Status of Wave at the beginning of 2011

This is a cross-post from my blog on the Military Social Networking system milBook. I have also started a new blog on the new online space for FedWave here, which is restricted access for the time being.  

As a reminder, there is an online community for Federal Wave (FedWave) located here. You must apply for membership first at APAN.org. I will approve all reasonable requests for group access.

The Wave-in-a-Box (WIAB) initiative has made impressive progress, and now Wave has been accepted into the Apache Incubator. See also below for a current screen shot of the FedWave Working Model, which is running WIAB on a Windows 2003 Server.

Google's announcement regarding Waving in 2011 located here covers some key things about Wave. First and foremost, the wave.google.com main system (gwave) will continue to be operational until a suitable alternative is up and running. There is an export capability available for gwave, but currently there is no place to upload these waves. My guess is that this will not change for a few months yet.

The WIAB project is in transition from its current location to its new home in the Apache Incubator. The new location of the Apache Wave info page will be http://incubator.apache.org/wave/ but this is not currently an active URL. You can subscribe to the Apache Wave email list- instructions are located here. Even when the software development project is moved to the Apache site, the Wave Federation Protocol (WFP) Site will still be operational, as it will continue to refine and promulgate the underlying protocol that Apache Wave and other products (Novell Vibe, SAP Streamwork, etc.) will use.

The FedWave initiative continues, and is still seeking a sponsor and funding. Please see above for how to join the online community at APAN.org. New content is being added, so check back to see the latest!

Here is that screenshot of the current version of the FedWave Working Model:

 

The key thing to note here is that the browser being used is Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, with no special add-ons, (such as Google Gears) unlike gwave which does not support native IE. I have been able to access the Working Model using IE from a Government computer, although the port will need to be opened to access the site from Government networks. It is set up to use an authorized port (8005) which is important. Overall very encouraging.

I will publish another update once the transition to Apache Wave is complete. Please post your questions and comments below. Thanks.