Google blows your mind!

Most people that know anything about me know that I'm a huge Google user. Gmail, Reader, Maps, Calendar, Blogger, YouTube, Labs, Chrome, and the list goes on. I recently rejoined the land of cell phone users, and I picked my phone (HTC G1) because of it's Google integration.

Now I know a lot of people are very concerned with one provider having all of their data. The idea that the one provider has your balls in their hands and can squeeze or just yank at any given time. Personally my data isn't quite that important, and the convenience far out weighs those concerns. So for me, this is huge and I'm excited. (I'm so excited in fact, I'm not playing inFamous for the first night in 4 days.)

Having said all of that, Google I/O 2009 started on Wednesday and has been in full swing. Day one, those in attendance received a cell phone running the Android mobile OS. Day two they were introduced to what may very well change how you surf, send emails, blog, or hell just think!

They unearthed Google Wave. It's a new web app that Google is releasing later this year, and it basically does everything. And honestly if it can't currently do it, you the user could create extensions to do what you want.

The full Google Wave presentation has been posted on YouTube and I have to say I've had my mind blown repeatedly watching this hour and twenty minute presentation. I was going to embed it here, but honestly I went through all the trouble of typing this out while trying to watch the rest of the video; I'd kind of like you stick around and read the whole post.

Some things really stand out in the presentation. I really like how you can live update a document or event with another user. Add new users at any point of the conversation and the new user can see everything, even replay it as it happened.

The last four Sundays have been some sort of movie event with sister and friends. This weekend is going to be more of the same with Up releasing on Friday. If I could create an Up Wave, invite all who may be interested in the event, and just have at it. Is Sunday a bad time? Go to an earlier show? Do we care about IMAX? Everybody can post their comments, create a poll, and in the end easily see what time and showing is best for the group. Group event planning just got PWN'd!

I'm planning a trip to Washington DC this summer to hit up the museums, and this would make that even easier. I could post all the information I gather to the Wave and the people involved can all weigh in. "I want to go to the Air & Space Museum." "OMG me too, I've never had space ice cream!" (True story, can you believe it?) "I want to go to the pop culture museum." "Ew, I don't want to go to there, let's go see ol' Abe Lincoln instead!" All of this could take place inside of a Wave, and everybody could actively work on gathering information. Hell, this blog post could have been edited and created there! Could have quickly linked all the sites, added images, and maps with out a single mark-up on my part.

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently joined Twitter and have been exploring and enjoying the service. The site and/or clients can pull all the information you want together, but sometimes you miss things. Or other people find things and I'm completely lost on how. With a Twitter API you can set up a "Twave" do it all for you. Can pull information together based on what you need or want, and you can then interact with it as you see fit.

Wave could essentially branch off into anything the user wants it to. If you lack the knowledge to build what you want then just find somebody else who has and use that instead. As much as I hate the catch words of "Web 2.0" or "Web 3.0" this may finally be what those concepts fail at describing.

If you use Google, go watch the video, you won't be disappointed. Make sure you also go to http://wave.google.com and sign up for an account. May be a while before you get in, but it can't hurt. I wrote some goofy haiku for why they should give me early access. I wish I could remember exactly what it was so I could re-post it here. Something about "Gimmie it now please."