

Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/09/surfing-the-google-wave.ars

======
sunburnt
_Each top-level conversation contains groups of messages that are sort of like
subthreads. The conversations are referred to as "waves" and the subthreads
are called "wavelets". Individual messages, which are called "blips", are the
smallest discrete conversational unit of a wave. The distinction between Wave
the service and "wave" the conversational unit is significant, so keep an eye
on the capitalization._

Why the jargon? These terms do not relate to anything anyone is familiar with
in any different context. This seems unnecessary.

I genuinely hope that <http://xkcd.com/483/> (Fiction Rule of Thumb) doesn't
apply to Google Wave.

~~~
pohl
Sorry for the pedantry, but doesn't expecting the terms to relate to things in
a different context go against the very nature of jargon?

Jargon is "technical terminology unique to a particular subject."
[wiktionary.org]

I imagine that when one is discussing OTs and how they relate to the
federation protocol, these terms would be very useful. Sure, you could talk
about nodes and edges in a graph, but there are many graphs of many types in
any large system. These terms refer to specific kinds of nodes in a very
specific kind of graph.

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ajg1977
I haven't been following the Wave hype, but by the end of the rather verbose
first page I still had no real idea what Wave is supposed to be or why I'd
want to use it.

Best I can tell it's some mish-mash of email/IM/docs - which frankly sounds
horrifying.

~~~
loup-vaillant
As I understand it Wave core principle is actually simple. When you do email,
the fundamental unit of communication is the email. In Wave, the fundamental
unit of communication is the _conversation_.

Unlike physical mail, most emails don't stand alone. They are part of a
conversation. Conversations can get quite complicated. In mailing lists, they
often get very long, effectively taking the shape of an HN thread.

Now, plain email _is_ a mish-mash of message/IM/docs. We already use it these
ways. Wave, by being very permissive, make these tasks easier. Single messages
aren't harder, ML-like conversations have an enforced structure (easier to
follow), and the collaborative editing thing just emerge from the possibility
of modifying the entire conversation.

I see Wave like I see Lisp: a simple and consistent core, which allow many
possibilities.

------
axod
Seems really over complicated to me, and I can't understand what problem it's
trying to solve really. The scope seems to be ridiculously broad.

Guess we'll see if people start using it or not, but it seems like there's a
fair learning curve before you even understand what it is and why it exists.

------
davidw
> Wave is designed to facilitate real-time concurrent messaging, meaning that
> content appears to all users immediately and multiple users can edit and
> submit content at the same time.

One of the things I like about email is that it is _not_ real-time.

~~~
sp332
Real-time just means that you can start ignoring it immediately, instead of
waiting whole seconds for it to arrive in your inbox first.

~~~
davidw
If you have someone typing away on the other end and they know you're there,
that's IM, and that's ok in some situations, but not in others.

~~~
cpr
You can hide the fact that you're editing a reply until you send it, so it can
act more like email, if you like.

------
cpr
This is actually a pretty good overview of wave, hitting all the high points
well.

~~~
sachinag
Reading this comment, I knew it had to be Ryan Paul (since it's not a Mac
article).

It's kind of awesome how many of their great writers still code from time to
time, so they really get it.

------
presty
so.. any chance for an invite? :p

