Samuel L. Jackson Rides The Google Wave... Pulp Fiction Style

A very good way of illustrating the use of Google Wave :-)

Google Wave, a certain death for IRC ?

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an open protocol that sits in the application layer of the internet protocol suite. It basically enables users to login to a channel, located on a server, in which they can exchange text strings in the public channel, or in a private conversation with other users.

The protocol and many of it's applications such as irssi, mIRC, .. have been around for a very long time. Many people assumed that instant messaging clients would be IRC killers. But still today, it's widespread and used all over the globe, mainly by a community of tech-savvy users.

Some of the features why people still like to use it are:

• Anonymity - apart from your IP address, that's pretty visible for other IRC users, you're able to hide between an anonymous handle or nickname
• Channels - Channels, the virtual rooms where you login, stay active even when you are away. If you run your IRC client on a unix box, you even never need to log out, and you're able to read the conversation afterwards.
• Instant communication - Just like with google wave, an unlike to email, messages propagate immediately.
  
• Bot scripting - you can write bots that sit in an IRC channel, that respond to certain text comments, or events happening in the channel.
• File Transfer - the DCC commands allow you to send and receive files. Combined with the previous features, this means you can write bots that can send files on demand. Therefor, there is still a very lively scene of (illegal) filesharing on IRC.

Why would Google Wave, or one of it's applications have the ability to win the hearts of today's community of IRC addicts ?

Although IRC is not intended for collaboration, many users would appreciate better collaboration features and the possibilities to structure an interesting discussion. IRC logs give you a great overview of the dialogue, if you have the time to read through them and synthesize the content for yourself.

Wave Gadgets are "the next step" of gadget like robots, already existing in IRC. To name one examples, many channels run "quiz bots" who fire off questions and that are able to register responses, and more important, recognize who's FIRST. This type of INSTANT interactivity isn't possible in email. Although it is possible in platforms like facebook, you lose the anonimity there.

Because Wave Gadgets offer much richer forms of interaction, with regard to usability (see the chess or sudoku demo), while *probably* enabling you to keep the anonimity, there might be something really valuable for today's IRC users.

A big limitation on IRC is that once typed, there's no way of modifying sent messages. You are only able to send out new messages that are propagated (and duplicated) to all the users in the channel. It's also impossible to link to something said earlier in there.
Maybe this stuff is beyond the scope of IRC: if you're talking to someone, it's not possible to rewind to some of your earlier words, and change stuff. It would be interesting to hear of today's IRC users have a need for this type of editing and manipulation of the propagated info.

Verdict

Many people have made the mistake to predict the death of IRC. I'm convinced that the wave protocol offers enough potential to get some hardcore IRC users really enthusiastic. They will probably be among the first ones themselves to experiment with Wave, and amaze us with new quiz gadgets and IRC like functionality.

/quit (see you in the Wave)

Google Wave opportunities for Institutional Repositories

Institutional Repositories are web based information systems, used in higher education institutions and (digital) libraries to expose valuable content online. In a simplified way, you could consider them content management applications, with very specific usecases for digital preservation, and metadata-editing workflows.

Unique in the landscape of Institutional Repositories (IR's), is the dominance of Open Source platforms, even though these systems have strategic importance for institutions running them (for example DSpace @ MIT).

Can Google Wave solve problems in the area of IR's ?

The current state of the art IR's face important issues. I believe Google Wave offers important opportunities to at least optimize following issues:

Lack of voluntary deposits from (scientific) faculty

If there is a lack of deposits, this often relates to policy (if no one is obligated to deposit) or marketing (if no one knows about the repository) issues. However, it's still also very much related with usability and the required effort from the submitter.
Google Wave can mean a big step forward for deposit-usability.

Let's say a scientist just finishes writing a new pre print, that he'd (or she) like to deposit to the repository of his institution. He opens up a new wave, and adds the institutional repository bot, a bot intended to communicate with the repository on a wave. Because the bot and the scientist have authenticated with each other at some point in the past, this is already a huge leap forward: no more repository specific authentication.

The bot gives him a range of interaction possibilities, and the scientist chooses new submission (in the demo, it was already clear that interaction through forms, would be possible in Wave). When he drags his file into the wave, he can submit it to the repository, and add some metadata. Real clever IR bots will also be able to generate metadata automatically from the document, even maybe extract a full list of references, made in the document.

You probably get the point now about submitters, interacting with the repository bot from within the wave. The information could also come the other way, when a scientist is on a wave, together with the bot, with the sole purpose of knowing what's going on in the repository. Maybe he wants to get notified about new items in the repository, with similar keywords of the ones he used in his submissions ? Or maybe he wants a daily update on the download stats of his items ?

Ok, fair enough, a lot of this last stuff could also be implemented more or less with email, but the fact that the bot can continuously update the same wave, will make it much more efficient to synthesize information, and will make it go a lot FASTER.

Workflow optimization

In the Institutional Repository DSpace, one or more people can be responsible for checking, and extending the (meta)data for new submissions. If a collection receives a lot of submissions, theses metadata editors can become a bottle neck if tasks are piling up. If there are multiple metadata editors for a collection, a new submission arrives in a pool. From this pool, one of the editors has to "claim" the task, and do the editing.

Task pools and claiming will not be required anymore.

Let's say a new submission arrives, in a collection that has two metadata editors, Mary and Jane. The IR bot will start a new wave, and add Mary and Jane. Mary and Jane always have the same view on the data and the current state of the submission. Instead of having to claim the task, they can just work concurrently on the metadata editing, and push it further through the workflow. Jane can check the spelling of the abstract, while Mary checks the copyright status of the journal where the paper is published.

If you are a repository administrator, funder, submitter or visitor ... you've got a reason to be enthusiastic about Google Wave.

Can Google Wave increase email productivity ?

Most people will agree that productivity gains could be reached by optimizing the way we handle email. However, a great deal of optimization is already possible today with tools in our current email clients, such as Gmail. In some cases, lack of knowledge of these tools or discipline lie at the cause of many email annoyances.

It looks like following real problem, that currently can't be tackled with Gmail//email, can be solved with Google Wave.

Tackling management of one-way updates, such as newsletters

The way you can manage a newsletter with GMail is to create a filter, enabling you to make the message skip the inbox. The problem consists of the fact that all the messages are sitting under the filter, as unrelated, atomic items. But because these messages are newsletters from the same organization, it's highly likely that their content will be related.

Let's imagine that you will keep receiving plain email newsletters, once you are using wave. If your wave client allows you to channel all the incoming newsletters in the same wave, you can include a robot or gadget to do certain tasks for you. It could start archiving and processing older newsletters, and present their combined content in a much more accessible way. For example a tag cloud, or a searchable index.

Taking one step further, when newsletters won't get sent out in plain email anymore, but are created as waves, the whole concept of newsletter can be redefined. The wave, sitting in your email client could be a live updated list of top5 newest items on the source site, or 5 most popular items.

In any case, we might be able to get rid of recurring, individual email messages, just because it doesn't require an individual message to update the wave, and bring new content to your attention.

To be continued by how Wave can tackle the Ever Growing Inbox

John Moore on Google Wave as a CRM solution for Small Businesses

Could Google Wave offer be a starting basis for customer relationship management software ?

John Moore puts up some valid points why it could, and people are discussing about it.

One of the main issues in current CRM systems, is that they are database driven, where the web front end offers nice search, browse, reporting and entry functions into that database. The idea is that information, arriving in email, gets somehow structured and entered in that database. Some systems already have integration, where all emails from and to a contact, are automatically stored within the entity of that contact.

But to my knowledge, there are no systems that automatically extract and synthesize information from those emails.

In my opinion, Google Wave, and bots that sit on the wave can play an important role here. Sure, the backend can still be a database, but how information gets in there, from a conversation or dialogue, can be heavily optimized.

John also indicates that access control is a question mark, and would like to see folder-like permissions. To some extent, I agree ... but wouldn't it be great if the wave thinking, would enter the CRM thinking, instead of vice versa. If you're not on the wave, you don't have access. Or is that too simplistic ?

Looking forward to elaborate more CRM ideas.