Google presents a new tool and a new hype is born. This time it is about online collaboration and promises nothing less than the end of email. Although the tool has clearly some great innovations, I cannot share the great enthusiasm and again the belief that a tool can change things for better. We are moving from one hype and tool to the next, but still, we do too little to drive the necessary core changes within organizations make it even possible to use tools such as Google Wave.

I have been reading so much euphoria about the new tool, which leads me to write this piece and mention a few enthusiasts, whom blogs I have continuously read and which I always enjoy.

“The Wave is not just another application, it’s a whole new way of using online information…  The Wave takes collaboration to a whole new level,” says Maish R Nichani. while Martin Koser writes, “Google Wave is poised to reshape (rewires I say) the nature of communication (yes, more face-to-face real-timelineness communication), improving the web experience.”

Real-time collaboration – what a nightmare!

Most excited was Lars Rasmussen, the developer of Google Wave, about the real-time collaboration. You can see changes made on a page within seconds. I have heard for the first time that the online collaboration’s biggest challenge was real-time changes, but on the contrary, that is the smallest problem. Bringing people to collaborate online is a huge challenge because of trust and the habit of a meeting culture, just to name a few. More importantly, I would argue that the growing speed of the Internet through life streams and tools such as Twitter and Friendfeed is made for a minority. Isn’t collaboration a process over hours, days and weeks?

We are witnessing more and more divides on the web

Who can and wants to master all this information every minute. How can you possible still work productively, on top of the ringing telephone and colleagues interrupting you. So, real-time collaboration can be great in a session, but if that is the future of collaboration, then it means that one has to collaborate 24/7. We have to ask us if instant communication really makes us more productive. Typing quickly a message in a smart phone in a go is perhaps not the greatest contribution. I argue that online collaboration, exchange and creativity needs time and breaks. I also doubt that this is a will change with the younger generation.

People, unlike tools, bring change

I wrote many posts about how different tools, such as blogs and RSS, can make a difference for information sharing and lead to more productivity and creativity. No doubt, Google Wave, combines here in an innovative way previous tools.

But all my experiences in online collaboration showed me that when a certain need has to exist. If that is the case even trivial mailing lists or a forum from the post web2.0 times can work dynamically. A fancy tool alone will not convince colleagues to share more information online. The tool can help and support interaction, but does not deliver interaction per se. Google Wave combines in an intelligent way many different streams knowledge worker have to deal with every day. But email is still seen as a core way to communicate and it will take many more years before this will change at large. Will new tools make it easier for that change to happen? I doubt it.

Lee Bryant makes a good point in this regard: “There is an echo chamber of voices confirming each other in the newest tool. “When they switch tools, the previous tools are “dead” and the new tool is “the future”. Meanwhile, millions of people continue using Outlook as a primary interface to their work, just as they did a decade ago.”

Luckily at least Google Wave is open source, which allows to be runned on an own server. Online collaboration takes a culture shift towards openness and trust to work online. In most organizations that takes a long road – even firms, who are the frontrunners such as IBM, face the same internal struggles, a colleague has recently told me.

A tool for one part of the world

Lars Rasmussen pointed out rightly that email is already forty years old and it is time for something new. But I am not sure that is the way forward because of one other reason: bandwidth!

Jonathan Goshier outlines this point nicely: “Of course, I have to point out that all this real-time communication stuff only matters to the fraction of people on the planet with good bandwidth. Here in Uganda, I’m so glad when an email actually makes it out of the queue that I don’t even bother to think about ‘rewinding’ conversations and dragging and dropping video! In all seriousness, it’s this reduction in basic utility for all users that worries me. Most Google’ products are by-in-large accessible no matter what kind of computer you’re on (except maybe Google Earth). With Wave they seem to be going down a path that might be a little more exclusive in nature. Not a deal-breaker but a concern none-the-less.”

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High bandwidth access expands worldwide, finally in Africa too, but in many places the connectivity does not allow for an easy Internet usability, let alone the use of many tools for publishing own content and interacting easily with other users. Aside from many other challenges, one important to remark is the lack of low bandwidth application. This might be one of the reasons of why particular localization of many languages is progressing slowly. More importantly, the need for high bandwidth access for most current websites creates new divides.

Some examples

• Checking up a profile on Facebook or at least access the log in page, which has alone almost 800kb! In a cybercafe, where you have to pay fees per minute, it may take up to 3 minutes with a dial up modem connection.

• Video or audio upload is almost impossible with a low bandwidth connection and can cost you a lot when your tariff is measured in volume instead of time.

• This blog is based on WordPress, which is a great open source tool, but unfortunately not made for a dial up connections. If you want to publish a new post on WordPress (2.7.1), you have to download over 750kb first.

Unfortunately even the free and open source community has little activity around low bandwidth solutions.

Where are the low bandwidth solutions?
One really great initiative is Maneno, which not only tries to provide a low bandwidth blogging solution in Africa, but also focuses on offering multilingual options emphasising on various African languages such as Bamanankan and Swahili, beside French, English, Arabic and Portuguese. I got in contact with Maneno recently and their team ensured me that their system is designed as low as 13 kb without images and 33 kb including images.

Another one is Dgroups, a community platform based on emails. I am currently working on a project for IICD, which has over 50.000 members worldwide. Dgroups has just been newly launched and it now offers the administration of groups solely by email.

Twitter can make a difference as it lets you send and receive messages via mobile phone. But, unfortunately, Twitter gave up its free SMS service a while ago. I asked one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey, at the e-stats conference when the free service is coming back, to which he replied ‘on mid year.’ This leaves the question, ‘what can be said in 140 characters?’ Quite a lot when you look at the Mobile Voices project just featured by the Netsquared N2Y2 challenge.

But one thing is for sure, just because you only have low bandwidth connection, does not mean you want to see dull, text based websites. There are various ways to make websites look appealing and still reduce the data size considerable. Aptivate has excellent Web Design Guidelines for Low Bandwidth.

What is the difference with mobile phones?
Low-bandwidth is a big topic for mobile phones as 3G is not everywhere available; in Africa it is only available in big cities.  In many cases all information exchange is limited to SMS exchange solutions. There are  different solutions that need to deal with the heavy loaded web. One such is the Opera mini browser, which  tries to compress data as much as possible, compressing up to 90% according to a presentation at the W3C Maputo meeting.

UPDATE

There was an interesting discussion on the KM4DEV mailing list and here is a summary of key points.

UPDATE 2

Jonathan Goshier has a great and critical blog post around this topic and emphasis the importance of local services: Web 2.0 Services Shutting Out Developing Countries

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The discussion about web2.0 and development is divided roughly into two groups. One argues for the potential of the social web and that finally the users shape the web and applications to their benefit. And the other side wonders what does web2.0 make for a difference in the field of ICT4D, and doubt whether the chit-chatting over blogs will change anything, and what is so new about it anyway. The skeptic people believe that connectivity shall be a primary concern. In my view, the latest developments are promising, whether they are called web2.0 is secondary. New innovations can make a difference in connectivity, however, the danger of repeating old mistakes exists.

I remember when Tariq Khokar Jackson from Aptivate said that the Web2fordev conference website can, with its 300 kB, take up to a minute to load from a dial up connection. In an interview, he underlines the importance of simplicity in webdesign and its obstacle for connectivity. To get an impression of what that means, you can use the Aptivate Low Bandwidth Simulator. I checked it through CNN.com and it took 4 minutes to load the website with a 20kb-normal-African-university-connection. I, myself, had an interesting experience when I was in South Africa last year. I was faced with volume packages for internet. Suddenly, a YouTube video was not a choice, and Skype calls were much shorter. I had to think it twice whether to go on overloaded fancy news sites or not.

So, what are some of the potentials and obstacles? I tried to list the points I could think of and hope you will have some other points to add.

Potentials

• Websites become more lightweight, the separation of layout and content gives more ways to access.
• Device independent publishing such as RSS feed.
• Beta mode of websites focuses on its users and offers multiple channels to distribute and exchange information from Email to SMS.
• Mashups allow to mix and filter content before it is delivered to its users. That means standard searches, feeds or information channels can be individually subscribed to get relevant content.
• The fusion of mobile phones and the web allow new ways of access and interaction. Market information systems are one way, but tools, such as Twitter, open a two-way conversation.
• There is a boost in languages, especially through open source software. Excellent publishing software is freely available in dozens of different languages such as Arabic, Swahili, etc. Web2.0 has a boost in forming own distinct language spaces.
• The personal computer plays less of a role with new innovations such as software on a USB flash sticks or web based software.

Kevin Painting makes a good point in his post (Update: not accessible anymore):

In a delicious irony, the Web2.0 paradigm to move the “desktop” from the PC to the Internet has created (for some) a host of seemingly old fashioned problems of connectivity which, of course, are the daily lot of many in developing countries. To wit, in a Web2.0 world, when all your programs and files are on the Internet, what do you do when you can’t connect to the Internet? There is much activity now to develop applications that work seamlessly in an on-line/off-line world that will be of enormous utility to developing countries where lack of access to the Internet is not an occasional nuisance but a daily reality. The big players have been very active here: Google with its Gears application, Adobe with Air, Microsoft with Silverlight. We can only look to developments here with heightened anticipation.

By the way, this paragraph is part of a blog post series about a “One Laptop Per Farmer” by Hans Jörg Neun, who is director of CTA.

Obstacles

• The major concern certainly is the bandwidth issue which, nowadays, websites need. Websites not only have many photos but also widgets and many third party applications.
• Podcasts and video streaming is in many places extremely pricy. For example, in South Africa only volume tariffs are offered.
• To interact fully in the particapative web, one needs to be frequently online. Most of it becomes even instant communication and leaves out those who have only sporadic access.
• Most resources are invested in new fancy and high bandwidth applications, and less into innovative lightweight applications for small connectivity.
• Often, important rules of usability are left aside and websites are confusing and overloaded.

I am sure there are more points and hope you can add some. But, I think there are further challenges, which I wrote in a post bak in January.

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