Wednesday, December 02, 2009

What's All The Fuss About Google Wave Anyway?

You’ve probably heard people talk about Google Wave being a game-changer, a disruptive product, or maybe even as an email killer. But while keywords and phrases like these grab people’s attention, they don’t explain why or how Google Wave could be a paradigm-shifter. In this article, we explore these questions by highlighting some of Google Wave’s most unique and promising features. By exploring these features, we can better understand the potential of this new technology.

1. Wiki Style Functionality

The feature: While Google Wave works a lot like email or IM, there is a huge difference: you can edit not only your messages, but the messages of anybody within your wave. You can reply to messages within a conversation string and reorganize conversations.

Why it’s game-changing: There was a perfect example of how this changes communication during Google’s demo of the product. A group of people are trying to plan a group dinner, and want to see who can come or not. In email, you have a string of emails with yes or no, which can get messy.

In Wave, you can edit the original message with a section with who can or cannot go. Replies can be made within a conversation string, rather than at the end, making conversations a great deal easier to track.


Next week we talk about the 2nd feature that makes Google Wave rock - Wave Extensions...




What Is Google Wave?


Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited.

Google Wave was the brainchild of a team based out of Sydney, Australia. The core team members are two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon, all of whom were involved in Google Maps previously. Google Wave has been made available to the public, but only to a select few (like us at The Insyder).

For your opportunity to win exclusive invites to Google Wave, hit us up on Facebook on 'The Insyder Magazine Fan Page' and tell us why you'd like to get the invite.


Yahoo Releases Top Searches of 2009 (Twitter Nowhere to Be Found)

Yahoo Releases Top Searches of 2009 (Twitter Nowhere to Be Found)

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009

What's World AIDS Day All About?


Tuesday December 1st, 2009 marks the 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day. AIDS Awareness Week takes place in the last week of November. Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week starts on World AIDS Day and concludes on December 5th.

The theme for World AIDS Day 2009 is Universal Access and Human Rights, to highlight and underscore the importance of understanding HIV and AIDS from a human rights perspective.

The campaign slogans for World AIDS Day 2009 are:

I am accepted
I am safe
I am getting treatment
I am well
I am living my rights
Everyone deserves to live their rights
Right to Live
Right to Health
Access for all to HIV prevention treatment care and support is a critical part of human rights

The first World AIDS Day was held in 1988 after the world’s health ministers met and agreed on the concept of the day as an opportunity for everyone to demonstrate the importance of AIDS and show solidarity for the cause. World AIDS Day is now internationally recognized as a day when individuals and organizations from around the world come together to bring attention to the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. World AIDS Day is an opportunity to take action on calling for universal treatment, care and support for people living with HIV and AIDS.

World AIDS Day was originally organized by UNAIDS, but in 2005 it handed over responsibility to an independent organization, the World AIDS Campaign.

Make your voice heard on World AIDS Day 2009 to raise further awareness in your community and across the world about the state of the pandemic and the critical next steps that must be taken to halt its spread.