Smarterware » collaboration

Google Wave Versus the Rest, Feature by Feature

Gina Trapani — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:05:21 +0000

Got a great response to last week's frequently asked questions about Google Wave, and it's worth expanding further on the differences between Wave and the current crop of web-based collaboration offerings.

Wave combines features from email, instant messenger, Google Docs, wikis, and forums and throws its own spin on things. For a quick visual of its offerings versus similar tools, check out this feature-by-feature comparison.

Feature	Email	Instant Messenger	Google Docs	Wikis	Forums	Wave
A single, hosted copy of a conversation or document	No	Not usually	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
The ability to see when contacts are online	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Instant messaging or chat, with no-refresh updates	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Keystroke-by-keystroke live updates with multiple visible cursors	No	Some services	No	No	No	Yes
Simultaneous editing of one document by multiple collaborators	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Edit rights to other participants' contributions	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
The ability to see, compare, and restore past versions	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Interactive maps, videos, polls and other widgets	Not really	No	Some	Some	No	Yes
Inline replies and threaded conversations	Manually	No	No	No	Some	Yes
Ability to easily publish the conversation or document	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	To other Wave users
User access permissions (read-only or edit)	N/A	N/A	Yes	Some	N/A	Yes
Ability to easily link documents to each other	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes
Ability to export the finished document to a file	No	No	Yes	Manually	No	No

You'll notice that Wave doesn't have a green yes in every cell in its column; it's still missing functionality that's holding it back from being a viable alternative in a production environment--specifically, user permissions (everyone can edit everything) and the ability to export a wave or publish it so that anyone can see its contents (not just folks logged into Wave).

This table is slated to go into chapter 1 of the first edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave, so give me a shout if you've got ideas for how to polish it up before we boot up the printers.

Update, January 21st: Changed Wave's user access permissions column to reflect the newly-announced feature.

Tweak MediaWiki to Co-Write a Book

Gina Trapani — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:32:01 +0000

My new book's web site is powered by the same software the runs Wikipedia, the deeply-customizable MediaWiki. Over at Lifehacker this morning, I ran though how to make MediaWiki your own for any collaborative or just easy-to-update web site with a skins, extensions, permissions, and a few more helpful tweaks. Here's how to customize MediaWiki for your next project.

Debunking the Lone Genius Myth

Gina Trapani — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:31:04 +0000

During their session at OSCON, Google programmers Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick say that it's coders who can collaborate with others, not lone ranger geniuses, who are best at what they do.

Doodlendar Polls a Group for the Best Date with Google Calendar

Gina Trapani — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:27:12 +0000

Emailing a group of people to find out the best time to schedule a meeting or event is probably the least efficient way to do so; inevitably you start a long thread of "This time works for me but not that time on Tuesdays and Thursdays" and "Monday is OK but I PREFER Friday" and on and on. That's why I included Doodle in chapter 6 of my book. Doodle's a web-based polling application, where you can suggest a list of meeting or party dates (among other things), email out the link, and recipients simply check off their preferences and Doodle does all the calculations for you--no parsing of messy email threads required.

Recently I was a judge in a contest the folks at Doodle held for the best use of their API. My first pick for winner, Doodlendar, took home first prize. Developed by two students in Zurich, Doodlendar puts your Google Calendar side-by-side with your Doodle poll, so you can easily see your schedule as you make or respond to a poll. Doodlendar even lists the possible event dates on your GCal as pending so that you don't schedule over them before the final date is chosen.

Thanks to Doodle management for the opportunity to review some really nifty implementations of this underhyped but useful tool's API. Congrats to Doodlendar for bringing home first prize. Here's the full announcement of the winners and runner-ups.