Interaction with today's technology

Below are two pictures (with accompanying audio files to explain the situation) that capture the interaction between humans and today's technology. Enjoy!


The first picture is called "Video Gaming: The Next Generation"

The audio file for the first picture: http://aviary.com/artists/alexhoang83/creations/video_game


The second picture is entitled "I love Hi-Tech Cars"

The audio file for the second picture: http://aviary.com/artists/alexhoang83/creations/car_technology

Google Wave

         Hello everyone out there in cyber world. Welcome to my official blog. My name is (Alex) Huy Hoang and I am a graduate student at the UH Bauer College of Business. Fate has wonderfully made me to start my own blog today. However, the purpose of starting this blog is not for my own amusement but for a homework assignment to research about a new application, service, or technology remotely related to information technology, and then posting it on a blog. Surprisingly, it was a lot harder than I thought to find an interesting and worthwhile piece of novel technology for this assignment; but, nonetheless, after many slow, failed attempts to start on this assignment I have finally found something! My topic is on Google Wave. And yes, it’s from the same amazing people from who brought you Google Maps and Gmail. My friend recommended Google Wave to me and said it was pretty neat. After researching some about it, I agree! I think Google Wave can potentially revolutionize the way which people communicate, collaborate, and share ideas together over the internet.                  

                                              
         Now, what is Google Wave? Well, in short, it is a real-time communication and collaboration tool. This new format can totally redefine how people email and communicate with one another. Google Wave’s homepage, http://wave.google.com/help/wave/closed.html, states that it is still in a “limited preview” stage where users have to request an invitation to have access. Nonetheless, I highly encourage everyone who is interested to fill out a request form for a chance to try out Google Wave. I filled one out already and am still waiting for my access. Here is the link to the “Request an invitation to Google Wave” web page, https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/. Good luck!                          
         here is a long 1 hour and 20 something minute introductory video by some pretty funny Google engineers who talk and walk you through the main highlights of Google Wave, http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html. I personally want one of those cool “W” t-shirts they’re wearing.  The video shows that a wave can be both a document and conversation tool in which people can work together and discuss, in real-time, using maps, videos, photos, formatted texts and much more. What’s also really cool about this new service (product or application?) is that any participant can make changes or replies anywhere in the message, add new participants, and edit the content at any point in the process. That means, for example, if you get an email from a friend, to you and five other mutual friends, detailing the plans for a crazy weekend in Las Vegas, and instead of replying to the email the tradition way, you can just choose to insert a reply or comment anywhere in the email! Furthermore, let’s just say all six of you wrote a bunch of replies and you specifically wanted to know the order in which the replies took place there is a neat playback function that lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when! Did I mention everything is LIVE? Meaning that as you type, in the default setting, participants on a wave can see the edits as it’s being written and interact with one another all in real-time.                                        

         With Google Wave, there are also natural language tools to provide grammar and spelling corrections and even extensions, http://wave.google.com/help/wave/extensions.html, which individuals can embed waves to their own sites. Some extensions include Sudoku puzzles, Google Maps, Lonely plant and some promising prospects such as SAP related processing, Salesforce.com or MediaWikiWave. Lastly, you can also use what’s called Google Wave APIs, http://code.google.com/apis/wave, to use and enhance Google Wave through extensions, which I already mentioned, and embed the wave technology into your own site to make it more collaborative and interactive.      
         I hope you all have enjoyed my introduction to Google Wave and hopefully it sparked some interest in you to try out the “wave” for yourself. Have a good day! =D