Catching a Wave..
Wave Art: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philipgibbs/
Like about 90% of geeks on the planet I’ve been pretty caught up in the Google Wave hype this week and even now several days later I can’t really find any reason to not be impressed. Well apart from my obvious distaste for the applause hungry manner in which the demo was presented but I’m pretty sure most people this side of the Atlantic found that as irritating as me and a combination of American and Aussie attitudes was never going to lead to a modest launch.
I’m not going to spend alot of time going into deep detail on what I think about it but I love the way it handles images, the fact that it is open source is great news and the ease with which widgets can be added is amazing. I think Pete might write a more technical response at some point but for now I’ll just point to some of the best blog posts etc I’ve read on the subject over the last couple of days;
Not surprisingly the place to start is at Google itself – now the video is a long one. 1 hour and 20 minutes and I did my share of cringing during it but its well worth watching – shorter videos from Google focusing on individual elements of Wave are starting to emerge so it is worth keeping an eye out for them.
Tim O’Reilly has a typically thoughtful piece on the Radar blog – which is a great summary from someone who has obviously given alot of thought to the issues Wave seeks to resolve.
Nick Gall writes an interesting and short piece – with a huge URL – which focuses on how Wave represents another ‘web paragim shift’ towards a HTML5/XMPP driven web.
Cameron Neylon writes an interesting take on Wave as he comes at it from what he hopes it will mean to his work as a scientist and researcher. Its particularly nice to hear from someone immediately drawing parallels to their own work rather than just being dazzled by the shiny new toy.
Ryan Carson has done a nice write up on Think Vitamin that covers some of the main elements that he thinks will “change your business, career and life” – Ryan is a tad prone to hyperbole especially with the title but its a well written piece and he knows his stuff so well worth a read.
There are obviously hundreds of other blogs and traditional news sources covering Wave and these just represent a fraction of what is out these (Read Write Web in particular have great coverage).