Luke Hubbard

Wow, just when you thought there wasn’t anything else unbelievable for Google to create, they release Google Wave!

Google Wave is a new tool for “communication and collaboration on the web,” which utilizes cloud computing. Wave is open protocol, meaning that developers can mold it to fit their own concepts. Here’s the official video from Google:

Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Google, the developers of Google Maps, were the ones to develop Wave. They aimed at creating email for the first time, like it was invented now rather than years ago.

With this in mind, Google Wave addresses needs of the common day user such as the ability to type and read conversations real time. This is different from instant message because in Google Wave, you can see your friend actually typing each character without having to hit an enter button. These conversations are called “waves.” Also, more than two users can enter into the conversation.

The features are endless such as the ability to drag and drop pictures into the threads, and to play back the conversations in the order they were created. You’ll have to check out the video to get the full understanding of who all this works… they do a good job of showing examples of each feature.

One really cool aspect of wave is its attempt to fuse together user generated content with a new form of email, which is delivery tool. Because Waves can be public, conversations could act as RSS feeds, newsletters, Wikis, or even blogs.

Wave is a web based application just like Gmail, and in fact, it looks very similar to the Gmail interface we’re all used to seeing.

Google Wave Interface

Most importantly, Wave is open protocol, which means Google is looking for outside developers to enhance the product. I’m very interested to see what the future holds for Wave and if developers will collaborate to build a product that replaces email, wikis, blogs, rss, and social networks.

Have you ever wondered why the word “spam” is used to describe unwanted email or other unethical behavior online?

According to Wikipedia, in 1970, Monty Python aired a sketch that featured some pretty funny characters over using the word “spam.” Check out the original sketch below, which I later explain had a major role in the usage of the word “spam” to mean “stupid pointless annoying messages.”

Evidentially, in the early days of chat rooms, people used to quote this sketch or simply write the word SPAM a huge number of times in order to frustrate other chatters. One funny example on Wikipedia sites Star Wars and Star Trek fans sabotaging each others’ chat room with quotes from the Monty Python spam sketch. Remember, Internet connections were much slower in the early 1980s so overloading a chat room with a large amount of text caused major problems for the participants in the chat room.

I had previously believed that spam was used to describe unwanted email based on the visual of someone throwing canned SPAM meat into a fast turning metal fan blade. The fan would chop up the SPAM and throw it all over the place, which I thought was a brilliant metaphor that captures the grossness of the spamming activity. Wikipedia claims this is not the actual origin of the word.

Hormel, the maker of the canned meat SPAM, has sued several companies over the misuse of their trademark. However, due to the massive common use of the word spam in the English vernacular, Hormel has had to accept that one of their prize products will forever be associated with unethical Internet behavior. Spam is evenly commonly defined by reputable dictionaries as both the canned meat and also unwanted email. Hormel has settled with encouraging people to reserve the all capital version of the word SPAM to mean the canned meat (again according to Wikipedia).

On a final note, keep in mind that spam isn’t restricted to just unwanted email. Unethical behavior such as invading instant messaging services is a form of spam commonly called “spim.” Unfortunately, spam also reaches search engines, news rooms, mobile phones via text messages, wiki entries, and website guest books. Most annoyingly, spam also enters into blog comments, but the savvy blogger employs technology to clean up the spam.