Google Wave interests me. On face value its just googles answer to twitter, 
social networks, forums, email & blog comments, but the way they are doing it 
makes me interested. For as well as the usual APIs that will allow developers 
to add functionality to the platform, and the now standard ability for users to 
embed this stuff in their own sites, they are also releasing full details on 
the protocol used to make the service work, as well as example code which 
demonstrates how to make your own clients and servers. If adopted by people, 
this means we dont have to worry about Google having complete control over this 
stuff and it all being centralised in the usual way.

So has anybody looked at it in detail? At this stage its one of those annoying 
invitation-based betas so I havent had the opportunity to try it myself, though 
the developers stuff I mention is available and Im starting to read more detail 
about it.

Im interested in it from the point of view of solving stuff we talked about 
here over the years: aggregating content and conversations in a more 
sophisticated way, whilst still retaining control of the data and not ending up 
in a walled gardem that al the API's from the likes of facebook have not really 
torn down, they just added more gates to the wall.

What significant developments have happened on the web in recent years, 
especially pertaining to vlogging? I took my eyes off the ball for a while 
after getting tired with the hype filled web 2.0 stuff once it reached the 
silly greedy commercial stage and then started to vanish up its own backside, 
whats occuring apart from the obvious like facebook and twitter? How have the 
video hosting services evolved, or have they just been treading water and 
trying to survive in recent times?

Are there any interesting projects that people are throwing themselves into? 
There is a hole in my life where once I used to be able to have dreams inspired 
by the likes of fireant, mefeedia, showinabox, and all sorts of other things 
whose names now escape me. Wow, I cant even remember the name of the video 
hosting site that used archive.org and never quite lived up to its potential.

Cheers

Steve Elbows



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