I have been fairly silent on this site for quite a while, every since I came back from Google I/O 10 actually. To say I was disappointed with the announcements surrounding Google Wave at the I/O would be a profound understatement. I didn’t want to come back right away and start hammering on Google for how, I feel, they have dropped the ball on what could be such a valuable business tool. Instead, I wanted to take some time and think about the whole problem.

To be fair, the developer team should not be the ones that are the whipping boy here. But, like the actors and actresses that fight for paparazzi time in the beginning….you can’t complain when that comes back full circle. This is, of course, in my mind the first problem that I have with Google Wave…why are the developers out in front of this! Google should have a clear business plan for Google Wave and have Management and Public Relations folks out explaining how they envision Google Wave being adopted.

But, let me take a step back. Google Wave was, to me, a great leap in bringing Web 2.0 to the business community. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is the biggest advance for business computing since Virtualization. Moreover, Virtualization is a great example of a business model Google Wave should be trying to follow. I have been harping for a long time here about how Google Wave is best suited for small to medium workgroups that have to collaborate on a specific work-flow…see my post on Gravity as an example of what I mean. However, the argument that I hear most often to counter that thought is that the business community is usually the last to adopt new technology. Ok…., how then do you explain Virtualization. It was adopted by business early and almost universally. Now, of course, businesses are really pushing the limits of what they can do with Virtualization, including the military (which is always the last to adopt new IT tech)….see Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) as an example of what I mean. My point being, that when a product is identified as being a business multiplier and marketed properly to the business community they are indeed first adopters.

Unfortunately for Google Wave, the Google Development Team does not seem to embrace a business vision for Google Wave. They continue to think of it as a social tool for the cloud. I strongly, strongly disagree that it has any real value in that realm. I would be focusing all my efforts on building an appliance that businesses can purchase and connect to their private servers. You build specific extensions that support their specific workflows and mass market the savings that will be realized by business when they adopt. You only have to take a quick visit to any of the Virtualization companies websites to see the myriad of offerings they have to support businesses that want to adopt virtualization….everything from product, certification, consultants, etc. This is the model that will make Google Wave successful. But it is not a model that seems to be of any interest to Google.

Why is that you may ask. Well, I think, that Google’s real business model is all about the ads. Everything else that they do is only about how to support the ad end of the business. Thus, they want you to be in the cloud all the time, they want to you to be going to webpage after webpage and viewing more and more ads. They have no interest in building or marketing something that takes you farther away from their ads. So, I doubt very much that we will see a Google Wave appliance any time soon. So…, rather than aggressively market Google Wave to business and talking about how a Wave appliance would benefit business they flounder around trying to make a case for real-time comments/blogging, etc. They need to get serious and think of this technology as a serious business multiplier. Make the case that any business that does not have Wave is just losing money and not being efficient.

There is a real business model here for somebody to build a Wave appliance and market it. I think that Microsoft will probably pick up on this in their next round of development for Office 2012 and beyond. Microsoft understands the enterprise community and is never one to let somebody else’s good idea go to waste.

I am confident that we will eventually see real-time collaboration at the office with business using their own private servers. Unfortunately for Google, it does seem that they will not be the company that brings that to market. Again, in my mind, it is the only real logical mass use case for Google Wave. Everything else is just fluff and not very serious or useful.

Time will tell if I am right or wrong. In the mean time, I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject, so please leave a comment below.

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A while back in January I wrote a post titled Top 10 Uses for Wave…Right Now! In that post my number one use was for coding, here was what I wrote back then:

Coding. This is my number one use case for Google Wave right now. You have got to try it. You do not need to be ocean’s apart, in fact…being in the same room right next to each other works best. Try it…you will agree with me that this is the number one…by far…best use case of Google Wave right now! Also, there are some pretty good extensions out there you might want to try. Take at look at the extension list if you want to try one or two.

Well…., now there is a really, really great extension out there…brought to you by the folks at wave-vs.net…..check it out:

I can’t tell you how happy I was to find this site. Funny enough it just showed up on my site here on Friday as a Google Ad. I clicked on it and was amazed. I find it very interesting that Google is not extoiling all about these guys on their own blogs. Also, I found it funny that the story of the day on Friday was all about how cool it would be to imbed a Wave as an iFrame! Are you kidding me! There was also some other lame post going around about live blogging with Wave that made a lot of noise on Twitter. Useless! Stupid! I really am getting very disheartened with how this being marketed and how that marketing is seemingly embraced by Google. Really missing the big boat guys!

Regardless…I definitely digress! wave-vs.net is a great leap in Google Wave extensions. These guys have taken the one thing that this technology is really, really useful for…right now…and made a excellent product that they can take to market. Yes, take to market. wave-vs.net is not free. In fact, price list ranges for $65 to $1100 EUR depending on your package. That, in my business mind, is the best news to hit Google Wave since Google I/O 09….somebody is going to make profit of this product and develop serious extensions that are very useful and will be a game-changer for those that will use it for development.

For that alone I am naming the wave-vs.net folks as our April Developer Spotlight. Congratulations guys (and girls) you have truly made a great product that will be heartly embraced by any developers who give it a try. Here is a little bit more about Wave-vs.net that I took from there website:

wave-vs.net is a Plugin to enable Pair Programming built-in Support on Core Editors and Designers in Visual Studio.Net 2008 and 2010.

Using wave-vs.net you can share Project Items and Develop together in Real-Time.

wave-vs.net Current version supports Remote Pairing for main Visual Studio Code Editors and Designers, we continue working to extend wave-vs.net capabilities.

If you are interested to know what Project Items/File Formats are enabled for Remote Pair Programming using wave-vs.net take a look on Visual Studio Integration information.

wave-vs.net does not only implements Pair Programming features. To make Pair Programming experience in Visual Studio.Net

• Federation Server Architecture for Geographycally Dispersed Setup
• Integrated Chat Client with Conference Rooms
• Wave Enabled – Pair Programming – Collaborative Development
• Major Source Control Systems Integration
• Completely Integrated in Visual Studio.Net

Do you want to see a Complete summary Feature List? go to Full Feature List.

For those of you that can’t wait to rush over to wave-vs.net and use this, please come on back and leave a comment regarding your experience with the extension. Also, feel free to leave a comment on my earlier rant if you wish.

As a disclaimer I am in no way getting any type of financial commission or royalty from this product (other then it randomly showing up as a Google Ad). I stand to gain nothing whatsoever from the developers. I am just very keen on what they are offering as I see it as truly making Google Wave better for all.

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The other day my friends over at Itensil contacted me and said they were interested in recruiting folks that would be interested in previewing an evaluation of their collaborative workflow product. I mentioned that my readers are the exact audience they are trying to reach with this product and I would be happy to post an article that called my readers to action to help out a company that is doing what I have been screaming for so very long here at The Shiny Wave – make a business workflow collaboration gadget! Which, in my mind, is the true power and promise of Wave.

So,….a little bit about the Itensil:

Itensil has developed a Wave gadget to deliver its SaaS team workflow product and is recruiting qualified business knowledge work teams for a preview evaluation.

The Collaboration Enabler includes simple, ready to use apps that guide Wave teams to:

• Develop ideas and make decisions faster and more accurately
• Create and implement action plans to achieve goals
• Capture and reuse successful team interactions and
• Bring new team members up to speed without slowing the group.

It also contains online workflow authoring and data management design tools to edit apps and create new ones.

See how it works in a 5-minute demo at www.itensil.com/demos

A limited number of free preview evaluation accounts are available to knowledge work teams that are familiar with Wave and looking for a better way to collaborate on loosely structured activities than email attachments; enjoy exploring new technologies; and willing to provide constructive feedback to the Itensil product team.

Itensil will provide online coaching and support, and special introductory pricing for evaluators who decide to adopt Collaboration Enabler. If this preview trial offer is of interest to you, please submit the form on the website (linked from the demo page) or contact Itensil by email at info@itensil.com.

Thus, if you are familiar with Google Wave (why would you be on this site if you’re not) and want to use it to do business collaboration….you are the ideal candidate and could start an evaluation immediately. Not only will you get a great product that will help you in your work, you will also be providing the team at Itensil with constructive feedback that will enhance the features of this great product.

For long time readers of this blog, this is exactly the type of product we have been waiting. An extension that truly unleashes the collaborative business power of Google Wave. The Itensil product really bring the power of web 2.0 to business. Again, if this preview trial offer is of interest to you, please submit the form on the website (linked from the demo page) or contact Itensil by email at info@itensil.com. Don’t forget to come back and leave a comment about your experience with Itensil!

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Have you heard about Squork yet? If you find Google Wave interesting, you will certainly by curious to what the folks at Squork are offering with their product. They describe it on their website as:

Squork is a hybrid business communications technology somewhere between email and instant messaging. It’s designed specifically for business people who need secure and live conversations, wherever they are.

It introduces a new dynamic in business communications, letting you instantly create collaborative workspaces to get a step closer to your customers, colleagues and partners.

The first generation of social networking tools are not conceived for the corporate world.

Businesses and their web workers can’t easily retain knowledge of conversation threads, shared content and presented data. A lack in conversational privacy can expose corporations to unacceptable risks, and then there’s always the question of intellectual property: who really owns your conversations, ideas, files and data?

Many businesses have been forced to ignore these risks so they can access the convenience and features of social networking.

Squork provides a better way for business workers to communicate, allowing you to:

• Engage individuals and groups in secure conversations
• Have multiple conversations at the same time
• Instantly create collaborative online communities and portals
• Keep up to date with your colleages and clients
• Access collaborative tools for web working

Squork compared to Email

• Squork messages cannot be intercepted
• Squork is a live conversation, not a message
• You can bring more people into a conversation at any time
• You can harness relationships by organizing business networks
• Squork is accessible through any device with a web-browse
• Conversation threads are retained in Squork’s archiving system
• Squork is instantly available – just setup an account
• Squork is FREE – No email server costs
• Squork offers improved document security

Squork compared to the Phone

• With Squork you know when contacts are available to engage in conversation
• Squork is less intrusive than phones – people are able to engage in conversation when it suits them
• Conversation content is retained in Squork’s archive architecture
• Squork offers integrated file sharing and diary management

Squork compared to VOIP

• Squork requires no installation
• Squork is far more secure than VOIP
• Squork allows you to keep a record of a conversation
• Squork is designed for business, and more secure
• Unlike many VOIP clients, Squork does not adversely impact your computer’s Port 80 traffic
• Squork does not permit other users to share your computer resources

They also have this video explaining their product:

I think Squork is worth keeping an eye on, which is why I have written this post. I plan to register once they have things up and ready. I have said many times, I am not a Google Wave fanboy. But, thus far it has the most potential for providing a great business collaboration experience. Moreover, it is open-source and that will make development and customization very easy. However, if the drop the ball companies with products like Squork and others are going to be more than ready to fill the void.

What are your thoughts about Squork? Does it fill a void Google Wave doesn’t do? Does it appeal to you? Please let us know your thoughts below.

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This will be my last post regarding all the different use cases of Google Wave. This is the last one because….there is a lot and if you are having trouble finding one…well, I just don’t know what to say anymore! There is, in my mind anyway, a non-ending myriad of use cases for how you can use Google Wave. But, if you are having a difficult time then this list titled The Awesome List for Google Wave 2.5 will definitely give you some ideas.

Here is how they describe the List:

Welcome!

There are so many different uses for Google Wave that the developers can’t think of all the ways to use it. Even you might be reading this wave without a clue as to how you can use Wave. So I decided to enlist all Wave users that want to share their discovered/brainstormed uses for Wave to help compile a list of uses and make it as big as possible! Awesome right? Now it’s time for the millions of Wave riders to help find new uses for this wonderful product! Let’s do this.

We are only looking for general ideas on this wave, if you want more detail in the use cases please see this wave: The Comprehensive Usage Guide to Google Wave.

They then give 76 documented uses for wave:

• Brainstorming Uses For Wave (This Wave)
• Email Replacement
• IM Replacement
• Live Forums
• Private Notes
• Role Playing Games (Text-Only or with Gadgets)
• Collaborative Book Writing (several authors writing different characters/sections in a novel/book)
• Collaborative Songwriting, Lyric Writing, Screenplays, (rhyme, thesaurus dictionary bot needed)
• Crowd-Sourced Language Proof Editing and Expert Fact Check for Fiction and Manuals
• Microblogging (Tweety and Regular Wave) (Rich microblogging as you can include files, rich formatting & have comments?)
• Blogging (With live comments and collaboration)
• Content/UI Aggregation (All your content and interfaces in one place)
• Live Meeting/Lecture Notes
• Customer Support/Relations (via Robot or live support), with collaborative FAQ as main content.
• Social Networking
• Bug Tracking
• Running and managing learning activities (Teachers)
• Auctions (listing and bidding maybe paying)
• Classifieds (listings and discussion)
• Personal Information Management (To Do Lists, Calendars, Contact Cards, etc)
• Robot Conversations
• Media Sharing (Photo galeries, YouTube, etc.)
• Live Private Or Public Wikis
• Collaborative Whiteboard
• Ticketing System (For Debuging And Tech Support)
• Coding/Pair Programming/Code Reviews (with ksyntaxy robot)
• Live Commenting Systems (for YouTube and such)
• Live Suggestion Boxes
• Flame Wars (Steph wasn’t excited about this one in the google i/o video)
• All forms of Debates
• Sports/Event Commentary
• Planning Events, Live Invitations/Meeting Requests
• Distance Learning/Meetings (Without the telepresence)
• Agenda Management
• Online Card Games like Poker (with a gadget)
• Session Discussions During Conventions – better than Tweets with hash tags
• Interactive glossary/encyclopedia
• School team projects (Writing report together, etc)
• Dynamic Newsletters (Could use Google Groups for this)
• Brainstorming
• Project planning/management
• Gaming logs for multiplayer and single player games (will need some sort of bot to post to a wave)
• Research Notes
• Board game implementations (will need dice bots, card bots and some way of representing the board)
• Wargame implementation (very similar to the one above, but further complicated by the fact that wargames would need more complex movement and line of sight implementations)
• On-the fly newsroom TELEPROMPTER (closed captioning) editing during live news broadcasts
• College/Graduate/Law School: Collaborative study group
• Last minute updates for emergency services
• Community Update Services (Non-Emergency)
• A way to discuss and create recipes
• A wave for designing GUIs (would need some sort of widget for fast prototyping)
• Artists interacting with their fans.
• Agencies introducing a product.
• Journalists constructing an article, while interacting with readers.
• Online Quiz games
• Collaborative graphic design (with client or partner)
• Spam (it’s going to happen…unfortunately)
• Collaborative analysis of chess games (archived games or real-time)
• Genealogy collaboration
• Tax Audit Collaboration
• Remote team management (business, managing employees, sales people)
• Online Town Squares to talk about current events
• Interactive Wish Lists (With Links and Pictures)
• Police manhunt
• Shopping/Grocery List
• Interactive Greeting Cards
• Education: real time feedback of student work from teacher or bot
• Travel Itinerary
• VOIP-based voice conferencing tied to a wave so you can talk real-time as you collaborate. Recording or adding audio to a wave is a different concept.
• Supervising PhD Thesis and dissertations
• Publishing and monitoring best prices
• Online press conferences
• Writing mathematics documents – requires native support for MathML and LaTeX-like dialects for inline/displayed equations and symbols [This is relatively simple to add on the server-side but would be a total game-changer for academic users. Also, requires a well thought out UI to allow code and WYSIWYG and/or handwriting of symbols]
• Lifestreaming (Special robots could be used for this)
• Intra-office memos (Vacation Requests,etc)
• Data collection for sociology and psychology using quantitative and qualitative research methods (example: Q methodology)
• Handling exceptions to structured business processes (for example Purchase to pay)
• Identifying and following up actions from balanced scoredcards/performance management solutions

This list is by no means all that there is. As I stated above I think that there is really an un-ending myriad of use cases. Thus, when I see someone Twitter that they can’t find any use for Google Wave I get this mental picture in my mind of this person that you do not want me to share.

Got an interesting use case you want to share? Are you already using Google Wave with one of the use cases above? Share your thoughts below, we love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

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I have spoken about Novell Pulse and IBM’s Project Vulcan in recent posts. I have not mentioned, however, the offering from SAP called Constellation.

The idea from SAP is to have a cloud based tool called 12Sprints that will allow users to collaborate in real time. They describe the product as:

A VIRTUAL WAR ROOM

It’s not just a place where things get discussed. It’s where things get done.
Invite the right people from inside and outside your company. Bring in the pertinent data. And choose the most informed course of action with the help of pre-defined, interactive decision-making tools. Secure, hosted, real-time, collaborative decision-making. Everything you need to get everyone on the same page — finally under one roof.

Here is a video of 12Sprints:

If you would like to sign up to beta test 12Sprints you can by going to the Beta Registration Page. They provide the following instructions:

Fill out the following form to register to participate in the free SAP codename 12sprints Beta program. After registering with your email address below, we will be in contact with you shortly.

As a Beta tester, we might ask you to help us make the product better. We hope you can:

- Log onto a hosted version of the application and test out the system
- Receive occasional announcements emails
- Provide feedback and answer occasional surveys on how the application is working for you
- Participate in occasional web conferences and online discussion groups

Benefits of being a Beta tester:

- Use the platform for free during the Beta
- Help drive the development and design process

SAP has also indicated that they will be offering this product as an applicance that can be set-up and reside locally to allow for an INTRANET cloud vice an INTERNET cloud….thus, keeping your data more secure and contained within your INTRANET.

So, by my count that makes three (big-time) competitors to that we have spoken about here on this site. At least in the enterprise domain, and we haven’t even mentioned PBWorks or MindTouch (oops…guess we just did). This space is starting to get pretty busy and crowded. It is going to be very interesting to see how it all shakes out over the next year.

In the mean time, I will keep signing up to test drive these Betas as I am really just concerned is seeing this technology advance as far and as fast as possible.

What do you think of Constellation and 12Sprints? Have you signed up to be a Beta tester?

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Last week at Lotosphere 2010, IBM announced Project Vulcan which Ed Brill, IBM chief of product management for Lotus software, describes as:

IBM Project Vulcan is not a brand-new effort.  It builds on the existing capabilities, and represents the future versions of, the IBM Lotus product portfolio — including Notes.  One of its key themes is social analytics and business analytics combined and applied to industry-specific scenarios — making collaboration more focused and relevant.  The vision of Project Vulcan intends to deliver collaboration across company boundaries; make it easy to deploy the technology; and include developer-friendly services and APIs.

Moreover, Mr. Brill says that:

Project Vulcan is the blueprint for where Lotus Notes is going.  We’ll continue to support your existing Notes apps — we have for 20 years, it only makes sense to continue — but we’ll add these loosely-coupled services to bring in more value, attention, and focus.  Project Vulcan gives us a structure for innovation, for delivering on that next leap forward in collaboration and productivity.

During their mini-keynote address, Ed Brill, director of product management for Lotus Software, and Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of messaging and collaboration, said the Notes entry point to Vulcan comes in 2011 after the 8.5.2 release.

So we now have a new player on the scene offering a collection of business collaboration tools. Moreover, IBM is taking a page from Google and offering the ability for developers to sign up at the LotusLive Labs website. Project Vulcan is scheduled to be available in beta on the LotusLive Labs in the second half of 2010. I have already signed up and am really looking forward to getting my “invite”. Obviously, IBM is hoping that the LotusLive Labs preview of Project Vulcan will offer some of the similar hype that Google Wave experienced. Moreover, some valuable user feedback.

Similar to what we wrote about Novell Pulse it becomes clear that Google must announce their business solution soon. Even if it just as IBM has done – Saying this is the direction we are developing toward. If they do not, they are risking that others that already have a larger footprint in the business area then they do will start to define that space before (and for) them. Thus, folks will be getting excited about what is to come from them and not about where Google is going with Google Wave.

I think  Novell Pulse and Project Vulcan is exciting and I can hardly wait to see those products and play with them. But, I would love hear from Google about their vision of how they see Google Wave, Google Voice and Google Apps all fitting together in the future…and when they think that future will be.

What do you think about this announcement from IBM? Will you be signing up in the LotusLive Labs and be giving Project Vulcan a try? Leave your thoughts below.

photos by Fabio Pignatti

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I find it very interesting how the big three in the IT industry currently conduct their business. Well, that is not interesting, but the complete difference in the ways they conduct their business and develop products is very interesting. All have their merits, as all three of these companies are wildly successful. Of course, I’m talking about Google, Apple and Microsoft. Let’s take a more in-depth look at how they seem to develop and roll-out their product lines.

Microsoft

Microsoft is the business king. Their enterprise suite of products are crazy popular and pretty much dominate that market space. Their most successful products would be MS Office, SharePoint, Server, Exchange and System Center Suite (not to mention SQL server, VB Suite, etc). Yet, for all the reasons I like Microsoft and those products just mentioned,the reason those products are successful is precisely the reason I am not a fan of the Windows OS (which by the way, causes problems in the enterprise area for MS if the OS problems tarnish the enterprise line).

In the enterprise line MS constantly is working with businesses on how to improve this product line, what other features do you want, what other use cases does this line need to support, etc, etc. It works very well. You get a product that can pretty much do what it is you need it to do. There is a whole administrative tail that comes with these products from certification courses, to…MS sponsored working groups in  your area, to…MS experts and business consultants that will help you architect how to use those products optimally. This product line is all about feedback, lessons learned and big service releases or product releases that address both that feedback and those lessons learned. Very, very much akin to a normal business model. Very comfortable model to business as it speaks about doing things to their products in the same way as business itself works.

However, applying that same model to the OS makes for a very bloated product. MS really needs to get back to basis with this product (I think  may be  a step in that direction) so that terrible frustration folks have with the OS does not tarnish the business line. But, this is their model, they are proud of it, it is the central theme of the Win 7 advertising campaign. Everybody gets a say and we listen to everybody and then…we build a product that will do everything.

Apple

You want to talk about opposites! Apple, probably does user research (of that I have no doubt), but if anybody at Apple ever talked about it they would surely be fired that day. Apple tells you what you need and then they deliver it. You wish the  could send meeting requests…buy something else, we don’t do that.

What they do, however, is give a product that does the things it does very well (I think that sentence makes sense). It will look cool, it will function as advertised and it will be integrated with the other core Apple products. You will not know about this product (outside of the rumours) until release. You get what you get. They tell you what it does and the reason it does it that way.

This model is clearly not designed to entice the enterprise customer. This is all about the personal consumer. Apple is about product. Making sure you have the current and the next hot product. Once you don’t…you fall off the radar and your profits also fall with it. When you have so much invested in the success of that next product you have make sure you have tight integration with your other products. If everything you makes works great together, why wouldn’t I buy everything you make.

Apple hit a home run with the iPod and then again with the iPhone. The tight integration of those products with the Mac line helped grow those products. The growth of the Mac line grew the software line, etc, etc. We will see another test of this model at the end of the month when the, much rumoured, Tablet computer (or whatever) is launched. I for the life of me cannot think of a good use case to justify buying this product. But Apple has apparently come up with one. They have built a product that will solve a problem I am not aware I have yet, they will tell me how their product solves it and then integrate that product in with their other lines. Will I buy what is presented to me…we’ll see.

They do this very well. They tell you what you need, they build it their way, it does what they say it can do and not do, they make it cool and make sure it works with all their other stuff. Your feedback….you get to make that at the checkout, that’s it.

Google

Google, which is primarily a web-based product line tends to lean toward fast roll-out of products that still need development. The product is open-source and encourages everybody to join in, try it and develop it further with extensions and apps that support and make that product better. They provide a whole bunch of open-source code to help everyone get started. Thus, they have another product to deliver their real business – search engine and ads.

This model has worked great in the past with Gmail, Google Maps and to some extent Google Apps. However, the idea that this works good for a product like  is yet to be seen. They took a little bit of the Apple model. They went far, far away to a secret island and designed the product without letting anyone find out about it and had a big huge launch. Then they took the MS approach and asked everybody to think of what they wanted improved and what new functionality they would like to see.

I am not sure if this will be successful.  is both a business and a personal tool…so, maybe taking what works from both MS and Apple is a good idea. I just have a real feeling that Wave (in my mind) is more of a business tool and, thus, really needs to be tight before roll-out and seriously solve a specific problem that business has. That big problem (by the way) is the easy one, real-time collaborative workflows! But, because it is (or certainly can be) a serious business tool they need a lot of the admin tail that supports business process (certification, architectural experts or consultants, appliance, etc) needs to be available. Moreover, in the same way that MS OS can tarnish the enterprise line so too can bad press and reviews about the preview of Google Wave hurt any enterprise aspirations.

On the personal side of the house they need to have more integration with their other products. Not available yet, hopefully soon. Similar to the way Apple makes all their products work well together,  needs to also work well with all their other products: Gmail (contacts & groups, Android, Apps, Voice, Blogger, YouTube, etc. That is a must for the consumer side and what will make it successful. The first thing out of everyone’s mouth with Google Wave is….”Does it work with(insert your favourite Google product).”

The come on over, try it and help build it has been extremely successful for Google and has gotten a lot of folks very, very excited about their products (read – this blog ). However, this product (as they have realized I think by the way they are trying to merge the best examples of what makes Apple and MS successful) is a mix of everything. So, perhaps incorporating the business model of MS, Apple and Google is the right road to be on.

Time will tell. I hope that this will be wildly successful but for that to happen they need to realize that they need the best of what has made Google successful, the best of what has made MS successful and the best of what makes Apple successful. Doing any part of that trinity half-hearted or with less enthusiasm will be to the detriment of the whole product.

Which model do you think is the best fit for Google Wave going forward? We love to hear what you think.

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One of the most anticipated releases (in  world anyhow) for 2010 will be Novell Pulse™. Which, they claim will work seamlessly with  so you, your colleagues and partners can get down to business in realtime.

If you are not familiar with the Novell Pulse™ product you should watch the video below:

Novell™, if you are not familiar, are the makers of ™, ™ and…….big contributors and supporters of ™! That is a big deal. If they can get ™ working well in Pulse™ and if Google™ can get Google Apps working well in  and they are working together to get Pulse™ and  to “work seamlessly” then it will really be a big deal when it is finally announced. They did mention the first half of 2010 which coincides nicely with Google I/O 2010.

The interesting part about this is that Novell™ is a serious business provider. Moreover, their quote regarding security for Pulse in the press release is encouraging:

“Security and identity management remain top concerns for enterprise companies considering real-time, social solutions,” said Caroline Dangson, Research Analyst, Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions at IDC. “Novell has a proven record in security and identity management, which is an important strength it brings to its new collaboration platform, Novell Pulse. Novell’s interoperability with Google Wave is another interesting application of its new collaboration platform in supporting mixed IT environments and demonstrates Novell’s strategy toward real-time, social sharing and collaboration.”

Novell has decided that the business for them in the future will be collaborative business solutions. See the latest powerpoint presention on the subject given by Richard Lindstedt of Novell, Inc:

For me, however, it is not clear just how close these two are working together. I’m not clear at all how serious Google™ is about the business apps end of Google Wave™ or, are they just trying to make something that transplants Twitter™ and Facebook™ (fat chance of that, btw). The problem that Google™ will have with the business end of things is that Novell™, it seems, is going to have a running head start. Pulse™ is not trying to be anything but  for business, and, from the video above, I think they are clearly on the right track. Perhaps OpenOffice™ and Google Apps™availability in  will be simultaneous at I/O 10. Not sure how that benefits Novell™. So, you see…I am not convinced that these two are working very tightly together on the business apps side of the house. Perhaps they are only working together on Federation, but no further.

Regardless, for me Novell Pulse™ will be a much anticipated release. Hopefully I will be right about I/O 10…as you know I plan on attending and expect (or want) big  news. In their press release they state:

Novell Pulse will be generally available in the first half of 2010 in a cloud deployment, and with an on-premise deployment option in a subsequent release.

The on-premise appliance will be very big news. It will essentially be a Enterprise Wave appliance for your INTRANET. Very exciting.

Oh almost forgot…..Hello….Hello, Microsoft™ are you still out there….what are you doing in this space?

As always, please share your thoughts below. We love to hear your thoughts!

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In May 2009 at I/O 09, was launched to much deserved fanfare. A lot of the initial prognostications declaring  to be a replacement for just about everything and as an important an invention comparable to “the wheel” have, thank god, died down. In fact, because of much of the initial nonsense calling it a Twitter, Facebook and e-mail replacement (Google did that one) have turned many off of the pre-Alpha Preview version.

Of course, readers of this blog know that while  may not be ready to replace anything just yet, it still holds unbelievable promise for transforming how we currently collaborate on everything from projects and documents to meetings and online shopping. If we take the current definition of Web 2.0 to be associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Then,  is the first true web 2.0 application for business.

That being said, the current preview version (pre-Alpha) of , although functional and gives folks an understanding of the product, is starting to do more harm than good. I understand the reason for the early preview: trying to understand server load problems, uncover shaky code and desperately searching for use cases. But the time has come to show that this application/protocol is much, much more than a glorified chat program with a few neat extensions. I think 2010 will be that time.

Thus, my TOP 10 IMPROVEMENTS for GOOGLE WAVE in 2010:

10. Developmental Timeline. I blogged about this extensively in another post recently titled: Where is Google Wave Going? In that post I laid out the following:

• Develop your Google Wave strategy for the way ahead.
• Release your vision of Google Wave and your vision for what you will be further developing for the product.
• Release some milestones that you have for the product.
• Talk about document support and how it will evolve and when you think it will be available.
• More info about a robot/gadget store would be wonderful.
• Outline a clear business support model. – Accreditation and/or certification credentials, building an appliance, etc, etc

9. Delete a Wave Permanently. The closest thing that you can now do is send your Wave to the trash. However, when you click on “All” you still see that Wave. It lives. Moreover, regardless of being the owner I cannot permanently delete a Wave, everybody else still has that Wave. I am only putting it in my trash. There is currently no delete. The owner should be allowed to delete the Wave. In business I don’t necessarily want to have collaboration work live forever. That would be another post by itself as to why that is a bad idea, but suffice to say the reasons are not nefarious….just good business practice.

8. Integration of Moderation Features. This was a topic of another post titled: Google Wave Etiquette – Moderating Your Wave. This post talked about the good work done by those currently using Google Wave to put in place a set of rules that help ensure we have a civil real-time collaborative discussion or workgroup, that obeys certain rules or customs. These ideas are good ones and Google needs to take a hard look at what so many are adopting for their Waves and make it a functional part of the Google Wave client.

7. Google Wave Client Code Released. Ok Google, thanks for the Federation protocol being open-source and all. Great, wonderful! But without a really slick client…federating is kind of worthless. The client is the great part. Now, one could develop a client but that would take great effort (for a good one) and with nothing released regarding Google strategy (see number 10) I could be wasting my time and money. Thus, if they want more people to actually federate with a meaningful Wave server they need to release the client code.

6. Google Groups Integration. Well, they claim to have integration with Google Groups. But,…have you tried it. I dare you. Come back and let me know how long it took and how it worked out for you. Enough said. Fix this!

5. Inbox Management. I spent a quite a bit of time thinking about this before deciding to add it to the list, let alone make it in the top 5 improvements. There is a lot of Waves out there that describe hints of  inbox management with Google Wave. My problem is that it is way to similar to the email inbox. I think some real thought needs to given to this problem to make it work for Wave. I don’t think just replicating an email inbox management solution works. One simple example to highlight this point would be the problem with finding a reply to Wave. Somehow that should be evident from your Inbox. This needs work and a new approach to looking at this problem, I think.

4. Draft Typing. The box is there but the functionality is still not available. I expect this will be an easy one for 2010, but it is a big one. Depending on how sensitive something is, this becomes critical…as in, I won’t use Google Wave for this correspondence because I don’t want anybody seeing what I’m writing until I am finished.

3. Owner Only Remove. The owner of a Wave must be able to remove participants from that Wave. Let’s say someone inadvertently gets added to a sensitive Wave they were not intended to be part of. The owner needs to have the ability to control his Wave and remove folks as he see fit.

2. Owner Only Invite. Keeping with same theme as the above improvement. There needs to be a function where the only person who can add a person to a Wave is the owner. It doesn’t need to be a default setting but its needs to available otherwise real business will not take place on Google Wave. If anybody can be invited into any Wave by anybody…I will share nothing of relevance with anyone.

1. Document Collaboration. The Holy Grail for Google Wave. I have written many posts, the latest titled: Google Wave Preparing to add Document Collaboration. This improvement is a must and needs to happen sooner rather than later. The problem with Google Wave right now is that nothing really serious is happening on it. Folks go looking for a Twitter like experience and find it lacking. Folks go to do collaboration and find that it is extremely limited because no office suite is integrated. Google Wave’s real power will lie in document collaboration and they must introduce it in the early part of 2010.

I, for one, will be at I/O 10 this year and hope to see Google unveil all of the improvements I mentioned above. So, ““

Did I miss something that is tops on your list? Leave a comment on what you think should have made the list, or just leave a comment on the current list. We love hearing your feedback.
Happy New Year!

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It is no secret that without some type of document collaboration ability Google Wave™ is…well…useless, really. Moreover, given that 92% of all businesses use Micorsoft Office™ as their document productivity tool, being able to collaborate using your Microsoft Office™ files is also really important.

Let’s look at what is available for collaboration right now, a top 6 list say (I know there will be a lot left off this list, but this list is not the point of the post):

• BaseCamp ™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• SharePoint™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Local Hosted Server
• E-mail – Share files – Local Hosted Server
• Google Docs – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• NetDocuments™ – Share files and project collaboration (not done in real-time) – Cloud Computing
• Google Wave™ - Real-time collaboration (promise of file sharing and project management). – Cloud Computing

The products above are all very good stand-alone products as they are, click the link above to find out more about what they offer. However, the point of that list is to show that nothing (including Google Wave™) offers a product that allows businesses to host a local server appliance, which allows users to collaborate in real-time with files they are sharing for a project…being managed collaboratively, also.

Google Wave™ comes the closest, having cracked the real-time collaboration nut, it now just needs a document suite that can be used with the product. Once they get the document suite (if they get the document suite) they should then seriously look at offering a local server solution. As cloud computing makes many businesses a little concerned….see this post for an example of what I mean.

But, we are ahead of ourselves. Google Wave™ needs a document suite!

To that end, it seems like Google™ is trying very hard to make that happen. Case in point:

• Google Groups Launches for Google Apps™ Enterprise Users (users they gave Google Wave invites too in September)
• Google Groups Launches for Google Wave™ (just one big link missing)
• Google Acquires EtherPad™ (a web-based real-time collaborative web processor)
• Google to Acquire DocVerse™ ( a web-based real-time collaborative sharing of Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents)
• Google to Acquire Yelp™ (Business database – great for an office contact app)
• Google to Acquire Trulia™ (A real-estate search engine, that I will assume will offer some serious photo capabilities , I’m stretching it here, but I’m sure it has some tie in that may not be readily evident)

What becomes very clear is that Google is working very hard to bring a document collaboration capability to Google Wave™. I certainly hope that they get there soon, as folks are really starting to lose interest in what is basically becoming a glorified chat program with a lot less users or connections you would have with a regular chat. Real-time document collaboration and robots and gadgets that enhance that capability is really where Google Wave has power and promise.

Just today, as I discussed collaborating on a book with a colleague, we choose not to use Google Wave, but rather send documents back and forth via e-mail. As it is better to be able to use a full text editor when dealing with a larger project then use the limited editing currently available in Google Wave™.

I, for one, hope that they are able to announce this either at, or prior too, Google I/O 10. I think this date (19-20 May 10) is extremely important to reinvigorate development of extensions for Google Wave™. Not to mention they could launch a whole series of workshops at I/O 10. Moreover, and most importantly , I will be in attendance and am hoping for big Google Wave™ news.

How have you used the current version of Google Wave to collaborate? Have you done any major collaboration projects with this version?

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