For the last year or so we’ve all be yammering one about the Google phone. It appears as though every Android device that has been released – the media flock to it looking for evidence of the Google.
Google have now announced that they will be launching a proper, pure, Google branded phone. It won’t carry the manufacturer brand or have the OS tinkered with. No. This is going to be Google’s version of the iPhone – 100% Google just the the iPhone is 100% Apple.
What can we expect?
I’ve given this some though and asides from the obvious high-speed internet access etc… I think the Google phone will be putting more of an emphasis on communication than the iPhone has – which is largely an organisational and app tool. Adequate video calling, perhaps? Most definitely it will be fully integrated with Google Voice for users in the US. Dare I say it; maybe even a mobile version of Google Wave? (at least then Wave would have a purpose).
What would you like on the upcoming Google phone?
Well, it’s time. A lot of people have been waiting for this for several months now: Google Wave is releasing 100,000 invitations in the next few days (expected for September 30th) for enlisted participants.
As we’ve discussed before, Google Wave will give users the chance to manipulate the same content at the same time, and displaying the information in real time for the rest of the users. This collaborative environment can be crucial in developers’ teams. Will be something like this:
I know what you are about to say: how do I get an invitation to Google Wave? Well, there’s no guarantee at this point that you may receive one of the 100k that Google’s releasing, but you might get a chance for a second Google Wave (mid-October maybe?):
Dev guys can click here and enlist to receive one of the invitations.
The rest of the mortals can click here.
And yes, if we receive one of those invitations you’ll hear from our experience.
At this point I think that saying that Google released a new and very ambitious project as open source should not surprise anyone. Google officially announced that one of their recent projects, Google Wave, and the protocol involved, will be open source and they expect a lot of contribution from the entire community (I’m sure they will get it).
Google Wave will be oriented to concurrent messaging in a collaborative environment, multiple users can be manipulating the same content at the same time and user activity is immediately visible to other participants. As any collaborative environment and architecture, most of the operations will converge when the server receives the concurrent requests; but the real challenge appears making all that an “invisible transparency” to the user without resigning the usability, functionality and performance.
Will be something like this:
Google says: “To kickoff Federation Day, we open sourced two components: 1) the Operational Transform (OT) code and the underlying wave model, and 2) a basic client/server prototype that uses the wave protocol. The OT code is the heart and soul of the collaborative experience in Google Wave and we plan that code will evolve into the production-quality reference implementation”.
You can even take a peak to the source code of this protocol. And you can check also a nice overview.
For the last year or so we’ve all be yammering one about the Google phone. It appears as though every Android device that has been released – the media flock to it looking for evidence of the Google.
