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On Google Wave – Part 7: Marketplace

Submitted by admin on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 01:25

Continued from part 6: social network platform.

Unlike e-mail Google Wave allows for third-party tools to be integrated into the architecture. Gadgets and robots are first-class citizens.

This will create an abundance of third-party additions, both gadgets and robots. Especially current enterprise software vendors will seize the opportunity and build gadgets and robots to integrate the processes they offer into waves. In fact, Wave could prove the ideal platform for the execution of business processes.

On Google Wave – Part 6: Social Network Platform

Submitted by admin on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 07:49

Continued from part 5: version control.
A social network platform has to be able to evolve with its users and with the communities it hosts. Twitter is for now the best example of how the platform – when it is malleable – evolves with its users. More complex platforms like Facebook and Ning are notoriously hard to change according to the preferences of their users.
Google Wave may have struck the right balance to make its entire platform customizable to a large extend. Google Wave offers free-text collaboration as Twitter does. Facebook and Ning have a more versatile data model that offer different kinds of functionality but at the same time creates content jails.

On Google Wave – Part 5: Version Control

Submitted by admin on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 05:20

Continued from part 4: collaboration.
Version control is again not the most accessible topic yet it’s inclusion in Google Wave is significant. The version control community has seen quite a lot of upheaval in recent years. We’ve entered the new millennium with one dominant open-source version control tool: CVS.
Then Subversion emerged as a new open-source version control system that tried to address the design issues in CVS. Subversion is an easier to use version control system because it removed many arcane and idiosyncratic CVS headaches.

On Google Wave – Part 4: Collaboration

Submitted by admin on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 15:12

Continued from part 3: extensibility.
Google Wave in many respects is the ultimate collaboration tool. It can be best compared to Wikipedia but instead of striving for encyclopedic accuracy people can work together to strive for their own outcomes. In doing so they can add all kinds of content, including gadgets and robots that can give a helping hand.

On Google Wave – Part 3: Extensibility

Submitted by admin on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 09:31

Continued from part 2: unified messaging.
Google Wave provides two ways to add new features to Wave: robots and gadgets.
A robot resides on a Wave provider and receives all updates for those waves it participates in. Robots can also update wave content, for example by automatically replacing www.google.com with http://www.google.com. Other examples of robots in the demo video is the spell checker and the translation feature.
A gadget resides on the Wave client (in the browser) and changes the look and feel of the wave. A Sudoku game could for example be a gadget.
Robots are ideal for heavy computations, and when access to external data is required – like a CRM database or a web service – which cannot be accessed by a browser.

On Google Wave – Part 2: Unified Messaging

Submitted by admin on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 06:42

Continued from part 1: architecture.
Theories and implementations of unified messaging are probably as old as the Internet itself. The basic problem that unified messaging is trying to solve is this: send any type of content to any user regardless of which software they run or what platform they are on.
How Google Wave approaches unified messaging actually both clarifies and complicates unified messaging. The Google Wave team has correctly identified two crucial properties of unified messaging:

On Google Wave – Part 1: Architecture

Submitted by admin on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 05:51

If you haven’t done so already, watch the 1:20 min announcement and demo of Google Wave. Wave is Google’s attempt at world domination and I welcome it.
I’ll write down my thoughts on the unique features of Google Wave in a few blog posts. I haven’t used Google Wave, in fact I’m basing myself on what’s available online today.
In this post I’ll talk about Wave’s underlying architecture based on what is known today. Architecture is probably the least accessible topic I intent to discuss yet Wave’s architecture is probably its most compelling feature. For me Wave’s architecture definitely deserves some closer inspection.
Wave has an associative memory architecture which is characterized by two important features: