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Riding high with Google Wave and GeneXus

What's the google wave genexus user control all about? What are the use scenarios for GeneXus and Google wave? Are there any opportunities for the community? Find the answers in the following interview to GeneXus architect Gastón Milano



Google Wave is a Web application that has given way to a new generation of online communication by integrating, at the same time and in the same space, several tools at once: email, chat, office, Wikipedia, translator to 40 languages, among other extensions. It's an online tool that enables its users to communicate with others and collaborate in real time, in addition to transforming the ways in which people can participate or interact.

-Let's talk about the Google Wave concept from your developer standpoint.

-Google released a beta version and those developers who had been invited could have a test environment of this social tool for teams to communicate. We at Artech received it with enthusiasm because in our team we're always looking for different ways to communicate and manage and categorize information in a connected way.

We had seen that feature at Google IO when Google Wave was released and the concept was described as a mix of many things: email + instant messaging + wiki, in a new way of communicating. This media convergence was appealing for many of us who are prosumers (content producers and consumers), and go through many emails, twitters, blogs and wikis on a daily basis.

Our development team tested it and found it to be a very interesting tool. We started from an initial document in GeneXus on which all the users invited could collaborate and comment instantly. But beyond the possibilities it represents for communication among team members or its usefulness for social interaction, we wonder what impact it could have on a business application and its meaning for such applications.

- Does the GeneXus Community see an opportunity in the way that Google Wave can be integrated into business applications?

- Yes. Lately the mechanisms available to access the Internet have changed. In the past, the only way you could access our applications was through a website or email. Today, we have different channels to access applications on the Web and many of them are social channels. As a developer I now have to consider that a user may enter my application through a social channel (which can be Facebook or Google Wave). It’s a new channel to access my applications and I have to take it into account.

Google Wave can be integrated in two ways, and one of them is through a component of your application in the Google Wave interface. It would be something like customizing the wave and having different gadgets or components inside it (automated translators, weather information, message alerts, analysis tools, and so on), which can be either built-in or developed by third parties.

Another form of integration would be to have a wave component in your business application. For example, if you have a news portal, instead of comments you can add waves for people to have organic discussions ('organic' is used as opposed to the linear and temporal organization of comments) on a news article and we could even provide the option the read the news with or without Wave.

- The opportunity would be in applications with a high social component that solve certain communication problems...


Of course, people are social beings; it is our nature to interact with others.

For the company, having a wave can be as important as having a wiki, in the sense that it maximizes the communication that otherwise would be lost every day. It’s a robust tool that allows us to be more connected and share as a team. Therefore, it goes hand in hand with our nature and with organizations or communities that are empowered by group communication.
 
Google Wave GeneXus User Control
Google Wave is a very sophisticated product developed on a Web platform with HTML/CSS script, which means that it uses technologies supported by our GeneXus applications for the Web.
We provide the Community with User Controls and we have developed a prototype to integrate a wave into an application. Basically, the User Control will work by embedding the wave within any GeneXus panel, so it will be available in the toolbox as any other control.
*currently there are limitations caused by the API that exposes Google wave. For example, it’s not possible to create new waves, and for this reason it is expected that the API is extended in the future for this control to have real value.
 

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