Initial thoughts on Google Wave

I recently snagged a Google Wave account and have begun to experiment with it.  I haven’t gotten any invites to distribute, so there isn’t really anyone I know on it, which means that I can’t really test it much yet, but I have been able to participate in some of the public waves.

My first impression is that it is clearly still in the preview stage.  The interface can be quite slow and there is an annoying lag between taking an action, such as sending a Wave to the trash (I’m not sure that you can actually delete waves in the trash yet) and it actually leaving your inbox and there doesn’t seem to be a means of selecting multiple waves for an action as you would normally be able to to with emails.

Fortunately, today, as reported by Lifehacker, the Wave team added a follow/unfollow button which means that not every public wave looked at will end up in your inbox, making the currently bugging sending of waves to the trash less necessary for now.

That said, I can see potential for Wave’s future.  Public waves can often act similar to discussion boards on the web and could potentially open specialized discussions to a broader audience than would be possible at a normal online forum.  This comes at the cost of the sense of community that forums often cultivate, but it’s a reasonable tradeoff.

I wouldn’t want to make too many predictions of success or failure at this stage in the game.  It’s clear that there are a lot of areas left to patch up what I’m currently using is far from being a finished product.  At the same time, it’s unclear exactly how popular Wave will be once it is released as a beta.  It’s seems that Google has ambitions of usurping email as the most popular mode of online communication through their federation scheme, but it’s up in the air as to whether Wave will actually take off as a successful online application and means of communication.

If anyone wants to reach me via Google Wave, my address is the same as my Gmail address off to the right, except it ends with @googlewave.com instead of @gmail.com.  Please note that Wave is not an email client so despite the deceptively similar address format, all emails will bounce.  Also, as noted above, I don’t currently have any invites to dish out, so no invite requests for now.

HD View and Photosynth

via InsideMicrosoft articles

Microsoft has been busy developing two different web browser photo-viewing plugins by the names of HD View and Photosynth.  The current builds of both these projects are compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox.  Both of these projects, though are currently in the testing stage with HD View in Beta 2 and Photosynth in a pre-Beta technical preview

HD View is, as the name suggests, software that allows the viewing of high definition photos in a web browser.  Since modern digital cameras produce images too large for most computer screens—for example, my digital camera has 6.3 megapixels and my 1280×800 laptop screen has 1,024,000 pixels or just over 1 megapixel—viewing such images in browsers is difficult.

HD View allows even very large images to be viewable in a web browser by allowing users to zoom in and out of a large photo and breaking the image down into more manageable pieces.  This allows even photos with gigapixel counts to be perusable by Web surfers.  For an example of that, one of the panoramas featured on the HD View site is this one of the Seattle skyline from nearby Kerry Park:

The panorama contained a total of 1.4 gigapixels, much more than any conventional camera that even a professional photojournalist would capture.  For an idea of the scale, here is a screen capture of the furthest zoom in of part of the Space Needle:

As you can see, the detail of the panorama is utterly amazing.  The site has links to even more detailed panoramas, including a 13 gigapixel panorama of Harlem.

Photosynth adds a different dimension to digital images—that is, a third dimension.  Photosynth is software that takes compilations of photos and assembles a 3-D map of the place where the photos were taken.  This map is shown through little particles.

One can then switch from picture to picture either by clicking on photos at the bottom, selecting the photos at the angle desired by clicking within the map area or by using keyboard shortcuts.

Photosynth also has one of the key features of HD View built in in teh form of zooming.  Besides hopping to pictures closer to the object of interest, one can also use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in on a specific feature.

Currently, Photosynth is touting a collection of images released, in conjunction with NASA, of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.  Below is a picture of Endeavour on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

Microsoft also has collections from Britain, Rome, Venice, an art studio among a few others.  As of now, you cannot add your own photos to be compiled into a photosynth, but it appears that such a feature may be down the road.

Photosynth has even greater promise than HD View, though it can only work on Windows, as it uses Direct X to render.  I hope to see more of these as time progresses.  They make for great viewing

Google Earth’s Sky mode

Today, Google released a Sky mode in Google Earth, which allows navigation of the celestial orb similar to the navigation of the Earth that Earth mode gives. This is likely related to the deal that Google signed with NASA last year. I downloaded the newest version of Google Earth (4.2) to give it a try.

To switch between Earth mode and Sky mode, you can click on the circular space icon on the right side of the toolbar or use the View menu and select “Switch to Earth” or “Switch to Sky”, depending upon what mode you are in at the time. The program always loads in Earth mode.

The tool bar in Google Earth 4.2

The first thing I noticed about it was that it was completely separate from the Earth imagery. When I clicked on the Sky/Earth toggle button, it the server login window that comes up when Google Earth first opens came up and it did again when going back to the Earth. For those unacquainted with Google Earth, this is not a personal login, but rather the program itself connecting to the Google server that hosts the information needed. This takes a little time, so it’s not a quick switch between Earth and Sky mode.

A review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Well, I just finished the last Harry Potter book, and so it is time to post my review of the book. I will start off with a short summary of my feelings about the book in general and then move on to a fuller review with spoilers.

In this book, it seemed that Rowling was trying to fit as many events into as few words as possible, which made it a bit difficult to understand what was happening at certain points. Because of this, I thought that the book lacked a lot of the charm that made its predecessors so popular. Most of the book was devoted to explaining in fuller detail past events and finishing off the storyline, which had quite a ways to go after the sixth book.

Overall, I’d say it was one of the less enjoyable Harry Potter books. However, despite this, I would still recommend recommend it to those who have liked the previous books because of its explanations and completion of the story. Of course, some of you may be tempted to read the spoilers (some of which are provided below), but you won’t get a fuller experience or explanation from anywhere but the book itself.

Safari 3 for Windows beta

Apple’s Safari 3 Public Beta download page proudly touts Safari as “The world’s best browser. Now on Windows, too.” I decided to proceed with the download to evaluate whether or not Safari could really be called the world’s best browser.

Some Background

Safari is the name of the default web browser in Apple’s Mac OS X operating system in much the same way that Internet Explorer is the default browser on Windows. During Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in June, Steve Jobs announced that the version of Safari to be released with OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Safari 3, would also be released with Windows, adding it to the list of alternative browsers for Windows, which is currently topped by Mozilla Firefox with Opera.

Browser appearance

Safari for Windows looks very much like the Mac version of Safari, identical save for the minimize, maximize, and close buttons looking like they do in iTunes and having the drop-down menus within the window. It also uses the matte gray that is found in QuickTime and iTunes for Windows as opposed to the brushed metal look of Safari 2, but this is the same in Safari 3 for Mac and for pretty much the whole of Leopard.

In my opinion, Apple’s use of it’s own operating system’s look in it’s Windows applications is a little, well, ugly. It looks fine in OS X, but OS X’s other visual elements use the same system.

Beyond matching the Mac OS gray, it also has the blue rounded scrollbars found in OS X and the pill-shaped buttons within the browser window that are found in OS X. As well, some of the dialogues and alerts us OS X animations for appearing and disappearing. It really does match Safari in OS X as much as possible without losing functionality in Windows.