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Back in 2009, Google announced a new real-time messaging tool, one that would let you chat, share files and work on documents with others. As Google projects usually are, Wave was released as a beta — in this case, a closed beta restricted to a few users. People excited about the tool begged others for invitations to try out the service for themselves. And as more people tried Wave out, they realized it was really cool. Which led to more word-of-mouth, which led to more people begging for invitations, until the beta opened to the public.
Yesterday, Google executive Urs Hölzle announced in the Google blog that the company would no longer support the Wave project. This seems to have shocked absolutely no one in the technology journalism field. In fact, it may have come as a relief — now we won’t have to come up with a way to explain the tool to everyone else. But I’ll give it one last shot.
Is Google preparing to take over the universe? Sounds like a silly question until you look at everything that Google has announced in just the last month. Google is in the process of crushing or getting-ready-to-crush a number of businesses. For example: 1) Google navigation: New Google Navigation app shows what happens when you combine [...]
I hope your Halloween preparations are going well. Yesterday, the HowStuffWorks.com office celebrated early. Employees with kids brought their little monsters to the office for a round of cubicle-to-cubicle trick or treating. The office was filled with dinosaurs, pirates, faeries, and enough animals to fill up a zoo. I managed to hide in a broom closet for most of it but eventually did emerge to take part in the festivities. Many people told me they liked my costume. I managed to refrain from responding with “What costume?” But on to TechStuff!
There’s been lots and lots of talk out there about the next phase of communication, especially with the launch of Google Wave, which some people see as the successor to e-mail. Admittedly, I’m not terribly excited about Wave, but there are two factors at work here:
- I’ve only had it for a few days.
- Jonathan’s the only person I’ve sent Waves to.
I’m not dismissing it, certainly, but it seems like a tool I’d use for work, rather than completely overhauling my entire communication strategy. We’ll see how that pans out.
But then the other day I heard about Mozilla Raindrop. Now for those of you who only know Mozilla as the creator of the Firefox Web browser, you should know that the organization works on many projects. In fact, I like the Thunderbird e-mail client quite a lot. But in Mozilla Labs there’s a new project called Raindrop that is supposed to unify messaging from multiple protocols.
The Google Wave is a collaborative, centralized communication tool that’s still in the preview stage. Tune in as Jonathan and Chris explain where this technology came from and what it does (and what it might do some day) in this episode of TechStuff.
On September 30, Google made a select group of salivating techno geeks very happy. That was the day when Google offered a few coveted invitations to its Google Wave service. Until that day, the only people who had a chance to really play with Google Wave included people within Google and attendees of Google’s last I/O Developer conference back in June. Google announced in its blog that it would send out 100,000 invitations to preview the service.
Image Files and Facebook Apps – TechStuff Podcast Roundup
by Jonathan Strickland | October 9, 2009
Hey there! I’ve torn myself away from exploring Google Wave to talk about the episodes of TechStuff we published this week. I’ll be sure to post my thoughts about Google Wave in an upcoming blog post. We may even tackle it as a podcast subject in the near future, so keep your ears open.
In Monday’s episode, Chris and I talk about the different kinds of image files you’re likely to encounter in our digital world. What do those file extensions mean? What’s the difference between a JPEG and a GIF? Does anyone use the BMP file format? Why are some viewable in Web browsers while others aren’t? When should you use a particular file format? Chris really did the heavy lifting in this episode, educating yours truly about the different file types and why they are important.
Facebook, applications and your privacy became the focus of our discussion on Wednesday’s episode. The social network gathers new users every day, many of whom appear to install each and every app that crosses their paths. Is it a good idea to load up on applications? What about all those quizzes? Are they harmless fun, or could you be sharing your personal information in ways you didn’t intend? Can an app developer get a look at your information even if you have your profile set to private?
I’m excited about Google Wave — so excited that I was surprised to find I hadn’t written about it yet. Marshall Brain wrote a quick post in which he says Google Wave is designed to replace e-mail. I think it goes well beyond that. Now Mark Hachman of PCMag reports that Google will open the beta build of Wave to 100,000 users beginning in September.
Google unveiled Wave to a group of application developers attending the Google I/O event back in May. Google Wave combines elements of e-mail, Google Docs, instant messaging and video and picture hosting services to create a real-time collaboration tool. I can imagine using Wave for everything from working on a professional project with several team members to creating a fun online scrapbook with your family. And that’s just for starters — the whole point of debuting Google Wave at the I/O event was to get application developers excited about the prospect of building new features using Google Wave as a platform.
You’ll find the video of the Google I/O presentation behind the jump. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes long. Normally I’d find it hard to sit through a presentation that long without getting antsy, but Wave really caught my attention.
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