The HiTech eZine » Computers

Google’s WAVE Application

Dennis Dearborne — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:54:59 +0000

I just completed an Online Seminar (the better part of 2 hours) viewing of the about to be released (sometime this Summer?) Google Wave Application. This seminar was geared towards API (Application Programming Interface) developers. Google’s Wave is “Open Sourced for developers”. Which, loosely defined, means… “Ya’ll Come and help us develop this puppy”.

WHAT IS WAVE?

Google Wave is a new communication service previewed recently at an API Developer’s showing called “Google I/O”. “A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more”. The service seems to combine Gmail and Google Docs into an interesting free-form workspace that could be used to write documents collaboratively, plan events, play games, chat (Twitter for example), or discuss recent news.

FIRST THOUGH, A LITTLE BIT OF “WEB HISTORY”

Two of the most influential successes in digital communications, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the ’60s to imitate some analog counterparts. Email mimicked “snail mail”, and IM (Instant Messaging) mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communications have also been invented; Websites, Blogs, WIKIs, collaborative documents, etc. Computers and networks also dramatically improved along the way.

THEN ALONG COMES A NEW IDEA!

An idea which quite possibly may be the birth of something HUGE, taking us rapidly from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, and completely reshaping the way that we view computer interaction, both in Business and/or Social Networking. Email is now 40 years old, yet still remains the most popular method to communicate. Email came before the internet… before the web. What would email look like IF it were to be invented today?

Email becomes REAL TIME. Instead of simple static documents that need to be created, SENT, distributed, and then REPLIED to, with the same ponderous and static distribution back to the originator. Imagine this whole process occurring in REAL TIME, with all participants of the WAVE making their individual contributions TO that Wave!

Spell Checking also occurs in Real Time as you type your contribution to the Wave. But it’s also so much more than just a “spell checker”. It’s also a “context checker”. Here’s a real example used in the seminar. A demonstrator typed “icland is an icland”. The “spell/context checker” converted this (INSTANTLY) to “Iceland is an island”. Thunderous applause resulted from the programmers in attendance!

WHOSE IDEA IS THIS?

Two engineering brothers (Jens and Lars Rasmussen) created a well known (and well used) application by the name of Google Maps. This also morphed into Google Earth and Google Sky! They then conceived of a new idea/project, which they codenamed “Walkabout”. This idea has morphed into Google Wave!

They started with a set of tough questions:

* Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

* Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?

* What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

They then gave developers an early preview of “Google Wave”.

WHAT’S A WAVE COMPRISED OF ANYWAY?

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Think of a “wave” as something akin to a “thread”. The WAVE starts out simply, gathers participants, and the WAVE builds. It can gather documents, text, graphics,photos, videos, IM’s, WIKI’s, etc as it “builds”.

Wave is an HTML5 App that uses your browser as it’s engine. It’s quite easy for me to imagine the platform being a simple NetBook (or Smart Phone), with it’s internet connectivity, using it’s browser as your “Window” to ALL of your communication needs!

HOW IT ALL WORKS:

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a “wave” and add people to it. Everyone on your “wave” can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly (in REAL TIME I might add, NO waiting required!). It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages (IM’s) as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it (the thread) evolved. This “Playback” capability allows for Newly added participants to “catch up” with conversations, and other added content that occurred before they were added to “the group”. One mouse click on a button… boom! instant “catch up”. Very, very nice capability indeed!

Google says, “As with Android, Google Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we’re inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch.” Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

* The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave). This feature ALONE is incredibly powerful. Have you ever tried to create a photo album that ALL members of a group can add to? And merely by performing a drag and drop operation? ALL members of the Wave are upgraded simultaneously AND instantly! And, again, any added Wave participants can “catch up” by merely clicking the “playback” button! WOW!

* Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services (Twitter for example), and to build new extensions that work inside waves.

* The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the “live” concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can inter-operate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, they intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

In Wave, what you would think of as an email “REPLY” can be inserted into this “next generation email” scenario as an IM exchange. All of which occurs in REAL TIME. Current IM exchanges (let’s use Skype texting as an example) you spend most of your time watching a “pen scrawl”.. indicating that the other party is typing… typing…. typing…. when, in WAVE, you watch character by character as they are actually being typed. Imagine how much quicker IM’s transpire if you can be reading while they are typing…. and vice versa. This allows you to “formulate” YOUR OWN reply as you read. This can DRAMATICALLY speed up the conversation. BTW, there IS a check box that you can invoke so that others CANNOT see your typing (mistakes and all) until you hit “return”. Have it YOUR way!

This will allow email “type” communications to be combined with IM type communications, all to be combined into ONE TOOL! Once again, new participants can be added to the Wave with a simple mouse click, and a simple function called “playback” allows the new Wave participant to “catch up” to the Wave by adding in prior subject threads, that they, otherwise, would not be privy to.

Private replies (akin to DM’s) can be injected into the threads, and they remain PRIVATE. Pictures can be dragged (from a desktop looking Wave panel,) right into the content of the Wave. Thumbnails appear immediately (as the file transfers of the photos takes place behind the scenes). HTML5 can not support this drag and drop from the desktop quite yet. However it’s, as we speak, being implemented into the new spec. It’s the ONLY part of Wave that isn’t accommodated as yet! Group photo albums can be created quite simply with WAVE, something that remains complex to do with today’s current tools.

This technology is incredibly exciting. I can’t wait for the developers to get busy with API’s and turn Google Wave’s infrastructure into something incredibly flexible and useful. I believe WAVE will SURELY transform the way that we all interact on both Business AND/OR social levels.

Comment I found on the Google Wave forum, to me, pretty much encapsulates my feelings about where the development of this product is headed. I would give David’s full name (for credit to him) but it was not included in his post.

” David said:

I just finished watching the video, and I was blown away. I was amazed at how content-centric this is. Any type of content can theoretically be added to a wave: chats, e-mail, documents, images, spreadsheets, code, video, twits, etc.–anything you wish. Even extensions are exposed as content within waves. This completely breaks down the barrier between different forms of content (and applications) and unifies it all as waves. This means that, theoretically, all of Google’s services can be unified within Google Wave. They wouldn’t necessary have to go away, but their interfaces would be used less, as all their content would be exposed through Google Wave’s interface. Not just that, but any service could be added and exposed as waves, from Google Reader and Gmail to competing services like Flickr and Facebook. Just like RSS feeds pull in the web to us, Wave could eventually pull in all our online activity into one organized place. And we’d rarely need to leave it!

The best part of all this is how open this is. Anyone can offer a competing services, and anyone can theoretically take all his waves with him to a competing service. One could even run a Wave server at home, solving the privacy issues of using a third-party service.

In short, this has the potential to change not just the web, but how we compute in general. I can’t wait to see where this goes.”

Many kudos to all at Google…… Dennis Dearborne The HiTech Trucker

Samsung NC20 NETBook

Dennis Dearborne — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:15:15 +0000

SAMSUNG NC20

12.1″ UltraBrite WXGA (1280×800) Display, 1.3+ GHz VIA Nano U2250 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 5400 Rpm SATA 160 GB Hard Drive, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, 6 Cell Battery,

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with SP3

Black (NC20-21GBK) – from $549 (or less online)

SAMSUNG NC20 is the new full size Netbook which balances mobility and convenience. It has a 12.1″ WXGA (1280 x 800) wide screen display like normal 12.1″ notebooks and a larger keyboard.

Shop online, surf the web and chat. Weighing only 3.3 lbs. and with 1 GB of DDR2 RAM (single slot, but easily upgradable to 2 GB), the NC20 Netbook gives you the freedom to accomplish more on the go. Enjoy images filled with bold, vibrant colors on a glossy LCD screen. Yet the NC20 Netbook is an affordable solution for all your online needs.

What will really make this system sing (or virtually ANY Netbook) is to replace Windows XP with Windows 7! Netbooks come with XP installed because they don’t have the “UMPH!” for Vista. Windows 7 is leaner and meaner (in many ways), having significantly lower Hardware requirements than the “bloated” Vista version of Windows. I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks now and I LOVE IT!!

PROs:

A 97% full size 102key keyboard is larger than many Netbooks. Better than usual Netbook RAM and 800Mhz FSB (Front Side Bus) with 1MB CPU L2 Cache, make it faster then a typical Atom (Intel) setup. Then there’s the great screen with a very nice resolution for its size.

Battery life is better than modest and more than what’s expected with just over 7 hours with everything on max brightness settings.

Built in 1.3 Megapixel Camera and Microphone.

Built in 10/100Mbps LAN and Wireless 802.11b/g (NO “n” folks!).

3 USB 2.0 Ports

VGA Port

1 mic & 1 Headphone mini-jacks

3-in-1 Multi-memory Card Slot (SD, SDHC, MMC)

Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

Front & Side air vents for better than most cooling

CONs:

Lacks the latest N wireless that everyone is updating to.

The speakers sound fine but don’t really get loud at all.

NO eSATA or HDMI ports

The Samsung NC20′s pros out-weigh its cons by a long shot and is a very nice choice for a classy yet very functional Netbook.

Building on the market-leading energy efficiency of the VIA C7® processor incorporating 65 nanometer process technology, the VIA Nano processor offers up to four times the performance over previous generations, within the same power range, for the ideal blend of powerful performance and energy efficiency for a longer battery life.

Product Released on: 04/30/2009

Samsung’s NC20 stands out from the crowd in two very important ways. First, it’s one of only a handful of 12-inch Netbooks. Secondly, it’s the first Netbook tested with Via’s Nano CPU, intended as an alternative to Intel’s very popular Atom processor.

The Atom is found in virtually every other Netbook, so it’s always good to see some competition, and the new Nano managed to tie with Intel, and even beating it in some benchmark tests. Keep in mind though that the Nano was powering a larger screen with a higher resolution.

I’m concerned that the NC20′s 12-inch size, which blurs the line between typical Netbooks (and I’m even hesitant to use that term because of its 12-inch display!) and more full-featured ultraportable laptops. The key to Netbook satisfaction is keeping one’s expectations realistic, and with a larger screen and keyboard, the NC20 looks and feels more like a traditional Laptop. Even so, as all Netbooks do, it labors somewhat with multitasking and video streaming.

As most 12-inch Laptops are high-end ultraportables built around expensive ultralow voltage processors, you may be expecting a slim, highly designed system. But instead you get a thicker, heavier system with a plastic chassis that looks and feels like a larger version of the Samsung NC10 (10.2″ Display with a 1.6Ghz Atom processor).

This low-frills chassis has a comfortable keyboard with a slightly shortened space bar. The large touch pad is a big improvement over the ones I’ve seen on smaller 10-inch Netbooks. There are no media-control or quick-launch buttons, which, while I wouldn’t expect them on a Netbook, are common on more traditional 12-inch Laptops.

The 12.1-inch wide-screen LCD display offers a 1,280×800 native resolution, which is the same as you’d typically find only on a 13- or 15-inch Laptop! That lets you view more of a Web page than the 1,024×600 resolution I’ve seen on most 10-inch Netbooks. Even though it’s the right resolution for watching 720p HD video content, the system showed typical Netbook-style stuttering when trying to stream HD content.

More important is the 1.3GHz Via Nano CPU, which is this system’s main selling point. Nano is based on the x86 architecture, meaning it can run the same software as chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices…Nano may deliver better performance than Atom in some cases.”

The Via Nano holds its own against the Intel Atom. Only in multitasking tests–which has never been kind to single-core CPU powered Netbooks–did the Atom perform notably faster than the Nano.

In pratical use there isn’t any real difference between using an Atom-powered Netbook and the Nano-powered NC20, which indicates that this new CPU could easily find acceptance as an alternative to the widely used Intel CPU.

Alternative Systems worth taking a look at:

HP 2133 Mini-Note
Windows Vista Business Edition; 1.6GHz VIA C7-M Ultra Low Voltage; 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB VIA/SG3 UniChrome Pro II IGP; 120GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Acer Aspire One AOD150
Windows XP Home SP2; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 224MB Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Hitachi 5400rpm

Asus Eee PC 1000HE
Windows XP Home SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Seagate 5400rpm

Consider also the Samsung NC120
Windows XP Home SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 160 GB – Serial ATA-150 – 5400 rpm;10.1 in TFT active matrix 1024 x 600 ( WSVGA ); 2.8 lbs aprox $100 less than the NC20; Part of Samsung’s second generation of Netbooks, the N120 offers a generous keyboard and some unexpected audio power.

I LOVE this Laptop

Dennis Dearborne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:30:12 +0000

*Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 (6MB cache/2.8GHz/1066Mhz FSB)
*4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1067Mhz (2 Dimms)
*Edge-to-Edge FullHD Widescreen 16.0 inch RBG LED LCD (1920×1080)
*2.0 MP Built in WebCam with internal microphone
*ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670 – 512MB Dedicated Video RAM
*500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

*BluRay Disc Combo (DVD/CD read/write + BD read) Slot Load Drive

*Intel WiFi Link 5300 802.11AGN Half Mini Card

*ports: 2 USB 2.0, 1 eSATA, 1 HDMI, 1 Firewire (1394), 2 headphone jacks, 1 microphone jack, LAN, external Video

*Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal (2.0+Enhanced Data Rate)

*Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0

Microsoft Windows Vista with SP1 Home Premium Edition 64-bit Edition English (which is required for Windows to recognize 4GB+ RAM)

$2148.00 (plus shipping and taxes) and this could be YOURS too! Unfortunately, you can’t just “ditty-bop” into your local Walmart, or even your local Best Buy and pick one of these sublime “puppies” up, it has to be ordered directly from DELL. You CAN, however, configure this computer online and pick and choose the items of your choice. In practice though, it only takes Dell 3-4 days to build, and then can be received overnight, if you want to get it right away.

The DELL XPS-Studio-1640 is my most recent “Desktop Replacement” category Laptop. I NEED/WANT/COVET the latest and greatest “HiTech Toys” available dear readers! And this Laptop fills the bill perfectly! It plays BluRay movies flawlessly, and the LED back-lit LCD screen is just GORGEOUS!

I’ve recently upgraded my Windows Vista (Dell factory installed) o.s. with the RC1 version of Windows 7. See more POSTs on Windows 7 coming to this very site!

While the screen is “only!” 16 inches it’s in the “widescreen” format and is only slightly smaller (only in height!) than my prior favorite Laptop, the 17″ TOSHIBA QOSMIO. While the screen is only a “titch” smaller than the Toshiba’s, the outside dimensions are MARKEDLY slimmer all the way around. It amazes me how much “stuff” they can cram into such a diminutive package (15.0″x10.0″x1.25″). There is still enough room for 2 Altec Lansing speakers and a subwoofer! Very capable sound system indeed!

The Samsung NC20 (see Netbook eval on this site) measures in at 11.5″x8.5″x1.2″. It’s sound is “thin and puny” in comparison though.

The QOSMIO is a veritable “tank” in comparison at 16.5″x12.0″x2.5″! It takes two hands to pick up the QOSMIO, yet the Dell Studio XPS-1640 can (quite literally) be picked up by pinching it between thumb and forefinger! To be fair to the QOSMIO, it has excellent sound. It SHOULD with 4 Harmon Kardon speakers AND a subwoofer! The QOSMIO has only a 2Ghz processor, Florescent back-lit display, no Hi-Def DVD, and a smaller Hard Drive! Other than the dimensional differences, and the MUCH greater weight, this is still a pretty nice laptop itself, or I wouldn’t have purchased it.

While I had had the QOSMIO for only a couple of months (it’s my backup computer on the truck now) the DELL is a very welcome replacement. The DELL is quite refined and polished in its engineering and finish. Fine touches abound! The screen has to be seen to be believed, and the back-lit keyboard is a very welcome touch while typing in the darkness of the back of my truck.

And, for you gamers, this is close to being the most capable gaming laptop available. It’s, of course, nothing like a full-blown desktop gaming machine! However, I’ve not found a game yet that doesn’t play well on this mighty Laptop! Crysis (and other quite hardware demanding games of similar ilk) play smoothly, even at higher resolution settings and graphics modes.

I’ve, literally, owned a half dozen Toshiba Satellites (one HP Pavilion, and the one QOSMIO) and this DELL just “shines” in comparison. For those of you though that have only the requirement to get your e-mail, and surf the web, BOTH of these machines are radical overkill. I would suggest getting one of the far more cost effective “new breed” NETBooks. They are not only much cheaper, but they are a much more practical size. And we all know that our real estate in a truck can be very precious indeed!

Customer “Ratings” of this computer at : http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-studio-xps-16?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=corp&~lt=popup#reviews