Google Wave
Quaunaut
The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">HOLY F*** GMAIL AND TWITTER JUST DIED</div><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/" target="_blank">http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/googl...and-web-vision/</a>
I am completely, unbelievably mindblown. This simultaneously has the potential to be the new mainstay for e-mail, IM, twitter, message boards, blogging, collaboration, etc. The scary thing is, I'm not even using hyperbole. This is insane. Completely, completely insane.
Long ass video:
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
I am completely, unbelievably mindblown. This simultaneously has the potential to be the new mainstay for e-mail, IM, twitter, message boards, blogging, collaboration, etc. The scary thing is, I'm not even using hyperbole. This is insane. Completely, completely insane.
Long ass video:
<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
Comments
The thing that totally blew me away was the automatic french->english translation on the fly. That was really goddamned impressive.
--Scythe--
It wasn't that long ago that I read a sci-fi story where being able to translate messages live helped stop a world war. It seemed very believable.
And now... it's here.
It wasn't that long ago that I read a sci-fi story where being able to translate messages live helped stop a world war. It seemed very believable.
And now... it's here.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And not a moment too soon, what with North Korea and all that.
--Scythe--
It wasn't that long ago that I read a sci-fi story where being able to translate messages live helped stop a world war. It seemed very believable.
And now... it's here.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thank god we now have a way to translate messages live. Before this, we had to wait around for them to be shippe off to a translater who was, for some ridiculous reason, not available, and then let him work it out for a week or two.
But you can't easily replace email. You'll still be dealing with that for decades.
The thing that totally blew me away was the automatic french->english translation on the fly. That was really goddamned impressive.
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quotin' this for truth, although Wave looks like it won't blow as much* Google Docs does. Google Docs is nice and all but it can be a royal pain in the arse for certain forms of collaboration.
*or, more explicitly, Wave looks a damn sight better, but not the pants-creaming experience Quaquanaut saw it as.
in 30 years when it can finally replace e-mail...
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
OMG GET ME INTO DEV SANDBOX PLZZZZZZZZZZZ
I actually do want to try developing some stuff for it.
As to the others: Sure, e-mail will take a long time to replace, but 30 years? Hardly. As is, a growing market share of internet users use e-mail only when they have to, or to transfer small files. IM, or sites like Facebook/Myspace are a lot more prevalent, easily.
On top of this, nothing says Google Wave can't replace YOUR e-mail account. Sure, folks who aren't quick to migrate won't like it, but that doesn't mean you can't use it and it's features. And for each person that does take to it, it'll spread stronger and stronger.
It isn't a closed system, so it can essentially grow as easily as people are willing to adopt it, person by person. Big groups don't have to migrate at once.
Often, sadly, they do. I have my company email address. It can only be accessed through outlook on a secure VPN. Using wave for my work is impossible without wholesale migration across a company employing 122 thousand people across fifty countries. Sadface.
--Scythe--
Very cool. I'm excited.
But you can't easily replace email. You'll still be dealing with that for decades.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
yeah, just like the fax machine <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> that relic boggles my mind. Print something out from a computer, put it into the fax machine, digitize it, send it to the recipient where it's printed out again, and chances are they're going to scan it into the computer as a PDF. The height of efficiency!
on the random subject of neat Google things you might not know about, <a href="http://www.google.com/goog411/" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/goog411/</a>
The Orwellian surveillance stuff will probably be in the code they don't release.
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you're missing my point a good amount. See, even if your company doesn't adopt, you can adopt it for your personal use.
But then, that begins to open up other potentialities that could be major problems for companies:
Say you and another person at work are on Google's Wave server. You end up talking about work. Collaborating on work projects <i>there</i>, instead of anywhere else. As others at your work join in and see you two on there, it'll slowly start becoming a place people work at instead of your work's servers. Workflow is cut into two places. However, with the people on Wave being more efficient thanks to the ease of collaboration, it could signal to agile companies that they need to adopt it. This is where I assume quite a bit- but I do indeed assume that Google has things prepared to make migration from an environment like you're talking about really easy and quick. Otherwise it'd be such an obvious hole for them, that I also don't doubt that extensions would come out to do the same thing anyway.
A lot of what I'm talking about requires a lot of faith in companies to not be idiots, which like people is something I probably shouldn't do. But the companies that <i>do</i> migrate will likely have a decent advantage to those who don't.
I believe this (or something similar) could easily get up to 90%+ adoption by tech savvy people within a fairly short period of time (~2 years). But you'll still be regularly conversing with people that refuse to upgrade (either by stubbornness or ignorance) from plain email for a long long long time.
Sure, you'll be using wave to answer email, but you'll still have to comply with plain old email rules in those conversations.
But it doesn't replace a real translator, who would give you: "But of course... now we can use Rosy it all becomes a lot* easier".
* Because when used in a positive sense, 'a lot' is preferred to 'much' in most cases. 'Much' could be used but it would produce a different register.
The translation does trouble me, though. Because nowhere is there any sign of a comparitive in the actual French text. The only sign of a comparitive is the 'beaucoup' (a lot/much). But even if it is finding the 'beaucoup' alongside a past participle ('read'*) and assuming that the words 'much', 'read' and 'easy' are part of the same clause, there's still nothing to indicate a comparitive. You could for instance have the phrase "les livres de J. K. Rowling sont beaucoup lus" (the books of J. K. Rowling are read by many {lit. "read a lot"}).
"Facile" -as the English word suggests- just means 'easy', on its own it can never mean easi<b>er</b>. So this is where I have to start doubting just how staged this was. There's a typo which wasn't picked up on but the translator still managed to get a comparitive (easi<b>er</b>) out of nothing. How can a translator find a comparitive that's not there with no clues unless it has some inkling of what the user wants it to find? If it has corrected "lus" to get 'plus' it would have to ignore any suggestion of the word referring to the past participle 'read'. But somehow it manages to both be a Babelfish 'translation-by-numbers' machine (translate-every-input-word-for-word-with-no-regard-for-their-arrangement) and also a more intuitive native language spellchecker prior to translations ('in this context from the determiner {beaucoup/much} and the adjective {facile/easy}, surely you have missed the "p" off the "plus", giving "more", or an -er suffix for the comparitive), and give both answers. Something about it doesn't make sense.
* a translator would know that "lus" is a past participle masculine plural despite there being no masculine plural in the preceding comment, so would instantly conclude that 'read' is a typo
---
I was really enjoying it until that made me wonder just how much of it was authentic and how much was hypothetical, because that translation makes no sense no matter how you imagine the program is working; it's contradicting itself by giving that translation.
And if you spoke French like Crispy you could call them on their BS! It would be the best of both worlds.
Its a softwaretranslator. The day these will be better than real than real people is the day we will have to fight back our new robotic overlords.
I for one welcome our new robotic overlords!
The API allows you to share Waves between different Wave server networks, so it's not like it's impossible, if it's even hard.
Its also worth noting that Serenity was listed under the example poll for best movie ever.
'lus' was translated both as 'read' and as '[adjective]-er' (the latter by correcting 'lus' to 'plus' in the process). It was double translated. I would never expect computer translators to be as good as human translators (not in our lifetime at least). I was just pointing out this points towards perhaps a bit of live staging at the I/O.
'lus' was translated both as 'read' and as '[adjective]-er' (the latter by correcting 'lus' to 'plus' in the process). It was double translated. I would never expect computer translators to be as good as human translators (not in our lifetime at least). I was just pointing out this points towards perhaps a bit of live staging at the I/O.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmmm, I think computers could be trained to be be better at translation then your average professional level translator... probably not in real time over the net at this point, but it is within the capability of an algorithm to understand sentence context's and make translation decisions. It'd take some really smart people a long time to make it happen though, and it's a task that has to be done for every unique combination of languages. The best of the best human translators and language experts will exceed your digital translator, mostly because they have an additional level of intelligence that allows them to cross compare context of the sentence with context of the translation situation and make the translations more or less involved based on the appropriateness of the conversation in question.