A company taking advantage of its new application that can turn any laptop into a wireless access point named CONNECTIFY which is developed by military consulting firm Nomadio.
Connectify lets a notebook to a single internet connection by effectively turning it into a software based wireless router which requires Windows 7 OS as a hotspot.But any wireless-equipped device, including handhelds and other notebooks running whatever operating system can jump online without any additional software.
The program even encrypts traffic to and from the software hotspot using WPA2-Personal (AES) encryption.So the connectivity highly secured though wireless.
While the connectify beta is free to download, Nomadio expects to charge users once the complete version is released in about six weeks
Yahoo had sealed the fate of GeoCities, one of the pioneers of the emerging Internet years ago. Fifteen years of service came to a halt when Yahoo told everyone still using the service that it would be shutting down, encouraging them to move on to something better. Yahoo has substitute a placeholder that confirms today as the final day for service.
here's no mention of just how many people still used the service, though I imagine it wasn't very many. Numbers aside, there's still a feeling of nostalgia I get when thinking about GeoCities.
Yahoo is offering to migrate any existing users
over to their hosted services. Their disposal of GeoCities is part of their greater plan to improve company profits, which has been an important concern after a series of failed mergers and service cuts.
In its four-decade history, the Internet is set to undergo a biggest change with the expected approval this week that the international domain names or addresses can be written in languages other than English. Domain names are the monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.
"This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago," said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board, calling it a 'fantastically complicated technical feature.' ICANN, the non-profit group that oversees domain names is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. It is expected that the board would grant approval on Friday, which is the conference's final day.
One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board is whether to allow for the first time the entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.
Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's new President and CEO, said that if the change is approved, ICANN would begin accepting applications for non-English domain names and that the first entries into the system would likely to come in mid 2010.
Enabling the change, Thrush said that it is the creation of a translation system that allows multiple scripts to be converted to the right address. "We're confident that it works because we've been testing it now for a couple of years. And we're really ready to start rolling it out."
However, Beckstrom recalled that 3-5 years ago many people had said that using non-Latin scripts for domain names would be impossible to achieve. "But the community, the policy groups and staff and board have worked through them, which is absolutely incredible," he said.
In 2009, Google became more aggressive on expanding beyond web search in a bid to take on Microsoft. Now, Google is focusing more on business applications, which is a traditional Microsoft stronghold with Exchange on the server side and Microsoft Office on the client side. However, when it comes to putting their trust on the technology products, not many Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are in favor of Google.
Recently, TechRepublic polled a 90-member panel of U.S. IT executives and asked, "Who do they trust more as a technology partner, Microsoft or Google?" The jury - made up of the first 12 respondents - voted 8-4 in favor of Microsoft. Google is making the pitch to businesses that it can save them money, speed up deployments, and provide users with a simpler experience. However, the primary obstacle that Google has to overcome is to convince IT leaders to transfer company data from internal servers to the Google datacenters, with all of the security, privacy, and compliance risks that such a move entails, reports TechRepublic.
The skeptical attitude towards Google was summed up by Donna Trivison, Director of IT for Ursuline College, who said, "There seems to be some conventional wisdom that Google is the answer to what's been wrong over the years in the Microsoft universe.
MAIN REASON:
When confronted with the Microsoft vs. Google question of trust, Lance Taylor Warren, CIO of H.A.W.C. Community Health Centers, said, "Neither.While some of the technology that Google has been releasing is intriguing, their track record of leaving things in 'beta' for years does not lead to a high level of confidence. Microsoft is Microsoft. If I had to pay full price for their products, I would have to give serious consideration to other solutions."
A UK-based firm will soon launch a camera that a person can wear as a pendant to record every moment of his or her life. This camera was originally developed as the SenseCam by Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, for researchers studying Alzheimer's and other dementias, according to ANI.
Its use in applications like MLB and and the memory aid research for Alzheimer suffers at Addenbrooks hospital in the UK, is based on wearing the SenseCam for lifelogging of 'events' during your day, and generating a fast-forward movie of the event as the memory recall interface.
This Sensecam work uses other recording devices besides the SenseCam, including off-the-shelf ones to take biometric readings, standard ones to record GPS and audio recorders, and RFID readers for objects tagged in the home or office.
The ViconRevue can soon be used by consumers to create "lifelogs" that archive their entire lives, researchers claim. It is worn on a cord around the neck and the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer.
The gadget will be unveiled at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago this weekend, in conjunction with a conference on research using SenseCam so far. "What's great about these kinds of memory technologies is that they can be very usable for ordinary people," says Henry Kautz, a Computer Scientist at the University Of Rochester, New York, who works on technology to assist cognition.
Vicon, which specialises in motion-capture technology for the movie industry, has licensed the technology for the camera from Microsoft and intends to put it into large-scale production. The revolutionary device can fit 30,000 images onto its one gigabyte memory, reports New Scientist.
Disney to unveil a new technology to ditch DVD called KEYCHEST.
Keychest aims to address the hurdles of playing a movie back on devices other than a PC or laptop, and limited storage space on those computers' hard drives. Keychest uses the same "cloud computing" method that Google Docs uses, permitting users to store files and photographs on remote Internet servers and access them from anywhere, rather than keeping them on their own computers.
This technology can provide the much needed boost to the movie industry. According to Wall Street Journal, DVD sales, have fallen as much as 25 percent at some studios. Blu-ray discs and digital downloads from sites like Apple iTunes Store, haven't grown quickly enough to offset the losses. Blu-ray and downloads combined currently make up just 11 percent of home-video sales, according to industry estimates, with DVDs representing the other 89 percent.
Keychest could put Disney on a collision course with an initiative, known as the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE, that has similar goals. But Disney argues that their effort represents a more streamlined approach. Instead of designing a new set of standards and formats, as DECE is trying to do, and having participants sign on, Keychest works using a combination of digital file formats that are already common, and recognized by a wide range of existing devices.
The Keychest process is enabled by a system that generates a unique "key" when the movie is purchased. Movies bought on discs, whether DVD or Blu-ray, could also generate an access key. In the case of a DVD, the user would need to manually type in a code; Blu-ray players are designed to connect to the Internet, and could send codes automatically.
An Indian entrepreneur has proposed a project to Indian Railways which will allow it to generate electricity through air pressure from running trains. Santosh Pradhan, who runs a bunch of engineering and mechanical units, has almost two decades of experience in manufacturing engineering tools.
"When a train runs at a full speed of 110-120 km, it creates an air pressure in opposite direction and no one has ever thought to utilize this huge air pressure which is freely and easily available," Pradhan told PTI. As per his technology, a small impeller is fixed at the front portion of railway locomotive and similarly on top of each coach of a train. "When the train is running, it will produce huge quantity of compressed air due to high velocity of the wind and by accumulating this compressed air in big fabricated tanks on either side of the track, we can run turbines or air turbine motors which can produce a considerable amount of electricity," he explained.
Pradhan has registered 20 patents with the government of India about his technology so that he remains the sole person to further develop this technology. He has now approached the higher railways authorities to seek permission for prototype and a subsequent demonstration of this technology which he says is 'eco-friendly and cost effective'.
Pradhan said about 14,300 trains were running on 63,028 route KMs in the country and about 20.89MW electricity can be generated per km with the use of air power technology. Thus approximately 14,81,134MW of power can be generated by using the entire railway track, according to his statistics and calculations. Pradhan says that the Indian Railways was spending 17 percent revenue on the fuel head which is roughly Rs. 15,000 crore (Rs. 150 billion) per annum. He also claims that the technology can save 2,586 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission in the country.
However, it all depends on the Indian Railways to allow additional fabrication of parallel wind pipes over the over head electric lines to pass on high velocity wind to reach tanks on either of side of track, Pradhan added.
WORLD'S NEW BORN SEARCH ENGINE HITS THE WEB NOW... ITS ALL BUT FINDING AND HAVING FUN..
A new search engine Goby.com has come up, which allows users to search for activity and help them find things to do in the city. Goby uses three boxes - What, Where and When - with drop-down menus to find results for your query.
Goby searches through over 200 categories, including live music, art exhibits, outdoor festivals, spas, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants.
Inshort its a Decison engine for every Holiday.
The new Goby website, pronounced Go-bE, works as an active Google link serach engine but with a super fin happy time twist. Goby.com is designed specifically to help people find things to do in their leisure time ranging from hiking to biking to finding a good restaurant or bed and breakfast.
Goby.com uses three boxes for your super fun happy time search...Goby asks What? Where? and When? Goby has drop-down menus to find the right results for your query. Goby crawls the web with its little funbots searching what it considers high quality information from 500 sources.
Goby.com has been available to the public for only a few weeks and it is still working out some kinks. Goby still has many errors on its search result and sometimes the same results are listed four times in a row. Photos representing these activities are pulled in from source sites like bedandbreakfast.com as well as from Google and Flickr.
In simple , Goby.com is a fun activity search engine..
Look on Goby.com and have fun..I have decided my next fun spot..wat abt u?
Apple has a strong lineup prep for this holiday season and beyond. Well its true, Apple introduced a new multi-touch mouse today called "Magic Mouse". Its once again a out-standing unique product of the multi-touch leader Apple and not like others who copy them.
"Apple Magic Mouse" has a multitouch surface that is reliant on touch, taps, and swipes unlike its usual buttons.
Features of Apple's new Multi-touch mouse are:
Multi-Touch smooth Surface with sleek and different style.
Powerful laser tracking makes it more sensitive and responsive even without mousepad.
Wireless: Bluetooth enable secure connection around 33 feet away[Not bad Actually].
Gestures on Usage:
Here the mouse itself a button. So the gestures includes, Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.
What are all the things can be done with this magic mouse:
Click.
Two button click
360 deg roll.
Screen zoom
Two-Fingers Swipe.
System Requirements to enjoy this magic mouse are:
Bluetooth-enabled Mac computer
Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0
Existing keyboard and mouse for setup
This new magic mouse comes along with the new iMac introduced today and is available separately for $69 only.
Post your thoughts on this magic mouse and share your exp on using it.
Google has planned to integrate its Chrome web browser along with the Microsoft's Windows Operating System. This news has spread on net the moment after the announcement of Mozilla Corp. integeration of its next version of its browser FireFox 3.6 with Windows 7 features such as taskbar thumbnail previews and jump lists.
Chrome is currently on 3.0 version release,while version 4 is presently under development. Also Google's Chrome OS work is been under progress which is known from the early developer build of OS.
So likely Google will integrate its next version ofits chrome browser with Windows 7 and it called off its plans.
In a letter to Federal Communications, along with 24 CEOs of major companies including the Facebook[Mark Zuckerberg] and Twitter [Evan Williams] have supported the initiative of net neutrality rules.
"We believe a process that results in common sense baseline rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness," the CEOs wrote under the auspices of the Open Internet Coalition to Julius Genachowski, Chairman, FCC, reports PC World.
List of CEO's along with Mark and Evan are,
John Donahoe, CEO, eBay.
Steve Chan, Founder, YouTube.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com.
Jay Adelson, Digg.
Dan Nye,LinkedIn.
David Ulevitch,OpenDNS.
Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation.
Howard Stringer, Sony Electronics,
Josh Silverman, Skype.
Stewart Butterfield, Flickr.
Also, Google CEO Eric Schmidt who has long supported net neutrality signed the letter.
Other companies that signed the letter are,
Zynga,
Vuze,
Cbeyond,
Craigslist,
EchoStar Corporation,
XO Communications,
Expedia, IAC,
One Communications,
and TiVo.
"An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to the larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity," the executives wrote.
The FCC is expected to introduce the formal rules regarding the net neutrality at its October meeting.
Net neutrality is the concept that everyone should have equal access to the internet.
The executives said that the openness of the internet has "fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity" and that these rules will help to protect that.
Google has announced that it will make the Wi-Fi cost on Virgin America flights free. This will make lot of frequent flyer on Virgin America's airlines.
Google will be footing the bill for all between November 10, 2009, and January 15, 2010.
Google is really giving a gift to Virgin America airlines in the form of yet one more incentive to fly its planes over competitors.Its not the fact that they are paying $13 per flight, but actually to make it more appealing.
Its a valid offer for all users. So, "Make hay while sun shines"
The gist of "WW.GIST.COM" is to provide a web service that connects your various social media networks with your personal contact information to give you an enhanced view of your connections.
The main feature of gist to import all of your contacts from your networks and personal contacts. Currently it can import from LinkedIn, Salesforce, Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, Gmail, Email/IMAP, and even simple CSV files of contacts.
Once all your contacts have been imorted, Gist allows u to rank on them in order of importance.Gist is still in beta, and will likely charge for the service once it reaches final release. If you have a lot of contacts and would like a new way to analyze all of your connections, it's certainly worth a look.
On using their services myself, i though they've not actually achieved the goal of managing information overload just yet, but Gist still offers valuable views into your various online social connections.
Apple working on FM radio for iPhone/iPod touch. This is to enhance the newly released ipod nano models.They are working on providing he ability to pause live FM transmissions and fast-forward when you resume playing.
Most probabaly the release would be made sooner but Apple is still working on integrating the new feature with its mobile iTunes Store.
So that users are just a few taps away from purchasing any song they are listening to on the radio -- provided the station supports song tagging.
GOOGLE EDITIONS is the new ebook store announced by Google.This will deliver books to any device with web browser. Google isn't launcing any new e-reader as do Kindle, but supports the ebooks bought from other providers.
Google's history with electronic version of books isn't a successful one. Their part of Google books is still under resolving legal issues. Google Books is a project which has already scanned over 10 million books and made them searchable for googlers.
So, Google edition is a means for competition for amazon ebook provider.Though i might not vanish all but cuts the profit of Amazon in max way.
GOOGLE EDITION IS LIKELY TO BE LAUNCHED IN HALF OF 2010..
As a part of internets huge advertising company, Google is often considered a barometer for e-commerce. Google reported its quater earning of this week,which let to the search engine gaints largest ever profit of any other week as 27% rise up. Its about $1.29 billion to 1.64billion.
Also companies number of paid clicks rose 4% on quater and 14% on year.Also its online advertising rose upto 7% i.e $5.94 billion.
The above record shows that recession is not a matter to google now. The only gaint smilying in this hard time. As a googler, i hope it last for ever .
Virus Bulletin test results has been pulished for oct 2009. More than 26 antivirus software has been tested.Among those 11 failed including the top antivirusi n the world avira antivirus which i use too...
Acc, to the test, an antivirus should detect all the malware which it has been passed thro'. More than 3,000 unique samples of 4 categories of viruslike WildList viruses, worms and bots, polymorphic viruses, and Trojans.
List of all viruses which has passed and failed are listed below:
PASS:
Alwil avast!, AVG I.S. Network Edition, BitDefender Security, CA eTrust, eScan internet security, ESET NOD32, F-Secure Anti-Virus, G Data AntiVirus, K7 Total Security, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, McAfee VirusScan, Microsoft Forefront, Quick Heal AntiVirus Lite, Symantec Endpoint, and Trustport Antivirus 2009.
If you're going to be buying a new computer soon, or if you regularly work on a number of different computers, you're probably going to spend a fair bit of time installing the latest version of a bunch of applications that you use most frequently. And that means downloading a bunch of apps, and then clicking next a few dozen times to until everything is configured properly.
Or you can use Volery. This service lets you create a single installer for dozens of popular freeware applications. You can pick and choose from a long list of web browsers, multimedia applications, and other utilities. Honestly, almost every application I use on a daily basis was on the list. And if you wish a program that wasn't on the list was included, you can fill out the suggest an app box at the bottom of the page.
Once you choose your applications, you just click the Get Installer button and Volery will download all of the programs and create a single installer. Click it to run, and the installer will load all of the selected applications onto your PC. The apps will all be installed to their default directories and shortcuts will be added to your desktop and Start Menu. You don't get all the advanced installation options you might be used to, but the fact that you can leave the installer running unattended kind of makes up for that.
Volery is in private beta at the moment, but the first 500 people to sign up using the following link should be able to get in on the action:
The program is free while in beta, but eventually the company plans to charge for access to the service. In other words, there will never be any offers to install the Google Toolbar or other applications that you didn't ask for during the installation process.
Final pricing hasn't been set yet, and while the company will begin charging for service, any installers you create with a beta account will continue to work even after Volery goes pro. Of course, if you want to create installers with the most up-to-date versions of each application, you'll need to pay up.
AVG 9 is finally here -- and like other 2009/2010 ANTIVIRUS suites the emphasis in the new version is on speed, performance, and minimizing the impact on system resources.
Even the install process has been streamlined, with developers reducing the number of tedious, finger-numbing mouse clicks from 22 to 11. Thank you, AVG, for doing this. It's a little thing, but no techy enjoys tapping "next" nearly two dozen times.
Grisoft says scanning speeds have been increased by as much as 50% and that version 9 also reduces Windows boot lag by 10 to 15%. The firewall is more intuitive and has been made less intrusive -- another small but welcome change.
The paid versions are available now through the AVG web site, and we've been told that the much-loved free version will be good to go in ten days.
If you're a believer in free antivirus, your preferred version will be up for grabs on October 15th. Keep your browser tuned to free.avg.com -- that's where the download will appear when it goes live. Of course, you'll also be able to read about the release here at Download Squad.
Mac OSX application djay, pitched as 'the world's sexiest DJ software' (I'm inclined to agree), has been updated to version 3.
Featuring a user interface that is likely to make Windows users cry in the corner and a featureset to match, djay reads your iTunes library and turns your Mac into a full on DJ system that is well suited to both beginners and professionals.
djay's range of functions really are too extensive to list here but in essence, djay allows you to drag and drop from your iTunes library and mix them either manually or using an 'automix' function. djay has full beat and tempo detection for seamless mixing, auto volume control and a range of effects you can apply to your tracks. Everything you would do on a set of turntables is here - you can even plug in a set of headphones to pre-cue the next song, and connect a microphone to do a bit of MC'ing!
djay stands out as a great example of an application really tuned for OS X - as well as that gorgeous user interface, multitouch gestures are supported if you are using a Macbook / Pro. MIDI devices can also be connected and mapped to application functions as desired.
Your hot mixes can be recorded from within the application itself for use later.
Check out a video of djay in action after the jump!
Google Translate certainly isn't the first machine-based translation engine that lets you translate text or entire web pages from one language to another. But it's certainly one of the most prevalent. And something tells me it's about to get even more ubiquitous, as Google has just launched a gadget that web publishers can use to let users translate pages to any language with the click of a button.
For instance, if you publish a web site in English but notice that a significant portion of your traffic comes from Germany, Japan, or elsewhere you can add a box to your sidebar (or anywhere on your web page) that lets readers choose their language from a drop-down menu. Google wil go to work translating the page and a small toolbar will pop up at the top of the page alerting readers tot he fact that the page has been translated. There's also a button to restore the site to its original language.
The most obvious benefit is that readers can translate your page without copying and pasting the URL into Google Translate. But there are a few other advantages as well. First, the tool adds a few letters to the end of the URL for any translated page, but it doesn't append "translate.google.com" to the start of the page, thereby robbing you of page views.
Second, if your site is in English and a visitor's browser settings are set to, say, Estonian, the toolbar should pop up automatically prompting them to translate the page. This could make your site a heck of a lot more attractive to international traffic.
Of course, the results are only as good as Google Translate's normal translations, which is to say, not very. While you can usually get the gist of articles translated by the service, you wouldn't really want to read literature converted from Russian to English via Google.
MedalFolders is sort of like a simple favorites menu for Windows. The program adds an icon to your system tray. When you click on the little red folder icon with a white star, a menu with shortcuts to your favorite applications and files opens up.
You can add shortcuts by clicking the "Open MedalFolders" option and dragging and dropping items. The program will automatically decide whether the item is an application or something else. Everything that doesn't fall under the Applications heading gets sent off to live in the Files and Folders area. And each category is arranged alphabetically. There are no sorting options.
The program uses about 10 to 20MB of RAM, which isn't much if you have a fairly modern computer, but considering the limited functionality I would have expected MedalFolders to be a little lighter weight. Still, if you don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but just need a quick way to access a bunch of files, folders, and applications and don't feel like using the Windows Quick Start menu, the program might be worth checking out.
Just in case you had any doubt that Google had a heck of a lot of server space, the company has increased the file size limit for uploads to Google Video. A few days ago, the max was 1GB. Today,it's a whopping 16GB.
In order to take advantage, you'll need a few things:
A Google Apps Premier or Education Edition account
A fairly speedy internet connection (unless you're cool with your videos taking a year or two to upload)
The change only affects Google Video, not Google's other video site.
YouTube uploads are still limited to 2GB.
Google also killed uploads to Google Video for the general public a while back, limiting the feature to Google Apps users. So it's doubtful that the company really expects to buckle under the pressure of all those 16GB file uploads.
Hope this increase in size is mainly for uploading HD videos..
After a long, long wait, RIM have finally released their Blackberry Desktop sync product for Mac OS X.
The application allows you to sync your iTunes playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks with your BlackBerry, manage applications, apply software updates and backup and restore your device (with support for scheduled updates and encryption).
Blackberry Desktop for Mac can manage multiple BlackBerry devices and is a free download.
If you're not one of the 100,000 lucky users who gets an invitation to Google Wave today, don't fret. You can check out Google Wave right here.
But first, ground rules. Click on all images in this post to see them full size. Uppercase "Wave" refers to the entire Google Wave product. Lowercase "wave" refers to an individual message or document. Think of a lowercase wave like an email or a Google Doc that you're collaborating on with other people. The screenshots in this post are from the Wave developer preview, not wave.google.com, invites to which are going out today. We'll update this post with anything significantly new in the non-preview version when we get our grubby little paws on the proper server invitation.
Ready? Let's go.
Inside Google Wave
When you log into Wave, the default view is a three-column, 4-module layout. From left to right, the first column includes Navigation on top (think of this as your Inbox, Sent, and labels in Gmail) and Contacts below (think of this as your GTalk buddy list). The second column is the list of active waves in your Inbox, and the third column is where you can start a new wave or open a wave.
Here's what it looks like. (Click to enlarge.)
When someone updates a wave in your inbox, it turns bold and moves to the top of your inbox—just like email. If a contact of yours is online, a little green dot appears on his or her icon.
All the modules are collapsible and dock themselves in the upper part of the screen. If you've collapsed your inbox and a new wave gets updated, it flashes green. Here I've clicked on new wave and minimized all the other modules to expand my workspace. (Click to enlarge.)
You can add all sorts of rich content to your wave, like a YouTube video, Google Map, image, links, or anything that a gadget enables. (More on gadgets below.) Here I've added some colored text and embedded a video clip in my wave. (Click to enlarge.)
When I finish typing and click the Done button on my wave, Wave pops up the "Add participants" module so I can share my wave with anyone on my contacts list. You can search for a contact by name, or just drag and drop anyone to the wave you choose. (Click to enlarge.)
Once you've shared a wave, the magic starts to happen. At first you'll swoon over the ability to watch your co-waver type in real-time. It's weird in a good, we're-living-in-the-future way to see another person's cursor hard at work outputting characters, key by key on your own screen. But you get over that novelty pretty quickly. (Most likely your IM client can do that; anyone who's used collaborative editors like SubEthaEdit has seen this as well.)
You can reply to an entire wave like an IM or an email by clicking the reply button on a wave's toolbar. But what's most cool is the ability to reply to bits of a message inline. This lets you and your collaborators annotate the wave as you go.
For example, I gave a talk about Wave here in San Diego, and prepared my talk notes in a wave. At the beginning, I did an audience survey to gauge the level of experience with Wave-like technology. I was able to insert replies to the questions in Wave as I went. (Even better would have been to have a co-presenter or note-taker do that for me.)
You can collapse or expand inline comments easily. Here's what the talk wave looks like with comments collapsed. Notice the small talk bubbles on the top Audience survey section. (Click to enlarge.)
Here's what that same wave looks like with inline comments expanded. (Click to enlarge.)
Your replies inside or to a wave can also be marked as private; so if Jack and Jill and I are collaborating on a wave and Jill wants to tell me something about Jack in-wave that Jack shouldn't see, she can click on the drop-down on the upper right of a wave and choose "Private Reply" as shown. (Click to enlarge.)
Once you've entered your private reply, Wave prompts you to add participants to just that reply. That's because every reply is a wave in and of itself. You can create a new wave from any reply or copy a wave to a new wave, too.
Besides real-time updates, another "holy crap" feature of Google Wave is wave revision playback. If someone adds you to a wave late in the game, after lots of conversation and annotation has already happened, you can click on the playback button to see how it was constructed over time. Think of this like a slideshow through Wikipedia page revisions. Here's a quick video clip of what playback looks like on a wave I was in on this morning.
Just like Gmail, Google Wave offers powerful advanced search operators, wave tagging, file uploads (though those are wonky for me in the dev preview), and saved searches. In addition to tags, Wave also offers folders. Folders! The interface is completely drag-and-drop: you can grab any wave and drag it to the trash or a folder.
Wave Extensions: Gadgets and Robots
Wave is a completely extensible platform, like Firefox. Wave extensions come in two flavors: gadgets and robots.
A gadget is a piece of rich content that you can add to a wave. A few example gadgets are available in the Gadget gallery.
Click on the puzzle piece on a wave's toolbar to add a gadget to the wave. One useful gadget is the "Who is Coming?" gadget that lets you invite folks to an event and get RSVPs quickly and easily.
The most useful gadget I've seen so far is the Ribbit conference call gadget. Add it to a wave, and everyone adds their phone number to it. (You only see your own number, not everyone else's.) Click the "Start Conference" button, and everyone's phone rings—and you're on the phone, while you collaborate on a wave. (Click to enlarge.)
For more on the Ribbit Wave gadget, check out Rafe Needleman's review. Robots are email addresses that you add to your contact list. Then, when you are in need of their services, you add a bot to a wave so they can perform some action on its contents. A robot can modify the contents of a wave, and several already exist that do silly to useful actions. For example, Eliza the Robot Shrink (elizarobot@appspot.com) will chat with you about anything—useful when you're the only one of your friends who has a Wave invite and you've no one to talk to.
More usefully, the Bloggy bot (blog-wave@appspot.com) will publish a wave onto a Blogger blog for you. For example, I have Bloggy in my contacts, and added it to my Wave talk wave as shown here. Notice the "Bloggy published this wave here" message in yellow at the top of the wave. (Click to enlarge.)
If another Wave user happens upon that blog post, s/he can comment on it in-blog, and those new updates will show up in my Wave client. Right now, you have to be logged into Wave to see blogged content; but that won't always be the case. Google is working on making published Wave content read-only for all users, even those not logged into Wave. Polly the Pollster (polly-wave@appspot.com) is another extremely useful bot which lets you create and distribute polls to survey wave collaborators quickly.
Other bots do things like automatically link Twitter usernames to their Twitter page, clean up empty replies (which proliferate quickly for some reason), and insert stock quotes. I expect we'll see tons more gadgets and bots bloom over the next year. Here are some more featured Wave extensions, courtesy of Google.
But What Will We Use Google Wave For?
The most frequent question I get about Google Wave is: "But what would I use it for?" Personally I can't wait to use it to take meeting minutes collaboratively and to co-write documents like blog posts and articles online with my editors and co-conspirators. Instead of using something like Campfire or IRC to chat with my fellow Lifehacker editors, I could see using Wave as group chat—but with inline and private replies, which are key. Right now, like all collaboration tools, Wave is only as good as how many of the people you work (and play) with have it. Even though I was one of the developers touched by an angel, with access to the preview, I didn't actually use Wave very much because almost zero of my actual friends and co-workers were on it. So as far as I can see, uses for Wave in your life will open up as the product itself opens up to more users who care enough to wrap their heads around it and start putting valuable information in it. If you're more of a moving-pictures learner, Google's new Wave overview video nicely illustrates some of the features I've highlighted above.
A 10 min video on review of Google Wave from its Team Members ...
Got any questions on Google wave, post on my blog..I'll answer what i can.
