Google Wave - Mission Drug Design Federation

"The Google Wave Federation Protocol may succeed email (an innovation from 1965), as the dominant form of Internet communication."
[Google Wave Federation Protocol @WP]

Google launched Google Wave. It is a mind-blowing technical platform, which might just "change" publishing, health support of patients and physicians, and any other industry, where knowledge workers are suffering from keeping found things found (KFTF) and collaboration security (see conference blogging, libel law, compliant commenting, medicine 2.0 danger). I do not think the GWave will replace collaboration tools, but it might enrich them, by facilitating information moderation and bridging (for all peers and channels).

You can check first the Google Wave presentation (almost 1.5 hours), or continue reading below.

What is the negative side?

There are two critical posts about GWave (1,2), and I comment on them here.

• like instant messaging, an attention keeper. I agree, but you could say the same for phone calls, meetings, or any other some2some, or some2many communication form. So, this can be easily disarmed by providing an "I am in the work-flow or busy" button, so do not expect immediate response. Just leave me alone and do not cause a workplace distraction.
• instant typing and sentence rewriting is creepy. I agree, it is like sitting in front of a washing machine, not really educational. There should be some degree of federation cache a user can trigger. Sometimes I might want to write even a full paragraph before getting viewed by others.
• CCing wrong person. This is a security leakage problem, and can happen with any electronic information. It is just a gut feeling, but I would assume that GWave could even trigger a recall or hold-back at any later stage. So, it might be even safer then the actual eMail system? Anyway, I still think that all confidential data should come with a peer2peer privacy option, or any other form of encryption/decryption.
• another silo of communication. A what? If anything can bridge silos, then communication. The demo has shown that GWave can integrate already many other data silos, and it provides even an open communication layer. Thumbs up for Google for making the standard open.
• user-wall gardening. This is serious and opens again the question how many IDs a researcher can and should have nowadays. Why do you think are people talking about global IDs, like OpenID? Exactly, to get rid of all the many single logins. So, I rather trust Google then any other small startup for hosting my identity information. Though, any company with a lot of data has to take user data, especially patient data, serious, right last.fm?
• eMail threads work, so why the Wave hype. Honestly, I had already many2many threads with overlapping replies, and believe me, eMail fragmentation is a problem. At some point I was ending up with copying eMail parts to a word processor for allowing me to follow the argumentation sub-trees. And no, a live meeting is not an option, if people are in different (overlapping) meetings, buildings, and countries.

What is in there for drug design?

The key feature is the federation of data and people sources, something like FriendFeed behind your company firewall in a secure legal environment.

"@Google, please take data security very seriously, only a few people might want that confidential data is moving to your server. We can talk about contribution tokens and embedding tools, but data should stay in the remote company silo." [personal note]

• Business Intelligence and News Alerts. You might follow a series of business intelligence news, journal article news, or other news feeds. Is it not sometimes a pity, that the commenting happens all over the place? Sure, there are BackType and Disqus for a comment federation, but it would be so much nicer, if everything could be federated in one stream. The Google Wave demo showed a federation example with a blog post, so I assume this will be possible.
• Dynamic Reporting. Imagine you get an updated data report for your project X. As usual, people can reply via eMail and tell you what is nice or unexpected. But, it would be so much nicer, if people could actually collaborate on the data in one workflow, instead of switching forward and backward between different data sources and communication media. This could really boost efficiency.
• Data Silo Bridging. Like many other tools is the trend going towards peer and feed federation, like on FriendFeed, Yahoo pipes, or RSS readers. This are all tools with their own API. In other words, you will face the same communication problems you have with data warehouses, either you create all NxN relationships between the services, or communication will be inefficient. Why do you think have people invented BioDAS or BioMART? Exactly, for having only one service many others can talk to, just like Google Wave. This will reduce the number of communication and API bridging efforts dramatically.
• Project Feedback. If I have a question within a project where the project members are not sitting in my room, my building, my campus, or even my country. What can I do? I write an eMail, and expect sometimes tree-like eMails threads, which are overlapping. If you like playing eMail puzzle, this might be fun, it is certainly not when you are having a busy work day. Then eMail fragmentation is a distraction. GWave looks promising and might just avoid this problem, totally.

Finally, I think Google Wave can certainly reduce the information fragmentation and data silo bridging problem with its new and open federation protocol.
I hope it might find its way into businesses with strict communication regulations, eg. Pharma, Medicine, or any other organization dealing with patient data. I further hope that Google takes data security and data duplication issues very seriously in their federation protocol. Google might have here an ability to tackle both things, I am looking forward to it.