Using the tools of evil, for the better of humanity (Google Wave)

[Cloxxki]

I'm a lazy webuser, so I only got the memo just now, and don't even know where.

The quick and dirty is here: http://lifehacker.com/5285944/the-google-wave-highlight-reel

It makes all kinds of sence. This indeed is how email would be invented had it not been trying too hard to be a letter without a stamp.

Obviously, Google is evil (they say), and emailing with them is the same as sticking a yellow memo on the devil's pc screen.
Yet, I see tremendous opportunity for the FE community here. A chance to simultaniously work, and keep track of conversation, and everything going on.
This seems awesome for brainstorming. And it doesn't get lost in cyberspace as an old fashioned chatbox conversation. And if it does get lost in cyberspace, Google better have a good explanation.

The simultanious editing of documents when taken to the next level might allow great sketches to be made up. You all edit in, the Wave takes shape, and onlookers just like active editiors, are "there".

As great as this forum is, in the classical sence of a web-forum, gathering like minded people to discuss their common interests, I have always felt to co-operation might be better, more in harmony, and real-time. The world is big, and add to that some webphobia's and inventors end up not leaving their door and only discussing their work in static forum messages, or worse, PDF's.

Could Google Wave and like-technologies aid for open source to develop quicker, and be a more exciting place to be? Especially the latter is important. Young bright people get easily bored or distracted. Something "cool" will help them focus on that their minds are really good at.

Your thoughts, apart from the obvious evil masterplan behind all this?

Thanks,

J

[broli]

I watched the 1hour+ long presentation earlier and it's quite cool. I would say it's a new leap in communication that would benefit any online community, especially the FE one. Instead of visiting all the related forums and yahoo groups everything can be managed highly efficient in one place. Imagine searching on all the FE forums, yahoo groups and blogs that you are part of in one go. That would be pretty cool. Not to mention the collaboration aspect of it and developer made gadgets.

They are open sourcing it so it's not pure evil. You don't need to run it on their servers if you can run it on your own or use their vanilla source code. You can change it as much as you like but the cool part is that it would still sync up just like email syncs up using different providers. The core fundamental remains the same throughout different providers. While some may look different than others or be faster.

I think it will take a while to get used to before it can be used to its fullest potential. I believe this would be highly effective on mobile devices.