
Google Wave: You need to pay attention to this - raju
http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2009/09/why-google-wave-is-the-coolest-thing-since-sliced-bread.html#more
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btn
Wave, in a lot of ways, is just a XMPP client/aggregator. I don't mean that in
a condescending way, it's very cool, but it's hardly "the first truly
revolutionary leap since HTTP itself".

The article says that this revolution hinges on XMPP letting you "talk
directly to ANYTHING, and ANYONE", but that's just false (it's decentralised
but not peer-to-peer) and hardly "HUGE": SMTP is such a protocol where "Social
networks and proprietary transports no longer have an exclusive license to
deliver content", it's just too old and crusty for us to slap some buzzwords
on it and claim that "it can easily turn into a bona-fide platform for next-
generation applications".

~~~
zby
XMPP is only the connection part of the Wave - the other, if not more complex
then at least much less understood part, is
[http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-
transfor...](http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform)
which is a theory about how to change a document according to concurrent
editing commands streams. The idea is that using a special document structure
and operations you can emulate the interface of any communication application
(in email that document is a thread of conversation with rules allowing people
append new 'emails', irc channels can be similarly represented with the
document being the channel 'screen', you can even represent a chess game as a
series of editing of the chess board). This generality let's you mix and match
freely the communication modes used in different communication tools (like
wiki and im etc).

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tybris
(woke up grumpy)

A. XMPP is the major leap since HTTP. Wave is just some bloated junk that
abuses it.

B. XMPP is not the intermediary network that allows anyone in the world to
talk to each other, the Internet is. XMPP is just the model that makes it
practical.

Just as the main job of the HTTP protocol is to define client-server
communication. The main job of the XMPP protocol is to define client-gateway-
gateway-client communication.

Wave is just a bloated, locked-in protocol for asynchronous user group
communication. Since it targets users directly, and not communication in
general, it will ultimately lose to customer-driven social networks.
Meanwhile, you can build stuff on XMPP that's a lot more awesome, because like
all the successful protocols before it (IP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, TCP, E-mail, Web
Services), it doesn't really do that much. You decide what it does.

~~~
calambrac
What about Wave do you feel is bloat?

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symesc
This some good analysis. I had no idea of the bigger vision of the XMPP
protocol.

In the near term I've been working through how we could use Wave within some
of our (relatively) simple content-creation processes at work, particularly
around those items that require review by a number of stakeholders before
being made public.

The key thing for me around Google's implementation is how one Wave, full of
modifications and history, can spawn a new Wave in the form of a published
version. We continually struggle with content management, and the balance
between easy-to-use and "actually-managed." Version history, content re-use,
blah.

If Wave can deliver that alone, it'll be worth our effort to use it. If it can
deliver all of what Jason talks about this article, it'll be one of the most
leveraged chunks of technology in the whole business . . . and insulate us
from the whims of Big Software Companies.

This is exciting.

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thetrumanshow
I have no idea what wave is. I keep hearing about it and follow up by
purposefully avoiding learning anything about it.

I figure if its really really good, it will simply work it's way into my life
somehow without any effort on my part.

~~~
anigbrowl
You raise an interesting point. I have a sandbox account and while I've seen a
couple of cool things on there (in a limited amount of time spent), I've yet
to see anything that makes me feel 'I must use this...all the time'.

Great for threaded discussions - HN could probably be re-implemented easily -
but so far I haven't tripped across any bold new paradigms with it. Anyone
have suggestions for particular things to check out?

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dgreensp
Wave _is_ an immature and new technology. And the Wave client does _not_ speak
XMPP; it's not an XMPP client.

Federated Wave servers, potentially owned by different parties, need a
standardized way to open a persistent socket and send messages back and forth,
with security, authentication, etc. XMPP is used as a transport layer for
that.

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frognibble
XMPP is defined in two RFCs. RFC 3920 specifies the low level transport
between servers and clients. Wave uses the server to sever transport defined
in RFC 3920. RFC 3921 specifies messaging and presence. Wave ignores RFC 3921.

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ROFISH
I keep saying this with every Wave article: Wave is _HARD_! It's not the XMPP
server-to-server stuff, it's the server-to-client Javascripting that is a
giant pain in the ass. You literally have to have a HUGE textarea or
designMode parser or just flatout write your own input methods.

~~~
bprater
Anyone have a reference for this? I'd be curious to see what the code looks
like.

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jsz0
I think it might be impossible for Google Wave to live up to the hype at this
point. The problem with declaring something is revolutionary or will change
the Internet as we know it (blah blah) is those choices are made by massive
numbers of users at a grassroots level. You can't just say hey, this is great,
you should stop using all the tools you're content with because it's
technically better. It doesn't work that way. I'm positive it will be a useful
tool to a certain group of people but it doesn't pass my "will my Mom be using
this in 3 years?" test. It doesn't even come close. Google should have
probably kept this one under wraps until they were ready for a pretty good
public beta. Announcing it so far ahead of time creates an environment where
lots of people want to project lots of different ideas on top of it without
any understanding yet of how people may actually want to use the service.

~~~
cracki
it's not in public beta yet. not the way google defines "beta". at the monent,
only developers get in on it.

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markessien
I have a wave account. I logged in, and I could not even figure out if the
thing could send an email to a normal account.

Google Wave is very hard to understand at the moment. It's something that has
to be addressed.

~~~
njharman
Totally. I can't comprehend that anybody thinks that busy mess of frames,
text, icons, is an "incredibly sexy client".

~~~
pkulak
Yeah, it's pretty crazy when you log into the dev account, but if I had
thousands of people all CCing me at once, my email account would be just as,
if not more, confusing. I suspect it will be a lot easier to get a hold of
once they open up "real" accounts and I can just participate in waves with
people I know.

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keefe
I found this to be one of the more coherent and simple introductions to wave.

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einarvollset
Meh.

