eWeek on Google Wave, What a Lark

David retweeted about this online slidedeck from Novell.

10 Persistent Messaging Problems that Google Wave Solves by Clint Boulton

You can see it here.

I appreciate that Novell is working on their Wave Server/services and it's an intriguing idea, but what does that say about Groupwise's future?

But I want to focus on some points in the slides, which were simplistic and in one case just blatant FUD.

Slide 1(Screen2) says Wave is free and open source. Great, just how long will Google support your file storage junkies for free? Last I checked there was no impediment to using Lotus products with other open source pieces. True the core Notes & Domino is IBM owned and not "free" but then it is more open to integration than Outlook and Exchange. You can even use Wave from your Notes client, or so I have been told, probably a sidebar app.

Slide 4 (screen5)Wave gives the same view to everyone, which to me is difficult to figure out the last development. But maybe I am just linear. I prefer a standardized way to see my information so every time I go there I don't need to relearn how to find information.

Slide 6 (screen7) FUD alert. 10MB limits exist because it's a default standard, which most admins never change and most companies never know they could change. Google has no such limits, per se. Just wait and see, corporates will limit it, when they start paying for the usage. Oh and tell your admins to raise the attachment limit or better yet use a Lotus Quickr server running DAOS on Domino to reduce the disk space used.

Slide 7 (screen8) a reminder that Outlook doesn't reply with attachments which drives people crazy, and why Notes clients have the options to send email with or without attachments. Wave will keep the attachments in place. Right, like Quickr does or Wiki's to a lesser extent.

They also discuss clean threading and error correcting data. So no one else has any live documents? IBM and Microsoft would argue differently. Yes past items might be stuck in a thread, but if you are using a modern platform, aside from your email to work in a collaborative manner, editing is not only available but open/secured as well to a much greater degree.

I liked Wave when I saw it but now that I have had time to play with it, I am not happy with how it works, for me, for business. Business needs a logic, sometimes bad logic, but needs logic for others to be able to work, repeat, reuse and provide training. If one has to jump around everywhere in a thread to find what could be easily defined or found using existing tools, this has a way to go to be ready for the business world.

Google Wave 1st Impressions

As some know I had some Google Wave invitations to give out, if they want to seed it, 8 is not enough.

I gave them ALL out within seconds on Twitter.

So why is everyone going crazy for it? Initially it was hard to tell because it did nothing.
Contacts didn't work properly so you could only talk to yourself. Sort of like when you joined Twitter then stopped using it.

Now after a few days, they got Contacts working and my 4,000 names I dumped in finally are showing people. Some discussion with Luis Suarez and we both got to see some interesting pieces.

First if you saw the original video you know this, is synchronous dialog/chat. Meaning for the non-technical crowd, as I write something, you can see it and vice versa. A nice touch, but I would like it NOT to work this way in business as sometimes you don't want the other party to read your 1st impression. I imagine this is amusing on the dating circuit.

Second, the browser window(I use FF) shows how many "waves" you have answers/comments on in the tab for the window so if you leave a window open on Wave all day you can easily see if you have new updates.

The Down side?
First, without an offline mode, not sure how helpful this is. Granted on the US most people are online everywhere but outside the US this is not always the case, thus using it for business could be a problem. So I can leave a message but can't get it? Probably some way to trigger an email notification but this would be useful.

Second, Where is everyone else? What else are they talking about? How does one find other waves to join in? Searching shows nothing. So unless I am invited or email someone there is nothing to do evidently. Not very enticing in this social world now is it?

Probably some more things will come to me and I will edit this post accordingly.

If you want me on Wave, try me at kbmsg2 at googlewave.com

2 emails of importance this morning

1)I have been accepted to the Google Wave Sandbox. Don't remember what date I asked to be part of it but nice to know they let me in. Now someone needs to teach me how to program :-).

2) Elguji announced their next baby to be born, IQJam which will go into production when Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 is released, or sooner perhaps.

Built specifically for IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.1 using XPages.
An Innovative Collaborative Question and Answer Community for the Enterprise

I think this may be where I start posting my technical blog entries in the future so stay tuned to see how that plays out.

Google Wave and Today's IBM DP Call

I know we didn't compare the 2, but I kept thinking has anyone watched the video inside of IBM yet? Of course they have, they'd be crazy not to.

Wave is impressive. How it works and what the User Experience is like is nice. The UI, not so great, very "Google bland" but if that works for you, why change it.

Would love to know what the back end looks like, but so does everyone else want to understand Google's server armies. Also how do you manage it, administrate it, all without a proper Directory?

Some of what we discussed on the DP call will be impressive to everyone when it comes out. And the products are becoming more like what every day users expect to see.

The problem which I am pondering is, and this came out in the DP call, how to convince companies that a "fixed" or "set" desktop model is not practical anymore.

Someone stated companies do not want yet another install to add to their desktops. I think they don't realize that it's not just one more install, it's a bunch of them and they are called updates and come out almost daily if you look at every product your company uses.

Unless you update your fixed desktop model monthly, which for 95% of all companies is beyond their imagination although well within their capabilities, your company probably has limited end users capabilities in ways which probably cost your business time, money and resources every minmute of every day.

This must stop.

I respect you have ancient systems that will break, or modern ones which were hard coded to IE6 or Java 1.4.2.8a-1 or some other hangup...and of course money issues. The problem from everyone so far has been a products fault, not theirs. No one ever says we need to spend the money to rewrite it. It's like brakes on your car, waiting until they don't stop your car is too late.

Will Facebook harm your network? Perhaps but as I found out today, so can a local non-profit organization website that got hacked.

Google Wave might be cool and new but will it make it into corporate environments? Unknown.

Will it get blocked? Perhaps.

Should you as an IT person be scared of it? No more than anything else out there.

Yet.