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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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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If you are not familiar with Second Life™ it is “the Internet’s largest user-created, 3D virtual world community.” Now, I have to admit I don’t know too much about this virtual world. But it seems like getting started is nothing more then making your own avatar and then entering the world and meeting folks. There is also, apparently, a business side to this as well. You can buy and sell products, land and provide virtual services to folks. They have their own “Second Life”currency which translates into “real” currency via a conversion rate.

The video below is a brief introduction if you are not familiar:

Now that you know what Second Life™ is, you will not be surprised to know that there is a great number of Second Life Wavers out there.

Aisha Gala started the SecondLife Wave, which is a place to meet wavers who also use Second Life™. This then lead to another bunch of Second Life™ Waves which are listed below:

Second Life Art Wave

Wave-SL integration

Second Life Deutschland

WINDLIGHT COLLECTION

Second Life Hungary

But the really big news is that the folks that met in Google Wave are going to get together in Second Life™, see all the info for the Dec 19^th event:

Second Life Wave Users Meet-up

Organizing and planning a gathering of Second Life Rezidents who are Google Wave users to discus the potential in integrating XMPP with SL applications. A list of topical questions will be prepared for the event. You can join the conversation already taking place at Wave-SL integration.

DJs

Live music

Demonstration of XMPP-capable bot

Developers Discussion: Integration of Wave with SL(see Wave-SL integration)

Date/Time

Saturday, Dec 19th 2009 – Event will last for 24 hours

Starting at midnight SLT (8am UTC/GMT)

Location

Free University of Berlin (see January Lightfoots’s blip below)

If you’re a Second Life™ user and a Google Waver this is a must attend event. Have fun! But please come back here and tell us how it went, we would love to know.

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As somebody who has been…well overly evangelistic about Google Wave I find Google’s complete disregard in describing where and how they expect this product (Google Wave) to evolve rather discerning.

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I think the real market for Google Wave is the business community. If we agree that the definition of Web 2.0 “is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.” Google Wave then, in my mind, is the first real Web 2.0 application that truly meets that overall definition and the first that promises to deliver real-time Web 2.0 to the business world.

Problem is, business doesn’t know what you talking about with you speak with them about Google Wave. I have now spoken with many business owners and professional communities. All of who had no idea what Google Wave was.

When I explained it to them they all had the same three questions:

• Can you collaborate using Google Docs?
• Can you collaborate using Microsoft Office?
• Do I have to do everything in the cloud?

To those questions I say:

• I hope that soon Google will announce what they are doing with Google docs.
• I know of a few online companies, that support cloud computing using Microsoft Office, are working on a Google Wave extension.
• There should be no reason that you cannot host your server and have Google Wave for your company Intranet.

Then they ask:

• So is it available?
• When will it be available?
• Who makes this robots and gadgets and how much will they cost?

I reply:

• It’s in Beta testing and you need an invite.
• I think next year it will be open up to the public.
• You could make your own robot or gadget that supports your own collaborative flow.

For the businessman and professional this is interesting news. But that is pretty much all it adds up to. Until it becomes real, until there is a clear business use case mapped by Google with a timeline for some important functionality or milestones in the development of Google Wave, this technology will remain a wait and see for almost all businesses.

So Google, if you listening, this is what you must do:

• Develop your Google Wave strategy for the way ahead.
• Release your vision of Google Wave and you 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

Without any real information on those points listed above anything I share with folks is purely speculation. Business does not support or pay too much attention to speculative IT. When it is available and when it works then they might take an interest.

In the meantime, Microsoft will be releasing it’s new Office line and it’s new SharePoint product. Many, many businesses will be signing up to upgrade their business’s collaborative workflow processes with something tangible. Unless, they know about something better (like way, way better) that is coming in the very near future.

Google, don’t do an Apple, share your plans for the Google Wave product. It may be able to do all things, that will be clear to most when they start using it, but share the areas of development where you will focus your efforts.

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There is an interesting discussion going on inside Google Wave by both educators and students about how Google Wave could be used in the classroom. One of the most interesting Waves currently on-going is titled Uses of Google Wave in the Classroom, it was started by Stuart Ridout and I really encourage you to give it a read and join the discussion if you’re a student, educator or just generally interested and opinionated.

In this Wave the conversation starts with the following assumptions:

• We’ll work on the basis that Google Wave is open to all and that students are able to register immediately.
• We’ll also work on the basis that the preview allows Google to ‘scale’ Wave and that all features are available in the final version, including the online indicator which seems to have been disabled at the moment

They then move quickly into ways that Wave could indeed be used in the classroom:

• I think we could have great success in smaller groups collaborating than whole-class waves which could get quite chaotic quickly. I can see it being used by small groups collaborating on a piece of homework such as a research project. This would allow leadership and management skills to develop as within each group someone will have to make the final decision on what’s in and out.
• Real-time international exchanges. Using the translation bot, students would be able to communicate with students in other countries without the additional pressure of language barriers.
• Without needing to be talking to foreign pupils, the translation bot will surely be useful in the Languages classroom.
• Curriculum planning
• Lesson/activity planning
• Rapid prototyping of e-learning activities
• Collaborative composition (sonnets, screenplays etc.)
• Planning presentations. Each blip can represent a slide, draft content, speakers notes and insert any images into each blip. Replies can be relevant to an individual blip/slide. When all parties are happy with the presentation a single person can create the final presentation.
• Planning school trips – great for staff & students to collaborate in the planning process.
• Taking and sharing minutes of school council meetings, the waves could be published back to the rest of the school.
• Deeper than usual Maths collaborative thinking / investigation via the use of the Wave Alpha bot.
• Report cards? Shared between staff, student & parents.
• Creation and collaboration of a students e-portfolio
• blogs
• wikis
• forums
• Also enhances the possibilities for parental engagement in the students e-portfolios – for example, a parent either contributing to, or commenting on their childs blog, or learning journal
• Tech documentation and help files

They have listed what they feel will be some anticipated problems with Google Wave:

Internal politics – especially in larger institutions.

Privacy issues.

Content vandalism.

Legal (e.g. Blackboard patent, ownership of collaborative content)

Confusion & fear factor – it gets hectic in here sometimes!

Finally they have given Wave Developers a wish-list of extensions and/or Google Wave enhancements:

Ability to group contacts.

Scheduling the cloning of waves.

Scheduling invitation of groups (of students) to individual waves and groups of waves.

Full range of embedded media gadgets.

Directory of embeddable learning objects

Directory of group interaction objects

Ability to ‘freeze’ blips (for rubrics, core content, set exercises etc.)

Coloured text-based on user

This is, as I said above, a great ongoing Wave. But there are some others that you might also want to read. Here is a list of some of these other classroom related discussions which are equally insightful:

• Blackboard Vs Wave
• Computer systems and internet technology class notes
• Google Wave as a collaborative learning tool
• Google Wave Lesson Demonstrations
• Social Networking in the Classroom
• Software Roles in Education
• Student-side Class Management: a Wave template
• Wave in Class
• WAVE to all the educators!
• Wave for Notes

All this discussion is encouraging and it will be very interesting to see where this leads and what Google Wave looks like when it does get adopted into the classroom.

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Last week I monitored the  Europe eComm 2009 Wave which I encourage you read if you have a Wave account, and I assume if you are here then you do.

If you are not familiar with eComm you should click on Europe eComm to find out more about them. They describe eComm as:

The worlds’ leading-edge communications event. It’s designed to showcase and accelerate both technology and business model innovation; and to explore the latest opportunities.

The reason I mention this conference is because both Stephanie Hannon and Lars Rasmussen both spoke at the event. Their respective topics of discussion where:

• Stephanie – Why You Should Care About Google Wave
• Lars – Wave Federation: Building An Open Network

Also, they had a Wave going about Using Wave at eComm (How’s it going). This was a very interesting and telling Wave and is worth reading. You will see that most folks were not sure where the value-added was. This was a Wave that was started by Stephanie and , in my mind, highlights that Google itself is struggling a little with the problem of what is the use case that this product solves. In other words, it is a solution to a problem that is not defined. So they are kind of throwing the Waves against the wall and see what sticks.

I have blogged over and over again on this site that my use case is the many Business Collaboration use cases that are required on a daily basis. I don’t think Wave impresses as well when you are trying to do the same thing that other products do. I.E. This Wave at the eComm could have been a chat conversation or a Twitter hash conversation or, or, or. The point being there are lots of things that do that type of function. Again I point to the Gravity post as how best way to present Google Wave to folks. However, the original Wave at the eComm was great. It captured all the content/conversations of the different presentations and linked to them all together within that original Wave.  It would have been great to have embedded video into the presentation Waves. Take questions from Wave, etc, etc. There is a lot of value-added that could be given to a conference using Wave and I see that it will find a way to bring real value added to a conferences in the future. Think streaming video, etc,

One gem of information that came out of this conference, pertaining to Google Wave,  was during Lars’s presentation. He mentioned that Google will opening up a port on the developer sandbox to allow federation with the Google Wave server. Immediately this hit the blogosphere with a post by theNextWeb. During the presentation they indicated that they would open the federation server up later that day (that day being Friday, 30 Oct) if there were no problems. At the time of this blog post I have seen no indication that they have opened up a port yet. However, it should be safe to assume that will happen sometime this week.

This is great news for those of us that have been playing with the server. It is one thing to build a server and federate with your buddies. But it is quite another to federate with the Google server. This will mean that I can send Waves to myself from my Google Wave account and receive it on my server. Or, if you signed up on the PygoWave server you can send stuff back and forth. All this gets us closer to being able to build and host business wave servers. Which, to my thinking is the real important part of this whole technology. To bring Web 2.0 to business (how I describe Google Wave) you need to be able to host a wave server.

Great news moving forward! I am really looking forward to linking into the Google server! Are you?

To read the technical background look at the White Paper about the Google Wave federation architecture.

2009-11-02 UPDATE:

Google Developer Blog just posted the following: WaveSandbox.com: Federate This, announcing the opening of the Developer Sandbox for federation.

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For those that are unfamiliar with Posterous, it is a extremely simple to use blog creation site. You send them the content you want in the blog via e-mail. You can attach what you want: photos, videos, mp3′s etc. The Posterous engine then goes and creates a blog page for you with your e-mail that you send as the current blog entry. You can then adjust settings, look etc as you wish.

The Posterous robot for Google Wave allows you to simply add the Posterous domain address to your wave. Create your post. Click done and it goes off to Posterous and creates your blog page and entry.

The Posterous webpage describes it as such:

What is Posterous-Robot?

Posterous-Robot is first a Google Wave robot. It is built by lookon with Google Wave Python Library and Posterous API. The posterous bot helps you to post blog to posterous.com in Google Wave.

How to use Posterous-Robot

It’s easy to use Poterous-Robot in Google Wave. You just need to add posterous-robot@appspot to your contact and start a new wave with the robot. After logining to Posterous, you can post blog to Posterous by editing the title and body of the foot wavelet.

A detailed guide: How to write a blog using Google Wave Robot for Posterous.

The how to guide comes complete with photos and shows just how simple using this robot is.

You can get the source code for the robot here.

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I mentioned in a post yesterday titled “Industries Discussing How Google Wave Will Effect Sectors“, that in the weeks and months ahead we will see more and more industry sectors starting to talk about how Google Wave could be used in their particular sector. In the post yesterday I referenced a blog by Robert Cole titled “How Google Can Help Facilitate Travel Inspiration.” This obviously focused on the travel industry and gave a couple of examples of how Google Wave could be used to help folks working in that field.

Today I came across two new pieces. One by Mark Senak, who has a blog titled “Eye on the FDA“. His piece on Google Wave is called “Google Wave, Part 2 – What Pharma Should Be Thinking About“. This title, of course, indicates that there was probably a Part 1 to that story, and there is, and you can read it and all his posts at his blog. However, I was interested in Part 2 to the story because he gave some particular examples of how Google Wave could be used. They were:

Clinical Trial Recruitment Waves – It is a perennial problem for pharmaceutical companies to get a good balance of patients involved in clinical trials, particularly minorities.

REMS Support – Today when the FDA considers a particular risk to the use of a drug, they can require a REMS program – Risk Evaluation Management Strategy which encompasses the same tools as when the program was referred to as RiskMAPs or Risk Management Plans.

He goes into great detail on these examples in his blog and I encourage all to give it a read. I find it very interesting and encouraging that folks can immediately list concrete examples of how Google Wave can be implemented in there field to address long standing problem areas.

The second example I came across was a YouTube video with Stephannie Hannon (Program Manger for Google Wave) where she address how Google Wave could provide opportunities in the journalistic industry. What is neat about his video is that she is being asked questions by the journalist about how Google Wave can help them (journalists) with this or that problem. You can hear his excitement with the answers she provides.

Stay tuned, as I said yesterday, many more industries will start looking very seriously at what problems Google Wave will solve for them. My hunch is that they won’t have to think very hard to come up with quite a few.

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Robert Cole had an interesting blog article titled “How Google Can Help Facilitate Travel Inspiration.” It is an excellent article and I highly recommend you give it a read. Of particular interest to me is near the end of the article when he states the following about Google Wave:

Google Wave will not replace travel agents. It will make travel agents better by making it easier for them to collaborate with clients in real time. The only downside for agents will be that Google Wave will also democratize the ability for others with appropriate skill sets to potentially become competent travel agents by engaging and actively collaborating with clients. What will separate the true professional agents from the pretenders will remain product knowledge, but most importantly, knowing the client and matching appropriate product to their needs. Add to that an ability to leverage a new technology like Google Wave to inspire not only their interest in travel, but their faith in the agent as a trusted expert.

I am optimistic Google’s engineers and leadership, heavily assisted by the open source community, will be able to develop technologies that will help inspire individuals to become travelers. Not just to create an economic stimulus that can foster job creation, or the prospect of the global community gaining tolerance and understanding through exposure to different cultures; no, I have a more noble goal – the permanent eradication of the term “staycation” from our vocabulary.

I think in the weeks and months ahead we will see much more of these specific pieces from varying industry sectors surmising how Google Wave could be useful to there particular niche area.

I think it is fairly obvious to anyone who watches the I/O 09 Developers Video on Google Wave that it has some real-world application to business collaboration. More so than any of the previous Web 2.0 technology to date.

Take note Google, industry is watching and starting to discuss how you can be used.

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