So, Google Wave is 1 year old. I failed to post my first impressions when I first got to play with it but much of it seems to still apply.
I have to say I like it a lot but I’m worried that it’s made for people just like me. This concern was reinforced when I introduced it to my girlfriend. I immediately gabbling about collaborative, real-time spaces or something and she soon switched off.
If something is not immediately obvious, people try comparing it to something they already know. E-mail is like, er, mail. On that basis, I’d describe it as an instant, disposable, real-time forum.
Google’s biggest successes have always been in simplifying the UI by keeping the clever stuff behind the scenes. They rejected Yahoo’s hierarchy and AltaVista’s complex search forms for a minimalistic, freeform search box. With maps, Google dumped the clunky 8-directional arrows in favour of actual dragging.
There’s a conflict when the simplest solution doesn’t have an clear physical analog. Whereas organising by folders are easy to grasp, tagging is more of a hurdle – even though it’s a straightforward generalisation. This requires a cognitive effort and too many of these can cause a non-geeky user to break off before they have adopted the new model.
I’m keen to use Wave more but, until Google frames Wave in more familiar ways, I’m not convinced it’s going to gain traction to the same degree as e-mail, Facebook or Twitter.
Regurgitated from an original post on simonhammond.com/blog on May 6, 2008.
I love Google Reader for managing and reading my feeds but public sharing leaves something to be desired. I use the share button because it’s right there and I know I’ll be able to find it later. But Google Clippings is kinda clunky. It truncates titles. It indents. Consequently, I could make it almost — but not quite — fit it with the rest of my site.
I was hoping that latest extension to Reader might address this but it turns out to be a poor imitation of Tumblr, probably trying to ape Facebook sharing with three spoonfuls of cuteness. The shared items page at the unsnappy http://www.google.com/reader/shared/12953360243211055664 comes in four flavours: ‘Default’, ‘Ice -cream’, ‘Ninjas’ or ‘Sea’. Its saving grace is that it includes an RSS feed.
Enter Yahoo! Pipes, herein referred to simply as Pipes. I had another peep at Pipes the other day. It’s a seriously fun construction set for the web originally based on mashing up RSS feeds but has now expanded out a little more from the stereotypical superfeed usage.
The useful new feature of interest is serialized PHP output renderer. This means I can suck data through Pipes, process and filter it, then pull it into my own page and present it how I like, i.e. I can fix the problem of Google’s clunky presentation of shared items.
Right now, I’m just displaying headlines at simonhammond.com/shared. That’s my shared items displayed how I like on my site. And that gives me the warm, happy feeling. Best of all would have it being served up from my own copy but for the moment I’ve enough confidence in Reader, Pipes and Delicious to provide.
Sorry for the hollow sparseness and obvious template-ness of this newly-installed blog. I expect it will round out in time and gain a bit of character. The important thing is that it exists. The question is then: why?
I spend most of my waking hours coding for the web. Mostly, this is the bread-and-butter stuff of my day job in e-learning. I also like to try out my own projects to give me an excuse to play with new technologies. It keeps me fresh and interested.
When I get stuck or a thought occurs which may or may not be novel, Google very often leads me to a web geek’s blog. Likewise, I hope this blog of my experiences and lessons will be useful to others.
It’s like some crazy karmic coding thing. I don’t want to prescribe the tone or content in too much detail. We’ll just see how it pans out.