I set aside the time tonight to watch the full hour and a half demo of Google Wave. Seeing the creators use their product shed some light onto the possibilities of the system. However, I’m glad I read the technical specifications before witnessing the user interface.
The initial focus and reaction around Google Wave centers, rightfully, on communication. In particular, the real-time aspects were highlighted and comparisons drawn to Twitter and FriendFeed. Some even tout it as the “one true” communication tool.
It’s important to note, though, that different people have different needs. For example, both Scott Rosenberg and Fred Wilson find the interface to be complicated. Fortunately, under the open development model Google is taking, others are free to design simpler interfaces.
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The big news to hit the web today was the announcement of Google Wave at Google I/O. Described as “the e-mail of the future,” Wave is an ambitious project with a grand vision of unified communications.
A concise description of what Wave is, exactly, seems to be hard to formulate. You have to see it to understand it seems to be a growing consensus. That is a bit frustrating to those trying to conceptualize, but it may be appropriate if Wave truly is a leap forward for communication.
Tim O’Reilly has the best description I’ve come across:
Jens, Lars, and team re-imagined email and instant-messaging in a connected world, a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud. Effectively, a message (a wave) is a shared communications space with elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking, and even wikis.
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A couple weeks ago, Marc Canter wrote a entry outlining the constructs of people, services and content. These are the central pillars around which collaboration software is structured.
Content, as a concept, encompasses a wide area. It could be a newspaper article, a radio program, a TV show, a spreadsheet or presentation. Creating and managing content has been one of the primary purposes of computers, ever since they came into existence.
With the rise of the Internet, and particularly social networking, there has been a renewed focus on people and the role they play in a system. Proper emphasis on individuals and groups makes collaboration more efficient.
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Rake has become a critical component of my development toolchain. So much so that I have developed extensions, such as Chrysalis, to assist with common aspects of the build cycle.
However, due to time constraints, Chrysalis does not support the latest version of Rake (currently 0.8.3). The 0.8 branch reworked some of the internals, and Chrysalis was developed against 0.7.3. As such, I often need to quickly switch between multiple versions of Rake.
Thankfully, the executable RubyGems places in the bin directory makes this easy. I had long been curious how this works, so I took the time to figure it out.
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John Doerr a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has written an article on Scientific American in which he suggests:
America is confronting three interrelated crises: an economic crisis, a climate crisis and an energy security crisis. The country’s best response to all three is a bold, coordinated campaign of investment and incentives to accelerate green innovation. Doing so will ensure that the U.S. becomes the worldwide winner in the next great global industry: green technologies.
After briefly summarizing the initiatives being undertaken by three companies that his venture capital firm has invested in, he notes:
Notice the trend. Two of these ventures came from outside the U.S. Of today’s top 30 solar, wind and advanced battery companies, American firms hold only six spots. That should worry us. In the race to save the planet, we are not winning.
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