Google Wave?

[Ralph Mack]

On 2:59 PM, Benjamin Scott wrote:
>    Here's what I learned about Google Wave tonight:
Thanks for that article, Ben. I just wanted to add my own observations.

I attempted to use Wave to do something real in a few different contexts:
1. Virtual table-top role-playing
2. Virtual committee-style meeting
3. Virtual project activity:
     - Design session
     - Planning session

In all cases, the thing that really stymied us was the inability to make 
useful pictures.

If somebody wanted to make Wave useful, they would develop a collaborative
picture editor for Wave with the following general model:

- Arbitrary overall closed shapes - boxes, diamonds, circles, clouds, 
cylinders etc.
   Height and width can be adjusted.
- Closed shapes have internal grid of rectangular boxes filling largest 
rectangular interior
   space of shape - rows and columns can be added and internal divisions 
can be adjusted.
- Boxes inside shapes can contain anything the outer frame can -
   the outer frame is essentially the outermost box.
- Lines between arbitrary points on edges of closed shapes or other lines,
   either direct or with rectangular bends if desired.
   Lines can connect things inside and outside box boundaries without 
restriction.
- Free text positioned anywhere, anchored to arbitrary point on 
enclosing box, shapes, on lines.
   Mild gravity to anchor relative to centers or corners of edges or 
halfway between.
- The entire frame in which this occurs acts in every respect like a box.
- Make it easy to export to a PDF, PNG, or SVG, or to an XML that can 
get dragged into
   another picture in another discussion.

Possible uses:
- Taskboard - big rounded rectangle holding grid of boxes.
         Rectangles can be placed in cells of grid or moved from one to 
another.
- Very simple point-to-point graph - like a burndown chart.
- UML class diagrams -
         Rectangles containing 1x1, 1x2, or 1x3 grid of boxes, lines 
between.
- UML sequence diagrams -
         Single Box rectangles at top, lines attached vertically, boxes 
attached to lines,
         lines running from box to box.
- Org charts - rectangles containing a single box - Lines running 
vertically with lines
         attached horizontally.
- Table - Single rectangle with boxes.
- Just about any kind of diagram you can think of.

The goal is to have something that you can sketch up on the fly
and that others can elaborate on simultaneously while chatting.
It would embed in the free text flow of a Wave.

Meaning lies in the minds of the participants, not coded into the tool.
A really, really smart external tool might be able to derive meaning 
from the XML
by looking at the internal arrangement of shapes and boxes and where 
things attach.
However, that would be strictly nice work if you could get it.
Pictures exist primarily for people to share ideas and epiphanies with 
each other.

Thoughts?
Ralph