Nice shirt collar

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As worn by parallel-universe Mark.

This is Baron Wells: US brand that seems very good at times, and at
other times quite rubbish.

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Robo-chat

To follow up on the robot chat this morning, I came across this on the Guardian just now:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/sep/04/artificial-intelligence-ai-computing

I was searching for info about IRC (Internet Relay Chat), see, -- similar to Wave, only 20 years older (and not multimedia, nor real-time) -- the above article is in reference to IRC and the Turing Test.

It led me to THIS site, which is brilliant:

http://virt.vgmix.com/jenny18/

... a repository of people's efforts to engage with a chat room-bound robot. Excellent.

I know this is all rather off-brief, but it does show how robots have been (mal)adapted for comedy gain in the past.

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Journalism and Wave

"Here's a list of a few wild ideas we had for using Wave.

Collaborative reporting: You may notice that double bylines aren't very common. That's because trying to co-author a news story stinks. The process usually involves one reporter talking to and researching a few things and another following a different set of sources and finally combining their findings toward the end. This can result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

We're not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we're sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through ...

... or search the newest findings as they're logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits. Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story's flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

Record and archive interviews: As reporters conduct interviews and frantically jot notes day after day, we start to develop our own shorthand. To outsiders, it looks like some sort of alien language. If Google connects its Voice calling service to Wave, we might be able to easily insert call recordings, voicemails and text messages into our notes. Wave's founders, brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, have indicated in a past discussion that Google was looking at ways to connect many of its products with the Wave platform.

A third-party Wave extension called Ribbit lets users initiate conference calls inside of the program as well as the ability to call a designated phone number and have audio transcribed into the document.

Live editing: We love our editors (really, we do). But sometimes crucial things get changed that we miss in the final read-through and in rare cases, tweaked to inaccuracy. Google Wave clearly marks updates to documents and lets you view a timeline of changes. Eventually -- once Google adds the feature -- users will be able to revert to a specific point in time. And the most passionate writers could watch live as editors tweak documents and respond to questions or changes.

Smarter story updates: Take a look at a breaking news blog like L.A. Now or the New York Times' The Lede. Scrolling down the page, you'll probably see the word "updated" in bold again and again. Instead of creating a new post for each piece of news that's later uncovered on a breaking story, the blogs post an update to clarify which paragraphs have been changed or factually corrected.

That timeline feature could allow users to intuitively view previous versions of a post and see exactly what has been changed and why.

Discuss while you read: All of the Times blogs and many of stories on the website have areas where readers can log comments. These are just static message boards.

We get a lot of comments, saying, "That's stupid" or "You're totally wrong." That leads us to wonder, Uh, which part? Wave lets users leave comments on particular paragraphs, sentences or words. This would allow readers to discuss passages as they're reading along and clarify which sections they're addressing.

Transparent writing process: Many readers say they're genuinely interested in how reporters string together a story. That fact was perhaps best evidenced on Sunday when curious readers gawked at the Associated Press' accidental publishing of a reporter's notes on the Roman Polanksi story.

What if we let readers watch the text as we write it? In our own testing, we found it to be a really fascinating peek into the writing habits and minds of our associates. It's also comforting to know that we're not the only ones who have trouble spelling the word "etiquette." Maybe we can go one step further and let the observers comment throughout the writing process. Readers could help shape a story.

Instant polls: Every once in a while, bloggers like to poll their readers on topics. But gathering a decent sample size takes a while. Presumably -- maybe once Google turns on compatibility with standard e-mail platforms -- people will practically live inside of the Wave software. We could blast out a poll using Google's Polly extension and instantly begin pulling in feedback.

Wiki news aggregator: Now we're drifting a little far out, but allowing readers to rearrange our homepage would be an interesting experiment. Of course, there's always the worry of a few unsavory links getting injected in there. Even Wikipedia isn't prone to destructive tricksters.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/09/google-wave-collaborative-journalism.html

Filed under  //  application   business   collaboration  
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"Google Wave: Live Viral Brand Tool"

"Google Wave is a pure social object that drives communication with less boundaries. By removing the barriers of email, IM, and so forth--what you get is co-creative 'open' communication in the form of "waves"--kind of like a real-time conversation wiki with a playback button. Instant transmission makes the communication become a dynamic document where the conversation shareable and easy to manipulate.

I see Google Wave's potential for communicating around a brand, generating earned media, tracking communication, and generating gobs of customer insight. For example, Google Wave could be useful for customer service management. It could be used to generate "real-time" communities around a brand or topic. Also, it would be interesting to use it to test a brand or conduct a product launch. From a research point of view, I can easily see using Wave to run online focus groups.

So, what would a Google Wave campaign look like? As as brand tool--the Google Wave could create a 'live viral.' Just imagine a Wave around a product with celebrity participation--think of the Twitter community Lance Armstrong has built for example--its broadcast-based and not very interactive--the Google Wave could transform that community completely. A branded Google Wave could be both the medium and the message where it might start as owned or bought media but over time transform and generate earned media.

I continue to appreciate the way Google develops products. They focus on evolving consumer behavior through online tools by reducing the fundamental barriers to learning, communicating and doing. The Google Wave will have tremendous influence because if its successful--it will co-create its own future with users for years to come."

http://thinkseedodifferently.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-wave-live-viral-brand-tool.html

Filed under  //  advertising   marketing  
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Wave and advertising

"What really sets Google Wave apart from other communication platforms out there is not its collaboration features (several participants can work on the message together), the step-by-step playback of changes made to the document (nifty!), dragging and dropping files from your desktop directly into the message (very nifty!) or seeing your friends type their replies in real time, word by word.

The true power of Wave lies in its many extensions, robots, and gadgets — mini-applications created by Google and others that turn a humble email message into a web page that can sport anything you want from a mortgage calculator to a multiplayer game. Only with the regular email, you click on a link and you go to a webpage; with Wave, the webpage comes to you.

Embed a Hulu player with this gadget, tune it into a new episode of The Office and engage in a discussion with other participants:

Media_httpwwwhhcccomblogwpcontentuploads200910wave6hulu1png_tpbfmlxfligeyto

Have an automatically updated RSS feed from your favorite blog:

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Make money advertising Amazon books with an affiliate widget:

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… or from a block of AdSense ads:

Media_httpwwwhhcccomblogwpcontentuploads200910wave2adsenseme2png_gpdjzziageksobc

Add new functionality by adding a “Wave bot” — an automated participant in a conversation who, much like chatbots in instant messengers, perform certain functions when triggered by the content in the wave. To activate, simply add bot’s email address in the To: field. Here, BotURL automatically expands all links shortened with bit.ly and tinyURL:

Media_httpwwwhhcccomblogwpcontentuploads200910wave12counterpng_vbjakehgddsfgat

We have spent the last few nights poking around Google Wave, and after the initial confusion our mind is officially blown."

Filed under  //  advertising   gadgets   marketing  
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Wave and the Google Phone

"For the last year or so we’ve all be yammering one about the Google phone.

Google have now announced that they will be launching a proper, pure, Google branded phone. It won’t carry the manufacturer brand or have the OS tinkered with. No. This is going to be Google’s version of the iPhone – 100% Google just the the iPhone is 100% Apple.

I think the Google phone will be putting more of an emphasis on communication than the iPhone has – which is largely an organisational and app tool. Adequate video calling, perhaps? Most definitely it will be fully integrated with Google Voice for users in the US. Dare I say it; maybe even a mobile version of Google Wave? (at least then Wave would have a purpose)."

Filed under  //  google   iphone   mobile  
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Wave: early-adopter negativity

"With wave, conversation has to be deliberate, you and your friends need to go there for conversation, it is too easy to forget to use Wave. Wave needs a client or at least integration with Google Talk.

"Editing a Word document is a very different activity than answering your email , and Wave conflates those two things into a single workspace."

"It takes time to get up to speed on, and Wave unapologetic You're not meant to learn how to use Wave in an afternoon."

"Google Wave sounds like a bad date so far: won’t apologize for being difficult and talks about how awesome they are."

"If you can’t sum up the principle idea in 25 words, then you're fired."

Filed under  //  naysaying  
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Quiet and LOUD

Upon logging into Wave, your Google contacts are searched -- those who have also signed up to Wave are presented in the bottom-left corner.

That's not many people, in my case (just two people, in fact):

Paul_1_-_google_wave_19112009_

You can create a Wave easily enough and invite your contacts. 

In my case, with none of my contacts online, better instead to look at public waves. If you search for with:public, the screen goes from inanimate to very, very un-inanimate:

Paul_32_-_google_wave_-_google

If the above looks confusing, imagine that list of waves shuffling, constantly, in real-time, according to the activity within them.

Here's the contents of a busy Wave -- "All Thailand Wavers":

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Filed under  //  busy   explained   walkthrough  
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Gadget run-through: Twitter

"Tweety the Twitbot" is a gadget that embeds Twitter functionality into a Wave.

Here is a gallery of me installing it.

Filed under  //  explained   gadgets   twitter  
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Wave and teachers and school kids

Media_httpwwwreadwritewebcomimageswaveeducation1jpg_qonjchcfyjvjjsi

"After searching some public 'waves,' we came across an educational wave. Entitled 'Wave in Class,' this wave was started by Loren Baum (a self-described "collaborative learning enthusiast" and graduate student at Ben Gurion University) and Sam Boland (a Politics student and "Tech Enthusiast" at Occidental College, Los Angeles). 

Nearly 100 people are included in the wave, ranging from teachers to PhD students to IT professionals to high school students.

As a note-taking tool, Samuel Boland wrote that "there appears to be a concensus that this [Google Wave] will work as a note-taking tool, the only disagreement is over how to implement it." Options for note-taking include voluntary extra-curricular groups, rotating in-class groups and small in-class groups.

A few users enthused later in the wave that "Google Wave combines a lot of the best features from different applications" - but with a real-time twist. It was noted that while Google Docs can be used to share notes and collaborate on assignments, with Google Wave students can collaborate in real-time. This could be important in education for things like notetaking, asking questions (a.k.a. a backchannel) and collaborative projects. 

Another feature of Wave that would be useful for education purposes, according to this 100-person wave, is the play-back ability - "so instructors can see exactly who did what, and see the progression of ideas."

Filed under  //  application  
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