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Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

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Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#3
I haven't been following the Wave hype, but by the end of the rather verbose first page I still had no real idea what Wave is supposed to be or why I'd want to use it.

Best I can tell it's some mish-mash of email/IM/docs - which frankly sounds horrifying.

Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#5
Each top-level conversation contains groups of messages that are sort of like subthreads. The conversations are referred to as "waves" and the subthreads are called "wavelets". Individual messages, which are called "blips", are the smallest discrete conversational unit of a wave. The distinction between Wave the service and "wave" the conversational unit is significant, so keep an eye on the capitalization.

Why the jargon? These terms do not relate to anything anyone is familiar with in any different context. This seems unnecessary.

I genuinely hope that http://xkcd.com/483/ (Fiction Rule of Thumb) doesn't apply to Google Wave.

Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#6
post #4

This is actually a pretty good overview of wave, hitting all the high points well.

Reading this comment, I knew it had to be Ryan Paul (since it's not a Mac article).

It's kind of awesome how many of their great writers still code from time to time, so they really get it.

Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#7
Seems really over complicated to me, and I can't understand what problem it's trying to solve really. The scope seems to be ridiculously broad.

Guess we'll see if people start using it or not, but it seems like there's a fair learning curve before you even understand what it is and why it exists.

Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#8
post #5

Each top-level conversation contains groups of messages that are sort of like subthreads. The conversations are referred to as "waves" and the subthreads are called "wavelets". Individual messages, which are called "blips", are the smallest discrete conversational unit of a wave. The distinction between Wave the service and "wave" the conversational unit is significant, so keep an eye on the capitalization. Why the j…

Sorry for the pedantry, but doesn't expecting the terms to relate to things in a different context go against the very nature of jargon?

Jargon is "technical terminology unique to a particular subject." [wiktionary.org]

I imagine that when one is discussing OTs and how they relate to the federation protocol, these terms would be very useful. Sure, you could talk about nodes and edges in a graph, but there are many graphs of many types in any large system. These terms refer to specific kinds of nodes in a very specific kind of graph.

Re: Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave by Ars Technica

#10
post #2

> Wave is designed to facilitate real-time concurrent messaging, meaning that content appears to all users immediately and multiple users can edit and submit content at the same time. One of the things I like about email is that it is not real-time.

Real-time just means that you can start ignoring it immediately, instead of waiting whole seconds for it to arrive in your inbox first.
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