The wave has traveled far and wide to unsettle the sphere of web communication. If it is as revolutionary a tool as Google claims it to be then the responsibility to justify the dreams of many for an open source communication and collaboration platform which performs, stays with Google. Let’s see whether the dream is made a reality to the masses. Google wave combines email, instant messaging, wikis, documents, and blogs for real time collaboration. Google wave now looks like an extension of a social networking platform integrating the mentioned applications in real time.

Working of a wave:

When you start a communication with a person in wave, it begins a wave and then to include a third friend, all you have to do is drag and drop his avatar into the wave. Similarly, you can drag and drop documents, images, videos and blogs into the wave. The real time editing feature of waves and then spell check with grammar and semantics is a revelation.

The wave functions as an email feature when offline and as an instant messenger when online. In a wave even before you could complete uploading, the files appear in your friend’s wave. Users can rewind the waves and play back from the instance they would like to view from and edit wherever necessary. The applications that would facilitate real time conferencing, wikis on web pages and many more can function as a value add to enhance the richness of the experience.

Google wave is a product, a platform and a protocol at the same time. The wave has made it debut as a ‘product preview’ supporting real time collaboration. The wave as a platform can integrate thousands of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The federation protocol on which Google wave is based is completely open source. This means Google will give away the protocol and even competitors can use the federation protocol and compete with wave. For Google, what’s the fun without little competition?

100,000 Google wave invites have been already sent to the subscribers. The developer community amidst users is still fine tuning Google wave, which is now only a preview, of what is expected in the future.

Making of Google wave:

The name was inspired by the firefly TV series in which a wave was an electronic communication mode.

The developers of the famed Google Earth from Google Australia, the two brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen are the brain behind Google wave. Google wave is built with open source codes and its web tool kit leveraging on Google web supremacy.

Google wave redefines communication and takes it to the next level. Even if its initial hype slows down Google wave is here to stay. The advantage of Google wave is access to multiple web applications in the same platform, which makes it highly convenient for the users. This is the major premise which will make it a success and the future of communication. For a company with resources such as Google, building wave further will not be a difficult task, and then not to forget the help it is going to get from the developer community who have always welcomed open source protocols.

Except for the few who received invitations, the rest are in a queue. Can you imagine, some person even auctioned the invite in e-bay for $200, to be banned later by e-bay. Google Wave holds a lot of promises, but still being made accessible only to the elite, will it fulfill the dream of the masses?

On reading the previous post you would have gotten a fair idea as to why twitter is popular. By now you would have realized that if you are not on Twitter you are missing out on something. Twitter serves to create an identity for yourself and connects up with friends in the web space. So all set for tweeting. If you are an aspiring tweeter than you need no qualifications other than a valid e-mail id.

Type in the address twitter.com and then join click for free. If your friends should recognize you join up with your original name. If you select protect your updates checkbox then it will restrict people from reading your tweets. You can experience twitter completely only if you left the box unchecked. My advice is that you can leave the box unchecked unless you have a terrorist attack planned on you. Every Twitter user has a page for themselves with Twitter.com\username. If you are really desperate for followers, there is nothing wrong in letting your friends know that you exist in twitter and they are doomed to follow you by sending in the link to your twitter page or announce your username.

From the desktop enter a message in the entry window at the top of your page. Your Tweet will be displayed to all your followers on their own Twitter pages. To add a friend click the “add” link in the action bar after you log on to the account. If your friend has set the public views option then his or her tweets will be visible, if set for private, a friend request has to be given to see your friend’s tweet updates on your page.

If you want to expand your network and bring the friends of friends into your follower list. Hover your mouse pointer over the pics of friends in the side bar of your friend’s page. If you click on the pic you can add him/her to the list.

You can view tweets of any persons friends by clicking on the ‘with friends’ tab above their message window. You can switch off views by the ‘previous tag’

The important numbers on the window are the list of followers and the list of friends whom you follow. If you want person to person tweeting. Enter @username when you tweet to the person though others will be able to see the tweet as well. We have to make sure that the person is your follower; otherwise the tweet will not reach the person.

Hook up your mobile phone and Instant Messaging account:

Once you have registered in Twitter on the web, you can connect up your mobile phone and IM account .Go to settings then phone and IM and activate the account. It is completely legal to view tweets on your devices, since twitter encourages mobility. You can set up twitter to send updates to the mobile phone or IM every time a follower tweets. In order to avoid a frenzy of clutter select direct message, you will be alerted only on receiving a direct tweet from your friend. SMS to 40404 to send tweets and since your caller id is attached to twitter, it will allow it after authentication.

Now you would have grasped the twitter basics. If you want to become a pro in tweeting, trace these steps and get into tweeting action and don’t forget to connect up your mobile and IM too.

Check out the Twitter user guide on YouTube

The first times are always extra special. Think of the first job, your first love, your first trip abroad. For me the firsts have to be announced as the memories are meant to be everlasting. One such occasion came, when I was to take my first flight from Delhi to Coimbatore. The mobile phone did come in handy to disturb my kith and kin on my first venture but not to all I know. So once I boarded the plane I tweeted for the first time via the micro blogging platform Twitter.

“On a flight from Delhi to CBE for the first time – quite an adventure!”

This was not my original idea though even Barrack Obama had tweeted the instant he won the Presidency. Everybody is into Twitter nowadays, it’s the ‘in thing’ for quite sometime now. It’s an idea, a catch phrase, posing your persona in 140 characters to be precise in the spoken word which is much simpler than a text message or an e-mail. Thus status updation made simpler is twitter for you. However Social media marketers always deny the very purpose of updation and opine that it’s better used in a subtle way to build the brand ‘You’ and make others follow you. The CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey was once a dispatcher, now I know where the status updation idea came from.

In twitter if you follow 2000 people it is difficult to keep track of who’s doing what, when. Why 2000? Since that’s the limit twitter has set up for the maximum followers, to keep spam out of the picture. I cannot manage even 30 imagine 2000. So that’s why people use Tweet deck to manage your Twitter account.

The other day Twitter had crashed and was not operatable for 2 hours and the Twitter blog enlightened me that Twitter was ideally built as a content management system and not as a messaging service; managing traffic has let down the server. So even today they are building Twitter. We’ve seen Bing, The Microsoft Search Engine grow at a steady Pace. Integrating Twitter into Bing’s real time search is a plunge in the rat race. Twitter lets brands like Microsoft find whether the brand Microsoft has a negative or positive image in the crowd through its advanced real time search options.

Twitter itself has a positive and negative perception like any other technology but the dimensions are multifold. For instance take Iran, Tweeters have cleverly casted a revolution against the ruling Government for the atrocities to innocent civilians. Reading the content on Twitter on Iran, your Heart goes out to the people of Iran.

You can follow the hash tags #iranelection and #helpiranelection to track and monitor the latest real time updates.

On another side people engage in defamation and character assassination on Twitter. Employers are Tweet Psyching prospective employees. Tweet psych is a psychological profile of a person based on their tweets. It is also another form of Voyeurism.

Twitter has orbited the space too. No Kidding. NASA astronaut Mike Massimo became the first man to tweet from space.

“From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!”

I was surprised it resembled my Tweet for the first flight venture which didn’t prove to be an adventure at all. It turned out to be a highly uncomfortable journey with several inconveniences. What will you expect from a low cost airline? Yes I did tweet on that too.

Don’t get tweet psyched out, keep watching this space to know more about twitter