Google Chrome is Fast

Summary
Google has a nice video demonstrating the speed of the Google Chrome web browser.

Enjoy.

(Video: YouTube)

And here's how they made that commercial...

(Video: YouTube)

Reader Question: What is Google Wave?

This post is a response to a reader question. Please email your questions to metaist.blog@gmail.com. Not all questions will be answered.

Question
An anonymous reader asks: What is Google Wave and why would I want to use it?

Not this kind of wave, but close.
(Photo: Wikimedia)

Summary
Google Wave is a new technology that is supposed to combine three existing technologies:

1. Email
2. Instant Messaging (IM), and
3. Wikis.

Email
Most of us are familiar with email. Briefly, it's static distributed content. In other words, one person can send out some information to a bunch of other people.

Instant Messaging
Instant messaging, however, is dynamic-- you interact with another person (or multiple people) at once.

Wikis
Wikis are collaboratively editable documents. The most famous example is Wikipedia, but there are others (including private wikis such as those found within corporations). Wikis are basically "dynamic content". So now, the content itself can change over time, but everyone can see previous version of the content if they choose.

Wave
Google's conception of a Wave, therefore, is a wiki where you see the changes in real-time (sort of like Google Documents). Here's how it works:

1. You create a new wave and add some collaborators.
2. The new wave appears in the collaborators "inbox".
3. Any collaborator (including you, the creator) can start to edit the wave.
4. Anyone looking at the wave (i.e. one of the collaborators) can see who's editing (and where on the page they're editing) in real time.
5. The wave can have robot collaborators who perform menial tasks (like "replace all the YouTube links with YouTube videos").
6. The wave can also have "gadgets" that collaborators interact with (such as a "survey gadget" that surveys people).
7. At any time, you can scroll back to see previous states of the wave all the way back to its creation.

Uses
So where would you use a wave? The answer largely depends on how you handle collaboration. Nature has a write-up about how scientists could use waves to collaborate and use robot collaborators to comb through papers and cross-reference, for example, gene names in databases. More mundane uses might include organizing a camping trip, but you're really only limited by your imagination.

Meta
Have you used Google Wave? Did you find it useful? What did you like / dislike?

Advances in Printer Ink

Summary
A recent IEEE Spectrum featured an article about an advance in ink-less printing called ZINK.

(Image: Wikimedia)

Commentary
As consumers, we're familiar with the high price of ink. If you think gasoline is expensive, how's $8,000 a gallon for HP ink? And it doesn't help that many printers have been "designed" to produce false out-of-ink messages.

There have been several attempts at lowering the cost of printer ink. In 2007, Kodak introduced a printer that used their "pigment-based ink" and was supposed to revolutionize the printer world. I'm not sure how successful, they've been, but it put the issue of ink pricing at the forefront of many consumers minds.

The most recent attempt at overcoming printer ink pricing comes from a Polaroid spin-off called ZINK (for Zero-ink) that has been working for decades on creating colorless, ink-less paper that uses localized heat to change the color at each point. Several companies have cameras that also print 2x3 inch photos using ZINK: the Polaroid PoGo, Dell Wasabi, and the TOMY xiao.

It's fascinating to see the old fallen giants Kodak and Polaroid wake from their slumber and try to compete in their former markets adapting to the digital realities of today. If their technologies advance and expand, we may see a disruption in the printer market similar to that of the '80s.

Discontent Grows with Google: Wave, Colsure and Go

Commentary
Recently, programmers have been grumbling about Google on several fronts, although none of the issues seem unsurmountable. Complaints about (the currently invite-only) Google Wave and, more recently, Google's Closure Library and Go programming language, all seem to wonder at how these formerly Google-internal technologies could lack Google's characteristic polish.

Now is the winter of the programmer's discontent.
(Photo: Wikimedia)

For example, Lukas Mathis is concerned about Wave's scrollbars, while others seem to have more general concerns. Similarly, while Closure seems to be providing the world with Google's internal toolset, Dmitry Baranovskiy points out that the library is riddled with poorly written code leaving many scratching their heads thinking "how could this come from Google?"

And then there's Go. Go is Google's new programming language that is attracting a lot of attention. Aside from the previously used name (a surprisingly lively discussion), apparently many of its advantages (namely its compiled, concurrent nature) are apparently not as stellar as Google supposes.

Yet unlike other companies that dig themselves into a hole, Google has a great escape plan: outsource the work to the community, and with enough interest, they'll polish your product for you. This only works, of course, as long as Google continues to give off the impression that they care about the communal input. Without that respect, Google is stuck under an avalanche.