google wave

5 ANSWERS

1. Guest8232
   

   Google Wave is a new communication service previewed today at Google I/O. "A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more."
   
   The service seems to combine Gmail and Google Docs into an interesting free-form workspace that could be used to write documents collaboratively, plan events, play games or discuss a recent news.
   
   Google Wave has been designed by the founders of Where 2 Tech, a start-up acquired by Google to create a cutting-edge mapping service, which later became Google Maps.
   
   "Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps. As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point; I was immediately sold," explains Lars Rasmussen.
   
   "In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content -- it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave to see how it evolved."
   
   You can see some screenshots of the service and find some details about the API that could be used to extend the service and the Wave protocol that allows anyone to run a "wave" server. Google promises that Google Wave will be available later this year.
   
   see it in action at http://wave.google.com/

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2. Guest1300
   

   Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.
   
   Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:
   
       - Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.
   
       - Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.
   
       - Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook (Facebook reviews) application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.
   
       - Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.
   
       - Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.
   
       - Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.
   
       - Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.
   
       - Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.
   
   While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited.
   
   Google Wave was the brainchild of a team based out of Sydney, Australia. The core team members are two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon, all of whom were involved in Google Maps (Google Maps reviews) previously. Google Wave was announced today at Google’s I/O Developer conference, although the product will not be available to the public for several months.

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3. Guest5540
   

   Google Wave actually has its own lingo - yes, you have to learn a few definitions if you’re going to really understand this new communication platform. Having knowledge of these terms will help you understand more about Google’s newest project.
   
       - Wave: A wave, specifically, refers to a specific threaded conversation. It can include just one person, or it can include a group of users or even robots (explained below). The best comparison I can make is that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone. Anything you’ve ever discussed in a single chat or conversation is a wave.
   
       - Wavelet: A wavelet is also a threaded conversation, but only a subset of a larger conversation (or a wave). It’s like a single IM conversation - a small part of a larger conversation and a larger history. Wavelets, though, can be created and managed separately from a wave.
   
       - Blip (BLIP reviews): Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single, individual message. It’s like a single line of an IM conversation. Blips can have other blips attached to them, called children. In addition, blips can either be published or unpublished (once again, it’s sort of like typing out an IM message but not yet sending it).
   
       - Document: A document actually refers to the content within a blip. This seems to refer to the actual characters, words, and files associated with a blip.
   
       - Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works within a wave. So these are the apps you can play with while using Wave. There are two main types of extenisons: Gadgets and Robots
   
       - Gadgets: A gadget is an application users can participate with, many of which are built on Google’s OpenSocial platform. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.
   
       - Robots: Robots are an automated participant within a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. They can provide information from outside sources (i.e. Twitter (Twitter reviews)) or they can check content within a wave and perform actions based on them (i.e. provide you a stock quote if a stock name is mentioned).
   
       - Embeded Wave: An embeded wave is a way to take a Google Wave and the conversation within it and place it on your website. Users could use this as a chatroom, as a way to contact you, or for something more.

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4. Guest9647
   

   A Wave Gadget is one of two types of Google Wave extensions. Gadgets are fully-functional applications. According to Google, gadgets are primarily for changing the look and feel of waves, although this seems to only scratch the surface of the potential of a wave gadget.
   
   First: almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget can run within Google Wave. That means thousands of applications that have been already created will work in Google Wave. Second: a gadget built within Google Wave can take advantage of live interaction with multiple users. This means something like a live online game with active participation from all users. In that way, it has similarities to Facebook or MySpace (MySpace reviews) applications, which take advantage of your friend network to make games, quizzes, and applications more meaningufl and useful.
   
   Gadgets are specific to individual waves, rather than to specific users. Thus, it’s not like having a Facebook app on your profile - the gadget belongs to everyone within the wave. They also do not have titles, to better integrate with the actual conversation. Some of the gadgets already built include a Sudoku gadget, Bidder (which turns your wave into an auction), and Maps (which allows for collaboration on a Google Map).

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5. Guest3891
   

   Google Wave is three things: a tool, a platform and a protocol. The architecture has at its heart the Operational Transformation (OT), a theoretical framework meant to support concurrency control.
   
   First of all, a definition is needed. Google Wave is:
   
       a new communication and collaboration platform based on hosted XML documents (called waves) supporting concurrent modifications and low-latency updates.
   
   The Tool
   
   Google Wave is an email program + instant messenger + collaborative document sharing & editing tool. It is using JavaScript and HTML5 on the client side running in browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, including mobile platforms (iPhone, Android), and Java + Python on the server side, but the server side can be implemented with anything a customer wants. The tool was built with GWT and uses Google Gears to handle drag and drop which is not yet included in HTML 5. The tool needs a dedicated server to handle concurrent communications which is needed especially for large teams. The server can be outside in the cloud or inside in a private enterprise or, simply, in someone’s home.
   
   Google Wave was demoed during Google I/O last week.
   
   The Platform
   
   Google Wave comes with a public API and the company promises to open source the entire platform before the product goes live. As a platform, Wave allows developers to modify the base code and extend it with gadgets and robots. Gadgets are small programs running inside of a wave, while robots are “automated wave participants.” Wave can also be embedded in other mediums like blogs.
   
   The Protocol
   
       Data Model
   
   The main elements of Google Wave’s data model are:
   
       Wave - Each wave has a globally unique wave ID and consists of a set of wavelets.
   
       Wavelet - A wavelet has an ID that is unique within its containing wave and is composed of a participant list and a set of documents. The wavelet is the entity to which Concurrency Control / Operational Transformations apply.
   
       Participant - A participant is identified by a wave address, which is a text string in the same format as an email address (local-part@domain). A participant may be a user, a group or a robot. Each participant may occur at most once in the participant list.
   
       Document - A document has an ID that is unique within its containing wavelet and is composed of an XML document and a set of "stand-off" annotations. Stand-off annotations are pointers into the XML document and are independent of the XML document structure. They are used to represent text formatting, spelling suggestions and hyper-links. Documents form a tree within the wavelet.
   
       Wave View - A wave view is the subset of wavelets in a wave that a particular user has access to. A user gains access to a wavelet either by being a participant on the wavelet or by being a member of a group that is a participant (groups may be nested).
   
   Operational Transformation
   
   This is the crucial part of Wave’s technology. Google Wave makes extensive use of Operational Transformations (OT) which are executed on the server. When an user edits a collaborative document opened by several users, the client program provides an Optimistic UI by immediately displaying what he/she types but it also sends the editing operation to the server to be ratified hoping that it will be accepted by the server. The client waits for the server to evaluate the operation and will cache any other operations until the server replies. After the server replies, all cached operations are sent from client to server in bulk. The server, considering operations received from other clients, will transform the operation accordingly and will inform all clients about the transformation, and the clients will update their UI accordingly. Operations are sent to the server and propagated to each client on a character by character basis, unless it is a bulk operation. The server is the keeper of the document and its version is considered the “correct” version. In the end, each client will be updated with the final version received from the server, which is the result of possibly many operational transformations. There are recovery means provided for communication failure or server/client crash. All XML documents exchanged between the client and the server carry a checksum for rapid identification of miscommunications.
   Client-Server Protocol
   
   Operations. Wavelets, the basic component of a wave, go through a series of changes called operational transformations. These changes need to be propagated and applied to each client otherwise a client gets out of sync.
   
   Operation Sequencing. All operations applied to wavelets are sent in strict order. An operation is not sent until the server has responded to the previous one. The server orders the operations based on a version number. Each client needs to apply the operations respecting the proper order.
   
   Opening a wavelet. To start communicating on a wavelet, a client sends an Open Request containing the Wave ID and the Wavelet ID to the server. The server responds with a snapshot - the serialized state of the wavelet - or a history hash of the corresponding version.
   
   Server-client Communication. The server sends to the client one of the following: a delta (a sequence of one or more operations), a version number or a history hash.
   
   Client-server Communication. The client sends: a delta or a version number.
   
   Recovery. When the communication fails, the clients starts by reopening the servlet by sending a history of hashes previously received from the server.
   Federation
   
   The Google Wave Federation Protocol allows multiple entities (wave providers) to share waves with each other. A wave provider can be a server running in someone’s home providing waves for a single user or all family members, or a corporation, or an ISP, Google being just another wave provider.

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