Ask any Google Wave user and they will confirm that Wave is a very useful tool for working in collaboration on projects. It’s powerful, fast and has a host of superb features.
So, why did Google announce yesterday that they were ceasing development of Google Wave?
The simple answer from Google, was that “we have not seen the level of adoption we would have liked.” In other words, it attracted very few regular users.
The bigger question, and one that I believe a lesson can be gained from, is why did so few people use such a powerful, free service?
The Google Wave demo video was over an hour long!
Google Wave, like Google Buzz, came out of the blocks with a problem, which lost it a huge amount of early traction. The initial Google Wave demo video, ran for over an hour – which was stupid. People wanted to see something that showed them how to get started with Wave quickly, yet they had to wade through a shockingly poor, over long presentation instead.
By the time the problem was fixed, and the dumb-ass video replaced with something more appropriate, Wave had already lost millions of early adopters.
These early adopters (people like you and me) are the one’s who typically open new online services up to the non-geeks.
Google Wave User Interface was poor
The initial user interface was also far from instinctive, making it a lot harder to get things done, than needed to be the case. In fact, lifehacker co-founder Gina Trapani was so frustrated by the lack of user information available, that she wrote a very useful book; The Complete Google Wave Guide – Which I’m guessing you will be able to get at a very reduced rate soon!
The worst part about the demise of Google Wave, is that it genuinely was a very good tool, which failed largely because of piss-poor launch marketing and a badly designed user interface.
iPhone jailbreak – It’s legal, it’s easy, it works…kind of!
Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad? Well, the good news is that it’s now legal; since last month’s US Copyright ruling. Better still, a new app claims to make it super easy to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad too.
So, a legal and easy way to reliably jailbreak your devices and free them from the bullshit DRM that has driven users nuts for years – right?
Err, no, not exactly!
Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad with jailbreakme 2.0
A new app called jailbreakme 2.0 has just been released, promising users of iOS4 devices the chance to easily jailbreak them. Easily? Yep, unlike previous jailbreak apps, which required you to hook your device up to a computer, jailbreakme runs from mobile Safari. At the time of writing this, their servers are down due to high traffic, hardly surprising with all the coverage jailbreakme is getting right now.
The perfect way to jailbreak your iPhone?
Unfortunately, there are widespread media reports today, saying that users are reporting various faults after liberating their iPhones and iPads with jailbreakme. FaceTime problems and faults to MMS services seem to be the most common issues. That said, I would be extremely surprised if a fix was not in the mix very soon. If you are looking forward to translate this content, contact Translation Agencies UK
I fully expect we shall see a surge in apps like jailbreakme, over the coming weeks/months. Maybe, just maybe, this will see enough users running non-DRM’ed iOS4 devices that Apple will reconsider their approach to DRM?
