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• Apple Tablet Will Restore Comic Books To Former Glory [Apple Tablet]

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  Comix, er, um, what adults call 'graphic novels', to get re-invigorating Apple-a-day treatment >>>

  "What is it in France they say? 'America contributed three things to culture: jazz, musical comedy and comic books.'" You can already buy two on iTunes. And if things pan out, you'll be get the third on the Apple tablet.

  Over the last few weeks I've been talking to people within the comics industry to try to sniff out Apple's plans, including Neal Adams, developer of an upcoming motion Astonishing X-Men comic on iTunes, who also told me the French saying. Everyone in Adams' line of work is buzzing about the tablet and what it can do for their masterpieces.

  It's an easy presumption for comic book fans. The Sun Times' Andy Inhatko is betting that LongBox, a digital distribution platform for comic books, will make an appearance on Apple's upcoming tablet. More than just an appearance, really:

  I'm pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked [LongBox CEO Rantz] Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

  One problem: Several sources I spoke to over the last couple of weeks, including top-level executives at giants like Marvel and DC, have said they've not heard a whisper from Apple—despite a nearly desperate hope that Apple would come a-courtin'. One executive said to me, when I mentioned the possibility of putting his comic books on the Apple tablet, "If you've heard anything from Apple, please tell them I'm ready to do it."

  That means that LongBox may be the only distribution option for comic books at the tablet's launch, through some sort of dedicated LongBox app. And if LongBox's distribution plan for the Apple tablet is just an app, why would they need to do any negotiations with Apple? Launch the LongBox app, sell the content, and go. No Apple nod necessary.

  We know that Apple has been reaching out to select publishers. It was Andy Inhatko who passed on the rumor about "trucks loaded with books" earlier this year. It all fits with the moves we already know Apple is making in its outreach to magazine and newspaper publishers. For Apple, the tablet is about cleaning up; with the addition of books, newspaper, magazines and comic books, there isn't a single vector of mass media that Apple won't be able to distribute through iTunes. With the success of the App Store—a success I think even Apple wasn't expecting to such a degree — they're even a major distributor of software and games.

  Oh right, there's also music and video.

  Marvel content, especially, seems like a given. Disney bought Pixar, putting Steve Jobs on the Disney board. Then Disney buys Marvel. Marvel has already dabbled in publishing content through iTunes, with a new "motion comic" version of The Astonishing X-Men hitting iTunes on October 28th.

  I spoke to Inhatko on my tiny Apple tablet last week about his story. He's increasingly persuaded that Apple is content to let print publishers distribute their content through apps, not through the iTunes store itself.

  He may very well be right, at least at the tablet's launch, especially given Apple's reticence to even acknowledge the tablet's existence, let alone provide publishers with detailed, unified specifications for an "iRead" format. But it also strikes me as an inelegant solution at best, especially considering iTunes 9's iTunes LP format is an HTML- and JavaScript-based 720p format that would work just wonderfully for a digital magazine and comics format.

  Could just be wishful thinking on my part—I'd rather manage subscriptions through iTunes like podcasts, rather than individual apps—but either way it's a win for Apple, who will happily get their cut no matter what system of digital print distribution ultimately takes off. If you have any leads on comic book tablet activity, by all means, send us a tip.

  There is one shocker I discovered in my discussions with Marvel folk: It's been confirmed to me that Hulk is stronger than Thor. Chew on that one for a while — at least until you can buy Hulk vs. Thor on iTunes. Excelsior!

  Joel Johnson has a blog, but your best bet may be to follow him on Twitter @joeljohnson.

  
  

  

  

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• Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format

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  After 14 years of using OUTLOOK PSTs exclusively myself, a little data portability is a welcome gift >>>

  protosage writes to tell us that Microsoft Interoperability is working towards opening up Outlook's .pst format under their Open Specification Promise. This should "allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way." "In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

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• CRASH Writer Haggis Ditches Scientology, His Scathing Letter

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  Enlightenment, perhaps not spiritual, finally found >>>

  Hollywood Reporter - Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer-director whose credits include Crash, Million Dollar Baby and Letters From Iwo Jima, has left the 'church.' His letter is a big step amongst celebrity Scientologists....

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• University Makes Twitter a Required Class for Journalism Students

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  Because after all, writing click-worthy 'tweets' is really just like writing effective headlines >>>

  

  Worried that too many tweets are mere pointless babble? So is Australia’s Griffith University, who recently made Twitter education part of the mandatory courseload for journalism students.

  According to a senior lecturer at the University, “Some students’ tweets are not as in depth as you might like.” The solution? Make Twitter writing practice a compulsory part of the course curriculum for would-be journalists.

  University officials cited increasing demand from employers for new hires well-versed in social media, and Twitter’s importance in global events like the Iran elections earlier this year.

  While we perhaps would have given up a prized appendage to have anything as cool as a Twitter course available back when we were in school during the Pleistocene Era, the Griffith U students’ reactions have been mixed. Some students had no idea what Twitter even was (sort of proving the point of needed education for future journalists!), and a few outspoken J-schoolers who felt the class was “a waste of time.” Clearly kids these days don’t know how good they have it.

  What’s your take: should Twitter fluency be required for future journalists? Or is it impractical to expect students to inject “more depth” into their tweets?

  [Via PSFK]

  ---

  Reviews: Twitter

  Tags: education, journalism, twitter

  

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• Interfictions online story-thinggums
  
  Ellen Kushner sez, "The Interstitial Arts Foundation is presenting 8 new original online stories - er, pieces of interstitial writing, a new one each week for the 8 weeks leading up to the November 3 publication of our new anthology, _Interfictions 2_ . So far we've ranged from F. Brett Cox's 'Nylon Seam,' Brett's 'tribute to Bettie Page fandom'complete with soundtrack (vocals & guitar, F. Brett Cox) to Ron Pasquariello's 'Chipper Dialogues' - a man & his mutt converse in haiku. This week, it's Kelly Cogswell's story-and-poem combo, 'For the Love of Carrots' and 'The Luxembourg Gardener.' Check out the Annex Page for a complete list of stories and authors. Interstitial art is found in the interstices of recognized category and genre. "

  Annex

  (Thanks, Ellen!)

  Previously:

  • Interstitial Arts charity jewelry auction - Boing Boing
  • Your photos needed for Interfictions anthology cover - Boing Boing
  • Interfictions 2 - anthology of genre-transcending fiction - needs ...

  
  

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• How to Convince Colleagues to Collaborate Online

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  Good advice for getting team-mates online >>>

  Last week, I met a new client who accepts that she needs to use the web much more effectively than she does now. Over the coming months, she’s planning to build her personal brand online, with the help of various promotions experts. Right now? “I just don’t have time for it,” she says. And when we discussed our next meeting, her suggested venue was her house — which is at least two hours’ travel time from mine.

  The size of the job simply doesn’t warrant me traveling for four hours for a meeting. But my client’s professional services firm operates its business very much on a face-to-face basis, and both of us would prefer to meet like this, rather than simply talking over the phone. Other than meeting halfway, we could try videoconferencing. But how will I convince someone I’ve just met, who obviously isn’t particularly comfortable operating in the online sphere, to use videoconferencing technology?

  I’ve often experienced resistance to technology among people who, whether they like it or not, work online. I’m sure you have, too — recent research has shown that collaborative technology hasn’t had as broad an impact in workplaces as we might like. As we know, overcoming such resistance can be a challenge, especially when we don’t know the person particularly well.

  However, there are strong arguments you can use to convince people to give collaborative technology a try. None of these arguments, on its own, is likely to get someone over the line, though — usually they need to be combined to be effective.

  Cost

  My client is on a tight budget, so she won’t want to pay me to travel for four hours to meet with her. This could be a strong motivator for her to try a technology like using a webcam. By the same token, I expect she won’t want to pay for any technological solution, so I’ll need to suggest free solutions to this problem.

  Cost is often a strong motivator for my freelance clients, but can be less important when you’re working within an organization. When I suggested to a remote colleague in a large corporate that instead of calling each other ten times a day we should just use IM, she had no motivation at all to do so: she wasn’t paying for the calls she made, so cost was not a motivator for her.

  Convenience

  One benefit of using multiple contact methods is that you can communicate with someone at virtually any time. Forget the old leave-a-voicemail-and-follow-it-up-with-an-email syndrome; you can do so much more than that. You can tweet or text your client or colleague a link or reminder; send them a quick message via IM; email them the minutes from your last meeting; call them using a free VoIP service.

  How can you communicate the benefits of convenience to your colleague? Think of a specific case in your recent history with this individual where technology would have smoothed or sped up the process, or made a real difference to the work flow. Explain this to your colleague, and make clear the difference that your preferred piece of technology could have made to the situation.

  Workplace Pressure

  If enough people within an organization are using a particular application, piece of software, or technology, it can be difficult for others to maintain their resistance.

  For clients who manage their own operations, or are solo operators, there can be less pressure internally to adopt collaborative technology. However, as in the case of my client, who runs her own face-to-face business and feels no such pressure, but is looking to expand her reach online, the pressure of external competition and the potential for missed opportunities may be a strong motivator.

  Knowing that my client is looking to develop an online presence, I could suggest trialling video chats via Skype as a way to become more comfortable in the online space. Since she’ll be operating internationally soon, I could present the chance to skill up now as an opportunity to get ahead — it’ll make it much easier for her to communicate with key contacts in the near future.

  Productivity Benefits

  Studies have shown that collaborative technology pays off. That’s good, but it’s not likely to convince an individual who’s just trying to do their job with a minimum of hassle that they should change, or even augment, the way they operate.

  Quoting statistics may not convince my client to climb aboard the collaborative technology bandwagon, but illustrating the realities of our situation may. The four hours I’ll need to travel, in total, to meet my client will not be productive time — that’s why she won’t want to pay me for it. If I travel to meet her, the meeting will effectively take up an entire day. For a client on a tight deadline, this is an enormous waste of time as well as money.

  One the other hand, if we made a video call at nine in the morning, I could action the outcomes of the meeting on the same day. This would likely put me at least a half — if not a whole — day ahead of the face-to-face meeting scenario. I have the feeling this is going to be a very strong motivator for my client.

  Support

  Though it may surprise some of us, many people are still scared of technology. It takes a long time to set up, may not work properly, takes up valuable space on their computers, is yet another thing they have to learn,  means they have to carry more stuff around, leaves them with no free time — the list of arguments against using technology is almost limitless.

  Worse still is the fact that most people don’t want to admit that we’re scared of the prospect of having to learn something new, to adopt it and make it part of our daily operations.

  Offering support to colleagues as an encouragement for them to try a new technology may make all the difference to your professional relationship, as well as your productivity. If I were to discuss the prospect of setting up video calling with my client, I’d send her links to the service and help information, ask her to call me if she had any problems with the setup, and suggest we had a trial run video call a week ahead of time.

  Personalization

  As I said, my client operates her business almost entirely in person. Many people who are unfamiliar with technology feel that online communication is somehow less personal than face-to-face conversations. Whether or not this is true, the fact is that the more opportunities you create for people to communicate with you, and for yourself to communicate with others, the stronger your relationships with those people will be.

  People will often communicate via chat in a far less formal, more personal way than they would in an email. The great thing about reading tweets that your contact has directed specifically at other individuals is that they give you an insight into other facets of that contact. If I really want to establish empathy and rapport with someone, I’ll call them rather than emailing or IMing. Each technology has its place, and I use as many as I can to get a clearer picture of the people I work, and are friends, with. This, in turn, helps us work more effectively together.

  These are the arguments I usually use to convince a colleague to give collaborative technology a try. Ultimately, though, the success of my efforts will depend on how well I understand their situation, and their reasons for not wanting to try an alternative to the status quo.

  What arguments have you used to convince clients and colleagues to communicate with you online?

  

  ---

  
  What was the big news that happened in your sector in Q3? Catch up with GigaOM Pro's, "Quarterly Wrap-ups."

  

  

  

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• Spurning the "false god of coffee"

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  Interesting self-experiment into coffee consumption and concentration >>>

  
  
  Robin Barooah gradually weaned himself off coffee and found that his concentration actually improved. He explains how he did it and what he discovered on the Quantified Self blog, which covers news about self-testing and self-monitoring.

  As part of a separate experiment, I have been keeping track of the amount of time I spend working on projects.  I work in 25 minute intervals which I time with a coffee timer, and I mark an X in a paper journal for each interval that I successfully complete.  If I get distracted, I don't mark the X, and if I can't concentrate, I abandon it and don't mark an X rather than sitting out the timer.  I've been doing this since the end of June, so I tabulated the data and created a graph of my hours of concentration per day, and overlaid a bar showing when I drank my last coffee.

  Causality is a complex issue. Obviously this is an n=1 experiment and I am intentionally doing other things that may well be improving my concentration, but one thing is very clear; the amount of time I spend concentrating has not deteriorated since I quit coffee, so I can easily reject the hypothesis "I need coffee to help me concentrate."

  The false god of coffee

  
  

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• Carl Sagan Auto-Tuned Part II (Featuring Feynman, Tyson and Nye) [Auto-Tune]

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  More Auto-Tune goodness with Carl Sagan >>>

  John Boswell who auto-tuned Carl Sagan for us, has come back with another clip featuring our favorite stoner, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye in almost educational, entirely awesome Auto-Tune goodness. [YouTube via Nerdist]

  
  

  

  

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• Sheriff Says Charges Will Be Filed in Balloon Saga

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  What goes up must come down (balloons, hopes, dreams) >>>

  Jim Alderden, the Larimer County sheriff, did not say what the charges would be, but he did say the parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, are not under arrest.

  
  

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• Samuel L. Jackson Rides Google Wave [Funny Video]

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  Best use of Google Wave this week: Pulp Fiction mashup. Samuel L. Jackson gets extra credit for his collaborative team-building skills >>>

  

  Still looking for a use case for Google Wave (or an invite for that matter?). Look no further than this brilliant mashup combining Samuel L. Jackson quotes with a demonstration of Google Wave functionality, including chat, wikis, and embedded videos, games, and maps.

  The video appears to have been created by Joe Sabia of Whirled Interactive. Be forewarned, it uses lots of adult language, so should be viewed with headphones on if you’re at the office. But, you probably could’ve already guessed that.
  

  [via Wired UK]

  Tags: Google Wave, videos

  

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• The Transit Holy Grail: One Bus Away

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  More coverage of OneBusAway.org, the free bus-location service that has radically increased my ridership habits (along with my trusty OrcaCard) >>>

  One of the hardest things about being a regular public transit commuter is the constant sense of helplessness. Sure, you're supporting your community. Occasionally you're involuntarily providing a destitute, possibly drunk man a shoulder to sleep on, you're saving money on gas, and you're helping the environment! But sometimes...you just want to know where your goddamned bus is.

  Brian Ferris, a grad student in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington apparently knows that feeling well. Some time ago he put together onebusaway.org, a site that uses and improves upon real-time bus arrival information provided by MyBus for all King Count Metro routes. The site offers an almost absurd number of possible channels by which to access this information; a phone number to call, a Google Maps mashup website, SMS interface, an iPhone optimized webpage, a text only page for older phones, and now the native iPhone App.

  While all are helpful, the iPhone app seems the most accessible. The default screen is a location-based map with nearby stops highlighted, which can be crucial when you're in a hurry and on the verge of powerwalking. Bookmark your frequently used stops and find out how many minutes you have with 2 taps.

  We certainly commend Seattle Metro for having their own iPhone App. It's a good effort and a step in the right direction, but One Bus Away is better for a number of reasons. For one, their data attempts to incorporate "info for every bus stop, not just a few timepoints". Their search is more robust with options for route, address and stop number, vs. Metro's route and more complicated intersection/location search. More importantly, its simply been more accurate. Also, it's app icon is much cuter.

  Created by a fellow frustrated bus rider, the app is just a portion of a commendable undertaking to improve a lot of people's commutes. They're not joking around about feedback and want to hear from you how to improve the service. And thanks to Nokia Research and a grant from the National Science Foundation, it's free.

  Download now.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Invest in Collaborative Tools, Get More Than Double Return, Study Says

  Last week, I reported on the surprisingly low numbers of American information workers using collaborative technology (just one in four uses IM at work, for example). Another study, released today, shows why businesses should be adopting these tools: Businesses that invest in advanced collaborative technology perform better, and they net a good rate of return on their investment.

  The Frost & Sullivan report, “Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration,” sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, surveyed 3,662 decision-makers in organizations in 10 countries. It found that 44 percent of organizations had deployed collaborative tools (VoIP, document sharing, videoconferencing and IM). The study found that as businesses invest more in these technologies, their return gets proportionally greater.

  

  While the study shows that companies investing in top-of-the-range telepresence and telephony systems get the most return, even organizations deploying just basic collaborative tools (like IM and web conferencing) reap a return on collaborative investment of over two times. The study suggests this is because teams using collaborative tools can benefit from a network effect — the more users on a network, the more value is realized from it.

  The study revealed some other interesting findings:

  • Collaboration technologies can help reduce stress. More than half of respondents say collaboration tools allow for greater balance between work and personal life and help them gain more control over their busy lives.
  • Confidence in virtual meeting is growing. More than half think conferencing tools are a good alternative to visiting business contacts face-to-face.
  • Telecommuting is becoming more popular. Almost half (47 percent) of respondents report having a formal telecommuting policy in place. However, less than a third (27 percent) telecommute at least once a week, and 22 percent telecommute on a daily basis. This tallies with the numbers in a Forrester study, which reported that one-third of workers telecommuted at least some of the time.
  • The environment is top of mind. More than half (53 percent) say reducing an organization’s carbon footprint and other environmental concerns are important factors in determining collaborative technology requirements.

  This report shows why businesses need to move with the times, start taking advantage of the technology and tools that are available, and improve on those numbers that I reported on last week. The good news is that more than 80 percent of organizations surveyed that have not adopted collaborative tools plan to deploy some form of them in the next two to three years.

  Does your experience tally with these figures — has investing more in collaborative tools had a positive impact on your business?

  

  ---

  
  As Q4 begins, online video is now mainstream. Read the, "Connected Consumer Q3 Wrap-up."

  

  

  

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• Judgment Day: Birther Taitz Fined $20,000 For Misconduct

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  A better read than the coverage of the Judge's fining Orly Taitz $20,000 is the 43-page order he wrote doing so: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20996403/Gov-uscourts-gamd-77605-28-0

  

  Finally fed up with Orly Taitz's repeated frivolous and conspiracy-ridden filings in a Birther lawsuit, the judge in the case has fined the crusading attorney $20,000.

  Opening with a quote from Justice Cardozo on the privilege of bar membership, Judge Clay Land of the U.S. District Court in the Middle District Of Georgia goes on for some length -- the order is 43 pages -- explaining his reasoning:

  When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge's rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice.

  Land continues:

  Regrettably, the conduct of counsel Orly Taitz has crossed these lines, and Ms. Taitz must be sanctioned for her misconduct. After a full review of the sanctionable conduct, counsel's conduct leading up to that conduct, and counsel's response to the Court's show cause order, the Court finds that a monetary penalty of $20,000.00 shall be imposed upon counsel Orly Taitz as punishment for her misconduct, as a deterrent to prevent future misconduct, and to protect the integrity of the Court. Payment shall be made to the United States, through the Middle District of Georgia Clerk's Office, within thirty days of today's Order. If counsel fails to pay the sanction due, the U.S. Attorney will be authorized to commence collection proceedings.

  [Late Update: Taitz tells TPMmuckraker: I have no plans to pay the fine.]

  Our full coverage of Taitz suit, which began as an attempt by an Army captain to defy an order on the grounds that Barack Obama is not legitimately president, is here.

  And here, as first posted by the Washington Independent, is Land's full order. He builds on and expands the fine work in his 14-page order last month that denounced not only Taitz, but her misguided movement:

  Taitz Fined $20,000

  Late Late Update: Commenter Nim notices that the judge on pg. 42 ordered a copy of the order to be sent to the California state bar, where Taitz is a member, and, in fact, already has problems.

  
  

  

  

• HTC's First Born Official Windows Mobile 6.5 Upgrade

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  ROM Hackers of World Unite. WinMo 6.5 Updates Online Now >>>

  HTC has just released the first official Windows Mobile 6.5 Upgrade for the HTC Touch Pro2, initially a Windows Mobile 6.1 device with promissed upgrade.
  
  The update is a ROM update that will clear all data on your device and replace the current Operating System with the new one. Not much info on that, except for the fact that is is ROM version 1.86.401.0.

  Download from the official HTC website, run the application and follow the instructions carefully!

  Note: Make sure to backup contacts, emails, messages, call history.
  
  Hint: use PIM Backup for all the above.

  

  Related Posts

  • HTC Releases Official Update for Touch HD
  • European Diamond2 Getting Official ROM Upgrade
  • Touch Pro2 Gets an Official ROM Update

  Comments [3]
  

  

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• Google Wave And The Dawn Of Passive-Aggressive Communication

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  TECHCRUNCH: Point of view on the meaning of Google's Wave & How We Communicate >>>

  We’re now a little over a week into the extended roll-out of the preview build of Google Wave. This is an important time for the service because many people can now finally start using it as they eventually may — which is to say, with their friends and colleagues. Of course, the backlash is also already in full-swing, as expected. But I can’t help but wonder if this backlash and the hype that it is a byproduct of, is blinding some to the larger picture. Google Wave is not just a service, it is perhaps the most complete example yet of a desire to shift the way we communicate once again.

  The Wall Street Journal has a long article about this today, noting “The End of the Email Era.” But most of that article is spent focusing on how Twitter and Facebook, which is to say, status updates and the streams, are replacing our need for much of what email has provided in the past. Only very briefly do they mention Wave. And I think that overlooks something.

  For many of us, email is simply not cutting it the way that it used to. It’s a sedentary beast in a fast-moving web. It uses old principles for management, and this is leading to overload. I think the key statement in the WSJ is this:

  We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone.

  That’s absolutely true. But that also implies that we want some sort of always-on communication connection. I don’t think that’s the case. I think we want the option to communicate in real-time at will, but also the ability to communicate at our leisure at times. I would consider this to be a desire for a “passive-agressive” method of communication. Perhaps it would be better stated as a “passive/active” method of communication, but passive-aggressive sounds better, so we’ll go with that.

  I would consider email to be a passive form of communication. I don’t mean that you don’t respond to it, I mean that you don’t have to respond to it right away. Instant messaging is at the other end of the spectrum. If used correctly, it’s supposed to be an “aggressive” or “active” form of communication in which you respond immediately. Twitter is very passive because the use of it is such that people don’t even necessarily expect a response of any kind, even if they point a message at you. Facebook is a mixture of all of those things (more on that below).

  Google Wave is attempting to be a passive-agressive form of communication. You can actively (aggressively) engage in threads in real-time, or you can sit back and let messages come to you at your leisure (passively). Having used the product for a few months now, and after using it quite a bit more actively with my friends these past few days, I really think that Wave is onto something with this method of communication. I would argue that Google Wave’s new message alert system needs to be somewhat reworked or re-imagined, but I do think the desire to blend passive and agressive methods of communicating is there.

  We’ve been slowly building up to a system like this. Gmail has for a while offered users a nice blend of email and instant messaging on the same page. And while it is nice that there is also the option to archive all your chats for searching purposes later, there is no good way to say, see that you missed an IM if you have a computer with Gmail open at home while you’re away and checking it remotely. You also can’t check these easily via IMAP on your phone, and the like.

  And while there is the option to reply to emails by chat if that person is online, there’s no real integration between the email message and the IM message, they exist as two totally separate things. It seems like we’re at the point now where that shouldn’t have be the case.

  Others, like Yahoo Mail, are now trying to tack-on status updates and the stream to email services too. The result is a Frankenstein-like service.

  Facebook is another interesting example in that, as I mentioned, it combines all of these elements: Email, IM, status updates, and a stream. But the connection between all of these things in that system is loose at best. From a unified communications standpoint, Facebook is really kind of a mess. There are whispers of changes, and I hope that’s true, but I’m not holding my breath for a service with 300 million users to do something new and drastic that will alienate a certain (probably large) percentage of its base.

  That’s why Wave is interesting. It’s backed by a huge company, Google, but it’s not trying to shove this upon all of its Gmail users. Instead, they’re going to slowly roll this out and see how users end up using it. And maybe more importantly, they want to see how developers start using it.

  And that’s really a key that a lot of early users are overlooking. Right now, when people hear “Google Wave,” everyone seems to want to place emphasis on the “Google” part of it. But the truth is that the grand goal of the team behind the project is to emphasize “Wave” as both a platform and a new communication standard.

  Whether Google Wave succeeds is really irrelevant. More important is if the idea of Wave does. Again, the idea of passive-aggressive communication.

  Wave, the Google web-based client, will only ever appeal to a certain number of users. Does anyone really think that Twitter would be where it is today if they only had twitter.com? No. Wave desktop apps, and mobile apps, internal company Waves, and public Waves; it’s the platform, not the product, that’s interesting. Or, more to the point, it’s the key communication idea behind it.

  [photo: flickr/matheus sanchez]
  

  CrunchBase Information

  Google Wave

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