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This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication. * Push vs. Pull. Does the recipient have to ask to get incoming messages. * Off t

This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication. * Push vs. Pull. Does the recipient have to ask to get incoming messages. * Off the cuff vs. Official. How quickly is the communication written, how much thought goes into formal language & proofreading. * Personal vs. Notification (this is a big problem for communication). Regular mail has fallen to this, 99% of mail is automated messages, both wanted and unwanted. Email is going the same direction. Phone never has moved very far that direction. * Filtered vs. Raw. Computer filtered, or human filtered. Spam, autocategorization, etc. And then it adds document problems to it: * Collaborative vs. Sign off. Am I co-writing the document with somebody or is it a write-revise-signoff cycle? * Controlled vs. AdHoc. How formal does the collaboration need to be. Does it make sense for us to both be editing things, or is internal consistency too important to allow concurrent edits? Basically, just saying "screw email, it's a chat! With Widgets!" totally ignores what people use communication services for, and the varying levels of formality, proofreading, speed, style, and automation. A quick rundown of communication protocols that exist: Email: Delayed, Push for the most part, Filtered, lots of notifications IM: Instant, Push, Raw, few notifications Blog: Delayed, Pull, Filtered (RSS reader, you decide what to read), few notifications. Waves: Instant, Push (?), Raw, notifications... maybe? Basically, it fits in the IM category for the most part. Why would this replace my email to the boss containing a page of pros vs. cons on a new technology that we were going to adopt? Would this replace the automated quarterly emails from HR showing me my 401k balance (and does it do the job any better?). Summary: Very technologically cool, but I have no idea how it fits well into the framework of communication types, and adds anything that's not covered adequately with current communication methods. A thought I have had was that twitter flourished because it was a different set of attributes from anything else that existed (along with other things of course).

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
Excellent break-down of the usage patterns of Email and IM. One thing that you hint at is persistence. While we all have the ability to log IMs, email exists as much for archival purposes as it does momentary communication. The simplest way I can put the Email/IM dichotomy is: it is file vs stream.
- cschneid 17y ago
  Good call, that's yet another axis of communication. I actually had all that written down for a blog post I was going to get around to making (with diagrams & graphics and everything). Something I'd really like to see if a protocol that is designed for notifications to humans. Anywhere from "Your car is ready to be picked up" to "We charged your credit card for this product, for this month of server", etc, etc. I think if it is built from the ground up as a notification protocol, we can avoid the crap emails that we filter based on regular expressions, and bulk mail, and recorded phone calls. But, it'd be really hard to get any sort of traction on of course.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    I am not sure what you'd want from the notification protocol that persisted XMPP doesn't offer already.
    - cschneid 17y ago
      I'm not sure, it's a random idea based on the idea that most personal communication protocols tend toward being used as notification protocols. XMPP might be the answer, or maybe dialects on top of XMPP. (haven't looked too close to see what's possible).
      - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
        please email me, i have a couple ideas i want you and/or somebody to implement regarding notifications ;) aaron.blohowiak@gmail.com
    - joezydeco 17y ago
      Threading. Which is what Wave is trying to offer.
      - rcoder 17y ago
        Voila! I give you XMPP + threading: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0201.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0201.html (last updated Feb. of last year) Wave is XMPP, with additional Google extensions for a variety of collaboration features. That is possible because the first letter in XMPP doesn't stand for "XML", it's the (annoying but common) "eXtensible", suggesting that domain-specific additions are not only accepted, they are encouraged.
mlinsey 17y ago
Tough to say without trying it, but I think this has the potential to be a very flexible format and therefore potentially cover more use cases than you are giving it credit for. As an example, I wouldn't want to turn writing the page of pros vs. cons to my boss into a big collaborative discussion. But once I write the big long list in draft mode and then send it off, it would probably be great if the boss and the whole team could have a conversation about the document in real-time and at various places in the document. It would sure be more manageable than the big email chains in outlook that I've got now.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  I think wave is an indicator of something profound about what our computing and networking infrastructure is good for. It's good for us to collaborate on digital content. It's not so good for us to cooperate without that 3rd digital object -- directly with each other. For that to happen, we need to revamp the entire interface, so it's not a total perception and attention sink. We need to be able to interact with the world and other people in the world, and have computing as only a side channel or an augmentation.
- dkarl 17y ago
  What is "flexibility" from a technical point of view is "ambiguity" from a social point of view. Is the conversation real-time or only potentially real-time? IM is a real-time conversation, like two people speaking. E-mail is not. A single protocol and interface for both means people will be constantly confused about each other's intentions. I like the idea of combining and persisting all communications about a single topic, but in the screenshots it looks like all Wave messages look the same. "Draft" mode vs. keystroke mode provides a clue, but what if I don't see the message arrive? What if I have a real-time conversation with somebody, and then five minutes after it ends, one of us posts another message? We have to add some kind of comment indicating whether it is intended as a continuation of the previous conversation, the beginning of a new real-time conversation, or a one-off message (with the sender perhaps not available to chat at the moment.) Everything that is currently implicit in the mode of communication (email, IM, etc.) and in mode-specific indicators (IM status, etc.) will now have to be communicated explicitly. That seems like a big step backwards. Google Wave will do well if it usefully aggregates many different modes of communication, but if it attempts to unify them then it will be socially unworkable, a total flop.
calambrac 17y ago
The demo video isn't even up yet, and you're already dismissing it for what you think it doesn't take into account? You're my new hero.
- cschneid 17y ago
  Hey now, I'm saying that the claim of a central "THIS IS THE BEST WAY" communication is flawed, because there are lots of ways to communicate. I based what I wrote on the two articles that got posted to HN, and gave my initial impression.
  - calambrac 17y ago
    Except that's not really what you said. You said "This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication". Then you listed these axes without explaining how they weren't accounted for. Then you reduced the product to "screw email, it's a chat! With Widgets!". Then you listed out a bunch of existing products that actually don't account for all the axes of communication. And then admitted towards the end of all that that you actually "have no idea how it fits well into the framework of communication types". All without having ever used the product, or having any exposure to it besides reading two short articles about it.
    - cschneid 17y ago
      Meh, not going to argue with you over a product neither of us have ever used. You're right, I took stronger than needed stances, and it's most likely that this will be a very cool technology. I am just pointing out that all-in-one tools don't really solve communication problems, and that there is a ton to consider when talking about how information is presented, stored, and discussed between people.
      - stcredzero 17y ago
        Didn't RSS readers solve a problem by aggregating disparate streams? Granted, the problem is a lot bigger here. Instead of aggregating/organizing lots of sources using only 2 protocols, you are trying to do the same for many protocols and many models. But I suspect this is why it would be a big win -- the users find this daunting as well!
stcredzero 17y ago
I think Twitter and Facebook are the key here. I think that those two sites and others are crying out for a unification of all of these axes of communications. Right now, your blog, your Twitter stream, your photo streams, the dozen different Facebook things, emails to friends -- unifying all of these in a way which lets the user navigate instantly to an appropriate level of detail, appropriate level of sign-off, and/or the appropriate kind of communications would be fantastic.
iamwil 17y ago
jzellman, eweaver, and I sat around one night last summer and made a grid of these things, for others like twitter, newsgroups, etc. Looking at it, it had holes in it, and we half-joked that all someone needed to do was pick some unfulfilled combination of communication axis, and they'd have another startup.
donjaime 17y ago
Wave is not just a singular tool, it is also a communication protocol. There is no single way to use it. If you watched the demo you would see that many of the issues you mentioned in your comment can be addressed simply by choosing to use wave in the manner that is appropriate for the specific communication's context. You are free to approach it as: 'Collaborative draft and then publish' 'off the cuff IM type conversations' 'Push type communication like email' 'Pull type conversation like a blog' * etc... Its really hard to explain without seeing the demo. When they publish the video for the day 2 keynote you should definitely watch it: http://wave.google.com http://wave.google.com I would just respond to your summary by saying that it does what existing communication types do already... but better... and throws in things like versioning (history and record/playback), collaboration, and concurrent modification for free.
greendestiny 17y ago
A couple of important communication axes: Receivers (number, type and level of privacy), Context (threads, or more generally things like being embedded in something like Facebook). I like Roman Jacobson's work on communication functions, which wikipedia used to have a slightly better description of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson
ntoshev 17y ago
It's a new medium for communication. If it works, people will use it in new unexpected ways; if it doesn't, people won't use it. But there is a lot of excitement about new forms of real-time communication: twitter, recent friendfeed functionality, etc - so they may hit it right. You are enumerating the current segmentation of the space, which is useful if you want to determine where the product stays, but these dimensions are not set in stone. For example Wikipedia is about off the cuff writing that evolves into an official document, collaboratively.
pageman 17y ago
what about http://summize.com http://summize.com ? Instant, Pull (with twitter, +push), filtered, real-time notifications? :)

aaronblohowiak 17y ago

Excellent break-down of the usage patterns of Email and IM. One thing that you hint at is persistence. While we all have the ability to log IMs, email exists as much for archival purposes as it does momentary communication. The simplest way I can put the Email/IM dichotomy is: it is file vs stream.

cschneid 17y ago
Good call, that's yet another axis of communication. I actually had all that written down for a blog post I was going to get around to making (with diagrams & graphics and everything). Something I'd really like to see if a protocol that is designed for notifications to humans. Anywhere from "Your car is ready to be picked up" to "We charged your credit card for this product, for this month of server", etc, etc. I think if it is built from the ground up as a notification protocol, we can avoid the crap emails that we filter based on regular expressions, and bulk mail, and recorded phone calls. But, it'd be really hard to get any sort of traction on of course.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  I am not sure what you'd want from the notification protocol that persisted XMPP doesn't offer already.
  - cschneid 17y ago
    I'm not sure, it's a random idea based on the idea that most personal communication protocols tend toward being used as notification protocols. XMPP might be the answer, or maybe dialects on top of XMPP. (haven't looked too close to see what's possible).
    - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
      please email me, i have a couple ideas i want you and/or somebody to implement regarding notifications ;) aaron.blohowiak@gmail.com
  - joezydeco 17y ago
    Threading. Which is what Wave is trying to offer.
    - rcoder 17y ago
      Voila! I give you XMPP + threading: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0201.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0201.html (last updated Feb. of last year) Wave is XMPP, with additional Google extensions for a variety of collaboration features. That is possible because the first letter in XMPP doesn't stand for "XML", it's the (annoying but common) "eXtensible", suggesting that domain-specific additions are not only accepted, they are encouraged.

mlinsey 17y ago

Tough to say without trying it, but I think this has the potential to be a very flexible format and therefore potentially cover more use cases than you are giving it credit for. As an example, I wouldn't want to turn writing the page of pros vs. cons to my boss into a big collaborative discussion. But once I write the big long list in draft mode and then send it off, it would probably be great if the boss and the whole team could have a conversation about the document in real-time and at various places in the document. It would sure be more manageable than the big email chains in outlook that I've got now.

stcredzero 17y ago
I think wave is an indicator of something profound about what our computing and networking infrastructure is good for. It's good for us to collaborate on digital content. It's not so good for us to cooperate without that 3rd digital object -- directly with each other. For that to happen, we need to revamp the entire interface, so it's not a total perception and attention sink. We need to be able to interact with the world and other people in the world, and have computing as only a side channel or an augmentation.
dkarl 17y ago
What is "flexibility" from a technical point of view is "ambiguity" from a social point of view. Is the conversation real-time or only potentially real-time? IM is a real-time conversation, like two people speaking. E-mail is not. A single protocol and interface for both means people will be constantly confused about each other's intentions. I like the idea of combining and persisting all communications about a single topic, but in the screenshots it looks like all Wave messages look the same. "Draft" mode vs. keystroke mode provides a clue, but what if I don't see the message arrive? What if I have a real-time conversation with somebody, and then five minutes after it ends, one of us posts another message? We have to add some kind of comment indicating whether it is intended as a continuation of the previous conversation, the beginning of a new real-time conversation, or a one-off message (with the sender perhaps not available to chat at the moment.) Everything that is currently implicit in the mode of communication (email, IM, etc.) and in mode-specific indicators (IM status, etc.) will now have to be communicated explicitly. That seems like a big step backwards. Google Wave will do well if it usefully aggregates many different modes of communication, but if it attempts to unify them then it will be socially unworkable, a total flop.

calambrac 17y ago

The demo video isn't even up yet, and you're already dismissing it for what you think it doesn't take into account? You're my new hero.

cschneid 17y ago
Hey now, I'm saying that the claim of a central "THIS IS THE BEST WAY" communication is flawed, because there are lots of ways to communicate. I based what I wrote on the two articles that got posted to HN, and gave my initial impression.
- calambrac 17y ago
  Except that's not really what you said. You said "This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication". Then you listed these axes without explaining how they weren't accounted for. Then you reduced the product to "screw email, it's a chat! With Widgets!". Then you listed out a bunch of existing products that actually don't account for all the axes of communication. And then admitted towards the end of all that that you actually "have no idea how it fits well into the framework of communication types". All without having ever used the product, or having any exposure to it besides reading two short articles about it.
  - cschneid 17y ago
    Meh, not going to argue with you over a product neither of us have ever used. You're right, I took stronger than needed stances, and it's most likely that this will be a very cool technology. I am just pointing out that all-in-one tools don't really solve communication problems, and that there is a ton to consider when talking about how information is presented, stored, and discussed between people.
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      Didn't RSS readers solve a problem by aggregating disparate streams? Granted, the problem is a lot bigger here. Instead of aggregating/organizing lots of sources using only 2 protocols, you are trying to do the same for many protocols and many models. But I suspect this is why it would be a big win -- the users find this daunting as well!

stcredzero 17y ago

I think Twitter and Facebook are the key here. I think that those two sites and others are crying out for a unification of all of these axes of communications. Right now, your blog, your Twitter stream, your photo streams, the dozen different Facebook things, emails to friends -- unifying all of these in a way which lets the user navigate instantly to an appropriate level of detail, appropriate level of sign-off, and/or the appropriate kind of communications would be fantastic.

iamwil 17y ago

jzellman, eweaver, and I sat around one night last summer and made a grid of these things, for others like twitter, newsgroups, etc. Looking at it, it had holes in it, and we half-joked that all someone needed to do was pick some unfulfilled combination of communication axis, and they'd have another startup.

donjaime 17y ago

Wave is not just a singular tool, it is also a communication protocol. There is no single way to use it. If you watched the demo you would see that many of the issues you mentioned in your comment can be addressed simply by choosing to use wave in the manner that is appropriate for the specific communication's context. You are free to approach it as: 'Collaborative draft and then publish' 'off the cuff IM type conversations' 'Push type communication like email' 'Pull type conversation like a blog' * etc... Its really hard to explain without seeing the demo. When they publish the video for the day 2 keynote you should definitely watch it: http://wave.google.com http://wave.google.com I would just respond to your summary by saying that it does what existing communication types do already... but better... and throws in things like versioning (history and record/playback), collaboration, and concurrent modification for free.

greendestiny 17y ago

A couple of important communication axes: Receivers (number, type and level of privacy), Context (threads, or more generally things like being embedded in something like Facebook). I like Roman Jacobson's work on communication functions, which wikipedia used to have a slightly better description of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson

ntoshev 17y ago

It's a new medium for communication. If it works, people will use it in new unexpected ways; if it doesn't, people won't use it. But there is a lot of excitement about new forms of real-time communication: twitter, recent friendfeed functionality, etc - so they may hit it right. You are enumerating the current segmentation of the space, which is useful if you want to determine where the product stays, but these dimensions are not set in stone. For example Wikipedia is about off the cuff writing that evolves into an official document, collaboratively.

pageman 17y ago

what about http://summize.com http://summize.com ? Instant, Pull (with twitter, +push), filtered, real-time notifications? :)