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It's interesting that you mention wanting someone to implement the "core concept" more effectively, because I think that one of the biggest problems with Wave w

by samdk 16y ago

It's interesting that you mention wanting someone to implement the "core concept" more effectively, because I think that one of the biggest problems with Wave was that it didn't have a well-defined core concept. It was billed as the Next Big Thing, the replacement for email and instant messaging and everything else, but it wasn't particularly good at doing any of them, and nobody had any real idea of what it was supposed to be doing. "Do everything well" is a pretty problematic core concept. I do think that something can be a subset of Wave's functionality and still be useful (I use Flowdock[0] every day, and wrote GitChat[1] for Rails Rumble, and both are essentially web-based persistent chat applications). However, I'm unsure if Wave's codebase is the best place to start. It's very hard to apply a new (much narrower) focus on top of an existing project than it is to start from scratch. [0] http://flowdock.com/ http://flowdock.com/ (Persistent chat with searchable tags, uploads, and some other useful features.) [1] http://gitchat.com/ http://gitchat.com/ (Flowdock-inspired persistent chat for open-source GitHub projects. Originally developed for Rails Rumble, and we haven't had a chance to work on it since, so it's still very buggy. It will definitely be stabilized/improved at some point though.)

tgriesser 16y ago
That's the biggest problem with billing something as the "Next Big Thing"... no one has any idea what that will even look like, so trying to hype something as the next big thing before it is released is setting it up for disappointment 100% of the time.
noibl 16y ago
The core concept is: a robust method for automatically merging concurrent changes to a published resource by collaborating users in real-time (OT). It's true that other key components of Wave were seen as essential to its success (in particular the federation protocol and the bots API) but those were still designed in support of the core use-case: real-time collaborative editing. There was a ridiculous amount of hype about the project and all the things it might replace but that doesn't change the fact that its development was and is focused on solving an actual problem using real technological innovation.
- samdk 16y ago
  This is actually exactly what I meant by a lack of focus. That may be the focus of the underlying codebase (and that may be where the innovation is), but the UI was just really a glorified chat room. It wasn't particularly suited to actually doing real-time editing.
  - noibl 16y ago
    The UI from Google was little more than proof-of-concept. The ability to sync arbitrary data, not just chat text, on the fly is what will make Wave useful if it ever sees wide adoption. That really is the core concept and not chat, as many seem to think. It's not accurate to say that there's no core concept.

by samdk 16y ago

tgriesser 16y ago

That's the biggest problem with billing something as the "Next Big Thing"... no one has any idea what that will even look like, so trying to hype something as the next big thing before it is released is setting it up for disappointment 100% of the time.

noibl 16y ago

The core concept is: a robust method for automatically merging concurrent changes to a published resource by collaborating users in real-time (OT). It's true that other key components of Wave were seen as essential to its success (in particular the federation protocol and the bots API) but those were still designed in support of the core use-case: real-time collaborative editing. There was a ridiculous amount of hype about the project and all the things it might replace but that doesn't change the fact that its development was and is focused on solving an actual problem using real technological innovation.

samdk 16y ago
This is actually exactly what I meant by a lack of focus. That may be the focus of the underlying codebase (and that may be where the innovation is), but the UI was just really a glorified chat room. It wasn't particularly suited to actually doing real-time editing.
- noibl 16y ago
  The UI from Google was little more than proof-of-concept. The ability to sync arbitrary data, not just chat text, on the fly is what will make Wave useful if it ever sees wide adoption. That really is the core concept and not chat, as many seem to think. It's not accurate to say that there's no core concept.