Thoughts and impressions about Google Wave and its possible impact on the way we communicate electronically.

Neat features:
• Email wave: general email functionality, add people to the wave, send private messages to some participants, replay the wave as it builds for people who got added on later.
• Chatting and Video: chat with contacts using real time character by character streaming with the ability to turn off character by character streaming.
• Photos: Upload, edit and share photos with contacts in real time. Contacts that are online can make edits or comments as you type them in or vice versa. Drag and drop items right from your desktop to wave for sharing.
• Polls: take opinions of contacts using polls with ability to view results in different formats, share them on your blogs etc.
• Ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs can all be stored in a single location for sharing online and real time. Google Maps integration as a gadget amongst weather and others can also be incorporate to your events etc.
• Google Voice?
• Gadgets:
o Facebook, twitter integration so a wave user can perform actions in the social networking sites from wave app.
• Documents: edit and share your documents with wave contacts. Real time editing features makes collaboration easier for teams. Replay option allows for showing the life of the document as it evolves into a final draft.
• Meetings: record meeting notes real time for instant feedback and documentation. Collaborate by sharing machine controls. The playback feature helps members to follow along if they joined late or are viewing the minutes at a later time.
• Brainstorming Ideas: Great place to discuss and fine tune ideas along with ability to add rich content to the wave.
• Interactive games: Play online games with your contacts by adding your favorite game as a gadget on the wave.

Observations:
Google wave is an application running in a cloud out on the internet; using a browser a user can interact with the application. The wave is geared towards being used as a desktop application which is in fact a web based application. The demo presents Google wave being used over Chrome, Google’s internet browser, where the look and feel is that of a desktop application, appears to work well with the wave. If you are out of internet, you are out of all the apps you use in the wave along with all the data; hence the cloud application. The fact that Google Wave is web based, it is platform independent; A great interoperability win by design. No matter if you are on Windows, Mac or Linux, your Google wave app works and behaves the same. Furthermore, since Google Wave is written using GWT (Google Web Tools Kit) it’s automatically cross browser compatible. Versioning and updating software becomes easier as the cloud is the only item which needs to be redeployed.

Expectations:
Currently, there are many different applications which the corporate world employs to communicate amongst each other. Means of communication like chatting, document sharing, email, video conferencing, WebEx, live meeting, Gforge or Google forums are just a few applications by which we communicate in the enterprise arena. Merging the functionality into one application with added features explained above, Google Wave appears to have understood the value of increased productivity by providing such a rich application with everything right here and now. The benefits unfortunately are hard to explain to a novice user due to the fact that some of what Google Wave offers is already available in different shapes and forms. The ability of companies to set up their own servers for the cloud is a very good indicator on Google’s part that they are serious about having market shares of productivity tools historically owned by Microsoft.
I think we will see more and more integration of other online collaborating tools into Google Wave in the form of gadgets, which will help users to gradually migrate to using Google Wave tools.
Personal use may also thrive based on the easier communication ability provided by the Wave, it’s fun to use!
I also expect Google Wave to appear on IPhones and other devices soon.
Security of information a consumer shares in the cloud application might be a reason for concern for many. Google must come up with a creative and compelling argument for users who could get on the Wave but won’t due to security concerns.



Impressive applications: Gravity is an extension in google wave implemented by SAP. Basically, it's a modeling app.
Assists diseparate teams of individual to come together to discuss, plan and write a business or process model while collaborating online, realtime using google wave.







Here it from the pros:

MP4 - My Yahoo Pipe

Yahoo pipes is a cool implementation of the pipes and filter pattern. Basically, you get to take your choice of data of many shapes and forms, apply some logic using operators and filters and create lists as well as visual implementations for output. Creating mash up's for converging data of different types or homogenous themes is also a popular use for Yahoo Pipes.

I viewed the quick tutorial presented at pipes.yahoo.com in order to get started; and you do get to start right after.

So, here is how it works ...

- Yahoo pipes provides a drag-and-drop type of online IDE to be your sandbox.
- It appears that Yahoo Pipes IDE is in a cloud; so without access to the internet you can't develop.
- Once you figure out what pipe output you want to create, using the inputs, operators, filters, data feeds etc. you work in your IDE to bolt together a result.
- All output should be connected to a single output pipe.

Here's how my Yahoo Pipe works and what are some things I used while building mine:

- The topic for my mash up is to combine two rss or site feeds from two websites which list items, mostly technology related and gadgets, on a daily basis. The list that the two sites post are usually great deals for a bargain; my mash up uses the two sites; hotdealsclub.com and dealcatcher.com as source, asks the user what keyword do they want to search for deals and how old the deal can be. Based on these filters, I then combine the results of the search and return a final merged list based on the search criteria and the date range.

- I acquired the RSS feed url from the site and used the 'Fetch Feeds' Sources as my starting point.

- I then dropped on the date input and text input from user inputs for capturing the search criteria.

- Wired together the feed output to filters along with the data and text input.

- Tweaked the filters by adding more rules to apply the date rule and search criteria so that the filter will filter through only items which contained text of the search criteria and are not older than the entered date.

- I found that I could not assign the same filter on two sources, I had to create to filters ...

- Then I used the union operator to merge the two filters; keeping duplicates.

- I found that I couldn't pass the output from two filters to output pipe which is why I used the union operator ...

- Finally, display the merged results in the form of a list.

Very intuitive interface is developed for the IDE; almost like a work flow control app. It was very easy to use the IDE to build my mash up and even debug it on any stage using the debug feature. Even easier was publishing it.

I was pleasantly surprised and it was refreshing to see such functionality appear on Yahoo when things as such are usually expected from Google ... while I blog on Google Blogger :) Wonder if Google has such an online app to create mash ups.

Well, here is my first, of what I'm sure is one of many, mash up's using yahoo pipes:



Sadfeen.

like it ...

ICC Champions Trophy, 2009

Pakistan is playing Australia tomorrow. Pakistani team is in their best shape ever; wining the 20/20 world cup and then beating India Champions Trophy!!! :0) AWEEESSSOOOMMMME!!

What is "Web 2.0?"

Web 2.0 is a buzz world. Whenever you experience places on the web which capture your attention and retain it for a period of time; you have been using a Web 2.0 'standard' site.

Theoretically speaking, the definition of Web 2.0, as explained by my professor, can be broken down into three categories:

1. Social Layer
2. Architectural Layer
3. Technical Layer

A web based product is said to be Web 2.0 if it presents itself in one or all of the categories defined above. Presenting huge amounts of information in a meaning full manner is a challenge; Web 2.0 is a paradigm which brings attention to elements which can help us do that and more.

Capturing a users attention is paramount in retaining their interest. Sites which present information in a meaning full and non-cluttered way succeed in doing so. Furthermore, if there are elements which allow the user to create new content and individualize items by uploading pictures, documents and videos etc. contributes to the social layer of the Web 2.0 paradigm. Flickr, Facebook and Pandora for instance.

Reaching beyond the social layer, when a user can execute desktop like application actions in a web based product, we find the architectural layer of the new web order. I find, for instance, Google Docs, to be a great example of architecturally web 2.0 application. Using Google Documents is almost like using open office and MS office, but, only on the web.

Accomplishing tasks like creating interactive, self-aware, real-time and rich Internet applications forms the technical layer of the Web 2.0 type websites. Using implementation which includes Ajax encompasses the technical layer.

Google Wave

http://wave.google.com/

A whole new world of collaboration - real time!

Extreme WEB 2.0, Rich Internet Application and Ajax in action.

There is so much to tell about the ~ wave ~ so why don't you hear it from the pros themselves.



This is soooo cooooooool!!! I mean out of this world!

FA # 1

Site which I am considering to examine for FA#1:

Sites which I like and visit often:

• Google maps, docs and gmail

Using gmail, maps and docs is extremely efficient for me and I have been using it since 2004. I like many features of the sites for instance:Gmail's conversation style message handling, chat integration, Maps street view is really useful and I use maps for all my navigation, phone/address look up needs and finally docs, I keep all my course documents and notes on google docs for easy access anywhere I am. Google docs seems to be like a good architectural Web 2.0 site; I think of it as a desktop application especially when I can use a menu bar. Yahoo provides similar services but their interface appears to be convoluted. Google services, in my mind, are so rich and clear at the same time; to the point. Yahoo feels like a drag to keep updating pages, moving from page to page to accomplish similar tasks as compared to google; I can carry on a chat without leaving gmail. I use google products everyday and will continue to, I can't wait for Google Wave to go live (Extreme Web 2.0).

• Amazon
• Facebook

Facebook is a really good example of web 2.0. I have been using it for three years now and love it. The interface with the UI is simple and easy to use. The pop-up chat, updates from pages I am a fan of or following is great. I can do multiple operations on the same page with; 'like' a post, comment on a post, hide certain updates from certain users etc. Immediate notification if I happen to be logged in with any updates. The MySpace site was unattractive to me. I didn't like it's appearance when I first looked at it back in 07 and haven't been back since.

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Good clean fun! To the point, I love it.

• Kayak and American express travel booking sites

There are so many travel booking and search sites nowadays and many of them are confusing. I found the above two to be straight forward and extremely interactive to use. When I am entering airport data an auto assist drop down list appears guessing at which airport I want to put in. The departure and return dates input fields interface is surprising an annoying field to select from a drop down list, the sites which I listed above show a small little calendar as soon as I tab over or click on the input box. A really cool feature of these sites is the filtering option panel which appears on the left of the screen as a panel; time selections, price, dates etc. appear as options to filter the results even more. A sliding filter is also presented on the Amex travel site to filter ratings of hotels and price ranges; and it's done while I am sliding the bar and doesn't require a whole page refresh. Refreshing :)

• WebEx
• DELL

Sites which I dislike but can't stop visiting due to subject matter:

• CNN

As soon as I type CNN.com it takes a second or two to load up and then the ever annoying pop-up appears or tries to appear. The news site is well planned. I like visiting CNN few times a day to catch up on the news, I would like to make it my home page, but its load time and pop-up keeps me away from implementing that thought.

• Natoinal Geographic web site

Extremely non web 2.0. Every link on each page leads to another page. I love browsing through photos of around the world, but, I have to do it several pages at a time. The site is static and lacking any dynamic interaction. But, I love it so I will put up with any lags or clicks :)

• HGTV

Sites which I don't like so I don't visit often or at all:

• My company's employee Internet site ;)

Perhaps it's just the fact that it's work related that I don't like my company's employee site ;) But, it's pretty lethargic. Pages take a while to load, searching the site is slow. Things are not upfront, it take a while to get where you want to be.

• MySpace

MySpace site was unattractive to me. I didn't like it's appearance when I first looked at it back in 07 and haven't been back since.

• Hotmail web email client

I don't like using hotmail web client. Everything is pages away. Their process for adding contacts is tedious. I stopped using it a long while ago and switched to gmail.

Google Voice

Sounds real nifty. Can't wait to check it out.