This sounds more up my street, I wasn't a huge fan of the Wave Model as is, I
always saw the potential being beyond that.
There is a saying "not all good ideas are useful", that is to say the potential
to be useful is not always met out in the wild. This is what happened with
Google Wave.
Good friend of mine hit the nail on the head, when I was discussing the use of
wave based technology in NGOs and Charities, which she a lot of experience in:
"This is more of project by programmers for programmers"
"It suits those who know each other and are already used to collaborating in
this way, which is rarer than you think"
"When I invest time on something the last thing I want is people editing willy
nilly".
Yes it is really easy to think of countless think tank type scenarios where
wave will be useful, but the proof in in the pudding. You and I may like the
idea (and I really do trust me), but that doesn't mean it will work. It is not
just about technology, and making it possible.
Don't get me wrong I think it is still salvageable and the overall concept of
federation and OT will have many unexpected uses. But a the same time, there
needs to be some thought to towards use cases. Is very easy to fall into the
trap of thinking becuase it can be used for 'everything' there for it is
useful for everything.
That is why I think there should be a serious re-consideration of Access
Control. One of the most important consideration in interface is the expected
behaviour. I believe the default behaviour for blip is neither expected nor
wanted en-masse. I think all participants editing blips should be still
possible, but that isn't what is wanted most of the time. People need their
space, even during collaboration.
You have to realise the Wikis and similar are a special cases. It is not
something where you would loose you job over it, and if it was then you would
be damn sure about how you use it. There is a difference between collaboration
in everyday task, and this level of collaboration. There is some politics
involved like it or not.
You can only speculate as to the fate of Google Wave. However certain thing are
definitely true:
* It wasn't targeted at anyone in particular, few associations were made
* it wasn't distributed, a per use case, it was go to and try.
Federation didn't happen when it mattered.
* Existing paradigms were not used to help people transition instead
there was obscure cultural references. Email doesn't count becuase that analogy
wasn't strictly accurate, it was confusing, and it wouldn't help anyway.
* It failed to take in to consideration that becuase there weren't many
expected behaviours, people would struggle to make heads or tails of it.Apache
Wave is a Techocracy, but I think they need more interface, and architecture
consideration. When I mean interface I mean the entire needs of the users, not
views.
I think more flexible technology, like Walkaround based projects sound like,
may overtake Apache Wave as is. The again I do like the out of the box,
initiative. It is getting beyond that sort of proof of concept..
________________________________
From: Alex North <a...@alexn.id.au>
To: wave-dev@incubator.apache.org
Sent: Thursday, 27 October 2011, 13:14
Subject: Re: Walkaround -- Wave on App Engine
Thanks so much guys. I'm glad you finally got it out there, and a little
regretful that I didn't do more to help you.
'grats on the launch.
Alex
On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Christian Ohler <oh...@google.com> wrote:
> Fellow wavers,
>
> rather than making waves accessible in Google Docs, which takes too
> long, we are releasing our code in a form that will hopefully be
> useful in the short term. You can find it at
> https://code.google.com/p/walkaround/ .
>
> From the project description:
> Walkaround is a variant of Wave, based on the Apache Wave code base,
> that runs on App Engine. Walkaround can import waves from
> wave.google.com to allow users to keep working with their data
> regardless of the future of wave.google.com. (The import feature is
> still experimental.)
>
> Much of the walkaround code is not specific to Wave, but factored out
> as a separate, more general collaboration layer that manages shared
> live objects. These objects can be modified by multiple clients at
> the same time, with changes made by any client immediately broadcast
> to all others. The Wave application is built on top of this, but the
> live collaboration layer is flexible enough to support other
> applications.
>
> Walkaround supports live concurrent rich-text editing, in-line
> replies, user avatars, wave gadgets, attachments, and we are working
> on integrating App Engine's full text search service. For now, it
> does not support Wave robots, federation, or private replies, but
> these features could be added.
> ---
>
> Some of you have been asking about Wave on App Engine; perhaps this is
> what you are looking for.
>
> The Wave application in walkaround depends very heavily on the Apache
> Wave code base, but the general collaboration layer is useful
> independently, so we put it into a separate repository for now.
>
> Happy hacking,
> Christian.
>
