Google recently announced it will shut down Google Wave, the company’s web app for real-time collaboration, in April 2012.

Google had previously all but abandoned Wave,ceasing new development over a year ago, but soon all traces of Wave will be removed from the web. Wave will become read-only in January 2012, meaning users will no longer be able to create new waves. After that Google Wave users have until April 30 to export their content before the service shuts down completely.

The official demise of Google Wave is part of alarger spring-cleaning effort that will also see Google shut down services like Google Friend Connect, Google Gears and Google Knol, among others. Despite the heavy hype that accompanied its launch, Google Wave, like Knol and other soon-to-close services, just never caught on with average users. As the Google blog blithely puts it, these services “haven’t had the impact [the company] hoped for.”

While Google claims that cutting the cruft like Wave will help it refocus its efforts on more popular Google services, that’s not much consolation for fans of the doomed Wave.

Fortunately for Wave fans, the code behind Google’s service has been turned over to the Apache Software Foundation for safe open source keeping. There’s even a service, “Wave in a Box,” which replicates the basic Google Wave experience.

Wave in a Box consists of two parts, a standalone wave server and a web client. The Wave in a Box web client looks a bit different than Google’s Wave user interface, but the same features are present. The Wave in a Box tools also have the distinct advantage of decentralization. Developers can run wave servers and host waves on their own hardware without Google being involved in any way.

If you’d like to take Wave in a Box for a spin, head over to the demo site and sign up for an account. While the user interface is considerably more bare bones than the Google version, the demo site is nevertheless usable and surprisingly snappy.

If you like what you see, you can install Wave on your own server. Just grab the source code from the Apache site.

Cyclists will adore the bike’s multiple aerodynamic design features and carbon fiber construction, but the most astonishing thing about the bike is its ability to change gears using its rider’s brain waves.

Before riding while using its mind-reading capabilities, a cyclist needs to train the bike to read his mind. Its “thought sensitive” helmet picks up brain waves, which are transmitted to the bicycle’s brain-controlled electronic “neurotransmission. “

The cyclist acquaints brain with bike by practicing with an experimental iPhone app, moving a cube on its screen until the neural technology associates that thought with the neurotransmission. Once the link is made, all the cyclist has to do is think in that way and the bike’s gears will shift accordingly.

This is some serious magic. But it’s altogether possible – in fact, we’ve tested tech such as the XWave that lets you control objects on a screen with your brainwaves, and it actually works well.

The Prius X Parlee is sponsored by bikemaker Parlee and Toyota as part of its Prius Projects program.

It’s an outstanding idea, but can these designers and innovators mass-produce the bicycle at an affordable price?

Springpad je stále beta, ale funkčná. Porovnávam ju s Evernote, ktoré aktívne používam a páči sa mi stále viac a viac. Možno switchnem na Springpad.

Aplikácia je free. Odporúčam si pozrieť obe videa a samozrejme si vyskúšať Springpad osobne .

Digit #46 – Božský Apple iPad v praxi from Muvi.cz on Vimeo.

Alright, I’ve read the reviews. I’ve the read Cory’s piece about open-ness and closed platforms (and I agree, open is better). I’ve read from the nit-picking details to the high level geekery, and I’m here to say, the iPad is an important device. Of course, some have already heralded it as the inflection point in “tablet” computing, and it is that – but the reason I think it’s important is actually a bit larger.

I truly believe that the models of human-computer interaction (”HCI”) that all of us grew up with are going to change dramatically in the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years. I believe it so much that Brad and I are working on it as a third show. And the reason that the iPad is such an important device is that it is a decisive break from the keyboard/mouse paradigm that we’ve been living in for 45 years (yes, the mouse is over 45 years old).

With this device, grandmas and doctors and “people on the street” will suddenly make the jump away from computing as a keyboard and mouse. In fact, the mode of interaction (and it is interactive, even if you’re passively viewing media content) is *completely* different. Multi-touch, tablet, portable — in much the same way that it’s hard for me to describe how I interact via a keyboard, so it is similarly hard to describe interacting via an iPad. But I think it comes down to this (fittingly, I’m writing this on Easter, in case there are any amateur theologians out there): Once computers went from pure business applications (numbers) to something “people” used (and this includes the entire advent of the internet), the primary mode of expression was the word. Text. Dare I say it, “logos.”

Accordingly, the HCI mode was textual. Even the mouse was built to point at text links; highlight text links; manipulate textual (and sometimes numerical) objects.

The iPad blows right by that (and it should given that what the video revolution has brought to the web). Sure, there’s email on the device – but it’s a secondary application. This HCI mode is built to interact in a way where the “word” isn’t the defining object. And that, my geeky friends, whether your inner early adopter is fully satisfied or not, is a game changer. Yes, there are iBooks and apps with text — of course! But the mode of interaction has moved beyond the word as primary HCI mode. Granted, it’s in some weird, hybrid, not fully formed, purgatory universe of user interaction — but the move has been made. And it’s been made on a device that “everyday people” are going to use. [sidenote: this thing is going to CLEAN UP in the grandma/grandpa and kid (4-8) gaming markets. CLEAN UP.]

By the way, saying that the iPhone/Smart phone market did this first really doesn’t work. Phones always had different modes of interaction (voice). We brought computing *to* them. Most people don’t think of their phones as computers. So, the iPhone – yeah, it softened up the marketplace. But the iPad – it’s a *computer* that no longer feels like “a computer.”

At the end of the day, sure there are problems with it: it doesn’t multi-task; I can’t ever achieve the speed of typing I can on a keyboard (though I’m an edge case, since the Department of Defense taught me to type north of 120 words per minute eons ago); it doesn’t have the USB port I want; it needs video/camera. NONE of that matters. That’s details. That will all come. This devise is an inflection point because it marks the moment where the dominant human-computer interaction model of the last 50-100 years began to fade in prominence.

And that’s why the iPad is important.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Wave combines features from email, instant messenger, Google Docs, wikis, and forums and throws its own spin on things. For a quick visual of its offerings versus similar tools, check out this feature-by-feature comparison table.

You’ll notice that Wave doesn’t have a green yes in every cell in its column; it’s still missing functionality that’s holding it back from being a viable alternative in a production environment—specifically, user permissions (everyone can edit everything) and the ability to export a wave or publish it so that anyone can see its contents (not just folks logged into Wave).

This table is slated to go into chapter 1 of the first edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave, so give me a shout if you’ve got ideas for how to polish it up before we rev up the printers.

GeoHot, one of the fathers of the iPhone’s jailbreak community, has just released the exploit that’ll unleash all sorts of promising PS3 hackery, just like he promised. We can’t wait for the homebrew and, frankly, piratical features this enables.

From the source:

This is the coveted PS3 exploit, gives full memory access and therefore ring 0 access from OtherOS. Enjoy your hypervisor dumps. This is known to work with version 2.4.2 only, but I imagine it works on all current versions.

You can find it at his page for now—try it out, let us know how it works!

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Microsoft has a history of collaborating with other firms, especially in the E&D division: Zune and Xbox have both gone through similar design processes. (And plans for the Microsoft Store leaked through a third-party agency were confirmed as genuine prototype layouts and concepts.) This video is branded Pioneer Studios, a Microsoft division within E&D that specializes in this kind of work, working with another agency that’s a long-time Microsoft collaborator on confidential projects.

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Over the next couple days we’ll be diving much, much deeper into Courier, so stay tuned.