He was hoping for a solution like “Laser-Vision” or “Cosmic Hug” to the problem of Jones’ increasing power.

Instead he was advised to wait and master his own power.

“But what power do I have,” he asked, “other than a difficulty staying dead, full control of my hands in a place where I can’t use them, power to destroy things followed by crippling guilt, and now a painful link to someone who wants me dead and has already murdered me?”

“You must trust me,” replied his companion earnestly, “you have time, and you will understand soon.

“Without my assistance, I want you to withdraw yourself to the other realm. There is someone I would like you to meet.”

Space Flight 704, Chapter 30: Dubious Powers is a post from: The Geekorium

For example, if I want to sync a folder like D:\My Videos, the program accepts the folder I want as D:\y Videos and then creates this new folder for syncing. Or it might sync D:\Archives as D:\rchives. On my other computer — no issues.

Investigating a bit, I discovered it doesn’t happen on my other drives (C:, F:). My D drive is different, in that I’ve moved the location of my My Documents folder to D. In a quick test, I discovered that moving it again to a subfolder of D removes the issue. It’s not a permanent solution however, as a) I like having my documents folder in the root of my secondary drive, and b) I would have to move 220Gb of data to an external drive and back again as you can’t move the location to a subfolder of the current location.

So I’ve sent feedback to Microsoft using the inbuilt “report a problem” menu in the beta. I did it in two parts though, so this post is my way of putting it all in one place, and on the off chance that someone is having a similar issue, they might get some comfort knowing that it’s not their fault (well it is, but only ever so slightly).

My Small Issue With the Windows Live Sync Beta is a post from: The Geekorium

1. A way to “subscribe” to people/searches: Lisa Miller writes Our Patch (the First Wavezine) on Google Wave [“our patch” wave search]. John Blossom write useful waves about Wave [wave search for John Blossom]. I’d like to “subscribe” to these searches and have them tell me when new items are published by these people. The presence of “archive” and “mark as read” options when you make a search suggests it should eventually tell you when the search has updated, but it’s not implemented yet. Instead, users are making their own indexes (for example - Our Patch) And while we’re on searches — a “quick add” option to turn a search into a shortcut.
2. Spam and abuse management: Spam and destruction seem out of control sometimes on wave. We know the team are building spam and user management, but it’s a bit slow going at the moment.
3. Federation: At time of writing, federation (connecting one Wave server to another) is only supported in the developer sandbox and not in the public wave preview. It’d be nice to know that when Novell Pulse is released, they’ll both talk from day one.
4. Moderation tools: Creators should have the choice to lock their initial blip from editing if that is what they desire. Some blips are purely informative and don’t need to be edited by all and sundry. This is perhaps antithetical to the way the creators intended Wave to be used, but users will do as they want with a tool, and it’s up to developers to support them.
5. Google Apps support for all users: I don’t like using nunn.joshua@googlewave.com. I’d much rather use josh@nunnone.com as I have with email for the last 5 years.
6. Better contact management: Currently contacts appear in Google Contacts under their Google email addresses. Why not add their names automatically, put them in a “Wave” group, and add a link to their home page pulled from their Google Profile (and don’t try to tell me Google doesn’t know that much about them…)

So that’s my list of “missing features” that are necessary ASAP. What do you think Wave is missing right now?

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilovememphis/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Six Things Wave Needs Soon is a post from: The Geekorium

1. First up, Wave will ensure messages are signed and verified from the source. Currently email can be forged and made to look like a legitimate email coming from a trusted source. The Wave Protocol specifically addresses this, making it impossible for anyone to “spoof” another address without access to that user’s account.
2. Email currently makes it very easy to send millions of messages with little to no cost involved for the sender — they send and delete and don’t need to save copies of them, and the recipient is forced to deal with the accumulated data. The Wave Protocol however, requires the sender to host the wave and keep a copy for future reference. Spammers will no doubt find ways to send and then remove their waves, but if a host no longer hosts the wave, that could be a reliable indication that the sender was a spammer.
3. Finally, the few times the developers have been asked about spam they’ve mentioned a possible white-list system. White-listing involves choosing who can send you messages and blocking everyone else. People worry that this will stop legitimate communication, say from long lost friends, getting through. But already built into the interface is a “Requests” link that Wave says are “Waves for users not in your contacts list”. This could allow anyone to contact you, but you’d know at a glance that they weren’t from people you knew and trusted, and could more easily add them to your contacts, or mark them as spam.

I believe a combination of these three factors will go some way to addressing the spam problem. By tying everyone to a Wave server it’s not as economical to spam using waves. By not allowing completely anonymous communication, reported spammers can be more easily shut down, and by white-listing users we can identify potential spam at a snap. The Wave team will hopefully come up with even more solutions to implement and I’ll be interested to see how it develops.

How Wave Could Tackle the Spam Problem is a post from: The Geekorium

I’m not bringing it up now to point out the flaws in my year 8 education, but to highlight something about the way people learn. When Wave was first announced and launched it was described by various people as “sort of like email” or “part instant messenger, part Google Docs”. This is because we often find it easier to understand something new when we “pin” it on a concept we already know and understand. Likening one thing to something else is sort of like my metal filing cabinet I had in 8th grade, useful up to a point, but no way to go about using something on an advanced day-to-day basis.

Which is why I think Google or a third party need to seriously consider how the non-tech-minded are going to learn how to use Wave.

The problem as I see it is how the tech-illiterate are going to learn how to use Wave. I work in an industry where technology is secondary to the primary business, and am constantly amazed to find that there are still people who can’t use email and often even refuse to turn on a computer. It’s sometimes my job to explain even the most rudimentary of modern communication tasks. I might normally do this by comparing email to snail-mail, email addresses to post office boxes and so on. The user then keeps these analogies in mind the next time they use their email without me around.

With Wave, the analogies are all different. There aren’t yet clear real-world examples we can use to explain Wave concepts and so far all the analogies I’ve heard compare it to other technology concepts. For example, a wave is compared to a message board and individual blips are like single emails. While somewhat helpful for technology types, these analogies will fail with non-techies who are already struggling to map these concepts to the “real-world”. I suspect the thought-process to interpret these concepts might take two or three steps to “translate” these new ideas into ones the user is familiar with. So we have Mr Jones who has been told that a wave is like an email, which he remembers from his grandson is like a letter. But He’s also been told it can be used instantly like a telephone. Technically (and very loosely) these analogies are correct, but are they useful?

Perhaps this is exactly the reason the Wave team abandoned terms like “message” and “update” for brand new ones like “wave” and “blip” — to give everyone a level playing field when learning the new technology. I just can’t help wondering however if new names and ideas might be more confusing.

What I’d like to see is a third party developer build a wave solution (server and client) that addresses the new concepts in an involving and intuitive way. It’s widely known that Google builds software the engineering way — by doing it the simplest way they know how, then testing multiple variations over and over and continually refining. This incremental approach can only work when it’s almost there to begin with. The huge shift in thinking that Wave requires might never make sense to the non-technical when built by engineers. Another party however may be able to research the best way to school new users in Wave right in the interface.

A radically different wave-compatible alternative could open Wave up to a whole new set of users that might otherwise pass it over as “too technical”. If Google want to encourage the world to embrace Wave and abandon email, they will need all the help they can get building a translation-free wave experience for new users.

• Do you find Wave confusing?
• What do you think your less tech-savvy friends and family might think of Wave the first time they see it?
• How would you make Wave more new-user-friendly?

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hectorl/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

French, Postboxes and Wave is a post from: The Geekorium

I’m certain that this will not be as big an issue in later iterations of Wave, and there are already some safeguards in place. Nevertheless, it is a real issue to watch as Wave matures.

The Freedom Problem is a post from: The Geekorium

A refreshing look at some of the downsides of waves as a new communication medium.

Some Downsides to Wave is a post from: The Geekorium

You’ve reached a page that contains content from Google Wave. We’re currently in a developer preview with a limited number of users. If you have an account please log in at wavesandbox.com.

The problem with embedding waves in blogs — no one can read them if the service goes down or won’t allow you access. Better would be to have the wave actually publish content to your database. Then a WordPress plugin that takes comments written and puts them back into your wave stream would be necessary. Better would be blog software written on the Wave Protocol.

The Problem with Embedding is a post from: The Geekorium

This is the biggest hurdle Google faces. Users convincing other users to switch, so everyone can benefit.

The Biggest Hurdle is a post from: The Geekorium