Do The WAVE!

For those of you who love technology and enjoy new products you'll like what I am going to blog about. I am a big fan of new software (well, hopefully software that isn't so buggy). Anyways, I recently heard about Google Wave. It's crazy! Now, I am a big fan of email, collaborative software, IMing, and everything that makes communication easier. When I heard that Wave was going to be the next evolution of email, I really couldn't fathom what it would be (or how they could make it "better"). Turns out, Google has done it again. Wave is really cool. It's immediate, fast, easy, and everything you could possibly want in this kind of software. Just a few things I'd like to mention are below, but look at the link. You'll like what you see.

Playback
Google Wave has a cool feature called playback. What it does is if I came into a chat conversation or something of the like, I can "playback" the actual conversation. It will show me exactly what everyone wrote in sort of video format. It's really cool since it cuts communication time and you don't need to fill a person in on what you had "just said." Manipulation of history is rather interesting indeed.

Immediate Image Upload
While I like using chat programs like MSN or Pidgin, sending pictures is a pain. In Wave you can just select as many pictures you want and literally throw it in the wave. The next thing you know, the other user can see the thumb nails and see the pictures.

Concurrent Editing
The cool thing is if someone is editing a Wave, all can edit at the same time. The demo was neat to show about four people editing the same document at the same time. I have not seen this done well, but the demo has definitely caught my eye.

There's a lot more, and I'm not an expert on it as all my comments derive from the demo. Either way, I'm ready to test out Google Wave.

http://wave.google.com/

Mixed Feelings on Going from Blue to Red

During this year I have been trying to get into graduate school. Around the 20th of May I received a rejection letter from BYU saying that I was not admitted for the MISM program. It was sort of depressing knowing that I wouldn't return to my Alma Mater. No more BYU... So, my chapter at BYU finally comes to a close.

However, on the flip side, on the 29th of May I received an acceptance email from the University of Utah for their MSIS program. I consider myself rather lucky since I heard they were only accepting around 15 students and there were 3 spos left by the time I had applied (at least that's what I was told). While I am excited I am going to graduate school, I am a bit sad of some changes. Examples of a few things are tuition will be a lot higher, I have a slim chance of being a TA again, and they won't accept my graduate credits from BYU (funny thing is they assured me it wasn't a "rivalry thing" for denying me transfer credit). Even so, there are some positives to this new program. Since the program is rather new, I will be contributing to a new program. Another good thing is it'll be good to have a change of campus. While I won't be too familiar with the U, it's probably for the best that I'm going to have some new surrounding.

So, now that I have had my undergraduate from BYU and I'll have my graduate from Utah...what does this make me? A traitor to BYU? A spy for BYU? A mixed-breed of the two colleges? I suppose only time will tell. For now, I'll keep a low profile and see where the chips fall. This will be an interesting year for me.