Netizen

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?

Google Wave

The browser is going 3D.
The browser is adding layers.
Email is going hyper social and real time.
Email will be rich.

The whole thing is open source. I think that is a great business model for Google to pursue.

Google Wave is in some ways more fundamental than Gmail. It could redefine the workspace.

On the other hand, connecting is not the same as thinking. Gelling a thought, the truly innovative ideas, where do they come from? But then those fall in the human realm.

Google might have missed out on Facebook and Twitter, but it has now yet again managed to find the next big thing. Bravo. There is no web company quite like Google just like there was no desktop company quite like Microsoft.

What would be a wave liberated from the keyboard? What would be an audio only version? Is that what a conference call is?

What after Wave? What would be the next big thing?

Facebook has a long way to go, in terms of a tool for not only discovering relationships, but deepening them.

Google Search has a long, long way to go. Search remains the most fundamental application on the web. Search could be so much better than it is now.

People search, what about people search?

So tell me, what is a conversation? What is a document?

This is about simplifying life. Some people don't sign on to some social networking sites saying they don't want yet another thing to have to keep up with.

Another thing to integrate into wave would be search result snapshots. These are the 10 links you get on Google News for Obama as of such and such date and time.

Cultural habits die hard.

I also feel like old email will not go away.

Google Wave is the ultimate mashup application.

It is amazing that a small, five person team worked on this to start with. But then is that not how it almost always happens?

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead.

On The Web

Google Wave Preview
Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For ... the HTML 5 standard ..... the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins ...... born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago ..... sleek and easy way to navigate and participate in communication on the web that makes both email and instant messaging look stale ...... your Wave inbox ....... it isn’t just about new messages, there can be any kind of new content in these waves. ......... your friend will see words as you enter them, and vice versa ...... You can also edit things wiki-style with concurrent group collaboration. ........ (”Modern” is Google’s passive aggressive way of calling out Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.) ........ Google Maps (that you can edit), games, event invitations ....... wants you to be able to use it across all sites on the web ..... you could share a wave with the public ........ Google doesn’t want Wave to be another one of its apps, it wants Wave to be a communication platform that it may have started, but flourishes all over the web in a bunch of different places. ............ Bill Gates’ early insistence on having a robust developer community as one of the keys to the success of Windows ........ emphasis on developers is helping newer platforms like Android and the iPhone grow. ...... in short order, there will be a ton of gadgets, extensions, mash-ups and interesting sites all built around the Wave concept. ........ Waves created by someone communicating with Waves created by someone else ....... Google plans to open source Wave. ...... the key fundamentals Google is focusing on with HTML 5: The canvas element, the video element, geolocation, App Cache and Database and Web Workers. ......... the Web Workers. ....... run background processes outside of the browser so it doesn’t slow to a crawl which running very rich apps — which Wave is. ........ Web Workers helps turns the browser into a more full-fledged launch pad for the next generation of web apps. ..... Wave will work with Twitter ...... a wave that can translate to other languages in real-time.
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build? Google Wave Developer Blog The Google Wave APIs come in two flavors: Embed and Extensions. With Embed, you're able to bring waves into your own site through a simple JavaScript API. For example, embedding a wave in a webpage is a good way to encourage a discussion among the visitors. With Extensions, you're able to write programs, which are packaged as Robots or Gadgets, that provide rich functionality inside the Google Wave web client.
Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave. We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps.

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

.... five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype .... you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds ........ you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. ........ As with Android, Google Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source ....... Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

.... the Google Wave Developer blog
Google Wave ichly formatted text, photos, videos, maps ...... combine Gmail and Google Docs ...... "Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. .......... richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. ....... allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave to see how it evolved. .... Google Wave will be available later this year.
MoMB: Google Wave
Gizmodo - Google Wave Is a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, IM ... a live chatroom with a spread of documents, photos and/or videos, where you can reply to any part of any message or anything that's shared, and it's all real-time. ..... free-wheeling mesh of Twitter, IM, Friendfeed really, any other kind of service presenting semi-real-time stuff in a stream ...... ultimate service for people with ADD, or enterprise looking to simulate the feeling of 10 people standing around a desk scattered with a bunch of projects, but you're all able to work on any of them simultaneously while you're also whispering to the cute girl across the table about the new sushi place around the corner
Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today ... the power of HTML 5 to match functionality long experienced in desktop applications. ....... a profound advance in the state of the art. ...... this project, carried out secretly at Google's Sydney office over the past two years ....... messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud ....... elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking, and even wikis. ....... Jens had the idea back in 2004, when Google first acquired the company that became Google Maps ........ email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. ....... email versus chat, or conversations versus documents ....... a single communications model ...... a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms ...... the amount and quality of participation goes up radically when comments can be interleaved at a paragraph level. ........ First generation email/IM integration let you see when someone was online, and opt to instant message someone rather than send them an email. Wave simply erases the distinction. ..... a lot of time in IM is spent waiting for the other person to press 'Done' ........ Google's relentless focus on reducing the latency of online actions is bringing the online experience closer and closer to our real world experience of face-to-face communication ....... Drop photos onto a wave and see the thumbnails appear on the other person's machine before the photos are even finished uploading ....... conversations become shared documents ....... you don't have to make the choice between discussing and collaborating ....... a document with lots of discussion and edits can become pretty messy. No problem. You can export an edited wave as a new wave, and start over. ........ "waves are tree-shaped sets of messages. You can shape a subtree, or a sub-conversation and limit the set of participants in any way you like." .......... Wave will become as ubiquitous and interoperable as email and instant messaging ...... a new fundamental service on the net. ...... web applications can not only match, but can even beat the functionality of native apps ......... commitment to the lightweight nature of the web, to real-time, to lightweight components connected by open protocols rather than to monolithic systems.
Twave: Google Wave + Twitter a potential game changer in the realm of of email, IM, and project management ..... Google Wave and Twitter are both forms of real-time communication, so why not bring them together? ....... a full stream of your Twitter feed within Google Wave. ........ you can manage them like you would email, with replies, archiving ....... Bloggy: Pushes wave content to a blog ...... Bidder: You can turn a Wave into your own eBay ....... The web is truly transforming into a real-time engine
Google Wave API - Google Code
A Sneak Peak at Google Wave

Hunger, Vision, Money

"If you kick it around enough, it starts to look like a ball."
- Skip Shuda

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that we aim too high and we miss it, but we aim too low and reach it."
- Michelangelo

"Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
—Albert Einstein

Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures

Why would someone, anyone come with me now? I am not a certified engineer. I am not rich. I feel like I have been both a high school and a college dropout. Why come along? Why come with me? Why team up with me? Why invest in my round one? Why believe?

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Mark Twain

Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Bad Time To Start A Company?
New York City: Transformed Forever?

"The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place."
- Jim Rohn

Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
David Gelernter: Manifesto

"An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it.
- Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

Hunger

You have to feel the hunger. Everyone I know is online. If that is your line, you might not have the hunger. You have to have a passion for search to go work for Google. To connect every human mind to the web, and then some. That is the vision statement for my startup. If you don't feel for the five billion plus that are not online, you are not coming along. That's the bargain. You have to liberate a people if you are serious. Once a people can vote, they are in a position to help themselves. Internet access is the voting right for this 21st century. Today Mahatma Gandhi would have poured his energy into internet access for the billions. MLK would have . It is broadband that will bridge the gap between the west and the rest.

I grew up in the poorest country outside of Africa. I have the hunger. Do you? You don't have to have grown up in a poor country to have the hunger. You could simply care.

People who can't pay for food, how will they pay for broadband? They can pay because every human being has something called mindspace. Every human being is capable of consuming ads. I can't think of one village on the planet where Coke does not want to put up a billboard. They want to keep reinforcing the brand name. (Brands Will Still Matter) Broadband catalyzes work on all the other noble goals like fighting poverty, liberating people, conquering hunger and disease. Electricity is fundamental to economic activity. Broadband is like that, only much, much bigger.

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."
- Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Enterprises

Vision

"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent."
- Thomas Edison

Are you someone who gets excited by new ideas? If new ideas threaten you, this is not for you. Do blinding visions blind you, or do they awaken you, stretch you? Are you too comfortable in your comfort zone? Are you risk averse as a rule? Or can you stretch? Because this startup has a panoramic vision. The idea is not to set up a corner coffee shop. The vision has global ambitions. This is not for the faint hearted.

"We were young, but we had good advice and good ideas and lots of enthusiasm."
- Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation

Money

"The cover-your-butt mentality of the workplace will get you only so far. The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business--but it's a whole lot more fun, don't you think?"
- Bill Rancic

If you have 100,000 dollars to invest, you should put 10K into this, or something like this. Most people never get an opportunity to come into the round one of a company that is headed for Nasdaq. If you have 10K to invest, you would be lucky to put 2K into something like this. Because the growth is astronomical. This is the oil beneath the ground in your backyard you did not know about. This is your winning lottery ticket. The risks are huge. That is why the rewards are humongous. To invest, to team up. Oh, the lure.

If a company's valuation goes from five million to 50 billion in 20 years, a $2,000 investment in round one has become 20,000,000. What could you on your own do to take your 2,000 to 20,000,000 in about 20 years? Many companies have achieved this kind of a growth trajectory before. This is no science fiction. This is history.

The rewards are huge for those who invest early, and team up early. I have not made a final decision on the formula for ownership stakes yet, but broadly speaking, earlier you join the team and higher up you are on the team chart, more your share. Anyone who leaves or is asked to leave before the company goes public goes to zero ownership. I want to come up with a new formula that is fair also to people who might team up five years after the company has gone public.

"My son is now an 'entrepreneur'. That's what you're called when you don't have a job."
- Ted Turner, broadcasting entrepreneur

The United States Of Entrepreneurs
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb

Image via Wikipedia

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
- Robert F. Kennedy

An Event Invite From DL21C: This Can't Be Real
Nepali Diaspora: Rethink Time?

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Firstrade

Firstrade: Online Brokerage Firm

Simple and affordable. For you. For the casual and serious investor alike. One of the lower charging online brokers. 10,000 types of mutual funds offered.

Firstrade: Online Brokerage Firm

This is a great online only place for early investors. It is cheap, it is easy. They don't ask for a minimum amount in the thousands of dollars before you can start investing.

The site is very easy to navigate. It scores high on functionality. Firstrade does stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Many reviewers have ranked it above Schwab, Ameritrade and Etrade.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Wolfram Alpha: An Answer Engine, Not A Search Engine

Image via CrunchBase

Wolfram Apha Is Cool

Wolfram Alpha Approaches 100 Million Queries Mashable

Google is a search engine. Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine. Microsoft is a desktop company. Google is an internet company. Google is a search engine. Facebook is a social site.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine. It is not even trying to compete with Google, but it is already a niche king.

Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess

Yahoo's boast of wanting to "kill those 10 blue lines" is on the vacant side. Microsoft wanting to rename and remarket an old search engine is not exactly challenging: where's the innovation? But Wolfram Alpha does kill those "10 blue lines." That is its strength and weakness.

100 million queries? Come on. That is prime real estate already. And the site was selling ad space before it launched. Smart. A sound answer engine and a sound business model: what else do you need to fuel growth?

Google Is Working On Search

It has a small database for now. But that will change as it makes more money and has more resources. But it is good enough now to make good money now.

Wolfram Alpha is not a Google challenger, I don't think so. But what if it were? Look at how fast it hit 100 million queries. That might be the real news. Google, be awake, be very awake.

https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1908944676

You know how you can watch a video clip on YouTube, and then you can get the code to embed that clip on to your blog? I wish this answer engine had a similar share/embed appendage.

But I guess you can always just plain link: New York.

http://www.wolframalpha.com

In The News

Hyped-up Wolfram Alpha gets delta-minus from me New Zealand Herald

Wolfram Alpha: A new way to ask Web for answers Orlando Sentinel

A computational knowledge engine for factual queries Hindu

Wolfram Alpha is the new Wolfram Alpha, not the new Google Pandia
Website of the Week — Wolfram Alpha Voice of America

Wolfram Alpha doesn't impress me FierceContentManagement

Wolfram Alpha won't ask and won't tell ZDNet

Wolfram Alpha and its architecture of failure CNET News
Sizing up Google's new search rivals VNUNet.com

Wolfram Alpha asks searching questions of the web Financial Times

New Search Engines Show Companies Haven't Given Up Fighting Giants findingDulcinea

Too many searches, not enough results GulfNews
Wolfram Alpha gets supercomputer boost CNET News

Search Engine Wolfram Alpha Focuses on Great Answers -- Not Movie ... PC World

Wolfram Alpha to Run On Supercomputers PC Magazine

Wolfram Alpha has a blog! ZDNet
Wolfram Alpha shows data in a way Google can't CNET News