Episode 95 - All Those Sheep Got PDAs

[Fab]

This week on Linux Outlaws: Google Wave, lots of Moblin news, Microsoft losing deals and sneakily installing Firefox plugins, Dan reviews Chakra and much more.

http://linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/95
http://linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/ogg/95

http://outlawarchives.com

[jonkulp]

Downloading...

[mynameis]

I already know what happens in this one so this post is pointless

Downloading anyway

[johnkemp]

T'was I who added "Danish Weekend" to Urban Dictionary. High blood alcohol levels caused me to submit it twice I got it right the second time, though

EDIT:
The first entry was my second submission and the best one. Doughnut seems a better fit (hehe pun) than pie as a pastry.

[jezra]

The overall winner of the World Beard and Mustache contest had his beard woven to look like a snowshoe.
Alaska+snowshoe beard = Win!

[mg6]

I just finished listening to the episode, and it was good as usual.

About Google Wave. There is a video that you can download (180 MB) to see the presentation (1 hour and 20 minutes). The software for Wave exists, they're not just working on protocols. The software works, but not all the features are done, and it crashed a few times in the demo. The demo was being put on for third party developers. These third party developers got accounts on the Google system so they can work on adding third party extensions and plug-ins.

According to Google, they will open source "almost all" of the system. You will be able to set up your own private servers that have nothing to do with Google, and your data will not go through Google. Your private servers can exchange data with anyone else's private servers, just like they do today with regular e-mail. Google will of course be setting up their system to offer the service to the general public (like they do with GMail today). I imagine that Google will also have some extra features in their own version which tie it into their ad services (this is probably the part they won't be open sourcing).

I watched the whole demo, and I was very impressed. I'm not sure I would want it to replace my personal e-mail, but I think it would be an excellent system for internal corporate e-mail. The live messaging is probably a lot less important than the fact that related messages are inherently linked together in a way that makes sense. If you've ever tried to follow an e-mail conversation that gets cc'd back and forth between sales, manufacturing, engineering, QC, etc., you would have seen how confusing this can get. Your in-box gets filled up with crap of which 99% has nothing to do with you, but you have to read it all anyway to find the 1% that matters to you. The "wave" format of the message tends to keep things much more organised. There were a lot of other "cool" features, but I this was the thing which really struck me (and it wasn't something they mentioned directly).

The other thing you really have to keep in mind when you see this is that the client is just a web browser. They are doing stuff with HTML 5 that most people would never believe you could do with a web browser. It also works with the iPhone and Android (that part of the demo failed though), and it should be able to work with other smart phones because they are going through the browser.

Third party developers will be able to add features, and they will also be able to package the system and distribute it independently of Google. This is something you could market as a replacement for Outlook/Exchange, Notes/Domino, and Groupwise. Add a calendar system and account management software, and package it up with a Linux server, and you would have a first class corporate e-mail and messaging system. All you need for a client would be any HTML 5 web browser. Users won't believe that they're using web mail, because it's nothing like traditional web mail. The demo showed it working on Google Chrome on MS Windows XP, and in Safari on Apple OS/X. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in Firefox on Linux.

Corporate e-mail via Outlook has always been one of the cash cows for Microsoft, as their only real competition has been Notes/Domino. One of the things that makes it difficult to use Linux in a large corporation or government has been the fact that you need a Windows PC in order to read your e-mail. Wave can change all that. Perhaps Google hasn't thought of it that way, but if I was Read Hat, Novell, Canonical, or anyone like that, I would be setting up a team right away to turn this into the flagship "enterprise" e-mail system. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this has the potential to be the biggest development in open source software in many years.

[lostnbronx]

Listening right now, I had to pause and just comment: is New Zealand a land of scrappy, take-no-shit em-effers, or what? They really have no problem telling major corporations (and the occasional governmental super-power) to screw-off when it suits them. They rock, ladies and germs. So says da 'Bronx.

[Fab]

T'was I who added "Danish Weekend" to Urban Dictionary.

Awesome!

[Fab]

About Google Wave. There is a video that you can download (180 MB) to see the presentation (1 hour and 20 minutes). The software for Wave exists, they're not just working on protocols. The software works, but not all the features are done, and it crashed a few times in the demo.

Does it work on Linux?

[soyrochus]

About Google Wave. There is a video that you can download (180 MB) to see the presentation (1 hour and 20 minutes). The software for Wave exists, they're not just working on protocols. The software works, but not all the features are done, and it crashed a few times in the demo.

Does it work on Linux?

The client is an HTML 5 app so it works in all "modern browsers" as they glibly stated. So for the moment no IE. And although HTML5 is not a formal standard yet, many elements have been implemented in current or beta versions of aforementioned browsers; during the demo they showed the client running in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and on an Android device and iPhone as well (webkit browsers). You would only need an extension/plug-in, Google Gears, for drag and drop.

And as the standard is open, it will be possible to write your own GTK or QT based client. The Open Source version will be the HTML based client though.

It's not completely clear how the server software is implemented. Google will release a "production quality reference implementation" as Open Source. The server-side extension model/API is based on Google AppEngine (it supports Java and Python) but it's unlikely that the server core (the protocol handler) itself runs "on" AppEngine as Google Wave is centered around the XMPP protocol (from Jabber/Google Chat). Most XMPP server implementations out there run on Linux so i 'm speculating that it will not be an issue.