Google Wave Ideas for the future

Introduction

_{This is an improved version of the article.}

It is no secret that the Wave attracted public attention ( 1 , 2 , 3 , etc. ) while still in deep testing.

Now Wave is open - and everyone can catch a wave or read reviews. I did not pass by. At the first acquaintance, the service turned my head about its concept, and I dreamed. This article is my perception of Wave, as well as a list of improvements related mainly to the functionality of a particular wave, a specific blip. This is what I lack for complete happiness. I think there are some very interesting proposals that directly stem from the concept of Google Wave, in the implementation of which the universality of the Wave would only increase. Some suggestions depend on others.

“What is Google Wave?”

Imagine a chat window in front of you. You see the history of correspondence: your messages on a blue background, others' messages on yellow. You are now writing an answer to the last replica of the interlocutor. You have already written the first few words, when you suddenly notice that something is amiss with the remark: it has literally literally changed! Part of the letters was erased, as if someone had pressed Backspace, and well, let's type in new words on a yellow background! And after a couple of seconds another line with a green background wedged into the message history, and words and sentences began to appear on it too! Before your eyes, all correspondence suddenly healed its life. The one who edited the lowest replica answered the words of the one who edited the highest. And two obscure subjects in the middle of the correspondence argued among themselves and turned to you for advice. You have gained courage and wedged into an argument,



Of course, if this had happened in your IM client, you would have long been out of snapping. For Wave, this is a common situation, although people rarely edit other people's messages - they write more and more, generating content right before your eyes. At the same time, Wave is not just symbolic chat, it is the organization of “bursts” (in the jargon of blips) as in blogs, that is, tree-like. Here you are sitting in someone’s wave called “Place of relaxation”, reading messages, when suddenly a picture appears in front of your nose, and someone starts to draw on it! And below you see how a certain participant posted a video from YouTube and now writes an announcement to it. For now, you want to read a very interesting message, so ignore other activity, but here the activity gets to the message being read. The author simply erased it and said that it would make a separate wave in two days. What to do, because this text has captured you, and I want to read it completely? Of course, you can immediately ask the author to return the text, but you can just look into the playback mode, and you will see not just the past of the wave, but the past in dynamics. A wave in the sea - here and now, it is formed by streams, waters, it is always in motion. Only neither the oceans nor the ships have a time machine to look at the past. Do you have.

Google Wave is a chat, a forum, and a blog. Blog did you say? Yes sir! Create and drive one (two, three) wave, not offering editing access to everyone, but allowing it to be read. Chat? Let the wave with a call to chat, and see what happens! Forum? Easily. Name the topic, describe the rules of communication - for Wave has already developed a special etiquette - and you will see how people will communicate.

Google Wave is not a chat, not a forum, and not a blog. I have no exact words to describe Wave, you can try it yourself. Or you can read what some witty people do with Wave . Better to say, Wave is what you want to make of it.

Feature Requests for Google Wave

I propose to discuss not only the ideas themselves, but imagine how they would affect communication and life on the Wave / Internet. After the ideas have been tested, I will try to convey them to the developers.

- Playback mode for a single blip.

From the developers: Individual comment thread playback (For instance being able to view the timeline of a specific wavelet).

- On the side, make a sensory activity strip. It marks the places of activity of the participants in the wave. The same applies to the playback mode. The activity bar must be hidden.

(I see an option that is implemented in TortoiseMerge. A very convenient strip for viewing changes.)

- Highlighted modified blip elements or highlight in another way. Also display the places of change in the activity bar.

From the developers: Colored blips on the scrollbar to mark new changes to the wave in their appropriate locations. Another idea for showing new blips might be using gradients and make the old blips transparent.

- In the list of participants mark colored avatars as active avatars. With a single click on such an avatar, transfer the view to the place of activity of this participant. Move active members to the top of the list. Separate live participants from robots.

- On-line / off-line editing mode for each message, by default - on-line. In some way selected when editing a message. For participants in the wave, an editable offline message is grayed out, it cannot be answered, it cannot be edited.

(In the Google Wave API review, such an opportunity is described for the client: “Bursts can be presented in draft form or be published by clicking the“ Finish ”button in the Google Wave client.”)

- When you reach the milestone in a certain number of blips, minimize the discussion to one metablip containing n blips. The metablip must be movable. Let the metablip contain 100 blips and the wavelet contain 125 blips. A metablip appears when someone creates a 125th blip (the minimum number of blips for a metablip to appear). Only 100 neighboring blips will enter the metablip, and 25 will remain outside. It can be the first 25 blips, the last 25 or (for example) 10 at the top and 15 at the bottom. The sizes of metablipes change, metablipes are broken up if a new blip appears inside or an old one is edited (optional). The metablip displays the number of blips, participants. Old discussions also collapse into metablips. Metablips are displayed in the activity bar as rectangles. Metablips should whenever possible Combine not only blips in one wavelet, but also blips of different wavelets. On the metablip there should be buttons “Select all blips from above”, “Select the closest upper blip”, “Select all blips from the bottom”, “Select the nearest lower blip”.

- Joint video viewing. The video player is placed in the blip. Users ("viewers") subscribe to the viewing using a special button, there they select the quality they need. Their avatars can be seen in the drop-down list. For signatories, a protected space (metablip) is organized so as not to interfere with another part of the wave. From the moment of subscription, the video player starts downloading the video. For viewers, vertical loading indicators are displayed to the right of the player. These bars show everyone’s readiness for viewing. Any viewer clicks “Play for all” and the video starts playing for all signatories. Viewers can communicate in a thread, in which blips are added from the bottom up under the player. For the rest, the thread is minimized, you can expand and participate in the discussion. For third-party participants, a progress bar is displayed directly below the video player - the process of viewing by viewers. You can join the view using the button near the indicator. After viewing, the thread turns over and becomes the usual part of the wave. While watching, you can also walk in another part of the wave.

- Joint listening to sound recordings (podcast, soundtrack, etc.). Participation is similar to joint video viewing.

(It seems to me that this will not be successful, but the video viewing will be.)

- Integration with Internet radio. A radio player is added to the wave and tuned to a specific radio wave, for a specific turn-on time (eg, from 10:00 to 12:00). Participation is similar to joint video viewing, only the player turns on itself.

- Video conferencing in a blip. (There is a video chat extension, how it works, there is no way to check.) Participation in video conferencing is similar to participation in watching a video. The video conferencing blip is necessarily saved and appears as a special wave in the special folders of the participants. Blip Playback is a conference playout.

- Audio conferencing is a special case of video conferencing.

(A certain type of conference is available in the form of the Conference gadget. I don’t know how it works.)

- Separate ordinary and epoch-making wave changes. Epochs in the playback mode are marked with large serifs.

- Broadcast blip to another wave. You can broadcast either an actual blip, or his moment from his story. In the first case, “remote” editing may or may not be allowed. By broadcast blip, you can go to the source wave.

(Now you can select any part of the wave as a separate wave, but this is not the same as broadcasting. Broadcasting implies that the receiver sees changes in the source. Using this function, you can collect the wave from the tracked blips, it would be convenient for moderators. make quotes and links.)

- Radio / video - wave. Video / audio conferencing blips marked as public broadcasts are broadcast to the general wave stream with a special tag. Everyone can watch, listen or join (depending on the privacy settings of the conference). A special case is when 1 person participates in a Video / audio conference, then the wave turns into pure TV and radio.

(This way you can make a wave-TV channel).

- Broadcast external resources into the wave.

- Waves code, waves for developers. The code file is broadcast to the wave. Developers can write and discuss code at the same time. In the ideal case, the epoch-making changes of the wave become commits in the external repository (commits to temporary, but not main branches, of course). Folding code into metablips. Code highlighting.

From the developers: Code highlighting inside waves / blips.

(There is a robot for highlighting the code: kasyntaxy@appspot.com.)

- Wave integration with an external version control system (for example , with SVN in Google Code). Folders - projects, waves - project files. The history of wave changes is the history of commits.

- “Online selection” mode: when one participant selects a part of a blip, for example, text, others see this selection. Similar to laser pointer during a regular presentation.

- Window of a third-party site inside the wave. (As an option: the “internal browser” window.) Working with it is no different from working on the site itself.

- Customizable position of the list of participants. By default, the list is on the right side of the window. Make the list hidden.

From the developers: Being able to move around and reorganize the panels would be a nice addition.

- By default, minimize threads.

From the developers: Maybe a way of auto-hiding all inline replies for documents like this to make them easy to read. That way, new users only expand inline replies when they want more info on said topic.

- Integration with office programs, including with presentations.

(This item is perhaps one of the most predictable and not only expressed by me.)

* Integration with Google Docs: collaborative editing of a document.

(Wave export to Google Docs is available using the Ferry gadget.)

* Integration with presentations. Showing a presentation is similar to sharing a video mixed with video conferencing. The "online highlighting" mode is added. The mouse becomes a laser pointer.

- Spoiler blip.

- “Rollback” of the wave to a certain landmark (or other) revision.

(Without this, the wave is not a Wiki, but a resemblance, anyway.)

- Sound design of the wave (background sounds and music). The author of the wave attaches one or more soundtracks to the first message, which are played for the participants in the wave. Disabled. There should be a global setting of "Play background music in the waves."

- One of the main wishes for everyone is more opportunities for moderation, for setting wave permissions. Moderation can be done using some blip editing templates. Permissions can be displayed in the first blip (or before the first blip) in the form of icons and / or labels. Such templates:
* any editing is allowed (by default, as of now);
* You can not edit the clips;
* You can not edit other people's blips;
* you can only add blips;
* You can add only your own blips;
* You can correct spelling;
* Do not insert empty messages;
* The same actions are only for wave participants or for all.

("Templates" can be anything: robots, gadgets or native functions. I, in principle, do not care how the developers solve this important problem.)

- A wave icon that emphasizes the thematic focus of the content.

- Invites to a specific wave.

- Own groups of participants.

This question was already considered at Habrahabr.

- Quick wave creation for a specific group of participants.

- “Quick Search” - customizable buttons with attached search terms.

From the developers: Make the search more user friendly. (With: public, and in: inbox is a bit different then what most are use to). A way to search within a single wave and its playback would be nice.

- Remove the yellow stripe.

- Natively represent YouTube videos in the form of waves with a special tag.

Wave Links

> This Google Topic : wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+riNZ4brQC

> Developer Wave: wave.google.com/wave/#restored : wave: googlewave.com! W% 252BEdTOMiGeA

Other Wave Materials

“What is Google Wave?”
Searching for these words yields an enormous amount of results. I dare to provide some useful links:

* Marathon with Google Wave development father Lars Rasmussen
* Lars online (Kiev-Sydney wave marathon with Lars Rasmussen)
* Google Wave on Wikipedia
* An article on a website

Terms

Blip - Eng. "Blip" is a splash.
Wavelet “Wavelet” is a “small wave”.