Web 2.5

Every year, Google holds a software developer's conference known as Google I/O, where they give demonstrations of the newest applications under development. This year, the Day 2 Keynote covered an extremely interesting topic that I've been following for a while: Google Wave.

Google Wave Preview

The above link will take you to Google's preview of Wave, and I encourage you to watch the video if you have an hour or so to kill. If not, here's the basic premise of this astounding new software:

Wave is a messaging tool, a sort of email/IM/board/blog hybrid with an element of social networking. Think of it as the best of gmail, AIM, twitter, facebook, and a community potluck combined.

Email is an old system based on the primitive concept of snail mail, in which a person writes a message, licks a stamp, addresses an envelope, and sends the message to point B. Google wanted to update this form of communication so that it would reflect changes in the way people interact over the internet. Wave updates in real time, and I mean true real time: as someone is typing, you will see the letters sweep across the screen, and if they delete, you will also see that. But it's much more than an IM service. Think of it as a community bulletin board, where people can post notices, and others can amend them as necessary. Use it to track a party invitation, with everyone amending the original message to add their name to the "Coming" or "Not Coming" lists.

The possibilities for Wave are truly endless, and it would be a waste of time to try to list them all here. Again, I encourage you to watch the video. The real time aspect of Wave made me begin to think about the direction the internet is turning.

"Web 2.0" is a term referring to the aspect of the internet concerning social networking and the facilitation of communication. The facebooks, myspaces, xangas, orkuts, and twitters of the world are all a part of this. But they all suffer from one key downfall: they're not real time. They are based on the old system of send-a-message, get-a-message. You also are given a static web page that (more recently) gives you a frozen feed of all your friends' activity, such as the one on your facebook homepage. In order to see if anyting has changed, you must click 'refresh' on your browser.

Wave is part of what I'm calling Web 2.5, where communication and interaction occurs in real time, as it does in the physical world. We've already seen the arrival of such an appeal with services such as FriendFeed. It is little more than a microblog aggregator, a tool to pull together my twitter and facebook feeds, but it updates the moment a change occurs. I can stare at my FriendFeed page and it will continually run, like a television show, giving me updates from assorted corners of the internet.

Is this the future of the internet? To the unitiated, this whole thing about real time updating seems trivial, but imagine the difference between television and a series of related pictures. Technically, you'd be getting the same information, but not in as smooth a format that mimics the natural pattern of the human mind.

So, does this mean anything? Or am I just getting excited about another Google product? (I am an unabashed supporter of all Google's exploits!)

I welcome your thoughts.

Video Games, Art?

So, I've been watching the coverage of the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) all day while waiting for my gums to heal. For those of you who're unaware, E3 is a huge convention every May in California to show off the best upcoming video games. Think of it as a World's Fair for nerds.

One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Brothers on the small television in my parents' bedroom. I had it in my head that if I jumped when I hit the A button, Mario would jump higher. So I got a lot of exercise playing Mario. Back then, games were simpler; generally, it was just a basic story with side-scrolling action. But it was fun.

Games soon evolved to feature more complex stories and systems of gameplay. One popular series is Final Fantasy, which is known for engrossing plots and compelling characters. I've always loved to read, and as a child I'd play video games with the same sense of story-telling.

I could make a compelling argument that I became even more attached to the characters in video games than in books because, obviously, I became the characters. I did not watch Link strike down Gannon; I did. Fox McCloud did not fly an Arwing; I did.

Yet, despite my love of these games, I always felt that they were looked down upon. People didn't seem to view them as a valid form of media. They were little more than animated board games, diversions fit for children.

So here I am now, 18 years old, and I still love video games. I believe that they accomplish the same artistic tasks as do books and movies. But, you tell me. Are video games art? Can they move people? Are the objects of creativity, or just playthings?

I welcome your thoughts.