide acclaimed Firefox has been capturing MS users since about 2004 when the 1.0 version was out. Back in 2005 Firefox had about 4% of the users around the world, and that number constantly increased to 13% in 2006, and 16% in 2007. Then Chrome appeared only to make the market even a bit more diverse.

As of today the statistics are mixed depending on who elaborates them, and where are they tracked. Net Applications Market Share says:

1. Internet Explorer: 65.85%
   
2. Firefox: 22.39%
3. Chrome: 1.74%

(Source: Wikipedia - Usage share of web browsers).
Check the link for other sources.
I edited this post due to wrong statistics. Thanks Daniel for clarification.

Internet Explorer 8 has been around for a few months now and since Microsoft already has bad numbers with the 7th version, they are beginning to do weird things to get people to install IE on their machines.

Browser for the Better

Browser for the Better is a Microsoft charity campaign that states that for every download of IE8 made through the website: http://www.browserforthebetter.com/index-htm.html, 8 meals will be donated to the organization Feeding America.

They were honest enough to explain below in small letters that the "8 meals" are for illustrative purposes only, and they will actually donate 1.15USD to that organization per download (because as we all know, in the US you can buy 8 meals with 1.15 bucks). Also it looks like tracking the downloads through the official MS website is an unattainable quest, because they will only donate money if you download through browserforthebetter.com, if you get IE8 from the MS page or through Windows Update, forget about the donation.

Dig up the treasure!

Now this is a funny one, they put somewhere in the internet a hidden element that is only viewable through IE8, and if you see it, you get 10.000 USD. Wouldn't it better to donate those 10 grand to Feeding America? I would have downloaded it!

Lets tell some lies...

Now MS created a get-the-facts website that shows you what are the IE8's "benefits" over the other browsers. I am afraid that one day they will get serious and remove this joke, so just in case this link gets removed or obsolete, I took a screenshot of it.

Videos

Well we can't deny that MS has more money than Google and Mozilla so they can spend a bit more money on their marketing campaign, just look up in Youtube the IE8 ads and you will see pretty much the same things that I wrote here but in film format.

What's next?

I can see it coming:

Come on Microsoft! You have the resources, spend some money on improving your browser, marketing can wait.

My First Apple Product Ever: iPod Nano

I used to be reticent towards Apple and its products. I still have some reserves about their software, but my wrong thought about their hardware was that it is unnecessarily overpriced and overrated.

But now I know that their hardware is overpriced for a reason: it is better than the rest. And it is not overrated at all, it is simply superior.

Recently I stumbled upon this little device on a store and bought it after an Apple representative showed it to me:

The iPod Nano is a beautifully engineered machine that covers your audio playback needs by far exceeding all your expectations. Being a Winamp lover I would usually despise iTunes and everything related to it but the representative told me that I can load music into the iPod with many different players so I bought it. Later I read that sometimes Apple releases firmware updates and I must use iTunes to install them so I had no other choice.



I will tell you a bit about the iPod in this post:

Features

• Audio and Video playback.
• Music browser and Cover Flow.
• Allows playlists, song rating, displays album arts and lyrics.
• Smart shuffling capabilities.
  
• Some small cool games.
• Alarm, notes, calendars, etc...
  

But hey most media players today come with those features, don't they?
I'll tell you why iPod is different.

Pros

• Audio with iPod is just better, the Apple earphones and the audio decoding capabilities of the iPod make music sound a lot better than on any other device.
• Cover Flow is the easiest way to browse for your music, simply turn the iPod on the side and it will display an art gallery of your music which you can browse with the wheel.
• The battery lasts longer than on any other player, it promises 24hs of non stop playback if you don't mess around with it too much.
• High amount of memory, iPod nano comes in versions of 4, 8 and 16 gbs. That should be more than enough to carry your favorite music around.
• Shuffling with iPod is funny, I don't shuffle too much but iPod comes with a little bot called Genius, that will seek your library for music that matches style and will shuffle in a smarter way than other players.
• Better screen, iPod has a high resolution 2" screen which will display your music covers, video, captions, menus and it has a few nice accessibility perks.
  

Cons

• iTunes dependency: you need iTunes to install firmware updates. Fortunately iTunes improved over the years and now it is not so heavy and invasive as before, but I still prefer my Winamp over it.
  
• Some media formats and album covers not supported. FLAC has been completely overlooked.
  
• It's pricey, but with technology you should know: you get what you pay for.
• It has a nice surface but it scratches easily if you don't keep it in a rubber wrap. And those accessories are expensive too.
  

The Wave is coming!

Google presented a developer demonstration of their brand new project, which will probably be the central piece of their future Operating System. Please welcome: Google Wave!