Google Wave is a game changer

[Partial]

http://wave.google.com/

[mraynrand]

Holy Nerd, Batman!

[SkinBasket]

Holy Nerd, Batman!

I think the kids say "Holy Nerd, Badman!" these days.

[Partial]

This thing is going to be huge. This thing screams agile collaborative projects.

[retailguy]

This thing is going to be huge. This thing screams agile collaborative projects.

What is it? Looks stupid. But, then again, I don't get the new phone either. Launching on T-mobile? Who has T-Mobile?

[Partial]

This thing is going to be huge. This thing screams agile collaborative projects.

What is it? Looks stupid. But, then again, I don't get the new phone either. Launching on T-mobile? Who has T-Mobile?

Android isn't about a phone. It's about the billions of phones world wide and one unified OS that can be on many phones. Android seems really flexible and will likely be the fastest developing of the smart phone OSes. It's open and agile by nature, and unlike in the PC space, the user won't A) realize its' linux and B) isn't brain washed to think Windows is the only option.

Android phones are on every carrier for the most part now, or will be soon. The original one was on T-Mobile because they bought the rights to an HTC phone which just so happened to be the first one to be released. I really don't care for that phone much at all personally, especially because of Apple's BS multi-touch patent blocking Android from having the same technology.

It is not stupid. This is next gen online communication. The push technology they wrote into this software is amazing. Update an image caption in one place, it will do it wherever that wave it in real time automatically. Type something in a wave, have it update in real time everywhere.

Want to add a comment to a document? Do it in a wave and have every user with that document open to be aware of the change immediately as it updates in real time.

I can think of a huge number of uses for this in IT. Especially for teams of workers working remotely outside of an office. Think of it as an "push" active wiki with drag and drop, version control, and chronology built in. Awesome.

I would feel comfortable doing project management on an IT project using this to keep everyone on the same page.

Here's a 10 minute summary, this software is unbelievable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itc4253kjhw

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Ty feels tingly.

[Partial]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

[Partial]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

Of course you do. Ah, the naivete of youth.

[Partial]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

Of course you do. Ah, the naivete of youth.

Right. It's incredibly naive of me to think that an application designed for project management and push wiki w/ accountability will not at all make project management much easier for a small web team :roll: What an outlandish idea! The ignorance of youth! They can't possibly know the tools they need to best do their job!

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

Of course you do. Ah, the naivete of youth.

Right. It's incredibly naive of me to think that an application designed for project management and push wiki w/ accountability will not at all make project management much easier for a small web team :roll: What an outlandish idea! The ignorance of youth! They can't possibly know the tools they need to best do their job!

Thank god, there are no PM software out there.

They might know...but, you certainly don't. You aren't a PM..and if you are one..the team is fucked.

[Partial]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

Of course you do. Ah, the naivete of youth.

Right. It's incredibly naive of me to think that an application designed for project management and push wiki w/ accountability will not at all make project management much easier for a small web team :roll: What an outlandish idea! The ignorance of youth! They can't possibly know the tools they need to best do their job!

Thank god, there are no PM software out there.

They might know...but, you certainly don't. You aren't a PM..and if you are one..the team is fucked.

Find me a piece of PM software that does all of the things that Google Wave does, then we'll talk :oops:

Project manager? For a side job I work with 4 peers on a web application. It's a small team and project management is something we do together.

At my full time job, I work with one of the 209 PGMPs in the world and interact with them on a daily basis in a very close manner. What they do and what all 4 of us do is not very different, except imo we're better at it as we don't have all the corporate overhead getting in the way of success.

So go fuck yourself and your high horse.

[SkinBasket]

I remember a time when the world was going to changed...

http://i3.iofferphoto.com/img/item/425/810/36/Segway.jpg

[mraynrand]

It changed



http://stuartcondy.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/paul_blart_mall_cop.jpg

[mraynrand]

Android isn't about a phone. It's about the billions of phones world wide and one unified OS that can be on many phones.

Android phones are on every carrier for the most part now, or will be soon.

It is not stupid.

It sounds a lot like Skynet. I am afraid.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Ty feels tingly.

Ty only works for big companies, remember? Big, slow moving companies that don't use tools like this :wink:

Ty never said he only works for big companies.

Ty finds your gushing over google wave embarrasing.

Partial believes that as a self-employed person part time on a small team this will be very useful and is worth the embarrassing giddiness.

Of course you do. Ah, the naivete of youth.

Right. It's incredibly naive of me to think that an application designed for project management and push wiki w/ accountability will not at all make project management much easier for a small web team :roll: What an outlandish idea! The ignorance of youth! They can't possibly know the tools they need to best do their job!

Thank god, there are no PM software out there.

They might know...but, you certainly don't. You aren't a PM..and if you are one..the team is fucked.

Find me a piece of PM software that does all of the things that Google Wave does, then we'll talk :oops:

Project manager? For a side job I work with 4 peers on a web application. It's a small team and project management is something we do together.

At my full time job, I work with one of the 209 PGMPs in the world and interact with them on a daily basis in a very close manner. What they do and what all 4 of us do is not very different, except imo we're better at it as we don't have all the corporate overhead getting in the way of success.

So go fuck yourself and your high horse.

Who said the PM had to do all of Wave to be useable. My god..how are projects getting done right now. The horror.

Side job..lol. To even compare that is laughable.

You work close with a PGMP...and you think you know exactly what they do? I'm sure you are hovering over their desk 8 hours a day. I'm sure you are in every meeting they attend. I'm sure you are at their house at night. LOL

P.S. Certification is fine, but dont' act like that is special. Plenty of good PMs that don't have a cert.

P.P.S. Like most things...you are wrong about how many are out there.

[Partial]

No one made those claims Ty. It's going to be a huge new technology. I don't care what you think or don't. If you want to be slow and less productive than people like me, go ahead. No skin off my back.

You're laughable man. You've been wrong plenty of times before and will be again. I love how you think you're just so smart that you can proclaim something backed by one of the richest companies in the world as a failure when basically everything else they've backed has been successful.

Then again, I bet you think Gmail, Google Docs and Maps are all failures anyway :roll:

[retailguy]

something backed by one of the richest companies in the world as a failure when basically everything else they've backed has been successful.



I remembered reading this when it first came out. I was on a plane and bought the magazine in a gift shop. Surprised it is still online, but P, you might want to review this:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/146101/top_10_google_flubs_flops_and_failures.html

[Partial]

something backed by one of the richest companies in the world as a failure when basically everything else they've backed has been successful.



I remembered reading this when it first came out. I was on a plane and bought the magazine in a gift shop. Surprised it is still online, but P, you might want to review this:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/146101/top_10_google_flubs_flops_and_failures.html

Most of those are very small projects. Wave is a GMail sized project easily, and Google has it's finest engineers, the duo the wrote the GMaps app doing this.

I don't like that link because Google Checkout and Orkut are hardly failures. Both are pretty popular. Some of those ideas are big time failures on small integrations, though, thats for sure.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

No one made those claims Ty. It's going to be a huge new technology. I don't care what you think or don't. If you want to be slow and less productive than people like me, go ahead. No skin off my back.

You're laughable man. You've been wrong plenty of times before and will be again. I love how you think you're just so smart that you can proclaim something backed by one of the richest companies in the world as a failure when basically everything else they've backed has been successful.

Then again, I bet you think Gmail, Google Docs and Maps are all failures anyway :roll:

It may or may not be hugely successful. There may or may not be challengers. the simple fact is that you dont' know enough about it to say one thing.

Slow and less productive: You mean like those who adopt a new technology over what they already know.

Find one quote where i proclaim it as a failure..king strawman.

P.S. Everything else has been successful? :lol: Why dont' you list all the google failures? :lol:

Here i'll help you start off the list:

1. Google Accelerator.
2. Google Answers.
3. Google Video.
4. Google X.
5. Orkut
6. Google Checkout
7. Google Viewer
8. Google Voice search
9. Google Coupons
10. Google Catalog

Since google employees are suppose to devote 20% of their time to personal projects..one would expect many failures. No slam on google, but you are a complete dope.

[MJZiggy]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

[Freak Out]

Google Chrome OS is going to be a hat trick scoring game changing smash mouth bad ass of an OS with a big ass it factor. Chumps.

[retailguy]

Google Chrome OS is going to be a hat trick scoring game changing smash mouth bad ass of an OS with a big ass it factor. Chumps.

:shock: What does this even mean?

[MJZiggy]

I think it means he likes it.

Maybe

[Partial]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

Sharepoint is god awful compared to this, are you kidding me? We use that POS at my job at its awful.

Things this does that share point doesn't (as far as I know, i'm not a power user or anything)

1. Update automatically in real time
2. Provide nearly the same quality of interface for threaded discussions
3. Where is the API to embed share point within other sites
4. No notion of "wave". A wave is basically an entire share point entity itself.
5. Does Sharepoint have version control? Wave has version control built in
6. Drag and drop, can you drag and drop into SP? If not, how do you handle bulk uploading without individually selecting each file. Drag and drop is infinitely faster
7. Automatic uploading and pushing, Does SP do this?
8. Free
9. Open source so anyone can make any modifications or improvements, or use the technology in any other products they wish (they biggest, most important point of them all)


That said, they're different beasts. I can envision a million and a half uses for Google Wave beyond the demo. Remote group programming IDE, is just one of many examples.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

What is this Sharepoint you speak of? :roll:

[retailguy]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

Sharepoint is god awful compared to this, are you kidding me? We use that POS at my job at its awful.

How can you know this if it hasn't been built yet? :?:

[Freak Out]

Bigguns has his sig changer set for automatic with hourly Partial quote updates it seems.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Bigguns has his sig changer set for automatic with hourly Partial quote updates it seems.

Actually not.

the first quote..that i changed today..was from the Admin. But, lo and behold it disappeared...without an email or explanation.

The second is indeed a Partial quote.

Amazing how some people get banned, while others call people cunts and douches. :roll:

[Partial]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

Sharepoint is god awful compared to this, are you kidding me? We use that POS at my job at its awful.

How can you know this if it hasn't been built yet? :?:

It is built. It's in private beta for developers.

[MJZiggy]

Just a question since I don't have an hour and a half to watch a rich geek talk at me, but isn't this basically the same thing as SharePoint?

Sharepoint is god awful compared to this, are you kidding me? We use that POS at my job at its awful.

Things this does that share point doesn't (as far as I know, i'm not a power user or anything)

1. Update automatically in real time
2. Provide nearly the same quality of interface for threaded discussions
3. Where is the API to embed share point within other sites
4. No notion of "wave". A wave is basically an entire share point entity itself.
5. Does Sharepoint have version control? Wave has version control built in
6. Drag and drop, can you drag and drop into SP? If not, how do you handle bulk uploading without individually selecting each file. Drag and drop is infinitely faster
7. Automatic uploading and pushing, Does SP do this?
8. Free
9. Open source so anyone can make any modifications or improvements, or use the technology in any other products they wish (they biggest, most important point of them all)


That said, they're different beasts. I can envision a million and a half uses for Google Wave beyond the demo. Remote group programming IDE, is just one of many examples.

Well, I don't need it to update in real time, I just work on the document and save it back to the folder. What advantage does real time have over that?

Why do I need an interface for threaded discussions?

What the hell is an API and why would I want my company's internal documents embedded in other sites? If I want someone to have the link, I give it to them and then give them access. Oh. Does Wave have access control? If so, why would you want to embed a password protected document on other sites?

I don't even know what a wave is.

SharePoint IS version control. That's it's main function.

Yes, you can drag and drop documents into and out of SP. Provided you have the proper access.

Why do I need to automatically upload if I've already dropped the document into SP? And I don't know what pushing is, but thanks, I don't do drugs.

It's free to me...:mrgreen:

We specifically don't want just anyone modifying our documents. Not only do WE not want that, but our dear Uncle Sam would be none too happy about it either.

I suppose then they are different beasts and while your company (or you personally) might get off on it, I don't see how it works for businesses that want to collaborate privately.

[Partial]

Zig, you're clearly not a technical person and thus I can understand you not seeing where this could be a huge benefit to companies.

Real time updates have many benefits. Perhaps not to what you're doing exactly, but there are definite fields that would benefit from this. Imagine a conference call code review, for example. Much easier in a real-time setting like this.

Threading is hugely valuable for keeping track of when, how, who and what point in the conversation something was said. This adds not only accountability, but it is a million times easier to jump into something and pick everything up. It adds order to what would otherwise require going through an revising, etc.

Have you ever seen Google maps on a page outside of maps.google.com? It has many uses, and it used in a wide variety of unique, functional ways. What about Google desktop search, or the many additional functionalities one can add to their Google experience with Google Gadgets? An API gives programmers access to the service calls, etc of an application. Since this is open source, developers are free to modify and extend it to their hearts content, potentially making it even more useful.

A wave is tough to describe. I think of it as a "blob" of real-time content with threaded public and private conversations, document sharing, etc. The "Push" technology behind the Wave is what makes it really cool from a technical standpoint. Instead of the client polling the server, the server is pushing the data to the client. Think of it as your email client at work polling the server for new messages versus a blackberry having messaged pushed to the phone as they hit the server. Wave's can be embedded in other sites. They don't have to be. They can function as 21st century email or instant messaging if you'd like.

Fair enough on the version control. That's fair. I don't think either is an ideal solution compared to say SVN, but they're both adequate and good enough for most instances.

You can drag and drop it from a browser? Must be an active X extension or something. There is some drag and drop javascript out there but it's not great. Google uses a Google Gadget to do it right now, but is patitioning the w3c to make it a standard of HTML 5.

I'm not saying it's exclusively a business product. I think Google will start implementing Wave's into GMail very, very soon as it is essentially a modern email replacement. I can think of a lot of benefits and uses in a corporate setting, especially one where all workers work remotely and are looking for a free product to track their discussions and to produce documentation. I would totally use a wave based development environment (especially if I can have my own sandboxed server environment).

[VegasPackFan]

This might be a really stupid question, but how does Google generate revenue from something like this when it is open source and free?

[Freak Out]

This might be a really stupid question, but how does Google generate revenue from something like this when it is open source and free?

Magic.....or maybe porn.

[pasquale]

This might be a really stupid question, but how does Google generate revenue from something like this when it is open source and free?

Basically all their money comes in from advertising on google searches, gmail, etc. I'm sure they have some other sources, but I can't imagine they are as huge as their advertising.

[Patler]

Isn't it a bit premature to get overly excited about Google Wave? All that is known about it at this point is what Google says it can do, and hopes that it will do.

It sounds to me like one of those things that the "computer nerds" will adore because of all of the "new technology" it has, all of the new features it puts forth; but one that the rank and file of computer users in the business world might be slow to accept.

[retailguy]

This might be a really stupid question, but how does Google generate revenue from something like this when it is open source and free?

Magic.....or maybe porn.

:P Mark to Market... just like Enron, which was the last company that really touted how great their products worked, before they were built....

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Isn't it a bit premature to get overly excited about Google Wave? All that is known about it at this point is what Google says it can do, and hopes that it will do.

It sounds to me like one of those things that the "computer nerds" will adore because of all of the "new technology" it has, all of the new features it puts forth; but one that the rank and file of computer users in the business world might be slow to accept.

Foolish thoughts. With Partial Evangelizing, mass adoption is but a mere week or two away.

[Partial]

Sounds like things are coming along nicely for Google wave:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/06/google-wave-dev-preview-hands-on-and-impressions/#continued

Ziggy, Sharepoint sucks! We have been using this for about 8 weeks now and it's awful. As a matter of fact, my team is protesting heavily to move to the JiveSoftware 'SBS' (Social Business Software) platform for collaboration. It's expensive at 300k to have an instance of, but my company already owns one for a project we're doing, so, it's pretty great.

As for Ty's comments, well, I never said mass adoption was bound to happen. I said it is a game changer because it has some awesome features. Large corporations are far too slow and set on buying tools with commercial support than using an excellent, free alternative. Why do you think so many companies use IBM's extremely overpriced product when you can typically get software that does the same thing (or very close to) for free? Also, are you implying that all software is created equal? Give me Jive SBS or 37Signals Basecamp over Microsoft Sharepoint crap any day of the week.

Also like to point out that Sharepoint doesn't have a mobile app as far as I can tell, nor does it have an extension engine, real time translations from one language to another, etc.

Also, unless you're buying an assload of M$ software, you can run sharepoint. Craziness. By the time you're done with all the licensing and massive staff to administer unstable windows servers, you're spending far more than it would cost to get a far superior product in basecamp/jive SBS.

[Tarlam!]

I never said mass adoption was bound to happen. I said it is a game changer because it has some awesome features. Large corporations are far too slow and set on buying tools with commercial support than using an excellent, free alternative. Why do you think so many companies use IBM's extremely overpriced product when you can typically get software that does the same thing (or very close to) for free?

Um. This makes a congruent line of thought, not.

You are declaring the "game" is played a certain way.
Then you observe something now will change the way said game will be played.
Then you say the major "players" won't play the game the changed way. Instead, they will continue to play the game the old way.
Yet, you maintain, the game has been changed, despite the lack of players.
The implication is the game will, indeed, not be changed.

[ThunderDan]

Sounds like things are coming along nicely for Google wave:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/06/google-wave-dev-preview-hands-on-and-impressions/#continued

Ziggy, Sharepoint sucks! We have been using this for about 8 weeks now and it's awful. As a matter of fact, my team is protesting heavily to move to the JiveSoftware 'SBS' (Social Business Software) platform for collaboration. It's expensive at 300k to have an instance of, but my company already owns one for a project we're doing, so, it's pretty great.

As for Ty's comments, well, I never said mass adoption was bound to happen. I said it is a game changer because it has some awesome features. Large corporations are far too slow and set on buying tools with commercial support than using an excellent, free alternative. Why do you think so many companies use IBM's extremely overpriced product when you can typically get software that does the same thing (or very close to) for free? Also, are you implying that all software is created equal? Give me Jive SBS or 37Signals Basecamp over Microsoft Sharepoint crap any day of the week.

Also like to point out that Sharepoint doesn't have a mobile app as far as I can tell, nor does it have an extension engine, real time translations from one language to another, etc.

Also, unless you're buying an assload of M$ software, you can run sharepoint. Craziness. By the time you're done with all the licensing and massive staff to administer unstable windows servers, you're spending far more than it would cost to get a far superior product in basecamp/jive SBS.

Maybe this thread should have stayed dead after a month!!!

[Partial]

I never said mass adoption was bound to happen. I said it is a game changer because it has some awesome features. Large corporations are far too slow and set on buying tools with commercial support than using an excellent, free alternative. Why do you think so many companies use IBM's extremely overpriced product when you can typically get software that does the same thing (or very close to) for free?

Um. This makes a congruent line of thought, not.

You are declaring the "game" is played a certain way.
Then you observe something now will change the way said game will be played.
Then you say the major "players" won't play the game the changed way. Instead, they will continue to play the game the old way.
Yet, you maintain, the game has been changed, despite the lack of players.
The implication is the game will, indeed, not be changed.

I think you're completely off base. This technology and open-source-ness will encourage other technology providers to "rip-off" (can you rip off open source) and steal ideas from. Then, they will implement it into a corporate package with corporate support that they will sell for lots of money.

The technology stack is the game changer. Big companies won't be using anything like this for years. This product will be a game changer for the fortune 50 million, not the fortune 500.

In my opinion, rarely is it the big companies that drive innovation. The fortune 500 are slow moving and have the money to have solid, developed processes. The fortune 50 million don't have that luxury, are less formal, use innovative solutions instead of paying IBM or Microsoft the big bucks... I would say that even for Google, putting something out like this is rare. If you think about it, they completely changed the way searching was done with their citation theory. Since then, what is a new technology they put out? They bought Grand Central. Email was basically the same with a few new pieces of flair. Google talk is basically the same thing as the other messengers. Google Payment is the same thing as Paypal. Google Maps were basically an evolution of Map quest. Basically, outside of search, docs and now Wave, Google has taken a lot of evolutionary steps, not revolutionary. The fact they have their finest engineers working on this project, and its actually something completely revolutionary versus evolutionary, I think that Google has lofty expectations for this. With that said, they have the sort of bank roll and influence to make this thing a success and I suspect it will be fantastic software.

I however think the biggest, most important things with Google Wave is the integration with other applications, what third party developers will do with it, etc. Google is giving people a gun and telling them where to hunt. Developers will have to do the hunting, so to speak.

[SkinBasket]

Tarlam, you boob.

[Freak Out]

Is Google Voice a game changer? Can somebody please change my diapers? Hello?

[Partial]

Is Google Voice a game changer? Can somebody please change my diapers? Hello?

Is this a joke? Google Voice is way too late to the scene. They bought grand central years ago. I do, however, enjoy the Google Voice, as I now screen calls for my on the side business, recruiters off of job boards, etc.

[Freak Out]

Is Google Voice a game changer? Can somebody please change my diapers? Hello?

Is this a joke? Google Voice is way too late to the scene. They bought grand central years ago. I do, however, enjoy the Google Voice, as I now screen calls for my on the side business, recruiters off of job boards, etc.

Well.....the diaper part was a joke. :) Hey fuck off and hook a guy up with a invite for Google Voice! I tried to get it but had to be "invited".

[Partial]

Is Google Voice a game changer? Can somebody please change my diapers? Hello?

Is this a joke? Google Voice is way too late to the scene. They bought grand central years ago. I do, however, enjoy the Google Voice, as I now screen calls for my on the side business, recruiters off of job boards, etc.

Well.....the diaper part was a joke. :) Hey fuck off and hook a guy up with a invite for Google Voice! I tried to get it but had to be "invited".

PM me your gmail and I will. FYI, the voicemail to text translations suck. Evidently with Vonage they're right on the money. Google needs to license that technology asap as its awful currently.

NM... don't see an invite widget on page.

[Tarlam!]

Tarlam, you boob.

Dear Skin, I thought we had agreed no bedrrom talk on PR. Now you have me blushing! :oops:

[superfan]

This app is not without potential. However, calling it a game changer is a prime example of putting the cart before the horse. The app is not even released yet as a final product, and in its current incarnation does not appear to be suitable for anything but personal (not corporate) use.

Partial, you question the flexibility of large organizations to adopt technology such as this, and you question the adoption of Sharepoint at such organizations. However, this app appears to lack several features that are absolute, critical requirements for many organizations:

1. LDAP integration - This application appears to lack LDAP integration. Can you reasonably expect large organizations with 10,000+ users to separately create and manage user accounts in this application? Not to mention customer/client accounts, which appears to be a big strength of this product, the ability to collaborate with these individuals.

2. Security - Many organizations have compliance requirements for security purposes, and companies that don't have these requirements still should be very aware of security. Should sensitive corporate information be trusted to anyone at Google to view as they desire? How do you lock clients into only the data they should see, and not collaboration between corporate employees and other clients? Even if this is viewed as a team focused, internal only app that is not customer facing, it is inevitable that sensitive information of some sort will be exchanged, and therefore viewable by others outside of your company.

I am not ashamed to admit that I did not watch the entire video in its entirety, it was far too nauseating. So perhaps some of these capabilities do exist or are planned, and I missed it. I can't consider this software for my company unless these issues are addressed. I work for a relatively small, "sexy", Mac centric company, and in that sense this software is a good fit, but I still can't recommend it for corporate use.

The Google nerd sums up the product nicely in the first minute of the video - it is a "personal communication and collaboration tool", and a far cry from anything that is corporate (much less Fortune 500) ready. I have limited exposure to Sharepoint, but I know enough about it to say that despite its flaws, it is at least capable of addressing issues #1 or #2 above, which is more than I can say of Google Wave.

Imagine an informal chat on Google Wave between developers about an existing or potential customer that is, shall we say, less than discreet, and this chat somehow finds its way onto a blog. Questions will follow. How did this happen? Who had access to this chat? Can we check the log files? Does this product even have log files that track all access rights and activity? People lose their jobs over gaffes such as this.

It is one thing to suggest that this software has potential. It can be dangerous to call it a game changer, and rip on businesses that have not adopted this, or similar, products, without thinking about the full implications.

If somebody can alleviate my concerns, I welcome the input. If it met all of our requirements, I would consider it for my company, and we could use a product with these capabilities.

[superfan]

Partial, I'm going to call you out on a few items here, perhaps for your benefit as well as anyone else who happens to read this. I know you are relatively new to the IT field. I'll be the first to admit I am neither the smartest nor most skilled guy ever born, but I do have 10+ years managing a corporate IT environment, you can accept my comments or not, makes no difference to me.


Large corporations are far too slow and set on buying tools with commercial support than using an excellent, free alternative.

In my experience I have used free/open source options whenever they make sense. For example, our help desk ticketing system is open source, and we love it. Why? Because it gives us everything we need, and it is reliable. And if it does go down for a brief period of time, we can still function via phone calls, walk ups, etc.

However, the key phrase you use here is "commercial support". If a business is running a mission critical, 24x7 application, it makes far more sense to have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a vendor in place that includes (for example) a 4 hour response/resolution for any issues. Let's say my company incurs $100,000 in lost revenue for every hour of downtime/lost productivity when this application is unavailable. It is a no-brainer for me to spend $20k/year for a support contract, vs. the help desk frantically trying to fix an unsupported "free" application that could take days to fix.

Your business requirements drive the need of commercial vs. open source solutions. If you have a high tolerance for downtime, than the open source solution makes more sense.


Why do you think so many companies use IBM's extremely overpriced product when you can typically get software that does the same thing (or very close to) for free?

The reasons I listed above are also valid here - all depends on your tolerance for downtime. In this case I would also add the lack of features in the free version as a key criteria. I don't know what IBM product you are referring to (Websphere? Domino/Notes?), but it doesn't matter.

In this case the key phrase is "does the same thing or very close to" for the free product. If the president of the company comes up to you and says "Why can't I do this?" and your answer is "Because that isn't available in the free product we use", unless your company is extremely limited in regards to budget, you will find yourself moving to the paid product to support the feature set required by your president and your users. Some corporate politics generally come into play at this point.


Also, unless you're buying an assload of M$ software, you can run sharepoint. Craziness. By the time you're done with all the licensing and massive staff to administer unstable windows servers, you're spending far more than it would cost to get a far superior product in basecamp/jive SBS.

This is not necessarily accurate. My company is not large by most standards, we have between 200-300 seats, which qualifies us as an SME (Small/Medium Enterprise), yet during licensing negotiations, Sharepoint CALs were essentially free when purchased with Windows and Office, so we are facing very little additional cost if we choose to migrate to Sharepoint. I believe this will be pretty consistent with companies of our size or larger. So the Sharepoint licensing cost argument is basically moot.

Plus, the "massive staff to administer unstable windows servers" comment is ill informed and generally false. In my experience, our Apple XServes have required many more staff hours related to troubleshooting and maintenance than our Windows servers. The Apple servers have been more prone to hardware failure in our environment and are more costly when it comes to hardware replacement. We have three physical Apple servers, eight physical Windows servers, and an additional 20 or so Windows virtual servers in VMWare. The Apple servers require at least double the time and expense of the Windows servers for hardware and software related issues, with a much lower install base. I can't say whether we are consistent with industry averages in this regard or not, all I know is my own experience.

I like what I've seen of Basecamp, but can't comment on jive SBS, not familiar with that product.

Hope this helps clarify any questions Packer fan/IT geeks might be having.

[Partial]

This app is not without potential. However, calling it a game changer is a prime example of putting the cart before the horse. The app is not even released yet as a final product, and in its current incarnation does not appear to be suitable for anything but personal (not corporate) use.

Partial, you question the flexibility of large organizations to adopt technology such as this, and you question the adoption of Sharepoint at such organizations. However, this app appears to lack several features that are absolute, critical requirements for many organizations:

1. LDAP integration - This application appears to lack LDAP integration. Can you reasonably expect large organizations with 10,000+ users to separately create and manage user accounts in this application? Not to mention customer/client accounts, which appears to be a big strength of this product, the ability to collaborate with these individuals.

2. Security - Many organizations have compliance requirements for security purposes, and companies that don't have these requirements still should be very aware of security. Should sensitive corporate information be trusted to anyone at Google to view as they desire? How do you lock clients into only the data they should see, and not collaboration between corporate employees and other clients? Even if this is viewed as a team focused, internal only app that is not customer facing, it is inevitable that sensitive information of some sort will be exchanged, and therefore viewable by others outside of your company.

I am not ashamed to admit that I did not watch the entire video in its entirety, it was far too nauseating. So perhaps some of these capabilities do exist or are planned, and I missed it. I can't consider this software for my company unless these issues are addressed. I work for a relatively small, "sexy", Mac centric company, and in that sense this software is a good fit, but I still can't recommend it for corporate use.

The Google nerd sums up the product nicely in the first minute of the video - it is a "personal communication and collaboration tool", and a far cry from anything that is corporate (much less Fortune 500) ready. I have limited exposure to Sharepoint, but I know enough about it to say that despite its flaws, it is at least capable of addressing issues #1 or #2 above, which is more than I can say of Google Wave.

Imagine an informal chat on Google Wave between developers about an existing or potential customer that is, shall we say, less than discreet, and this chat somehow finds its way onto a blog. Questions will follow. How did this happen? Who had access to this chat? Can we check the log files? Does this product even have log files that track all access rights and activity? People lose their jobs over gaffes such as this.

It is one thing to suggest that this software has potential. It can be dangerous to call it a game changer, and rip on businesses that have not adopted this, or similar, products, without thinking about the full implications.

If somebody can alleviate my concerns, I welcome the input. If it met all of our requirements, I would consider it for my company, and we could use a product with these capabilities.

Those are all valid concerns and the security issue is ultimately going to be the same with any cloud platform/app engine, etc.

This thing is a great commnication tool for small business. Never would work at my large company. That's why we use Jive SBS. Great piece of software.

Also agree on the other points you made. Nobody in their right mind would dispute those. Most companies cannot afford to pay big bucks to get enterprise level support. Take IBM for example. Just to have our stuff in an IBM data center, we pay 800k a month for a small application. Then, another application that our company has which actually uses Websphere portal and app server, an army of servers, rational application developer, performance tester, whatever the rational continuous integration tools is, etc... You can cover all of your bases with open source software such as JBoss portal, eclipse, cruise control, etc and have almost the same feature set for free versus the millions of dollars in licensing and maintenance costs. The fortune 500 is about covering your ass, I get that, but they also don't drive innovation.

That's good to know about Sharepoint. I just googled it to be honest and didn't look closely because I really don't care. That software is terrible, though. If you company has the fat IBM-ish budgets, check out www.jivesoftware.com it's like IBM connections but has some really great project management stuff built in.

[mraynrand]

Where is Superfan when you need him? Wha happened to Google wave?

[Freak Out]

Google wave is still alive and well....don't think it ever made it to game changer status but it does work pretty well. Superfan is with Rastak watching a Twins game.