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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Teh Internets Enough of Boxes and Gutters

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 3:32 PM

This video of a Google Wave retrospective of 2009 has been circling the internet for a few weeks now:

And it's made me think about how I haven't really found a use for Google Wave yet. I can understand the appeal of Google Wave in a business environment for meetings, but this Discuss 2010 link advertised at the end of the Wave video demonstrates the problem with Google Wave if you're trying to have a conversation or doing other non-destination-based tasks: It just turns into another forum, message board, or blog comment thread. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there are plenty of forums, message boards, and comment threads hanging around out there already. I don't think that was the intent of Google Wave. This Seattle Times Wave about the Lakewood Cop Shooting didn't provide much beyond what any other well-equipped comment thread did, for example, though it received a lot of press from tech blogs at the time.

But it occurred to me this morning that the problem with Google Wave is the fact that it's restrained to a rectangular box on a screen. Click to enlarge this screenshot:

It basically looks like a more-busy version of an e-mail box. And if you just look at the Wave part on the right, it's just another narrow alley of content on a web page. Just like Twitter and every blog in existence, and almost every other content-providing website in the world.

I don't have a solid idea of what I mean here, but Google Wave would be much more valuable if it came with you as you were on the internet, if it wasn't just another destination rectangle in a universe full of destination rectangles standing up on end. All I can picture right now is something like an IM box, but that's not quite right, either. That's just another box, albeit one that follows you everywhere. Maybe something like Second Life without the yiffies and the dumb animation. The person who pulls the web out of its current fascination with the bottomless pit of content going straight down forever is probably a person who will make a whole lot of money.

Comments (13) RSS

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" fascination with the bottomless pit of content going straight down forever "

Mmm, spring rolls

Posted by mrhappy on December 30, 2009 at 4:00 PM

Paul, check out the zorero extension to firefox for something like the guts of your idea.

Posted by Jonathan Golob

on December 30, 2009 at 4:19 PM

I wonder if Google's Sidewiki project approaches any of what you're looking for here. Granted it's another vertical column, but anybody can add content to it for any URL -- which is to say, it acts on destinations rather than ever being a destination itself. The usual wiki-related caveats about editorial consensus etc still apply, but the idea is fascinating.

Posted by chatterton on December 30, 2009 at 4:21 PM

My understanding is that Google Wave is not an application - it is a protocol, or medium. What they have demonstrated are a basic set of capabilities and an API to allow the developers of the world to make use of those capabilities as they see fit.

The presentations of GW to date have been to demonstrate these capabilities. As such, it is a broad, vanilla attempt to establish a familiar context against which to contrast these new abilities.

You are correct that the current applications of this technology are bland; that is a purposeful attempt to better communicate the features of this new protocol. The ones that jumped out at me in from the first hour-long demo were:
- Natural language parsing
- Real-time translation
- Threading, forking and changing privileges on exchanges
- And some bit about efficient best-path information exchange dynamics, requiring no central server

Anyway, that's why it doesn't seem very interesting yet. The original HTTP spec was pretty boring, and then someone went and invented Amazon.

Posted by John Galt on December 30, 2009 at 4:24 PM

I've been hearing about this thing for a year now, and I STILL have no freaking idea what it is or does. Every explanation I've seen left me knowing less, not more. That screenshot, for instance. All I know for sure is that I desperately want to look at something else.

@4 is another example. I don't know what "threading, forking and changing privileges on exchanges", but I would almost be willing to pay money to ensure that I never find out.

Posted by Fnarf

on December 30, 2009 at 4:49 PM

yeah, I feel like Google Wave is going to be one of those things we can't find a use for right now but will really shape things in our near future like @4 was saying. It will probably be under the radar for awhile.

I remember the first time I saw twitter in 2007 and laughed so hard, "what the fuck is the point of this.....this is never going to catch on"
look at it now....

Posted by Andy_Squirrel on December 30, 2009 at 5:05 PM

@6, yes, we've really turned the corner on Twitter, haven't we? It's the go-to tool of the future for smearing a corporate reputation (TheEnd107), or for endlessly repeating a fugitive from justice's deliberate misdirections ("RT Clemmons is at Cowen Park!"), or important updates on your friends ("I just ate a chilidog").

Posted by Fnarf

on December 30, 2009 at 5:35 PM

Well Fnarf - as I was listing those points that was the item that was the hardest to summarize.

To answer it in part, please check this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITi…

It will jump to the 22-minute mark. If you listen from that point to about the 23:15 point, it shows an example that might make a lot of sense to you.

Posted by John Galt on December 30, 2009 at 5:56 PM

@7, not to mention pointless Twats are now showing up in Page 1 of Google searches in a handy scrolling box. Now maybe this has been going on for awhile--I'm famous for my tunnel vision--but today is the first time it fell within my narrow cone of awareness.

Posted by rob!

on December 30, 2009 at 6:26 PM

Im still waiting for my invite. Still.

Posted by Queef! on December 30, 2009 at 6:47 PM

horrid.

Posted by David K

on December 30, 2009 at 9:19 PM

I have been using Google Wave for a couple of months now and I too am frustrated by the limiting "box." I am particularly frustrated by the lack of a decent notifier, a sign of its chat-like nature, and by the difficulty of keeping track of Waves and Blips. This is not just a problem with Waves, though, but is true of all social computing systems, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc. One major problem is that we have not yet cracked how to gather their short-form contents together in a genuinely practical format. We all get lost in the detail, as though we are all talking loudly, together in a very big room (see http://tinyurl.com/yjo8eqe).

However, I think that John Galt (4 above) clearly points to what Lars and Jens Rasmussen have in mind for Waves. Waves is not, and never was, intended to stay within the box. It is an approach, a protocol and a federated system that will allow such conversations to embed themselves within our web spaces. Jens' genius is that he sees the universe of potential in a system and then starts building it - not as an app, but as a landscape, an environment. Waves, at the moment, is but a building site. It will take a few more years before we see what will actually grow and proliferate.

Posted by robin boast on December 31, 2009 at 2:38 AM

@8, flame wars, very funny.

So it's like a big inbox for lots of different blogs all at the same time? That's so, uh, sorry, I dozed off.

I was transfixed by the sweat stain on his hideous t-shirt until they panned to the woman and I realized it was part of the design. Then I lost my appetite.

Posted by Fnarf

on December 31, 2009 at 10:39 AM