Google wave

Equal parts conversation and document, Google’s super communication tool has been a top trend on Twitter, a focus of media speculation, and was even able to knock Microsoft’s Bing from the top of the news cycle. But almost all the hype has been based on the demos — almost nobody’s actually got to try out Google Wave. What Wave does promise to do is to tie e-mail and instant messaging together and add a load of functionality on top of it. As the co-founder Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what e-mail would look like if it were invented today.”

Verdict: The future of collaboration, watch this space!
URL: http://wave.google.com/

Microsoft Photosynth

Developed as a research project within Live Labs — Microsoft’s applied research arm — Photosynth automatically stitches together digital photographs to create a somewhat abstract but high-resolution 3-D re-creation (called a synth). Confusing? Well, Photosynth uses the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and then brings that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

Think of it like Google Earth at the ground level — say you’ve taken a bunch of photos of the Taj Mahal from different vantage points. Photosynth then examines your images for similarities with images clicked by other Photosynth users and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, it recreates the space around the Taj and lets you navigate your way around the Taj, through possibly hundreds and thousands of photos. To fully wrap your mind around this, you have to see it for yourself — it’s immersive like never before.

Verdict: Awesome potential, limited use. One to watch.
URL: www. Photosynth.net (Windows only)

Microsoft Bing

Onomatopoeically named to remind people of the sound made during “the moment of discovery and decision making”, Bing is the much revamped reincarnation of Microsoft’s search technology (previously Live Search).

Here’s the disclaimer — Bing’s got a localised (rather stunted) version for India up and running, but if you really want to try out all its features, you’d want to change the country (there’s a link on the top right) to the United States before anything else. Once you’re there, you begin to realise that Microsoft has shown that it understands that different kinds of searches require different kinds of answers and interfaces within which to present the results.

So if you search for ‘Nikon D9’, you not only get regular web results, but a left-hand navigation menu also pops up with Quick Tabs for shopping, accessories, and videos all based on what your intent might be. Hover your mouse over a web link, and Bing can pull up an abstract of the page on the right of your link.

In a sense, they’re taking search to the next step — that of the beginning of a decision such as what Chinese restaurant to try or what type and model of car air filter is best. Unfortunately, these features are too hidden and not well developed enough to make one want to switch over immediately. Oh, and if you didn’t hear — Bing’s biggest handicap — its initials happen to spell out “But It’s

Not Google.”

Verdict: Explore, but keep Google handy for the time being!
URL: www.bing.com www.bing.com

Google Squared

Still very much a Google Labs project (most Google projects are!), Squared is Google’s experimental attempt to generate structured results out of regular web pages. Google Squared finds web pages that have been indexed, just like with a regular search, but presents them in a spreadsheet format that, if the data was relevant, could potentially be more useful to someone doing research on a particular topic.

Much like the much discussed Wolfram Alpha, Squared is a fairly major departure for Google in that it could eventually change the way we look up data on the web. For example, if you run a query for “dogs”, rather than present a list of pages relevant to canines as the ‘normal’ Google would, Squared attempts to generate a spreadsheet of dog breeds, complete with their average height, weight, and country of origin. And as with Wolfram Alpha, it’s very cool when it works, and rather messed up when it doesn’t (which is rather often).

Use it, and you’d be hard pressed to search more than a few queries in a row that didn’t result in clearly incorrect facts or glaring omissions. But it shows the way we will research, and merits keeping tabs on.

Verdict: Flawed, but exciting!
URL: http://www.google.com/squared