Ride It: Google Wave

Google Wave Demo at I/O 2009

During this year's I/O convention, Google demonstrated the developer's versions of the Google Wave. This boasts to be a powerful open-source web based communication and collaboration tool. It allows users to communicate in real-time and share photos, videos, maps and more. Participants can reply to any part of conversations and begin from any part of an email thread. People can be added to the thread at any moment and see the entire conversation in the manner in which it unfolded. It works across browsers and mobile devices, can be embedded into blogs, edited, shared and more.

The innovations demonstrated in this video are quite impressive such as context aware spell checker, real-time typing view and drag and drop photo sharing. Viewers of the demo all received accounts to help with the development of the program. There are also game, rsvp gadgets, and many more options available for this api, all from the view of one browser window. Developed by the people who brought us Google Maps, it is expected to be released later this year.

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Refined, not reinvented: OSX Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard proves to be one bad kitty

Anyone who follows Apple news knows of the release of their newest OSX Snow Leopard. This is to be an improvement on the current operating system by making minor tweaks and adjustments to the features currently offered. Scheduled to be released in September, Apple is offering this upgrade to Leopard users for only $29. Upgraders can expect to see enhancements to the finder including customizable Spotlight search options, and enhanced icon view that lets you look through multipaged pdfs and watch quicktime movies. Apple has also intergrated Expose with the Dock so you can move through applications and documents faster. For me the best improvment is the size. Snow Leopard will free up abot 6GB of space on your computer. If you ar designer like me you can use all the space you can get. It also is about 75% faster when shutting down and twice as fast when waking up from sleep. That removes my main reason for not shutting my computer down at night. They've also made a host of improvements to Quicktime, Safari, Preview, Mail and other applications. Read more about the enhancements on Apple's website. I'm sure once the OS is released, Apple will post an extensive video on their site on how to use it. Until then, c|net gives us a sneak peak at how this OS really works.

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The Way You Move: Xbox 360 'Natal'

Microsoft Xbox 360 Motion Sensor Controller Demo

At this year's E3 conference, Microsoft unveiled it's much rumored motion sensor technology code named "Natal". Gamers would be able to play titles on the console using no controllers, no wires, basically no limits. Not only will it pick up large gestures, but it's even supposed to be able to detect minor movements such as wiggling of fingers. What makes this possible is a peripheral motion sensing camera that allows the device to detect pixel distance. In other words, it can detect not only the color of the objects in front of it, but how close they are to one another.


With Sony releasing demos of their own motion sensor technology, many are wondering what the delay was in releasing this and competing with the Wii. Remember a little gadget called the "Eye Toy"? The ability to track motion sans controller has been in development for a while. Consider the games that are typically offered on the two consoles. I would imagine games in the relm of Halo and Grand Theft Auto become difficult due to the currently established mental model of how those games are played. Moving your controller to walk around walls, pressing buttons to shoot make more sense than trying to do that in the real world around imaginary object. It's not to say that it's not possible, but in the initial phases it probably wasn't very practical. However the games demoed in the video would, in theory, work really well with controller-less game play. The gestures used to play these games would make enough sense that you wouldn't have to actually have a physical object in front of you.

The additional features such as teleconferencing and the navigation through the video and menus also seem very possible. There are many applications already using the technology. The only thing that seems a bit far fecthed is when the girl puts on a virtual outfit and models it on the screen. I would be interested to see how that worked in person. All in all what Microsoft has managed to do with this technology is a huge step into the future of game play. At the very least it begins to nip at the problem with obesity and America's sedentary lifestyle by making us get up and move.

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