Wave goodbye

Sheer brilliance was not enough, it is curtains for Wave. Bits and bobs are likely to appear in Google products but the whole notion of Wave as the next generation, game changing product is not going to be realised.

For us Wave proved itself quickly; it was easy to produce a WYSWYG interface for MediaWiki. This generated a lot of interest in many places, it had us generate a lot of air miles and we had something to show and tell.

For us there were a few issues that were not resolved to our satisfaction. Our aim was to provide a WYSWYG interface for MediaWiki and this meant that our complete solution had to be open source. This took just too long, there were understandable reasons but it killed interest in the Wikimedia Foundation. As the Wave interface was to be used for Wikipedia, it was just not acceptable that there was no way to internationalise and localise Wave and its extensions.

I am sad that it is over, here is finally a video with Erik Schmidt talking about the demise of Wave..The sound quality is poor..



Thanks,
      GerardM

Can we use Wave to edit MediaWiki on a mobile ?

I spend quite a lot of time helping the Mobile Wikipedia become more prominent. I learned a lot from doing this so I consider it time well spend. The number of languages with sufficient localisation has gone up from 20 to 52 or 34 depending on how you count. We created some concept mobile main pages and we requested the implementation of two main pages for two Wikipedias.

The software used is build in Ruby on Rails and it is developed separate from MediaWiki. It is currently useful to read Wikipedia articles, you cannot edit and you can not sign on or set personal preferences.

The MediaWikiWave project proved the concept that it is possible to create a WYSIWYG interface for MediaWiki. We have a functional editor for MediaWiki, the question is will it also work on a mobile phone, the question is will it also work with other languages and scripts.

I expect that for Wave to succeed, it will support both mobile phones and other languages and scripts. We have been told that internationalisation is part of the core MediaWiki functionality, and as I argued earlier, internationalisation and localisation need proper support for bots and gadgets as well. The one thing I am not sure about is mobile telephone support. What I do expect is, if not great then rapidly improving, support in Chrome and on Android and Chrome OS devices.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

The dust has not settled, the code is still being written, the software / functionality is still very much alpha but the first book for Wave has arrived. The Complete guide to Google Wave does a good job at explaining about what Wave actually is today.

Defining what Wave is, is hard because it means different things to different people. At first it was "e-mail redone with the experience of today", it proved necessary to cut the link to e-mail so that it could become its own thing and for me, I concentrate on Wave as the editing front end to a MediaWiki back end.

The book as it is available today, is the "preview edition", it has its home on a MediaWiki wiki and, it is billed as a work in progress. At that it fits in nicely with the collaborative editing that is the great strength of Wave. Consider, the people that find this important are likely and fall in love with Wave are also the people what are interested in writing the book on Wave. The GoogleWave extension allows for the inclusion of a Wave on a MediaWiki page show Wave to all the people who have not been invited yet.

When you want to learn more about Wave, do read the book, it is well worth it.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Wave is not to replace e-mail ... yet

At the Google meeting in Amsterdam, one of the most interesting fact about Wave for me was about Wave and e-mail. While it has always been said that Wave is "how we would build e-mail today", today Wave keeps its distance from e-mail.

Wave presents a different paradigm from e-mail and this paradigm needs to evolve. In order to do so, it needs to keep a distance because otherwise it is particularly the e-mail associated aspects that improve.

Lars and Stephanie explained that in an earlier incarnation, Wave did include much functionality with e-mail in mind but that proved to hinder rather then help the development of the Wave paradigm, so they binned it. Similar functionality may be added later and will probably be added by another party.

This is similar to what we do with MediaWiki, our approach is that Wave provides superior editing while MediaWiki provides superior publishing. Our challenge is to appreciate these different strengths and bring them together. As long as we do not need to touch the MediaWiki functionality, there is the easy upgrade path for Wikipedia that we seek.

Our challenge is to find ways in Wave to leave MediaWiki alone and interface and provide necessary functionality in Wave. Some things are still missing; internationalisation and localisations is crucial not only for the core product but also for the robots. The use of MediaWiki authentication and authorisation, including blocks, is crucial. As crucial is the availability of the Wave code so that we can play with the look and feel, add toolbars and add to the toolbars. The fun thing is that our use case provides the Wave developers with concrete challenges. It has already served to punch holes in some theories and help improve them.

All in all, Wave is awesome and it was wonderful and productive to meet in person.
Thanks,
GerardM

Don't stop me now, I am having a good time ...

There are several things that are not so nice in MediaWiki, edit conflicts is one and wikitext is another. The MediaWiki Wave project is happy to show you that edit conflicts and several types of wikitext can be a thing of the past.


Wave provides a great colloborative editing interface, with a realtext interface. This is the MediaWiki that everybody can edit.. :)
Thanks,
     Gerard