Google Wave: A new type of "Ruby Quiz" ?

A

Aldric Giacomoni

Google Wave is, according to Google, "the new email". It combines email,
their idea of working together on same documents, and versioning
control. It has lots of potential.

I playfully created a simple class for playing cards and decks and
invited a few people to it, figuring we could reinvent git (because I
bet we can outsmart Linus, you know?) or at least toy around. Then,
someone asked if this was the spot for the new Ruby Quiz, and I got this
idea..
Instead of several people working separately on a small problem, why
don't we have several people working together on a slightly bigger
problem?
My toy class for cards and decks could become a complete software for
playing cards online, complete with games, their own sets of rules, etc
etc.. But if we wait for me to code all this, it'll be a while! If,
instead, everyone pools in a bit, we can go much farther, much faster.
That's only one example of a "bigger problem" .. Maybe we just want to
implement a specific encryption algorithm, or something similar, or
create an important gem (like a gem to unrar, or something).

I'm clearly not reinventing anything - but maybe we can test the Wave's
potential for this. What do you think?
 
J

Johnathon Wright

me too! (e-mail address removed) ( I know, not a google wave address... try
it anyway. :) )
 
A

Aldric Giacomoni

Johnathon said:
me too! (e-mail address removed) ( I know, not a google wave address... try
it anyway. :) )

Didn't work.
Everyone else should have two new waves.. Unless one of my clicks didn't
register ;-)
 
R

Rick DeNatale

Google Wave is, according to Google, "the new email". It combines email,
their idea of working together on same documents, and versioning
control. It has lots of potential.

So far, in my experience Google Wave has not worked very well.

Part of the problem is that it's a confusing muddle of email, and
wiki. They claim to have (underlying?) version control, but it's not
obvious other than the ability to 'replay' the history of the wave,
with no obvious way to recover a previous state.

A wave is really a document which in the wiki fashion, 'anyone can
edit', but I've found that users don't really understand that when
they edit a wave, they are affecting every wave participant's 'copy'
of the wave, since there really is only one copy.

I set up a wave for a couple of technical groups, one accrued some
interesting contents, until someone, thinking of it as 'email' decided
to clean things up by deleting everything HE had already read. Which
deleted it for everyone.

So I'm seeing a lot of people playing with wave with no clear picture
of how it is intended to be used (I'm including myself in this), and
Google hasn't as far as I can see given such a picture. I'm not
really sure that they have one themselves and that wave is still a big
social experiment to try to figure out what it really SHOULD be.
There are a few resources going out like Gina Trappani's book on wave,
but right now, it seems to be worse than the wild wild west, or the
unexplored sea. It's hard to know where the bandits and dragons are.

By the way, there are ways to have waves searchable by members of a
google group (e.g. the google group which follows ruby talk). You can
actually add the group as a participant using the groups email
address. Wave will seem to complain about it not being a wave
address, but it will work, and then members of the group can search
for the wave with the group: prefix to the search. (I'm doing this
from memory, so there might be some variations from what I just said,
but the function is, or at least was, there).




--
Rick DeNatale

Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale
 
A

Aldric Giacomoni

Rick said:
So far, in my experience Google Wave has not worked very well.

Part of the problem is that it's a confusing muddle of email, and
wiki. They claim to have (underlying?) version control, but it's not
obvious other than the ability to 'replay' the history of the wave,
with no obvious way to recover a previous state.

A wave is really a document which in the wiki fashion, 'anyone can
edit', but I've found that users don't really understand that when
they edit a wave, they are affecting every wave participant's 'copy'
of the wave, since there really is only one copy.

I set up a wave for a couple of technical groups, one accrued some
interesting contents, until someone, thinking of it as 'email' decided
to clean things up by deleting everything HE had already read. Which
deleted it for everyone.

I agree - it's kind of a mish-mash at the moment, and I haven't much
played with the "replay" function.. If we can go back and forth, we
really should be able to fork, but it looks like we can't.
Google is probably a bit like Microsoft when it comes to social
experiments.. But googlewave is somewhat "mold-breaking" because it
attempts to establish a new convention. This being said, as it is open
source, there's a lot of potential for Good(tm) there. People need to
learn, and that's true of everything.. :)
 
M

Mike Peltzer

if the google wave group is still happening, my id is:

(e-mail address removed)

thanks!
 
C

Caleb Clausen

So far, in my experience Google Wave has not worked very well.

Part of the problem is that it's a confusing muddle of email, and
wiki. They claim to have (underlying?) version control, but it's not
obvious other than the ability to 'replay' the history of the wave,
with no obvious way to recover a previous state.

A wave is really a document which in the wiki fashion, 'anyone can
edit', but I've found that users don't really understand that when
they edit a wave, they are affecting every wave participant's 'copy'
of the wave, since there really is only one copy.

I set up a wave for a couple of technical groups, one accrued some
interesting contents, until someone, thinking of it as 'email' decided
to clean things up by deleting everything HE had already read. Which
deleted it for everyone.

So I'm seeing a lot of people playing with wave with no clear picture
of how it is intended to be used (I'm including myself in this), and
Google hasn't as far as I can see given such a picture. I'm not
really sure that they have one themselves and that wave is still a big
social experiment to try to figure out what it really SHOULD be.
There are a few resources going out like Gina Trappani's book on wave,
but right now, it seems to be worse than the wild wild west, or the
unexplored sea. It's hard to know where the bandits and dragons are.

By the way, there are ways to have waves searchable by members of a
google group (e.g. the google group which follows ruby talk). You can
actually add the group as a participant using the groups email
address. Wave will seem to complain about it not being a wave
address, but it will work, and then members of the group can search
for the wave with the group: prefix to the search. (I'm doing this
from memory, so there might be some variations from what I just said,
but the function is, or at least was, there).

I read a description of the design of network protocols once which
noted that simple, to-the-point, successful protocols are succeeded by
ornate, overcomplicated, overdesigned protocols. Examples: slip was
followed by ppp, bootp by dhcp, rip by ospf/bgp/isis. (Actually, I
like both dhcp and ppp myself, and consider them improvements on what
came before.)

Clearly the same is true of other areas of technology. Gmail was a
very successful (or at any rate, popular) service for google, so they
said, "Ok, good. Now let's turn it up to 11."
 
A

Aldric Giacomoni

Mike said:
if the google wave group is still happening, my id is:

(e-mail address removed)

thanks!

I haven't seen anyone online ("onwave" ?) from the original group in a
while; maybe if someone came up with a new coding idea?
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,744
Messages
2,569,484
Members
44,903
Latest member
orderPeak8CBDGummies

Latest Threads

Top