Google announced last week that it will discontinue support for Wave, and I’m not surprised. At launch, the hype was huge and everyone was excited to bother their friends for Wave invites. But when I finally got mine, I opened Wave and thought, “What’s this? What am I supposed to do with this?”

The Wave interface is not as intuitive as what I had hoped for in a Google product. When I’m conversing in a wave, I’m never sure where I’m supposed to click or what I’m supposed to select. Judging by popularity, I don’t think I was the only one who thought so.

It’s not that Wave doesn’t have great features. Real-time playback of conversations looks cool.  Google pushed Wave’s spellcheck that checks based on context in addition to spelling. Once you get over the learning curve, Wave is pretty cool. But for some reason, not enough people found Wave useful enough to warrant continuing support for it.

There’s a simple thing I think Google could have done to increase adoption rates for Wave, and that is to have chosen a better name.

One of Google’s product strategies, it seems to me, is to pick a service you can describe in one word and do it really really well. A well-named, simple, straightforward product minimizes the learning curve, so people know right away what they can expect to use the product for. Search, Gmail, Calendar, and Maps all exemplify this strategy. You know Latitude will deal with location. Even Picasa suggests it has something to do with pictures. Wave, on the other hand, tries to do a lot without priming the user with what to expect by using a good name. (Buzz is another example of a Google product that tries to do a lot with a vague name.)

I can hear the disagreement now: “But if Google comes out with a new, innovative service, it can’t help but pick a new name for it.” Yes, that’s true. It’s not that I think Google should stick to improving existing services and forget innovation. My point is that with an innovative product with a steep learning curve, a descriptive name will go the furthest to help customers figure out how they are expected to use it.

There are two websites in particular that I think do this really well (though they take the strategy to the extreme). The first is a to-do list tool at NowDoThis.com. The page is incredibly simple. All you see is a command, a button labeled ‘done,’ and a link to edit the list of commands. When you click the ‘done’ button, it shows you the next item on the list. There isn’t even a title on the page; the title is implied in the url. The site does exactly one thing very well, with no fuss and no frills.

The other site is DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com. Like NowDoThis, it features a plain white screen with one simple tool, in this case one that checks if a given site is down. This is simplicity to an extreme, without even a button to submit the form (instead, “or just me?” is a link to submit the form). I love the way they incorporate the tool and instructions to use it into one sentence.

One of the benefits to designing products this way is that once you have a simple tool, you can incorporate it into other services. I can put a small Google Maps widget on my business site to highlight my location. I can open NowDoThis in the bookmarks sidebar in Firefox for an in-browser to-do list. To Google’s credit, it is possible to embed a Wave in another site; I just haven’t seen it done more than once or twice.

I predict that Google will integrate Wave’s best features into Talk in the near future. Unlike Wave, Talk is simple and well-named; even before you open it, you know what you can do with it. I think Talk will benefit from Wave features like context-sensitive spellcheck and easy media sharing.

The ironic part is that I’ve used Wave this summer more than I did all of last year. My friends and I found it was a great way to share data in our Skyped Dungeons and Dragons campaign. We used it to share initiative rolls, HP and pictures of the monsters we faced. We could have also incorporated dice-rolling widgets. However, we could have done the same with a shared Google Doc, which is probably what we will have to do when Wave support is lost for good.

Oh well. I’m not crushed.

My first homepage - names and images blurred to protect the innocent and embarrassed.

Last month, Fred Wilson wrote an article on the importance of online branding for young people, especially those of us prying our way into the job market. He agrees with David Karp that the best way to secure a positive online presence is to sell yourself well and market yourself frequently. Examples include posting copious flattering pictures on Facebook to overwhelm the unflattering shots and spreading links to your LinkedIn profile so that unrelated flotsam doesn’t get a higher search ranking than your professional profile does.

I completely agree that pains should be taken such that when the prospective employers google your name, they never find unmentionable content before they find your homepage. When I google my own name, at least the top four results and two more of the top ten are actually about me, and moreover are pages I’d be comfortable letting a recruiter see. While I haven’t secured the domain for my full name, I do have a versatile domain that I like and that I’ll be able to use for my future portfolio.

I didn’t go about domain shopping until halfway through college. Wilson, on the other hand, brags that he bought the domains for his children’s full names a few years ago, and his daughters maintain photo blogs under theirs. He doesn’t mention how old his children are, and while a quick scan of the girls’ blogs shows that they’re probably college students, one might get the impression from Wilson’s article that he advocates kids begin to build their brand as soon as their early teens.

I’m all for building positive content, but I remember the kind of content I created when I was a teenager. No, I wasn’t a wild party girl, but in high school I did have a website dedicated to obscure and decidedly dorky interests. Sure it helped me learn HTML and CSS, but it’s far too embarrassing to showcase to potential employers. While I was proud of it at the time, I’m very glad I never promoted that website under my real name. Kids who start branding in their teens will be stuck with cached content that they probably won’t want associated with their names when they want to impress someone with their online presence. For this reason, I disagree with Wilson that kids need to start their branding early. I don’t think kids need to worry about self-branding until they know what they want to showcase. Until then, anonymity is a kid’s best Facebook friend.

In response to cluttered news sites that contain far more flotsam than actual news, Arc90 Laboratory has created a browser tool called Readability which restyles articles from busy pages into something a little easier on the eyes. After you choose how you want your articles to look, Readability installs as a bookmarklet in your browser toolbar. As you come across an illegible article, click the bookmark; Readability pulls only the text of the article and relevant pictures into one clean, neat page, styled as you chose in setup.

For my bookmarklet, I chose Newspaper style with medium size font and medium margins, and I’m very impressed so far. I would strongly recommend Readability to anyone who peruses any amount of articles.

Readability transforms articles from this,

Into this,

I’ve only had a couple problems so far. Readability identifies the longest chunk of text on the page as the article, so if the article is very short, Readability either might not find it, or may substitute something else (I once ended up with a very readable set of Google text ads). Still, I anticipate that the demand for this sort of service is strong, and will continue to grow especially as screens become smaller and more cluttered.

Cloud computing, with services such as Salesforce and Google Mail and Docs, is easily my favorite internet technology. The potential for scalable, affordable services online really excites me, and I definitely plan to enter that sector of industry when I get my degree. But cloud computing is fraught with pitfalls, too, as a few recent data disasters have shown.

Upsides:

• When my data is in the cloud, I can access it from everywhere. This becomes increasingly important the more devices you have. When I want to see my email from my personal computer, my iPod Touch, netbook, my lab computer, my eReader, and my phone, it’s a lot more convenient to keep that data in the cloud, rather than having to manually sync each device. This property has saved me more than once, too. When I took a train to New York City last spring and found that I had forgotten my ticket confirmation number in the rush to get out the door, I was able to pull it up on a public internet terminal and still catch my train.
• Cloud data is more secure than local data because it is backed up on someone else’s servers. If my office burns down, I’m still going to be able to access my email, and if the server goes down, there will be a dedicated team to fix the problem.
• Cloud computing is necessary for software as a service (SAAS) products, which can be very scalable and very profitable. When Salesforce gains a new client, they don’t have to come out and do a complicated database installation or train local IT on how to implement their product on local servers, or even make sure all the users’ terminals have the same operating system. The software is in the cloud and ready to go; all the local users need is a browser to access the database.
• The cloud has also ushered in an era of free applications such as Google Docs, which not only competes with expensive office suites but also enables easy document sharing: you don’t have to upload your presentation to send to your coworkers if your presentation already exists online. These programs are easy to use because there is no installation, and they’re compatible with almost all computers because they work through a browser.

Downsides:

• Your data might not be as safe as it sounds. Last month, as Microsoft performed an update on the servers that host data for T-Mobile Sidekick users, something went horribly wrong and all data in the cloud was lost. I don’t own a Sidekick, but I would have been outraged if this happened to me. The worst part is that there really wasn’t anything Sidekick users could do about it. While Microsoft “worked round the clock” to restore the lost information, they couldn’t possibly restore everything. Backups can fail. No server is 100% safe. So while your data might stand a better chance in the cloud, the more backups you have, including local backups, the safer you are.
• If the company you trust with your data goes down, you might lose it. Yahoo announced in April that it would close its free web-hosting site, Geocities. Last week every Geocities site officially became unavailable. While Yahoo gave plenty of warning in advance, it still hurts to find out that your website, something you consider your property, is going to be shut down no matter what you do. I’m sure plenty of Geocities users never had the chance to save their data. Whenever you upload content to 3rd party servers, you put your data in their hands, and there is always a danger that they will delete it without your permission.
• The flip side to the argument that 3rd parties will ignore your data is that they will pay attention to your data. Online banking is a form of cloud computing, because the bank offers a virtualized resource as a service over the internet. That’s great, but there is huge pressure on the bank to make  sure I’m the only one who can see that data and manipulate it. Likewise, if I send confidential email, I trust Google Mail not to let its employees or anyone else read it without my permission, but neither I nor they can absolutely guarantee it will never happen. There is always a danger of unsecured data with cloud computing.
• Cloud applications are primarily accessed through browsers, but browsers vary in terms of what technologies they support. While modern browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome adhere to web standards, the browser that dominates the market, Internet Explorer, sometimes makes its own rules, which web developers spend lots of time and money trying to stay ahead of. SAAS companies take a risk because they cannot guarantee the browser their client uses will be compatible with their software. Even scarier is the idea that Microsoft might decide that it doesn’t like the idea of Google Docs competing with its office suite and makes Internet Explorer incompatible with Google’s product.

So while cloud computing is exciting because of its scalability and versatility, it is also dangerous because it puts personal data into the hands of 3rd parties. I still think, however, that as people start using more and more devices in addition to personal computers on a regular basis, companies that utilize a cloud architecture to deliver their products will be the most successful.

I love excuses to dress up, and every year on Halloween I come up with more ideas for costumes than I have time or resources to do (I’m making two costumes for myself already, and I’m helping my housemates sew theirs). So if you’re still looking for something nerdy this year, here are a few technology and internet-related costumes to try out. Most are pretty simple, and could be created last minute with just a trip to the thrift store, bargain store, or craft store for cheap clothes, blank shirts, and other supplies.

• Lolcat: Cat ears are easy to find this time of year, or you can fashion a pair from felt or paper and a headband or string. Affix a witty caption to your chest, probably in the form of “Im in ur ___, ___ing ur ___.” As a bonus, you could also claim to be XKCD #262. Other memes make great costumes as well (don a pair of hipster sunglasses and suddenly you’re Rick Astley!).

• Windows Blue Screen of Death: Dress all in blue and draw black X’s over your eyes with eyeliner or black makeup. For more authenticity you could put the actual error text on your shirt. (See below for more details on writing on shirts).

• Code: Get a plain white shirt and write some code on it, either with a Sharpie/fabric marker or using a printable iron-on transfer. There are lots of things you could do with this. You could write some Python and be a snake, or write some Java and be a cup of coffee. You could even pick some clever songs in code and go as a music album.

• Google: Get a plain white shirt and draw out a 1 with 100 0′s (a googol). Use red, blue, and green markers to evoke the Google color scheme.

• Xbox / Xbox 360: There are a couple different ways to go about this one. Either you could get an actual cardboard box and draw an X on it, or you could use a blank shirt and draw an X inside a box. Draw a circle on the back of whichever article to be an Xbox 360.

• Halo: Construct a halo out of aluminum foil. This makes a great complement to the Xbox 360 costume.

• Tycho and/or Gabe from Penny Arcade: This works especially well for a couple of guys going out together. Tycho wears a blue sweater and khakis, and Gabe wears a yellow tshirt over an orange long-sleeved shirt with jeans. If you want to go all the way and make Gabe’s Pacman logo on the tshirt, I’d use black felt and fabric glue rather than black paint or markers. These costumes have been done successfully in the past.

• iPod Billboard: Simply dress in black, attach a neon posterboard to your rear, and rock out with white earbuds while you collect your candy.

• Steve Jobs: You’ll be recognizable as the Apple CEO with a black turtleneck, jeans, and your iPhone or iPod. Bonus points for making reference to his recent liver transplant.

• Ninja: Ninja costumes never go out of style, and can be whipped up in a matter of minutes. Dress in all black and use these ninja mask lessons to make a hooded mask. I even tried out the instructions myself to ensure ease of creating a clever disguise. For added nerdiness, be the Ask a Ninja ninja or attach programming to your costume to be a code ninja.

• Blogs: Make reference to your favorite blog while you trick or treat! My favorites include,

• Cakewrecks: It would be a little sticky to attend a party in, but I’m amused by the idea of writing a poorly-spelled inscription on a blank shirt and smothering yourself with a cupcake. Kudos if you glue on birthday candles randomly, too.
• Photoshop Disasters: Create an awkward visage by using face paint or makeup to alter your features dramatically or even add additional eyes, noses, ears, etc. You could also stretch your sleeve over your hand and tie it there, or attach extra digits to your hands if you can find them at the Halloween store. Go crazy, but make sure you dress snappily, especially in Ralph Lauren.

• The Doctor from Doctor Who: Pick your favorite Doctor (you have 11 to choose from) and go to the thrift store to pick up an overcoat, or even an oddly-striped scarf. This costume is especially great if you have a blonde significant other to play Rose or if you already own a replica sonic screwdriver.

• Lego: This is a classic, but what kid didn’t play with Legos? My favorite version of this costume involves painting or wrapping a box with solid-colored wrapping paper. Cut the bottoms off of paper cups, paint or wrap them similarly and use them for bumps on your Lego brick.

• Balloon Boy: What, too soon? To imitate the kid who captured the nation’s attention by pretending to fly away in a weather balloon, grab a helium balloon from a party store, cover it with aluminum foil and attach it to your person. For added authenticity, put on a “Hello my name is Falcon” name tag or wear a cardboard box. Someone is already selling kits like these online, if you can believe it.

If you decide to write on or otherwise design a shirt as part of your costume, keep in mind what you’ll be making when you choose how to make it.

• Iron-on transfers are great for lots of precise text, and give a nice finished look. They’re a little expensive though, and do require use of an iron.
• Fabric markers or Sharpies are best for writing cheaply on a shirt. It’s easy to look messy, though. For best results, put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt and pin down the fabric before you try to write on it.
• For larger designs with less detail, try using bottled fabric paint and a cheap brush. Again, you’ll definitely want to put something between the layers of the shirt to protect the backside from paint stains.

Got any other bright ideas for techy halloween costumes? Past experience? Hilarious annecdotes? Leave a comment or email mystitat@gmail.com.

Twitter is one of those double-edged swords of the internet community. While it can be a powerful tool for good, such when Iranian protesters tweeted their unrest in June, it can also be a tool for evil, judging by the amount of spam Twitter sends out. Still, I think one of the worst crimes Twitter and its users have committed is the way they butcher the English language with spinoffs and spoofs of the word twitter in terms for its users and companies who utilize it. I shall attempt to catalogue the some of the worst offenders:

Words that describe the Twitter service and those who use it: I swear I did not coin any of these terms:

It all started out very innocently. There was a website called Twitter, on which tweeters could post a tweet. Then the service expanded enough that it became a twittersphere, on which twitterites posted their twitworthy musings. When power-users entered the scene, they became the twitterati whose twitticism reached twitical mass. Now if you desire to be a twittizen of the twitterspace, you must follow proper twittiquette, lest you be deemed a twittiot.

It’s getting to the point where the vocabulary of social networking overlaps with that of Elmer Fudd. I’ll admit it was funny when Stephen Colbert made Meredith Vieira lol on the Today Show when she asked him if he used Twitter. He answered, “I have twatted” on national television; I’m sure the NBC producers loved that. And I’m sure if Randall Munroe had drawn XKCD #181 “Interblag” in 2009 instead of 2006, he would have included “tweeto” in his column of internet nickname prefixes. (I blog on the tweetotubes, myself.)

Companies that use Twitter for advertising or part of their service: This was really bad in the days when people didn’t know what Twitter was, and companies had to include plays on tweet or twitter in their names to denote that they utilized the website. There are still some bad ones out there:

• Best Buy’s @Twelpforce: Best Buy rolled out this service in July of this year when users like @ComcastCares were starting to become popular. They even put out a couple of corny videos to advertise it. No matter how useful they may be, I just can’t forgive them for their name.
• Twaitter: Twaitter.com is a service that times your tweets for you so that advertisers can reach the widest audience. I keep thinking it has to be a group for out-of-work busboys.
• Twinester: Twinester.com organizes groups and communities of Twitter users. You wouldn’t know it from their name, though. My first thought was that it was a club for fans of a strong thread or string composed of two or more smaller strands or yarns twisted together. Their logo’s coloring suggests that they intend their name to be pronounced “twi-nest-er,” rather than “twine-ster,” unfortunately.
• Twetris: Despite the corny title, this flash game turned out to be a decent representation of Tetris, using recent updates organized into blocks of varying sizes and colors. I approve of the game, though not the name.

What Twitter-related names make you cringe? Leave a comment, or (heaven forbid), tweet me about it.

While on my way home from my trip to the Grace Hopper Conference in Tucson this year, I got to spend plenty of time in a few different airports. While in Dallas on a layover, I saw a couple uses of technology that I thought were particularly clever.

• Gadget Vending Machines: I know these devices are not new. I’ve gotten used to seeing iPod vending machines in shopping malls; my local Macy’s has at least one. I had never understood the appeal, though. Gadgets costing over $100 tend not to be spur-of-the-moment purchases, so why would anyone buy an iPod or a digital camera from a vending machine? I’m sure better deals can be had online. When I saw one of these machines in the airport, however, it suddenly all made sense. Considering how easy it is to lose your gadgets when schlepping through security and such, an airport is one of the few places when you might suddenly decide that you needs a new digital camera or high-end pair of headphones. (I’m not sure about the iPods, because a factory-fresh iPod wouldn’t have any music on it, making it less than useful as entertainment on a plane.) The airport creates the perfect environment of hectic transportation and emergency purchases to support these machines, and I’d never thought of that before.

• Ad-Supported Public Internet: As I walked down the terminal, lamenting the lack of free wifi, I passed a kiosk offering free public internet. I thought this was strange, considering that when customers are trapped in a closed environment, like an airport (or a plane, for that matter), they usually have to pay through the nose for basics like food and internet. Intrigued, I took a closer look. It turned out this kiosk did indeed offer free internet access, and it prompted the customer to click on one of three ads on the screen to continue. It turned out that clicking on an ad started a short video, and after that, there was internet access. I didn’t test out the machine much farther than that, because who knows what kind of tracking software could have been installed. Still, I’m a fan of ad-supported services (Gmail, anyone?), and I think it’s a step in the right direction for airports to offer ad-based services rather than the digital equivalent of the $10 ham sandwich.