Google has announced the launch of a new service called Wave, which combines e-mail and instant messaging. Despite finding the service interesting, I still see fundamental problems in it’s architecture, specially regarding the flow of information. I cannot see how Google Wave will help people deal with information overflow. Actually, I believe Wave will only create more information overflow. Here is an interesting comment from the founder himself, Lars Rasmussen:
Well, what we are looking for now is for people to test it, try it out. We want to figure out what happens when lots of people use it. In the first several months, there were about 50 Wave users, and everything was all very controlled, calm, and quiet and all the Waves were super important to us. All of sudden there were 2000 users, all of them colleagues, all of them wanting to talk to us. And we learned — in a very exciting way — what it means to get lots of waves all of a sudden. And so we are learning lots from it.
It won’t scale and it won’t help people deal with information overflow. To solve this problem, I recommend taking a look at my proposal called ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards). It has been under the radar of Google for quite some time. Actually, it was part of Google’s Summer of Code in 2006. I have also commented it with the Google Reader and Google Talk team quite persuasively. I’ve been trying to reach people everywhere and talk about the advantages of adopting ISS. But unfortunately, no one has adopt it yet. Hey, it’s nobody’s fault, really. We have all being bombarded with information everywhere and it is hard to separate the wheat from the shaft. Too bad ISS doesn’t exist yet. It sure would help everyone in this sense.
I’m currently seeking to implement ISS on top of Drupal. ISS on top of Drupal has made me shift my focus from the original XMPP-based proposal to a Web-based proposal. The Web has such a momentum and it’s much easier to deploy. I just cannot see organizations and businesses contemplating XMPP and setting up Jabber Servers everywhere. Some will, but the great majority will just stick to the Web.
I find it interesting that despite these challenges Google has decided to build Wave on top of XMPP. This comment from Sergey Brin makes me wonder if the Chrome team is adding XMPP support to the browser:
Developers of Chrome have been collaborating with Wave developers to make the platform extra speedy on the browser.
Besides native XMPP support on Chrome, I suspect a plug-in for Firefox and other browsers would also be created, much like Google Gears and Gmail Voice and Video Chat. Well, that would kind of solve XMPP on the client-side. But who would provide XMPP on the server-side? Certainly Google comes to mind. I also found this on Google Wave’s site:
Our plan is to release an open source, production-quality, reference implementation of the Google Wave client and server, as well as provide an open federation endpoint by the time users start getting access.
Which surprisingly opens the way to other providers. It’s always interesting to see Google releasing server-side code.
XMPP and Wave’s real-time collaboration reminds me of all the exciting things developed by my friend Massimiliano Mirra on SamePlace, specially the concept of Shared Web Applications. I believe real-time collaboration is very important. It’s not just about information sharing. It’s about interface sharing. People want to be able to share information with others and they want to be able to share interactions with others. And both SamePlace and Google Wave provide a good solution regarding sharing interactions. Inspired by SamePlace, I have also tackled this issue on top of the Web. For more details, please see sessionLink.
The important thing is to keep the wave of good ideas and good actions propagating. This is what makes the world go round, and this is what makes the world a better place! So keep tuned! 
I liked your article. It is good to see people thinking ahead and coming up with models that might be suitable for future use. Yes, we are bombarded daily with too much information. I am waiting to see who sets the standard for an application or even an UI that users just get. Looking back at twitter, when they launched their api, who would have thought so many different applications could be built so quickly – and being used by so many.
I am glad to hear you are using Drupal for your ISS implementation. I would love to see it in action. Have you looked into sparql? I am waiting for someone to start meshing multiple apis for a grand platform. Or as Dries put it, the web itself become a very dynamic and active database – updated daily by everyday joes…
Hi Elvis,
Thanks for your interest! I hope to provide more details about how ISS fits into the Drupal WebOS and Ext Webtop architecture. I’m very excited about all this.
I’ve researched SPARQL but haven’t figured out yet how to make it part of the Drupal WebOS. I certainly would be very interested in discussing this.
BTW, are you from (West) Lafayette, IN? I lived there 4 years while my father was pursuing his Ph.D. at Purdue University. I was very surprised to find that on your site!
I’ll contact you by email!
Kind regards,
Nick