James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

So, I gave a talk last friday at the Sydney Linux Users Group about the work I've been doing with Plone and Local Government. On one of the last slides I went on about my future plans for what I was working on.

Then I got home and dug into this announcement that Google had made about something called Wave.

Umm, if it works as advertised, wow?

Two things lead me to say wow.

The first is the fact that for something that has the potential to change the way people work online, Google has decided to Open Source it. According to the demo video, they're going to be releasing "the lions share". Not only that but they've already released the first draft of the protocols used in the Google Wave.

This means that Google will not be the only provider of Wave services. If Wave takes off, then there will be a number of Wave tech providers, each able to talk to each other via an Open Protocol.

One of the features of Wave is the ability to create what are called "Robots". That is programmes that act as participants in the conversations being conducted on the Wave. This means that a Wave server can now be the focal integration point for any number of different systems. All of a sudden you can access and use everything from Email through to Plone through to Instant Messaging (Jabber, MSN, AIM and so on) via the one interface. It also means that the tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in older systems don't have to be wasted, they can still actively contribute via the Wave.

I'm not usually one to get all hyped up about a tech, but if this done right, it could be that evolutionary breakthrough that everyone has been looking for.