Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. You've heard
Speaker 1: the rumors before, perhaps and whispers written between the lines
Speaker 1: of the textbooks. Conspiracies, paranormal events, all those things that
Speaker 1: disappear from the official explanations. Tune in and learn more
Speaker 1: of the stuff they don't want you to know in
Speaker 1: this video podcast from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: and sitting across from me as usual, is senior writer
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Well all right then, So why
Speaker 1: why why are you waving at me? Oh? That can
Speaker 1: all be explained with a little listener mail. List listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from Lee. Note read in monotone. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: that's that's a stage direction. Hang on, he doesn't take
Speaker 1: direction while I can tell you this from my experience. Hi,
Speaker 1: Google released Google Wave. What is it? Please answer? Love always,
Speaker 1: Lee from Bowling Brook, Illinois. PS. I listened to every podcast.
Speaker 1: You are the highlight of my week. Oh I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that wasn't quite monotone. Thanks Lee. Uh, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we're the highlight. Also kind of sad about that. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about Google Wave then. Now, this is something
Speaker 1: that we can actually talk about from experience, because Chris
Speaker 1: and I have been playing with Google Wave for almost
Speaker 1: an entire day. You've been playing with it longer than
Speaker 1: I have. This is true. I got my invite um
Speaker 1: about a little less than a week ago, actually only
Speaker 1: a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, I got mine this morning. Right,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got like three days on Chris as
Speaker 1: far as the Google Wave experience. But let's let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's take in the way back machine, wave back machine,
Speaker 1: the wave back Hey, yeah, let's go into the wave
Speaker 1: back machine. Let's go someplace tropical, Liz take us away.
Speaker 1: Oh this is nice. It's much better than you know,
Speaker 1: the studio where I can hear the fan on the
Speaker 1: computer going. I'm much preferred like the the tweets of
Speaker 1: the the the twitter twittering birds, the sea birds, and
Speaker 1: the the sound of the waves laughing the shore. It's
Speaker 1: amazing soundscaping that Liz is down here, isn't it. It
Speaker 1: is amazing. So before we get lost in this tweeting
Speaker 1: is sort of communication. Yeah, we don't want to stay
Speaker 1: here too long because we'll probably get burned because Chris
Speaker 1: and I are both rather pale, sickly tech geeks. So
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about you know, you know what beach
Speaker 1: were on? Right? What are we on? Australia's beach? They
Speaker 1: only have the one, the only No, I'm kidding all
Speaker 1: the way around, so we're on the reason why I
Speaker 1: say Australia is because it was a team of Google
Speaker 1: folks from Australia who developed Google Wave and they unveiled
Speaker 1: this development development. You know what it's that it's that
Speaker 1: twenty hour flight to Australia that's doing it to me.
Speaker 1: They unveiled this at the Google's Io Developer event back
Speaker 1: in the spring of two thousand nine. Really, yes, and
Speaker 1: it was that short time ago. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: it was a long long time ago, does it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, no, it was just we've been talking about
Speaker 1: Wave for so long. Now. Well, we saw the we
Speaker 1: saw the preview for it, and it was very impressive
Speaker 1: to us. Um. The preview is a ninety eighty minute,
Speaker 1: eighty minute long presentation that that this team gave and
Speaker 1: it wasn't without its hiccups. The first thing we should
Speaker 1: say about Google Wave is that it's a tool that
Speaker 1: is in the preview stage. It's not even in beta, beta, beta.
Speaker 1: For such a long time, I was going to make
Speaker 1: that same comment, Yeah, no, no, no, that's good Google
Speaker 1: back in the way back machine. No no no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: we're still on the beach um. So yeah, Google, Google
Speaker 1: is all about the beta phase of testing, right but
Speaker 1: this is in the preview stage and it's a tool
Speaker 1: that was pretty impressive. I think it took a while
Speaker 1: for the audience to really get into it, but as
Speaker 1: the team began to unveil the different features of Google Wave,
Speaker 1: people were really starting to get excited. And the reason
Speaker 1: why they were unveiling it at the Developers Conference is
Speaker 1: it's not just a a replacement for email or instant
Speaker 1: messaging or anything like that. It's a platform for applications.
Speaker 1: So in a way, they're kind of um reinventing the
Speaker 1: way people could communicate over the web. Now it's in
Speaker 1: its most rudimentary stage right now. At the Developers Conference,
Speaker 1: they went ahead and gave everyone who went to the
Speaker 1: Developers Conference and invite into Google Wave to to check
Speaker 1: out the preview. Hey, last year, you brought me back
Speaker 1: a little compass this year, Yeah, last year I went
Speaker 1: to the Developers Conference. This year of I just couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. I was going to E three. I knew
Speaker 1: that I had I had a ton of other stuff
Speaker 1: going on. I couldn't make it to the conference. Rights, Right,
Speaker 1: they were ending out invites to the most amazing tool
Speaker 1: that Google has come up with in a really long time,
Speaker 1: or what appeared to be according to the video. Right.
Speaker 1: So Chris and I we we kind of we tried
Speaker 1: to pull our weight, you know. We tried to pull
Speaker 1: some strings and grease some palms and go to some
Speaker 1: back alleys and talk to some shady Google people and
Speaker 1: get ourselves some invites. And that failed miserably. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: started asking us Wave questions like, hey, guys, how does Wave?
Speaker 1: Where can we go? Yeah, we had a lot of
Speaker 1: people asking us these questions, and we honestly couldn't answer
Speaker 1: them because we had no access to Wave whatsoever. Well,
Speaker 1: then Google made an announcement back at the end of
Speaker 1: September that on September it was going to open up
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand invitations to Google Wave and the way
Speaker 1: that you would get an invite. They had been accept
Speaker 1: accepting applications pretty much all summer long. You could go
Speaker 1: to Google's uh the Google Wave website, and it would
Speaker 1: have a little form you'd fill out. We fill out
Speaker 1: your information, include your your email account or whatever her
Speaker 1: Google account, and fill out some other little bits like say,
Speaker 1: if you were willing to test for bugs, and if
Speaker 1: you saw bugs, if you would report in that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Then I had a section for notes, and
Speaker 1: they suggested that you'd be creative, so I sent in
Speaker 1: an epic poem. Um yeah, My first line was singing
Speaker 1: me oh muse, and then I put an iambic pentameter
Speaker 1: my request to be in Google Wave. Apparently that was
Speaker 1: not impressive enough, because I did not get one of
Speaker 1: those invites. The apparently not. So what was my saving
Speaker 1: grace was that one of the listeners that we have,
Speaker 1: one of my Twitter followers and a listener of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: didn get accepted into the the initial round. And Google
Speaker 1: Wave is a communication tool, so you have to have
Speaker 1: at least two people running Google a Wave to really
Speaker 1: be able to use it, otherwise you're just you know,
Speaker 1: it's I blogged about this recently and I mentioned that
Speaker 1: if you don't have two people, it's as if you
Speaker 1: have an email program and you're the only person in
Speaker 1: the world who has the email program, So you can't
Speaker 1: send you can't do anything with it. You know, you can't.
Speaker 1: You could write messages, but you can't send it to anyone. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: what Google did was they gave the people that in
Speaker 1: that first round a limited number of invitations to send
Speaker 1: out to other people. Right, So this way you could
Speaker 1: guarantee that you would have one or two other people
Speaker 1: at least with whom you could start conversations. Um, I
Speaker 1: believe it was eight invites. They called them nominations, so
Speaker 1: you can nominate people to get Google Wave. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was not immediate the nomination and who you would make.
Speaker 1: You could make a nomination, but it would not immediately
Speaker 1: invite someone into Google Wave. You still had to wait
Speaker 1: because I got the nomination or I was told that
Speaker 1: I was nominated, and then it took almost an entire
Speaker 1: week before I actually got the official invite to get
Speaker 1: into Google Wave. Yeah. As a matter of fact, as
Speaker 1: of this morning, it's still the same way. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: I didn't even get nominations, So before any of our
Speaker 1: listeners right in and beg me for nominations. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you I don't have any. Because I was I
Speaker 1: was nominated, I did not get my own set up.
Speaker 1: So the economy finally gain of him the nod and
Speaker 1: so it was a Thursday night when I got the nomination.
Speaker 1: I went ahead and felt out the info and then
Speaker 1: I started to try I played with Wave a little bit,
Speaker 1: and it's a bizarre tool. If it's hard to explain it,
Speaker 1: it kind of it's kind of a combination of email,
Speaker 1: instant messaging, collaborative software, and an application platform. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think if you're a UH, someone who has used other
Speaker 1: Google products in the past, it won't be completely foreign
Speaker 1: to you because it has elements. As far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: it has elements of Gmail UH and that you know
Speaker 1: how Gmail threads conversations together, that's part of it. And
Speaker 1: then the collaborative UH networking and being able to work
Speaker 1: on the same project at the same time. Google Docs
Speaker 1: has that UM, but it sort of smashes them all
Speaker 1: together with an UH an element of I am a
Speaker 1: little Google Chat. Yeah. So I mean the difference is
Speaker 1: an email is like a static message. It is a
Speaker 1: static message it's not like that. It is that you
Speaker 1: send an email to somebody else, they can they might
Speaker 1: be able to edit it, but they can only edit
Speaker 1: it themselves on that machine. So if you ask five questions,
Speaker 1: if you if I send an email with five questions
Speaker 1: to Jonathan, he can answer all five of those questions
Speaker 1: and and reply to me. But if he sends, if
Speaker 1: I send him a message on Google Wave, he can
Speaker 1: answer each one of those questions in real time, and
Speaker 1: we can actually have a conversation about that one message.
Speaker 1: Rather than sending message after message. We have one message
Speaker 1: that is being pass that is being worked on simultaneously
Speaker 1: by the two of us. And more so, if you
Speaker 1: have multiple people, Let's say that you're trying to communicate
Speaker 1: with five people. You send out the same list of
Speaker 1: questions to five people, You're gonna get five emails back
Speaker 1: with their each person's answers. Right, So now you've got
Speaker 1: Now you've got and and yeah, you don't have everyone's
Speaker 1: answers in one place until you transfer it Google Wave.
Speaker 1: You could invite those five people into a wave with
Speaker 1: you list of five questions. Each person could reply on
Speaker 1: his or her own time, and then you have one
Speaker 1: place with all the answers. So it's a centralized communication device. Um,
Speaker 1: you do see updates in real time. So if if
Speaker 1: Chris were in a wave, that he and I were
Speaker 1: in together, and a wave is just think of a
Speaker 1: wave as a conversation. So let's say that Chris has
Speaker 1: opened up a wave. For example, this morning, we were
Speaker 1: creating a rundown for tex Stuff Live. So let's say
Speaker 1: that Chris has got an idea for a story for
Speaker 1: tech stuff Live and he types out the title. I
Speaker 1: log into Google Wave. I see that Chris is working
Speaker 1: on a wave and that he's invited me. I go
Speaker 1: into that wave. I can actually see as he's typing.
Speaker 1: I'll see the letters appear on the screen in real time. Yep.
Speaker 1: So I can then see like, oh I hate that story.
Speaker 1: I can reply immediately and say, look, let's not waste
Speaker 1: our time on that. That's that's story is old and
Speaker 1: no one's interested. And then Chris will go and eat
Speaker 1: a gallon of butter pecan ice cream and cry in
Speaker 1: the corner. This is pretty much what we call Tuesday morning. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and if Jonathan happens to not be watching, uh you know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have Google Wave open, then when he comes
Speaker 1: back from uh, you know, going to get his twelfth
Speaker 1: cup of coffee in the morning, and he can come
Speaker 1: back to his desk, open Google Wave and he'll see
Speaker 1: all of the changes that I've made to our wave
Speaker 1: message highlighted, so he'll know specifically what changes I've made.
Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't have to go through and away
Speaker 1: a minute. Was that and there before? No? No, yeah that, No,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to worry about that stuff. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be readily apparent to him. And if you have multiple
Speaker 1: people in a wave at the same time all typing,
Speaker 1: each person's uh contributions will be marked with a little
Speaker 1: icon that has their Google Wave name on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say there's three people all typing in a
Speaker 1: Google Wave at the same time. If you were to
Speaker 1: take a break and stop typing to look and see
Speaker 1: what other people are typing, you'd see that your buddy
Speaker 1: Alex is typing one message maybe you know, two replies up,
Speaker 1: and your brother, your your you know, buddy Bob, he's
Speaker 1: typing something a little further down, and then you would
Speaker 1: see both being updated in real time. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: nice that it's labeled because that way you can see
Speaker 1: who labeled what, who who contributed what. It still seems
Speaker 1: pretty chaotic, so the team included another feature that's pretty
Speaker 1: useful called playback. Yes, playback lets you look at a
Speaker 1: Google wave and view it in in various iterations. So
Speaker 1: each time someone's coming and made a change, you can
Speaker 1: go to that point and see what the wave looked
Speaker 1: like before the changes were made and what looked like
Speaker 1: after the changes were made, So that way you can
Speaker 1: review edits. So let's say that Let's say that you
Speaker 1: have not been in wave for a while, and you've
Speaker 1: got two friends who have been in this wave. You're
Speaker 1: all discussing something important, like you you've got a big
Speaker 1: party coming up and you're planning it with these two
Speaker 1: other people, and while you were offline, they had a discussion,
Speaker 1: edited things and then moved on from there. You log
Speaker 1: in and you see the edits, but you don't see
Speaker 1: any of the discussion. You can use the playback to
Speaker 1: go back and look through and see if there was
Speaker 1: something important that you missed. So that was a good
Speaker 1: feature to add in there. It does. It does take
Speaker 1: you step by step through the process. You can see
Speaker 1: everything that has been done to that document. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: there is another bit of mash up involved in the
Speaker 1: Google Wave that I didn't speaking of Google products that
Speaker 1: that I didn't mention. And that's a blogger you might
Speaker 1: be saying, blogger, how does that factor into anything? Well,
Speaker 1: it's got a little bit of a content management system
Speaker 1: to it also sort of a CMS. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: can add links to the document. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: really that revolutionary, um, but you can also use these
Speaker 1: tools to to add maps or videos or all kinds
Speaker 1: of other things to the wave. And and not only that,
Speaker 1: you can actually embed waves into a blog, which is
Speaker 1: really cool because you can actually put it on a
Speaker 1: web page. And if you are part of the one
Speaker 1: of the waivers in this group, um, you can actually
Speaker 1: see real time changes on a blog as you would
Speaker 1: in Wave. That's what's supposed to happen. What's cool is
Speaker 1: that if someone were to say, look at your blog
Speaker 1: and leave you a comment, you can see the comment
Speaker 1: appear in real time on Wave. You could respond in
Speaker 1: Wave and have it show up on the blog. So
Speaker 1: it becomes kind of a blog management tool that sense um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the some of the other gadgets that you
Speaker 1: can add into Google Wave are pretty cool. There's some
Speaker 1: pretty simple ones. There's one that's a yes, no, maybe pole.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you create a wave with like
Speaker 1: twelve people and you're trying to see who would be
Speaker 1: available on a certain day for a party. And you
Speaker 1: send out a wave of saying, I'm looking at you know,
Speaker 1: October thirty for a Halloween party. Who's available? You put
Speaker 1: in the yes, no, maybe. Each person just clicks whichever
Speaker 1: response um applies to the him or herself, and then
Speaker 1: you'll see like if if, like you know, seven people
Speaker 1: click yes, and you can see which of the seven
Speaker 1: people click yes. Everyone can see it actually, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a built in gadget. It's already there.
Speaker 1: You don't have to design it yourself, so you can
Speaker 1: just drop it in there and and does all the
Speaker 1: the organizing for you. And you can change your answer
Speaker 1: at any time, so you don't like, if you've clicked
Speaker 1: on yes and you meant no, that's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: You can just click on no and it'll swap you
Speaker 1: over to the other column and that's fine. But there
Speaker 1: are plenty of other gadgets. There's the map gadget, so
Speaker 1: you can create used Google maps and look at. You
Speaker 1: can create a map, interactive map with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people. So you can do that for anything from
Speaker 1: just giving people directions to a location to maybe doing
Speaker 1: a scavenger hunt if you want it. I mean, there
Speaker 1: limitless applications really, it's just limited by your own imagination
Speaker 1: and the people with who you and the people who
Speaker 1: are on Wave. I was totally going to make that point,
Speaker 1: which will probably be just like three or four other
Speaker 1: people you actually know in your life at least. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once it opens up wider will be much more useful.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of other uh well, there
Speaker 1: are a few other applications that are available now. What
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see is what comes available in the future.
Speaker 1: Because it's such an open platform, you could create a
Speaker 1: kind of a a miniaturized Worldwide Web around a specific
Speaker 1: topic like imagine that you just want to discuss with
Speaker 1: your friends, very specifically a show you want to go
Speaker 1: to and you want to try and convince some people.
Speaker 1: Some people know the band that you want to go see,
Speaker 1: some people don't. So in this wave where you're inviting
Speaker 1: people to go, you include a map to the venue,
Speaker 1: to include um links to the venue's website, so people
Speaker 1: can get a look at what the venue looks like inside,
Speaker 1: you know, look at pictures. You could you can upload
Speaker 1: pictures to the wet wave so people could look at
Speaker 1: a slide show of pictures. Um. You could embed video
Speaker 1: of the band. Let's say the band's got a YouTube video.
Speaker 1: You could embed that YouTube video in the wave so
Speaker 1: people could listen and see what it looks like before
Speaker 1: committing to to going or not going. It's and it's
Speaker 1: such a centralized way of doing it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to use eight different tools, right, you know, So it
Speaker 1: makes makes it much easier to do that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And like I said, we're using it now. At least
Speaker 1: we used it today to create a rundown for tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Live um and it worked pretty well. Yeah, it did.
Speaker 1: I think it would get confusing if you were working
Speaker 1: with maybe five or six other people all at the
Speaker 1: same time, But with just the two of us, it
Speaker 1: was easily manageable. Yeah. Yeah, do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about robots, Sure, talk about robots. Um. The Google Wave
Speaker 1: team has enabled the possibility that robots can also help you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like data and uh, yes, and not so much. You
Speaker 1: used an android a droid and they're all robots anyway,
Speaker 1: we're not actually talking about that type of robot. Robots
Speaker 1: basically are sort of like the bots that you see
Speaker 1: on chat or in chat rooms. UM. You can actually
Speaker 1: have a robot that's in h involved in the wave
Speaker 1: with you, with other people, and so it basically functions
Speaker 1: like a script like you can have it if you
Speaker 1: start doing certain things in the wave and the robot
Speaker 1: is part of that, it might automatically go ahead and
Speaker 1: take care of some things that you would normally do yourself.
Speaker 1: So it's basically like a series of scripts. UM. But
Speaker 1: you know it can UM. It can allow you to
Speaker 1: look for certain topics and waves that you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to look for, and it can UH. There's actually an
Speaker 1: automatic translation UH system, which is really cool. If you
Speaker 1: have somebody, say in Germany and someone in I don't know, China,
Speaker 1: and they want to work with one another on the wave, UH,
Speaker 1: they can talk in their native languages without having to
Speaker 1: learn a new language, and Google will use its translation
Speaker 1: tools to automatically translate that for them into something vaguely
Speaker 1: resembling their native language. You'll actually see both both threats,
Speaker 1: so you'll see the original language that the person is
Speaker 1: typing in and then you'll see the translation as well.
Speaker 1: So like, for instance, I'm saying that I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the Palm Prex with my friend in Germany, and I
Speaker 1: don't happen to know that palm pre and German is
Speaker 1: shot and flugan flag and we wolf in China. Uh,
Speaker 1: Google knows, and so Google, you know, I'll type in
Speaker 1: palm prex, but it'll come out as HTCG one right
Speaker 1: shot and fluid and flag. Yes I'm kidding, I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, I said that was one of the functions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the most impressive functions that I saw.
Speaker 1: And a lot of these are on the video if
Speaker 1: you really I mean again, the video is like an
Speaker 1: hour and twenty minutes long, but it's it's worth watching. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well they Uh, the startup the little um Waves that
Speaker 1: I got from Google as starters had some some stuff
Speaker 1: on YouTube, so I'm assuming that that can actually be
Speaker 1: viewed by other people than are just on Wave, So
Speaker 1: there's probably quite a few demo videos that are available
Speaker 1: there actually. Um I included a YouTube demo video of
Speaker 1: Wave on one of my blog entries back when Wave
Speaker 1: was first announced. Actually, I think Marshall did too, so
Speaker 1: I think we double dipped into the Google Wave pool.
Speaker 1: To speak you you like that, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pun. Um. I'm really excited to see where
Speaker 1: this goes. Right now. I think it's got amazing potential
Speaker 1: but very limited use. And again most of that is
Speaker 1: because it's just it's there's not enough people on it
Speaker 1: to really test it now. It's in preview, they're still
Speaker 1: building out the infrastructure. It's not ready for widespread release,
Speaker 1: so I can't. I can't argue with their decision. It's
Speaker 1: just frustrating because you could. I can see so many
Speaker 1: potential uses for this, and I'm just dying to get
Speaker 1: to that point. Um. What I'm worried about is that
Speaker 1: Google will either lose interest in the project or they'll
Speaker 1: redirect them into some sort of other project and this
Speaker 1: will never come to fruition. I okay, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that. Well, no, because I don't work
Speaker 1: for Google. I can't. I'm not the one who makes
Speaker 1: those decisions. It's not what I meant. There's so much
Speaker 1: buzz right now about Google Wave. I would not even
Speaker 1: remotely worry about Google Wave falling off the face of
Speaker 1: the earth. Um. But I would say, you know, it
Speaker 1: is funny because there there is so much buzz and
Speaker 1: it's all Google Wave is a game changer stuff and
Speaker 1: um and in some ways I think it is because
Speaker 1: there are so many other collaborative applications that are available, um,
Speaker 1: all over the web from all sorts of little providers
Speaker 1: and and some of them are bigger. Uh. And Google
Speaker 1: Wave has some functionality that honestly, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if it was actually derived from some of those other
Speaker 1: Google tools. But um, you know, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: going anywhere. But I also don't think it's for everybody.
Speaker 1: I mean I think, you know, they were showing things
Speaker 1: that you could do with it that are not business related,
Speaker 1: like you could have a party and invite people to
Speaker 1: a party and through in that. Yes, no, maybe gadget
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like evite. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would necessarily need to use
Speaker 1: it for stuff, uh, you know, with just casual email
Speaker 1: with my friends. I think if they worked in some
Speaker 1: of the functionality into other things like Gmail, then it
Speaker 1: would make sense and I wouldn't be surprised to see
Speaker 1: it go that way, because when you think about the
Speaker 1: Gmail threading feature, you know, sending blips back and forth. Blips,
Speaker 1: by the way, are little pieces of of wave. The
Speaker 1: blips are the little bits of information that you can
Speaker 1: send in a wave. But um, but yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't I just don't know. It's something that I feel
Speaker 1: like I could use normally as part of my daily
Speaker 1: routine at work, but I don't know that I would
Speaker 1: use it casually. So it you're I think you're I
Speaker 1: think you're right. It'll be interesting to see what kinds
Speaker 1: of things they do with the A P I and
Speaker 1: some of the other applications you can build into it
Speaker 1: to to get other functionality into it. But that's probably
Speaker 1: a good thing right now, since it's in preview, we
Speaker 1: really don't need to be using it for everything anyway.
Speaker 1: It's also nice, if nothing else, it could set the
Speaker 1: groundwork for future applications from not just Google, but from everyone.
Speaker 1: We're already good. We could we could totally see a
Speaker 1: week you know, not to not to go like overblown
Speaker 1: and totally exaggerated out of hand or whatever, but I
Speaker 1: could be convinced that this is a glimpse into what
Speaker 1: the next generation of the web will be like. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's it, But I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be a subtle thing. It's just gonna be
Speaker 1: something that creeps in and yeah, and this is something
Speaker 1: where it's I'm not saying that Google Wave is exactly
Speaker 1: what the Web's gonna look like in in you know,
Speaker 1: five or ten years or whatever. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: the things that I'm starting to see in Google Wave,
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised if that if those features
Speaker 1: became more common in the web experience in the future.
Speaker 1: And I think that the reason why Google Wave is
Speaker 1: getting so much attention is because these features by themselves
Speaker 1: are already in other applications. It's just that they're in
Speaker 1: one place and that's attractive and people go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: when you put all this stuff together, you know, you
Speaker 1: can do all these things with it. And so look
Speaker 1: how much we got to talk about this and we've
Speaker 1: only been using it together for one day. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I've I've had waves with Chris Um, Tom Merritt and
Speaker 1: Jason Hawill have seen it, a couple of people I
Speaker 1: know in your life and some listeners, and that is it?
Speaker 1: So again, our experience is quite limited, because I mean
Speaker 1: that's the preview is very limited. But uh out seriously,
Speaker 1: that this is the last time we'll be mentioning way,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, well, but I hope that that more than
Speaker 1: satisfies all the people who have written in and asked
Speaker 1: about waves, because there's nothing else I can talk about
Speaker 1: about it. I'm done. Yeah, I mean, if you're wondering
Speaker 1: what it looks like, it's not even really all that
Speaker 1: different from an email. No, it's not. You've got your contact,
Speaker 1: you got your inbox, and you can see what's in
Speaker 1: the message. Something he doesn't strike up when you open
Speaker 1: the application or anything. It's the functionality more than the look.
Speaker 1: For me, it's even just the potential. It's not even
Speaker 1: the functionality. It's the potential of the tool. Now, whether
Speaker 1: it goes anywhere, we'll have to wait and see, oh
Speaker 1: will I'm just I'm trying not to build up my
Speaker 1: own expectations, much less our listeners. All right, All right, well, um,
Speaker 1: uh that exhausts me if not the subject this is true,
Speaker 1: I'm still getting over swine flu um. The let's move
Speaker 1: onto a little listener mail, and this listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Mike. Mike says, I really enjoyed your podcast concerning
Speaker 1: privacy and Facebook. I also share your hatred of quizzes
Speaker 1: and apps. When I heard about the light dot Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, I fell in love. Perhaps I mentioned on
Speaker 1: the podcast will be helpful for others, Thanks Mike. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got light dot facebook dot com, which is sort
Speaker 1: of a stripped down version of Facebook bloodc status updates,
Speaker 1: but takes away a lot of the other features that
Speaker 1: that can clutter up your Facebook feed. There are potential
Speaker 1: downfalls to light dot facebook dot com, as our own
Speaker 1: beloved Chris Palette discovered when he blogged about it. Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about that for a second, Chris, No,
Speaker 1: I don't, but I will anyway. No, No, No, it's um.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny because there was there's there was a
Speaker 1: group of people and one geographic area in the world, UM,
Speaker 1: which apparently was a very specific part of India oddly enough,
Speaker 1: and maybe a little bit of Pakistan possibly. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't really tell yet. It's kind of hard to tell.
Speaker 1: And um for a while, for whatever reason, they they
Speaker 1: wrote in UM. I got probably a few dozen comments
Speaker 1: on the blog post. I wrote about you know Facebook light. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was just really strange because everybody they
Speaker 1: were stuck. They couldn't get out of it. They couldn't
Speaker 1: go back to regular Facebook. And I thought, well, it's strange.
Speaker 1: Just go back to regular Facebook, you know, type the
Speaker 1: R A L L again. No it didn't work. Clear
Speaker 1: out your cookies, No, that didn't work. And everything I suggested.
Speaker 1: I was so frustrated because I wanted to help so
Speaker 1: badly and nothing I was doing, Uh what what you know,
Speaker 1: none of the suggestions I was making this helpful. This
Speaker 1: wasn't a client side issue. Now that yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: There was something about that particular geographic area where they
Speaker 1: could not get too regular Facebook, and they all wanted
Speaker 1: the apps and all the other you know whistles, and
Speaker 1: they just wanted to check out what light the Facebook
Speaker 1: light looked like. And then they got stuck with Facebook
Speaker 1: Light and they couldn't get out. Actually I think they
Speaker 1: got I don't know this for a fact, but from
Speaker 1: what they were saying, I think they got switched over
Speaker 1: and couldn't get out like they actually they didn't even
Speaker 1: necessarily try it. They just got switched to it. That's
Speaker 1: the way it appeared. And somebody posted on the Facebook
Speaker 1: forums that I might be able to help, and so
Speaker 1: I got a whole bunch of people saying, change my
Speaker 1: Facebook back, and I had to explain to them that
Speaker 1: I don't work for Facebook and how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: m is not part of Facebook and vice versa, and
Speaker 1: that didn't really appease people. I had a lot of
Speaker 1: people still asking me to change their Facebook back, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly the comments went away, So I assume that
Speaker 1: it's fixed. But yeah, that's uh. If you are I
Speaker 1: know all about Facebook Light, if you're at it, you
Speaker 1: can try Facebook Light and it is nice actually, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're just looking to see what everybody is saying,
Speaker 1: your your your contacts, it's very nice because it's very
Speaker 1: streamlined and very simple and you don't have to look
Speaker 1: at all the applications and the quizzes and all that
Speaker 1: other stuff. But if you want all that stuff, then
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be happy with it. So, yeah, something
Speaker 1: is broken. We can't fix it. Yes, that that that's
Speaker 1: the model of this podcast. Feel feel free to write
Speaker 1: us at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: but again not with tech support questions because we probably
Speaker 1: won't be able to help you. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Google Wave, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: wait because we don't have an article on that yet.
Speaker 1: But we have lots of other articles about Google at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, so you should go read
Speaker 1: those while you're waiting for us to get enough info
Speaker 1: to write a full article on how Google Wave works. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this podcast,
Speaker 1: Come back visit us again. We'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to
Speaker 1: check out the new tech stuff blog now on the
Speaker 1: house stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you