For those who don’t know, Google wave is a real-time collaboration tool. Unlike other real-time tools such as Etherpad, Google Wave has the ability to embed widgets into “waves”. You can use already made widgets such as syntax highlighting for code, or since wave is open source you can create your own widget. This opens Google wave to endless possibility as far a functionality goes.

Pros:

• Real Time collaboration – The ability to edit the same document in real time with team members in a project is a huge plus. And when I say real-time i mean character by character changes. For a project team of developers it’s especially useful for helping peers out with code help, or reviewing code that was written before implementation.
• Ability to embed custom widgets – Since Google Wave’s release, the amount of widgets has gone up substantially. Although there are still quite a few widgets that could be created, it’s a great start for such a new application.
• Problems – If at any point in time while “waving”, if a problem arises and Google wave is forced to close, I still have yet to lose more data than my last character typed. Good work on this one Google!
• Mute Feature – If you have a busy wave with say 75 participants, your inbox can get extremely busy very quickly with updates. A simple mute of the wave will stop those updates and keep your inbox clear.

Cons

• Settings – Google has decided that absolutely everything is done using waves. This means that changing your profile settings are also done in waves. I have to say,  I would really appreciate a section dedicated to changing your settings.
• Folder System – So far, I have found the folder system a little bit harder to use than anticipated. Sorting Wave’s become a task of adding tags to wave’s and then searching for a certain tag. I would like to see the ability to drag and drop wave’s into folders implemented in the near future.
• Group Waves – I would like to see the ability to automatically create a wave with a group of members already invited by default. This would be especially helpful with large project teams that are using wave as their main collaboration tool.

Overall I’m very impressed with Google wave and I’m excited to see the changes that will be implemented in the future. There are some things that I hope Google changes some things before launch but I’m sure they will take the feedback given and implement as many features as they can.

Cheers

With pc sales in the states alone only growing 2.5 percent from September, and Mac sales growing 11.8 percent, I think it’s clear who has won over majority of the fans in this case. With PC users frustrated with Vista, the switch over to Windows 7 may not go as smoothly as people may think. With most of the PC population still using XP, the switch to windows 7 may be a long and tedious process.

Keeping all this in mind, with Apple’s snow leopard priced at 35$(30$ US), it’s in an extremely good position to do some serious damage to the PC market share. Also, with the introduction of a strong anti-Windows 7 marketing campaign, Apple could be in an ever better spot come the holiday season. Also, with some rumored hardware changes to come before Christmas or just after the new year, Apple is looking better than ever to gain some ground on the software giant Microsoft.

Since Apple’s first retail store way back when opened they have been a huge success for the company. It seems that no matter what Apple does someone else in the industry tries to do the same thing after and tries to make it better.

Microsoft is now planning on opening retail stores right beside that of Apple’s. Now, it may be just me but is that not a really bad idea on the side of Microsoft? I mean with Apple’s retail stores being on the cutting edge of technology and “all about the consumer”, how is it possible that a company that focuses on profit margin going to be able to compete with that?

I mean sure they have some cool products they COULD show off in the Microsoft retail stores such as Microsoft surface and potentially promote their robotics devision, both of which have yet to be seen from Apple, but really can they compete with each and every store or will it be another advertising flop just like most of their latest commercials?

Cheers

Recently however, Microsoft has released the ASP.NET source code. The article found here outlines the details of the release.

I do think that a bigger step is needed to fully gain the acceptance of the open source community. However i do think it is a major step in the right direction. I would like to see another major jump for other companies to go the open source route. Customers having the ability to review the source code to make sure there are not “hooks” inside the code. I think by doing this, customers of Microsoft will have eventually begin to regain the company’s trust. But, I’m not sure it will be in time.

Cheers