Synch Up with Google Wave Developers

Reading the buzz about Google Wave over the last few months, I definitely get the sense of the blind men and the elephant. People seem to focus in on various aspects of this incredibly versatile beast. But calling Google Wave a “communication and collaboration tool” is like feeling an elephant’s trunk and calling it a snake.

As for me, I’m trying to take a giant step back and look at the entire animal. I see a platform that could become as fundamental to the digital world as the computer operating system. Through Wave’s extensible, embeddable and federated architecture, we will have the ability to dock an endless array of web apps onto an ever-expanding Swiss Army Knife web tool.

Imagine all the applications available on the web today, only pulled together into a common user interface with standard information architectures and easily integrated with each other. If there are 85,000 iPhone apps today, imagine how many more apps there could be for Google Wave, which will run on every possible interface. Here’s a very short list of the types of Google Wave apps we’d like to see right off the bat.

1. Social Network (Facebook, MySpace) – We had to start here, since WaveLab.com is destined to be the developer portal serving our companion website—WaveCenter—a planned next-generation social networking website. Think about consolidating all the best features of the leading social networks while eliminating their various shortcomings, all on the latest technology platform. Sound interesting? Then you’ll want to check out WaveCenter.
2. Dating (Match.com, eHarmony) – As long as we’re in a social mode, let’s include online dating. How many dating sites are there besides the giant leaders? Countless. And what could make more sense than tight integration between dating services with social networking?
3. Music (Pandora, Slacker) – Nothing goes with romance more than beautiful music, and today we have the ability to listen to exactly the music we’re in the mood for, explore new songs, and share with friends. Could digital radio stations be improved on by integrating with social networks? We think so.
4. Video (YouTube, Hulu) – Given Google’s ownership of YouTube, we’re confident we will see some video-related apps in the not-to-distant future. Will it just be a matter of embedding YouTube videos in the Wave interface? No. We’re sure it will go much further. Improve the search, filtering and organization. Throw in some editing tools. Apply collaboration. Who knows what could come out of it.
5. Gaming (The Sims, World of Warcraft) – So far the game apps for Google Wave are elementary; hangman, Soduku, that kind of thing. These are just the first baby steps. Inevitably, every type of online game—MMOGs, arcades, sports, puzzles, strategy, and yes, gambling—will find its way to the Wave environment, new and improved.
6. Financial Management – (Quickbooks, Mint) – OK, enough fun and games. Let’s get down to business. Need your accountant to have temporary access to your bank account? Just drag their profile onto your bank account wave/app and they’re in. And how about being able to navigate seamlessly through your bank, credit cards, and investment accounts and be able to drag funds from one to the other? Sweet!
7. Application Builder (Zoho, QuickBase) – Why wait for some programmer to develop exactly the tool you need? There are already great web-based application development tools out there. iPhone provides a relatively simple app development kit. Wave will have the same thing. Imagine assembling widgets and gadgets into full blown apps like tinker toys—drag-and-drop integration. Cool? Oh, yeah.
8. Online Marketing (Omniture, Lyris) Application built: check. Now you need to sell it. You’ll be able to market your products through multiple channels: Waves (of course), email (for as long as that still exists ; -), pay per click, social media, mobile, etc. all through an integrated suite of apps.
9. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (Salesforce, Netsuite) – Think a major application like CRM is just too big for Google Wave? Think again. SAP has already developed a Business Process Management prototype on the Wave platform, and you don’t get much more complex than BPM. The beautiful thing is any Wave app developer has these nice models to work from.
10. Stock trading (ShareBuilder, eTrade) – Gotta manage all that money you’re gonna make from the above apps, right? Easy. You’ll have your trading system at your fingertips and tightly integrated with your other financial tools and social networks of like-minded investors.
11. Project Management (Basecamp, WorkZone) – Project Management is the essence of collaboration, so this one is a no-brainer. Will the Wave apps be developed by the current leaders in the field or someone new? Either way, we expect this will be one of the first serious applications we’ll see on Wave.
12. Outsourcing (oDesk, eLance) – While we’re thinking about project management, how about outsourcing? It’s increasingly the way business gets done. But all the tools on the market have significant functionality limitations. A Wave app will easily surpass any currently available system by integrating with other wave apps, including all the aforementioned business tools.
13. Job Search (Monster, The Ladders) – Outsourcing may be the way of the future, but employment is hardly history. It’s huge. So Employment + Social Networking + Collaboration + who know what other applications could be available on the Wave… sounds like a better mousetrap to us.
14. Online Education (University of Phoenix, LearnIt)- Across all ages and all endeavors, the web offers the perfect environment for learning. Collaborating on lesson plans, virtual classrooms, customizable curricula…the possibilities are endless in the Wave environment. Oh, and let’s not fail to mention the obvious integration between online eduction and job search.
15. Price Comparison (PriceGrabber, Priceline) – With tools like these available now, anybody who pays full price for anything online is a chump! In the future, you’ll be a chump if you even have to spend a few minutes looking for the best price. Your personal bots and your social network will alert you when great deals on whatever you need appear—including on auctions.
16. Auctions (Ebay, uBid) – Ebay may be a behemoth, but the technology is totally replicatable. And there is plenty of room for improvement. Just the way Google Wave is taking a fresh look at how email is done, we think it’s time someone took a fresh look at how auctions could be done—on a completely new platform. Oh, and in the meantime, through an Ebay Wave bot developed by WithWaves you can already search Ebay.
17. Travel Service (Travelocity, Expedia) – You’re viewing pictures of a friend’s vacation and decide you want to go there. Click the photo and complete travel options appear on the screen based on all the data available to the system (the tags on the photo, your profile, your financial information, your calendar, etc.) Starting to get the picture of how having all these integrated apps can streamline your life?
18. Real Estate Lookup (Zillow, Trulia) – Don’t just factor price and square footage into your buying decision. An integrated app could look up the distance to your work and automatically calculate the commute cost and time associated with that location. Oh, and that would work for apartment finder services too. (Rent.com)
19. Data Backup (Carbonite, Mozy) – Data backup is booming these days, but this category is really a catch-all for various computer maintenance services—virus protection, spam blockers, anti-spam, parental control, etc.—there’s some real hazards out there and it can seem like a full time job just protecting yourself. It could be so much easier.
20. People Search (Classmates, Wink) – With social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn out there, isn’t it surprising that there’s even room for people search sites on the market? Shouldn’t all that functionality just get rolled up into one easy-to-use app that’s also integrated with audio and video communication apps? Of course it should. And it will.
21. Audio/Video Communication (Skype, Jajah) – Speaking of which… Integrated audio and video communication tools are a pretty obvious addition to this list. And while we’re at it, let’s include online presentation tools like Camtasia and Screenr.
22. Geneaology (Ancestry, Genealogy) – Amazing how many web services should go hand-in-hand with social networking but don’t yet. Maybe it’s just too much trouble. On the Wave platform integration will will happen naturally—a family of applications designed to bond to each other.
23. Blogging (Blogspot, Blogger) – After all the apps discussed so far blogging seems a little trite. But blogging is huge and it is the bread-and-butter of the social web. And if you think WordPress has a lot of plugins and themes now, wait until blogs can dock on any other Wave app.
24. Health Care Manager (Minerva) – As far as I can tell at the time of writing this post, MyMinerva.com, a web-based personal health records manager, has no direct competitors. Considering the heat of the health care debate, that sounds like an incredible opportunity for some Wave app developer.
25. Classified Ads (Craig’s List, Angie’s List) Let’s wrap this list up with classified ads. Such a simple application, really. How is it that Craig’s List has virtually no viable competitors? Isn’t it about time we got something new along these lines—just as easy to use but so much more powerful.

There should be little doubt that having some version of all these apps in Google Wave is not a question of “if”, but of “when”. Not to mix metaphors, but Google Wave is like a freight train that is is just starting to roll. It will gain speed quickly, and I predict that before too long the above list will be a tiny fraction of the services available on the platform.

All aboard!

I came across two iPhone YouTube videos this morning. The first one is serious - Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer scoffing at the iPhone in a way that makes it seem like he’s actually a bit nervous about it. He pushes the Motorola Q as a mobile Windows device that he says is a better choice for business users - “It will do Internet.” I don’t know what Motorola Q he’s using, but mine barely makes phone calls in between crashes. The second video is pure humor, and very relevant given all the hype around this yet to be released device.

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A couple of days ago I wrote about Spinvox, a startup that converts voicemails to text and sends them to you via email and/or SMS. They are just launching in the U.S., and Spinvox gave us 100 accounts to give away for free (the service is fairly expensive). Over 300 people responded in the comments saying they’d like one.

Since the company itself follows up, the easiest way for us to manage these account giveaways is by asking commenters to leave their email address in the comment itself. The harvesting risk is obvious, but people are willing to take it since it’s the only easy way for us to coordinate things. It’s something we’ve done multiple times in the past successfully.

What we didn’t expect is for one of Spinvox’s competitors, SimulScribe, to harvest the emails and spam those people directly and without their permission. But that’s exactly what they did. At least some people who left their email in the comments to receive a free Spinvox trial got an unsolicited email from the CEO of SimulScribe, James Siminoff, urging them to try their service. Simulscribe even used the subject line “Free Trial from TechCrunch” - a misleading (and trademark violating) message.

This was a bold marketing move, to be sure, but a very questionable one. Potential customers will think about how cavalier SimulScribe is with personal information before doing business with them. For our part, I apologize. And we’ll find a better way of giving accounts away in the future.

To Spinvox - here’s a terrific marketing opportunity. You should give every commenter to that post a free account. They’ll be loyal (and talkative) customers.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Google’s RSS reader was nothing to write home about when it first launched in October 2005. But the new version, released late last year, has won it accolades and legions of new fans. More than a few people have recently called it the best RSS reader, hands down.

But it’s hard to know exactly how popular it’s gotten. Feedburner doesn’t track it yet, so we can’t compare the subscriber numbers to other readers. We’ve noticed a significant jump in referrals from Google Reader, though. Enough to suggest that it is as large or larger than Bloglines already.

Hitwise says different. In a post tonight comparing the web based readers, they put Bloglines and Rojo firmly ahead of Google Reader. Generally Hitwise seems to be on the money, but something doesn’t add up.

One semi-obvious explanation is that Google Reader requires far fewer page refreshes than Bloglines. This would decrease their page view numbers, but not visits, which is what Hitwise tracks. We may need to wait until Feedburner starts tracking Google Reader directly as well to triangulate its true popularity.

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MOG, a great music site that somehow we’ve never covered, is a social networking site for blogging music aficionados. It’s a little bit Last.fm, a little bit iLike, and a little bit something else.

The existing MOG service is centered around a bit of software that you download to your PC (Windows or Mac). Like iLike, MOG tracks all of the music you listen to. However, where iLike just monitors iTunes, MOG tries to track all the music you listen to on your computer or iPod.

Each user has their own MOG page (Example - Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie) showing the music they are listening to. Other users can comment on the page, etc (normal social networking stuff). MOG also compares your listening habits to others and suggests new music you might like. Each album and song also has it’s own MOG page, along with links to purchase the music.

This morning MOG is launching a new feature - an embeddable Flash music player, making them a little bit like iJigg, too.

The new player will allow bands and fans to upload songs to their MOG page and syndicate them across the web with a few lines of code. It also provides a new revenue stream for MOG through song tags that link to music purchases on Amazon and iTunes. However, the new feature comes with a few requirements: the player only plays one song at a time, and the MOG post they upload the song to must have some written commentary in it. The new player can only play a single file at a time, fast-forward, and reverse. The lack of a playlist is a bit of a let down.

Here’s the embeddable widget:

The new player is clearly an attempt to further take on the MySpace Music and the other major music communities like myStrands and last.fm. This is a battle on the mind of MOG founder David Hyman, who cites the depth of user interaction, particularly artist-fan interaction, as their main distinction.

MOG has an extensive database linking songs and artists, using Gracenote’s wave-matching and text matching to map the song you play to the one they’ve got on file. The tracker updates your MOG in real time with the contents of your library and what your top played songs are. Each song also has a 30 second sample for your MOG’s visitors.

All the song updates, blog posts, and other widgets, are displayed in drag-n-droppable AJAX boxes. If you don’t want your friends to know you listened to Celine Dion, you are free to manually edit each of the boxes, adding or deleting items.

MOG claims 20,000 users, 200,000 uniques/month and is currently privately funded to the tune of $1.4 million. For a small site, they’ve done a very good job of attracting some big name bands to participate.

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Tags: mog, techcrunch, web2.0

Seattle-based Shelfari is a book centered social network that launched last fall. There’s lots of competition in this space, including Library Thing, Listal, Delicious Monster and others. The basic idea is to tell Shelfari all of the books you own, and have an online visual representation of your library. Book fanatics and book clubs are the target audience.

Shelfari isn’t as big as Library Thing (key Library Thing stats here), but it is a better designed site and they have a great looking widget to show off the books you own. Shelfari also allows users to insert their Amazon affiliate ID and make money off of any books sold from people clicking on the widget.

Library Thing sold 40% of itself to ABEbooks last year, so they have essentially taken themselves off the market. An acquisition or further financing would have to be approved by them. But the space is interesting enough that venture capitalists and bigger companies are starting to take note, and Shelfari is a good platform.

There are rumors that Shelfari will be acquired or raise a round of financing soon. Perhaps then they’ll be able to hire someone to write those pesky FAQs.

Shelfari was founded by former RealNetworks employees Josh Hug and Kevin Beukelman. John Cook wrote a good launch article about them last year.

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Tags: librarything, listal, deliciousmonster, books, amazon

There was a mysterious outage on MySpace this morning. It lasted just 2.5 hours, and the site itself performed mostly as it should. All that happened was this: Anyone trying to add a Flash widget to the site, or show an image via an inserted link, or otherwise embed any sort of code, couldn’t do it. Existing widgets worked fine, but none could be added. And if a MySpace user edited their page, any existing embedded code produced an error.

So far, MySpace hasn’t returned our request for a comment on exactly why this happened. But executives at some of the countless startups that are building their businesses on the back of MySpace, now the largest Internet site, in the hope of a YouTube-like success sure are talking. All off the record, of course. A common comment is “I don’t want MySpace to single us out.”

What they’re saying is that MySpace just made its first move in an upcoming big stakes game of “chicken,” and that a senior exec there is making a career-defining bet that everyone else will blink first. MySpace is still prickly over the YouTube acquisition (they wanted it), and rumors are that they weren’t happy that PhotoBucket didn’t ping them about an acquisition before taking their last round of financing, either. Perhaps the recent $20 million Slide funding was one straw too many. All of these companies rely heavily (understatement) on getting their content onto MySpace user pages.

People have been predicting this for some time, but until now MySpace hasn’t taken any drastic steps to cut these services off. Today may have been a test to see how easily they could cut these widgets out, and to see how people would react. Or, it could have just been a bug.

If MySpace does start to permanently ban widgets and other embedded code, they’ll almost certainly say it is for security reasons. But they’ll continue to push their own competing services, and allow only “certified” partners back in. And my bet is that the certification process may have a fee involved.

Update: MySpace is now unofficially telling affected companies that this was a “developer error” and not intentional.

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SixDegrees is a new site that urges users to donate to celebrity charities and then place a widget on their sites promoting those charities. It’s not explained very well, and it appears to be little more than a wrapper for Network for Good, a really excellent charity social network. It’s also, of course, a shot in the dark to revive Kevin Bacon’s flatlined career.

Users are urged to add a celebrity widget to their site which is tied to a donation page for a specific charity or charities. Donations made through the widget are tracked and the total is displayed in the widget. Users can also create their own custom widget, sans the celebrity photo.

Bacon goes into detail in the video below about the Six Degrees of Separation movie and the subsequent game making fun of the fact that he’s appeared in so many films. However, the connection of all that to this service isn’t really explained, although it can be assumed that since we all are so close in the global community, giving to charity is good.

We’ve created a widget to test it out. Donations go the the Red Cross.

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Late last year Google fired a few shots at PayPal when they waived merchant fees at Google Checkout for the rest of the year. Today they hit hard, using their biggest gun to promote the service: the Google homepage.

Google has added a link to Google Checkout along with a $10 coupon to use with Google Checkout merchants. Hitwise predicts we’ll see a big spike in Google Checkout traffic. I agree.

Small merchants overwhelmingly use PayPal to take credit card payments (we use them on CrunchBoard). But Google’s Checkout product is superior in a lot of ways. And the fact that they are promoting it on the Google home page and in search results is a real competitive advantage. Whether it is enough to overcome PayPal’s own big gun - their lock on eBay - isn’t obvious. But everyone loves a good fight, and the word is Checkout has more interesting stuff coming.

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Oliver Starr over at MobileCrunch has dished out a thorough review of the new Nokia N800 tablet phone he’s been testing under NDA over the past month. Oliver contrasts the 800 with the 770, saying it has a nicer form factor, with larger stereo speakers. The N800 features an 800 x 480 color display screen, two memory card slots (Micro SD, MMC, SD, and Mini SD) for cards up to 2 GB each (4GB by user experience), a faster processor than the 770, plenty of battery-life for a day of use without charging.

Check out Oliver’s post for his detailed review.

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Tags: mobilecrunch, nokia, n800