Google Wave: A glimpse of the future

At yesterday's I/O conference Google previewed an early version of Google Wave:

What is Google Wave? It's a communications & collaboration tool from the team formerly responsible for Google Maps. They set out to answer the question "What would email look like if it was invented today?".

Waves combines previously separate functionality into a tool that looks seamless and genuinely new. It's includes elements of email, instant messaging, wikis & collaborative document sharing. What exactly is a Wave? Start of by thinking of a wave as a threaded rich media email or instant message conversation. These are a few of the features:

• Conversations can take place one to one or in groups
• Combines asynchronous and real-time conversation in one.
• Anyone in the conversation can comment, or amend, in place, in the stream of the conversation
• Simply drag and drop documents, pictures etc into your browser to share them with other people
• Rewind and look back through the conversation history

Wave is more than just another Google App. It's also a platform, and a protocol.
A platform: Google's push right now is to get developers on board. You can embed rich content like interactive surveys. There will be plugins and bots to extend Wave how you want - rich content like an interactive survey, spellcheck, even translation. You can embed Waves in your website. Getting a large crowd of developers enthusiastic is a great way to make your platform the one that succeeds.

A protocol: absolutely crucially, Google will release the protocol specification and the code for client and server as open source. They say they want to see many separate but interoperable wave servers - it won't just be a Google App. A company could implement their own private Wave server which will talk to other Wave servers in the cloud, or at other organisations (just like SMTP today) . When the goal is a big as defining the next version of email, that's essential, and it is why I'm excited about Wave. The functionality looks excellent, but it would do no good at all in an isolated environment. I can have all the clever communications software I want, but it is useless unless the people I need to talk to have it too. I don't want a proprietary unified communications product which only works within my organisation - I want an open, global tool which everyone uses. Google have the resources to develop the tool, and by opening the standard the ensure that anyone who wants to can use it.

Communicationss & collaboration tools are normally seen as an enterprise requirement, but Google are a consumer company at heart. This will help them do groupware properly. JWZ put it crudely but got it right in his 2005 essay, Groupware Bad: The first question a social software developer should ask is "how will this software help my users get laid?". If you prefer, how will it make it easier for them to do what they want to do - meet and communicate? Good groupware solves problems for people, bad groupware tries to solves problems for organisations that no actual users want. Google grok this. They say "Google Wave can make you more productive even when you're having fun!".

What are the implications? Wave is hugely important in its own right and also demonstrates Google's strategy more generally. The implications look terrible for Microsoft:

• Google often say that they can do anything in a browser you can do in a native desktop application. As they put it, "never underestimate the browser". Wave uses elements from the HTML5 spec, which extends HTML further towards rendering complex applications. It's taken over ten years, but finally the web is becoming the platform.
• Although the ratified HTML5 spec is some way off, Firefox, Chrome, Safari & Opera already support key parts of it. Internet Explorer doesn't (yet?). If it doesn't, tools like Wave will be compelling enough to shift users away from Internet Explorer to other browsers. Microsoft either need to catch up and support modern web standards fully, or lose market share.
• Nobody else is going to propose a next-gen email protocol with Wave in the offing. By open sourcing Wave Google scare off potential competition. Who wants to go head to head with the gorilla? The only company with both the resources and willingness to do so on this is Microsoft. They difference is that Google's money is from advertising, Microsoft's from software. Microsoft can't afford to open source their software to define the next standard - they'd destroy their revenue. Google, can, and just just did. [As a side note, Microsoft purchased Groove, a very Wave-like product in 2005, and then had no idea what to do with it].

Poor Microsoft. On the day Microsoft announce Bing (another attempt to merely catch up on search) Google are racing ahead...

Wave is exciting, but maybe there's too much hyperbole over it already. I'll finish with a few notes of caution:

• Wave isn't ready or available yet. So far the developers attending the I/O conference are the only people with access to it. Google suggest that Wave will be available to consumers later in 2009. My guess is that we are at least 12 months away from Wave appearing in the corporate version of Google Apps, or getting the source code to deploy your own Wave server.
• It's not clear how Wave fits in a mobile world. Threaded, interactive conversations with rich media work well on a large screen.
• Email isn't going to disappear. Although Wave is an attempt to redesign email from the ground up, email is quick, cheap, lightweight, easy, and universal.
• Wave doesn't include voice or video communications. In the Googleverse, how does Wave fit in with Google Voice?

A truly unified communications tool should include voice too. Add a few more years for Unified Communications then - by which time our requirements for unified communications will have broadened even further. Perhaps this Holy Grail is as far away as ever - but we've just had a tantalising glimpse.

More titbits from the Student IT survey

When asked "How important is it that the University provides the following services for students?" The most important service is University email account, with 90% saying this is very important. After that ResNet, Public Computers, & Printing all have 78 or 79% of students rating them very important.

ResNet is the most highly rated service, with 85% saying the service is excellent or good (excluding those with no opinion). After that Laptop Clinics, Portal, Email, Help Desk & Electronic Library Resources all rate above 70% on the same measure.

Out of nine possible suggested new services, the most requested were

• Access student filestore from anywhere over the web,
• Audio or video recordings of lectures,
• An email address you take with you when you graduate.

Awareness of the Student Laptop Clinic, 24 hour Help Desk & IT Skills training is poor (around a third of students know about them)

98% of our students own at least one computer. 91% of these are portables of some sort. 11% of computers are Macs, 89% are Windows systems.

Cloud Computing & Google Apps

I recently organised an event on Cloud Computing & Google Apps, with two excellent speakers (Sam Peters & Andrew Charlesworth).

Write up is on the Futures Cafe blog...

Estimating iPhone / iPod Touch owners at Bristol

How many staff and students have we got at Bristol with an iPhone (or iPod Touch)?

With help from the Student IT Survey and mail server logs (big thank you to the mail admins!) I have some stats:

Number of unique users sending email via Bristol mail servers over a 30 day period, expressed as a percentage of the staff and student populations:

Device	Staff	Student
iPhone	1.6%	1.1%
iPod Touch	0.2%	0.3%
Total	1.8%	1.3%

Respondents to the Student IT Survey March 2009, expressed as a percentage of the 1439 respondents:

Device	Student
iPhone	2.6%
iPod Touch	4.5%
Total	7.1%

What does this tell us, and how do we account for the discrepancy between the figures?

The much lower numbers for email use than ownership suggest that many owners aren't using them for their University email account (but might be using them for personal accounts?)

Ownership of the iPod Touch is high, but email usage is low - perhaps with the lack an always-on data connection this is unsuprising (waiting until you are at the nearest wireless hotspot can be frustrating)

Could selection bias (which students chose to respond to the survey) distort the figures? I have no particular evidence for this, but it is always a suspicion. We true to reduce selection bias by offering an attractive prize draw to respondents - but in this case the top prize is an iPod Touch!

One phone or two?

How many phones do you want - one smartphone that does everything, or separate devices for work and home use?

Personally I'm firmly in the one device camp, I can't back this up with firm data, but my observations at Bristol are that many employer-issued phones languish uncharged, left behind in the office. They are only used occasionally - when someone knows in advance they'll be off-site for a few days. The same people carry a personal mobile with them.

Think of our different users within a university:

• I reckon that most academics want one device. The traditional of the academic for whom work is their vocation plays into this - work & personal life merge.
• Our students certainly only have one device (we don't pay for their phones!).
• Our estates staff (electricians etc) have particular requirements and definitely need a work phone as they are out on call around the campus.
• Our academic-related staff: this is where there is the greatest divide into the two camps. Some people are strongly of the opinion that they want two phones to keep work and home separate, others want one phone and somehow manage to juggle their identities.

Is this a divide between the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants (of whatever age?).

Leaving aside who owns the devices, I'd like an approach with at least two prongs, as per Gartner's Managed Diversity Strategy:

1. Provide basic low-level support for all devices. For example, we have step by step instructions on how to access our email and Calendar on all major phone platforms.
2. Provide comprehensive support for one specific platform (eg phone preconfigured before you get it, help desk support, perhaps custom applications).

I want to do both, but in the current economic climate option 1 looks attractive while 2 is difficult to justify.

Smartphones: the plethora of platforms

Smartphones are rather like desktop PCs were 25 years ago. There are lots of competing devices with different OSes - it's exciting or a nightmare depending on your point of view. Gartner's managed diversity strategy provides a useful framework to think about support.

If I'm an individual or an enterprise, how do I choose which platform to adopt? My preference is for the iPhone - it's what I've chosen for personal use, and I think it has business benefits too. Each of the platforms however have different strengths and weaknesses. Several people have recently asked me for advice, so hopefully this summary on the blog will be of use to more.

Blackberry: the standard for corporate messaging. We'd have to invest significantly to add Blackberry Enterprise Server to our infrastructure if we wanted to deploy Blackberries. The blackberry data contracts are also at expensive at £15/month, difficult to justify at a time when we are trying to cut costs. The infrastructure costs mean we'd either have to deploy Blackberries in a big way or not at all.

Symbian: Symbian is now owned by Nokia, who are almost the only firm left making Symbian phones. Symbian runs efficiently on low-end hardware. It's a general purpose smartphone OS but I think Symbian's developing niche will be at the cheaper end of the smartphone market, for people who want a phone with only occasional extras. The Nokia E63 could be a good, cheap phone for business users wanting phone+email. The keyboard makes it a decent Blackberry clone from the hardware point of view. Unfortunately for us the IMAP mail client is lacking - for example it will only store sent mail on the device, not on the server.

Windows Mobile: lots of devices in different form factors, from a huge range of manufacturers. Very open platform for third-party applications. I think of Windows Mobile as a 'general purpose computer' - it will do anything. This makes it a great choice if you really want a laptop replacement (but in that case how about a netbook instead?). Unfortunately the Windows Mobile interface is pretty horrible to use. The best Windows Mobile devices are from HTC, who have developed an easier touch interface on top of Windows Mobile. If you want a Windows Mobile get something like the HTC Touch Pro.

Apple iPhone: revolutionary when first released, the sleek hardware, large screen and touch interface make the iPhone a cut above other options. It is lightweight, slim, and easy to carry around in your pocket, so won't be left in the desk drawer. The user interface and other design factors are crucial to the appeal - you can't underestimate how important this is to the average, non-techy user. It makes the device something people will actually use and benefit from.

The on screen keyboard is a barrier for some:it takes time to get used to but can be quite fast when you've learnt. The email client is fantastic, and the web browser way better than any other smartphone. There are various enterprise tools you would expect (eg remote wipe) but not all would work in our environment. It can do calendaring with our Oracle Calendar, but through a third-party sync app which isn't ideal. This is an example of a more general failing: Apple have a limited SDK for third-party apps, perhaps as an oversight, or perhaps to retain their iron control on the platform. Unfortunately all this comes at a price: the iPhone corporate data contract (£15/month again) is more expensive than other options. A shame that the smartphone designed for the masses is affordable only to a few?

Google Android (so far just the G1 from T-Mobile): One to watch. In theory Android should give the iPhone a run for its money providing easy to use web-centric devices. So far manufacturers have been slow to release models - I don't expect a large range until 2010. Android platform not mature, missing too many features, especially those that enterprises want. Android is likely to remain consumer-centric for some time.

Palm Pre: interesting but still unproven and not here yet. When released it will still take time to reach maturity and feature parity with other platforms.

Digital nomads and multiple identites on the move

"Urban nomads have started appearing only in the past few years. Like their antecedents in the desert, they are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it. Thus, Bedouins do not carry their own water, because they know where the oases are. Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don't even bring laptops. Many engineers at Google, the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads, travel with only a BlackBerry, iPhone or other “smart phone”. If ever the need arises for a large keyboard and some earnest typing, they sit down in front of the nearest available computer anywhere in the world, open its web browser and access all their documents online."
From Nomads at last, The Economist April 10th 2008

Is the Nomad a good model for our academic and academic-related staff working on the move? I'm sure it describes some - but how many? Paul Saffo describes four categories of mobile worker, Nomads, Cyber-trekkers, Hermit Crabs & Astronauts - defined by how disciplined they are about what they leave behind. Personally I'm not a digital nomad - but I'm sold on the concept and working on getting there.

Having access to information on the move is very useful. But travelling light is more important. People won't put up with bulky, heavy, awkward gadgets. If your smartphone is larger than some critical size it will spend more time sitting in your desk drawer than in your pocket, and then it is of no use to anyone. Every student has a laptop, but most sit on the desk at home and only occasionally are brought in to the campus.

My starting point on mobile IT is that devices must be genuinely mobile. Even better would be for the devices to disappear into the environment. Use the keyboards and screens of whatever room you are in, and access your data in the portal or in the cloud.

Lets say you find the perfect device. The next problem is that you don't want to lug around two phones, or two laptops, and two sets of chargers (one of each for work and the other for personal use). To escape that fate you instead have to wrestle with managing your work and personal identities on the same equipment. This is tricky:

• Email identities are the easiest to separate. You can have two email addresses, and read them either in different places or in one virtual inbox (but you'd better remember to choose the right From address).
• Calendar is trickier - to stop yourself getting double-booked you need a view of both personal and work appointments in one place. Putting your personal appointments into your corporate calendar isn't a good solution (how do you get your data out when you change jobs?).
• Even more difficult is your phone number. You don't want to keep two phones in your pocket, unless you have very baggy trousers! So do you use your work phone for personal purposes? Apart from the cost, there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles with financial and tax regulations. Use your personal phone for work purposes? You won't want to pocket the bill, unless you've got a large bundle of minutes each month. Even worse, it means your employer has your phone number when you're on holiday. If somehow you do combine both into one device, you won't give up either your work or personal number - all those people to notify!

We don't have good, cheap, multi-network solutions for redirecting phone calls. Grand Central looks like the best multi-platform service. Sadly Google appear to have put the service on ice since taking it over (and there is certainly no sign of it outside of the US). One colleague points me towards Advanced Call Manager "It's brilliant" - but only for devices with Symbian OS. Doubtless there are others - all suggestions very welcome...

Further reading:

Dr Carsten Sørensen, LSE
Paul Saffo on Cyber-Nomads: a functional taxonomy of mobile users
Sociology of the mobile phone