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.

No, it’s not

The most popular technology story on news.com.au is linked as Is Windows 7 the end of the mouse?  This is the first paragraph:

MICROSOFT has developed a touchscreen operating system that could signal the end of the computer mouse.

Seriously, this is just bad reporting.  While Windows 7 does include support for multi-touch capabilities, touch-screens remain more expensive than a standard mouse and have other trade-offs such as accuracy and arm fatigue.  Just because a new feature seems cool or futuristic does not mean that the interface it replaces with disappear.

Microsoft should have used BitTorrent to distribute the Windows 7 Beta

Today, Microsoft officially released the first beta version of Windows 7, the successor to Vista, which has gotten largely positive reviews so far and personally, I think that the features look promising.

However, they did make a mistake today when they decided to have a limited release direct download from their website, which brought down their servers.  Now, Microsoft is a big company with vast resources, but corralling a rush of downloads to a particular timeframe for a sizable 2.4 GB download was apparently too much for even their servers.

Now, I would suggest that they use BitTorrent, as that would move some of the bandwidth load to those downloading the software.  I realize that as a proprietary software company, Microsoft has relied on income mechanisms that BitTorrent has undermined, but if Microsoft wants to remain a relevant player on the Internet, it should acquaint itself with tools that competitors such as Ubuntu have found.

If the improvements reported in Windows 7 are any indication, Microsoft has been developing a culture of introspection that has helped it correct some of the mistakes made with Vista which has taxed it’s brand image.  It think it’s time that Microsoft applies that same culture to its methods of distribution.

Firefox Add-on Compatibility Center

The Mozilla Corporation has Firefox 3.1 in beta 2 and will release beta 3 later this month, so I thought it would be a good time to point out the Add-on Compatibility Center that Mozilla created last year.  It claims to list add-ons that constitute 95% of add-on usage among Firefox users.

If the color is green, the add-on is up-to-date, teal represents add-ons that are compatible with out-of-date Firefox 3.1 betas, yellow represents those compatible with alphas, and gray represents those that have not been made compatible with Firefox 3.1 at any stage of development.

So, if you want to switch to 3.1 right when it comes out, be sure to check this list if you have any extensions that you can’t live without.

Huh. Maybe Microsoft is actually pursuing web standards

via InsideMicrosoft

According to the IEBlog, the current build of IE8 passes the Acid2 Test “in standards mode”.  I’m not exactly sure what standards mode is supposed to be, but the fact that the browser can pass Acid2 suggests that Microsoft has put in some quality time to web standards adherence in the next version of their oh so popular web browser, Internet Explorer.

This will make it the last major browser to do so, as builds for Firefox 3, the second Beta being released today, reached that milestone in April.  The two next most popular browsers, Safari and Opera, each passed over a year ago (over two years ago for Safari) in their public releases.

I’m no fan of Internet Explorer’s market dominance…

…but this is not the way to go.

Opera is apparently complaining to the European Commission that Microsoft is stifling competition by bundling Internet Explorer with their operating system.  While it is true that this is the main reason that Internet Explorer maintains its majority market share, it seems frivolous to me to force them to either separate the browser from the operating system, when having a browser is a key feature of any operating system package nowadays.

Certainly, Opera is not suing Apple for bundling Safari with their operating system or the various Linux distributions for bundling whatever browser they choose to bundle with their distribution.  The fact is that software is habitually bundled and forcing Microsoft to un-bundle their software without imposing the same restrictions upon competitors seems like an abuse of anti-trust law.

Now, there is one area where Opera has a real point:

Firefox Campus Edition

The Mozilla Corporation has decided this year to put out something called Firefox Campus Edition.  What is Firefox Campus Edition?  It’s simply the Firefox browser with three extensions already installed:  FoxyTunes, Zotero, and StumbleUpon.

So, to me, this seems like just another silly promotional.  That’s not to say that it hasn’t been useful.  Before this was announced, I did not know about the newest of those three extensions, Zotero, which is also the most useful for college students.  It’s a research aid, which allows you to take snapshots of websites and for pages it recognizes as articles, it will note relevant citation information which can then be used to generate citations in a given style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

The other two extensions are ones that I don’t use.  Foxytunes may be nice if you tend to use the mouse a lot, but I am a laptop user, where using the keyboard is usually more convenient than using a touchpad and a mouse is a hindrance to mobility.  I have not yet tried StumbleUpon, but from its description, it sounds like it would be a procrastination aid for me:

Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

So, in the end, I think this is mainly intended to get a more featured version of the browser out to college students that don’t know about Firefox’s biggest advantage, which is its extensibility.  Without extensions, there is little difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer or Safari, but with the added power of extensions, it gives a far superior browsing experience in my view.

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.

Google Pack adds StarOffice

via Google Operating System

Here’s a break from news on the 2008 election.  On Friday, Google Pack added StarOffice as one of the bundled programs it offered.  StarOffice is an office suite produced by Sun Microsystems that competes with the more popular Microsoft Office.  This is an interesting move as it allows the free download of the otherwise $70 office suite

First some background information.  Sun and Google signed a distribution pact in late 2005 where Google bought some servers from Sun and Sun agreed to promote the Google Toolbar.  When Google released the Google Pack software bundle (of which users could choose to include or exclude any of the applications offered) during the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, there was speculation that they might offer OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite that performs the vast majority of the fuctions of StarOffice, which has some added proprietary elements such as new fonts, clip art, and Microsoft Office migration.

This new offering is the first item to be offered through Google Pack that usually has a price.  It has offered trial applications, such as the Norton Antivirus 2006 software it included, or basic versions of services, such as the Trillian chat client it first offered or the PC Tools Spyware Doctor it offers now, but never did it offer anything that normally costs money to acquire in the first place.

So, if you think it sounds appealing, you can download it as part of the Google Pack.  The only thing you need to install besides it is the Google Updater, which is the installer.  After you have installed it, you can uninstall the Google Updater.  Of course, if you don’t particularly care about a few extra fonts, clip art, or Microsoft Office migration, and if you want a completely open source application, you can get most of the function of StarOffice in OpenOffice.org.