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Collaborative Mapping With Google Wave

A talk given at Ignite Spatial by Pamela Fox. Introduces Google Wave and then presents ideas about how it can be used with mapping and geography.

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wuzziwug
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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1K views

Collaborative Mapping With Google Wave

A talk given at Ignite Spatial by Pamela Fox. Introduces Google Wave and then presents ideas about how it can be used with mapping and geography.

Uploaded by

wuzziwug
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Google Wave is a project that was born right here in our Google Sydney office, created by the engineers

that made Google


Maps. It's now in early preview stage, and everyone's wondering what it is and how they can use it to make their world a
better place. The answer is different for everyone, but I want to share my ideas about how it can improve our geo world.

Google Confidential and Proprietary 1


Let's start with the basics. Google Wave is a communication and collaboration tool. It's been called "Email 2.0" or "what
email would look like if invented today." If you just look at the main screen after you're logged in, it kinda even looks like a
remixed Gmail.

Email 2.0?

Google Confidential and Proprietary 2


But that first impression is deceptive - it's much more than that. Google Wave lets you create conversations with your
contacts, and create a nested tree of replies in those conversations. Those conversations are called waves, and the
messages inside them are called blips.

Nested Trees of Blips

Google Confidential and Proprietary 3


If you decide that you don't like the contents of a blip - no matter who created it- you can edit it yourself. If you want to fork
the conversation, then you can create a private reply. At any point, you can play back the conversation and see when
people and blips were added. It's revision history made easy, and fun.

Private Replies

Playback

Google Confidential and Proprietary 4


This doesn't seem that revolutionary, but it actually solves many of the problems that email poses. You don't have to worry
about making stupid unretractable typos, trying to figure out who is replying to what where, or getting CCed onto a 40-
message long thread and trying to interpret the flow of conversation.

Typos!
Long Nested Threads!

Late CCs!
Google Confidential and Proprietary 5
So, yes, Google Wave can be thought of as Email 2.0. And just like anyone can set up an SMTP server and send messages
across email servers, our goal is for anyone (well, any engineer) to be able to set up a Wave server, and share Waves
across servers.

Google Confidential and Proprietary 6


In order to federate Wave, we need to document our protocol and open-source the essential components. There's the
operational transforms code, which is what we use to enable real-time collaboration of participants, and there's the data
model, which defines the structure of the XML documents that we perform the operational transforms on.

Operational Transforms*

Data Model

Google Confidential and Proprietary 7


And to let people create their own Wave clients, we are open-sourcing the client/server protocol for retrieving and sending
Wave operations, and rendering them on the client. Hopefully, we can open-source enough code that people can have a
consistent user experience across Wave clients on different servers.

Client/Server

Google Confidential and Proprietary 8


But now, my favorite part, and the part most related to geo: the developer platform. At Google, we know the power of
making extensible platforms, as we've seen how developers have added value to products like iGoogle and Maps in ways
that we could have never imagined. That may be why we now have more than 60 APIs.

Developer Platform

HTTP Visual
REST | RPC Google Maps API
Google Visualization API
Google data APIs
Google Charts API
Adwords API
Google Web Elements

Plugin
Geocoding API

OpenSocial Gadgets
Spreadsheets Gadgets
Wave Gadgets/Robots
Google Confidential and Proprietary 9
Our Wave developer offerings include an Embed API, which lets you embed an interactive Wave on your own webpage,
and an extensions API, which lets you create robot participants and collaborative gadgets that can be added to Waves. So,
you can either take the content out of Wave, or you can put your own content into Wave.

And for the Embed API


developers…

Extensions APIs
Robots Gadgets

Google Confidential and Proprietary 10


A Wave gadget is basically a mini-webpage with a shared state that can be modified and retrieved by all the participants. It
lets you extend Wave beyond textual communication onto visual communication... like maps! For example, the super-
simple map cluster gadget visualizes the locations of all the participants.

Cluster Gadget

Shared State
Google Confidential and Proprietary 11
This map gadget allows for more free-form map creation. When editing, you can add or modify markers and shapes, and
set the shared viewport. When viewing, you can read infowindows and pan around the map without anyone seeing what
you're doing. Privacy, and the distinction between edit and view, is fundamental to Wave.

Map Gadget

View

Edit

Google Confidential and Proprietary 12


The LonelyPlanet trip planner gadget adds the dimension of time. You can create a trip for a given location, and then add
places like hotels and restaurants to that trip. You can schedule places for particular days, and everyone on the Wave can
comment and rate each place.

Trip
Planning

Google Confidential and Proprietary 13


The cool thing about all these gadgets is that they are just a part of a larger collaborative document in Wave. So you can
use map gadgets in conjunction with other gadgets, converse below the map gadgets about what you're making, and
watch how the maps were created in playback.

Gadgets+Gadgets Gadgets+Blips

Playback

Google Confidential and Proprietary 14


A robot is basically an event listener on a Wave, reacting to events like the user typing by doing operations like adding
blips, editing text, or inserting gadgets. A hypothetical place locator robot could search for places in a blip, and offer to
insert a collaborative map gadget for all of the places it found.

Place Locator Bot

Google Confidential and Proprietary 15


That place locator robot could be even more useful by finding dates and times associated with all of the places. If it found a
list of historical events, it could insert a collaborative timeline map. Alternatively, if it found a list of upcoming events, it
could offer to add them as entries to your calendar.

Historical Events

Upcoming Events

Google Confidential and Proprietary 16


Robots can help you out - but they can also compete against you! A robot could insert a place-guessing game, and then try
to beat you and your friends. A robot is better than human friends though, because it can be configured to any level of
difficulty (like ridiculously easy), or track how well you're doing and adjust accordingly.

pamela
meanmachine

Competitive Robots

Google Confidential and Proprietary 17


Wave is a powerful platform for a wide range of use cases, from the casual to the serious. The average person can use it
when they're planning a pub crawl. The GIS analyst can use it to quickly visualize the places and data in their business
conversations. The history teacher can use it to quiz their students on the curriculum.

Analyst Pub-crawler History Teacher


Google Confidential and Proprietary 18
Even more crucial in our recent time of crazy natural disasters, volunteers could use it to map an ongoing emergency,
plotting casualties or rescue shelters, and discussing all the pieces of news as they are coming in.

Disaster Mapping

Google Confidential and Proprietary 19


Wave is still very new, and a baby in the web world, but I think it has great potential for geo. These are just my ideas after a
few months playing - now I want to see what all of you come up with.

Now…

Future?

Baby Wave New Wave

Google Confidential and Proprietary 20

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