Catching up and getting behind

Just popping in for a rare visit to my blog. Taking a few minutes to catch up (read: I'm having an epic battle with procrastination on an actual project.). I've removed the Podcamp Ohio 2 badge from the sidebar, now that Podcamp Ohio 3 has passed (in my defense, I was going to at least switch it to an badge for Podcamp Ohio 3, but there weren't any for this year).

Glancing at my most "recent" posts, I have to laugh that Google Wave was new, as was iOS3 (as it is now called). iOS4 is here now, and I'm not even going to bother writing a post about how I feel about having that installed on my iPhone 3G (there's a video that sums up my feelings almost perfectly). Google Wave has fallen from favor in a big way, so much so that its real merits go unappreciated by most. Google Buzz has come and, for most of us, gone. It's been over nine months since my last post. New humans have come into being, start to finish, in that time. I'll not try to sum up all that has occurred in the intervening time, whether technologically or personally.

After a few other rabbit trails that caused me to forget I was even writing this post, I really must be finished. Maybe I should start a blog on time management? Below is the iPhone video I mentioned above. Enjoy!

Google Wave: [insert wave-related pun here]

By now you've probably heard at least some mention of the latest buzz washing over the Internet: Google Wave. If you haven't heard, then my blog has a purpose! Rather than bore you with puns about catching the wave, surfing the Web, getting on the same wavelength, and so forth, I'll try to get right to the point.

I've been hearing about Wave for weeks or months now. It sounded useful, but I really hadn't heard a lot, and I was skeptical. Cliff of GSPN.tv recommended in his Social Media Serenity podcast that everyone watch the entire 80-minute video Google has posted about Wave. I worked my way through it over two or three days [insert parenthetical A.D.D. joke here], and when I finished, I was finally as excited as everyone else. Well, almost as excited—some of you need to step away from the Internet for a while. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Nothin' but love.

There have been a lot of great web apps in the last few years, and not all by Google. What makes Wave different? I'll get to that in a minute, but first, here's a quick video summary of what you can do with Wave.



Like the video says, there's far more that you can do with Wave than what the video mentions. However, the reason I believe this could be so revolutionary is that Google hasn't just created a tool, but also a protocol. Companies other than Google will be able to create Wave servers that can inter-operate with all other Wave servers in the world. New interfaces can be designed for working with Waves. "Wave" could become a universal term, like "email." Of course, all of this may be way down the road, but the potential is there. For now, using Wave will mean adding one more Inbox to our lists of places we check messages, but in the future, we could be checking our Waves instead of our email. If Internet protocols and standards interest you (read: if you are really geeky), check out www.WaveProtocol.org.

Google has also made Wave largely opensource and created a great set of APIs for developers to tap into in order to extend Wave's functionality. In other words, it could replace more than just email. Of course, it could also just be the beginning; a precursor to something else. Regardless of Wave's reach, I believe we're catching a glimpse of the future of the Internet—a merging of old-school tech, like email, and the new web tech we've all come to know and love.

I can't offer any kind of first-hand review, because so far I'm high and dry in terms of being invited to try Wave, so I'll close with Google's 80-minute, in-depth video.

What?

Gripe session: iPhone 3.0

It's been almost two months since the iPhone 3.0 OS update was released. At the time, I recorded my initial reaction to the update. Since that time, I've noticed several things that are having a huge negative impact on my iPhone experience. To be fair, I've also discovered a few more things I really like, but I'll add those as an update to my original post.

Odd problems on my iPhone 3G since the 3.0 update include:

• All of my contacts' pictures were converted to low-res versions, which only display as icons when they call rather than their former full-screen display (some of these photos were taken specifically for the contact, which means I can't even reassign them to get the full-res version back).
• I've been noticing that many of my songs and podcasts randomly use the wrong album art (e.g. album art from an episode of the GeekBrief.tv podcast for a song).
• Slowness! My iPhone 3G now lags in things such as typing, app shutdown (smooth transition from app to home screen usually skipped), certain sound effects sometimes stutter, etc. No wonder the 3GS is twice as fast ....

Of course there are many other objections that have been stated in this blog and elsewhere, however those are mostly omissions rather than actual glitches in the update. If you have an iPhone—either 3G or 3GS—and you've noticed other problems or glitches, please leave a comment.