This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication.

* Push vs. Pull. Does the recipient have to ask to get incoming messages.

* Off the cuff vs. Official. How quickly is the communication written, how much thought goes into formal language & proofreading.

* Personal vs. Notification (this is a big problem for communication). Regular mail has fallen to this, 99% of mail is automated messages, both wanted and unwanted. Email is going the same direction. Phone never has moved very far that direction.

* Filtered vs. Raw. Computer filtered, or human filtered. Spam, autocategorization, etc.

And then it adds document problems to it:

* Collaborative vs. Sign off. Am I co-writing the document with somebody or is it a write-revise-signoff cycle?

* Controlled vs. AdHoc. How formal does the collaboration need to be. Does it make sense for us to both be editing things, or is internal consistency too important to allow concurrent edits?

Basically, just saying "screw email, it's a chat! With Widgets!" totally ignores what people use communication services for, and the varying levels of formality, proofreading, speed, style, and automation.

A quick rundown of communication protocols that exist:

Email: Delayed, Push for the most part, Filtered, lots of notifications

IM: Instant, Push, Raw, few notifications

Blog: Delayed, Pull, Filtered (RSS reader, you decide what to read), few notifications.

Waves: Instant, Push (?), Raw, notifications... maybe?

Basically, it fits in the IM category for the most part. Why would this replace my email to the boss containing a page of pros vs. cons on a new technology that we were going to adopt? Would this replace the automated quarterly emails from HR showing me my 401k balance (and does it do the job any better?).

Summary:

Very technologically cool, but I have no idea how it fits well into the framework of communication types, and adds anything that's not covered adequately with current communication methods.

A thought I have had was that twitter flourished because it was a different set of attributes from anything else that existed (along with other things of course).

Plenty of times. Sometimes I even submit them and delete them a minute later.

I felt like I had something interesting to say, but when I actually articulated it, it didn't add much to the conversation. If you noticed PG's essay that he wrote with Etherpad, he had entire paragraphs in his draft that didn't make it to the final version.

What I find fascinating about this is not the technology itself. It is that Microsoft has, as much as possible, done their best to hide the fact that this is a Microsoft product. Unless one looks at the page footer, which is in a small light grey text (in zone-out land, in other words), one would have no idea.

This is right in line with their "surprise! it's a PC" campaign. If one watches the corresponding campaigns, Apple is unabashedly proud of being Apple, Google about being Google, but Microsoft seems to be embarrassed about being Microsoft.

I am rather curious where this will go, and how consumers will react. Of course, Microsoft wins if people ignore the company and just buy the product.

So, I've been an ER nurse for the last 15 years. I run the Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley meetup, and I love to support startup ideas. It's extremely rare that I don't support a startup idea or give it a fair shake.

This is a spectacularly bad idea. I can unequivocally say without a doubt that if you pursue this service, someone will die.

Why? Because I've seen it happen.

Part of my job as an ER nurse is to triage patients that come in. Triage involves sorting through the dozens of patients that come in every night, and decide who can wait and who cannot because they have a life threatening emergency. People having symptoms of a heart attack move to the front of the line. People who ate a bad taco and have the shits get seen on a space available basis. That's the gig. I sort patients: sort_by_acuity([bad taco, bad taco, bad taco, heart attack, runny nose, cough, gun shot wound, ear infection, headache, headache, headache, stroke, headache]).

I've been doing this job for 15 years, and I have seen plenty of triage mistakes that can change people's lives for ever. I've made a few myself. You care for thousands of patients a year, you're going to drop a ball every now and then. But, I have a lot of experience doing this, and I have a lot of knowledge and very good instincts on when someone is very ill. Patients do not have that knowledge and I would never trust your customers to make that decision when life and death is on the line.

This is why ER's are almost universally abysmal at judging how long it's going to take to be seen by the doctor. The same team that is taking care of your earache at 3am or helping you get stitches after you cut your finger on your computer case, is the same team that can crack your chest open and do open heart massage on you after a thug sticks a knife in your heart. We take care of bladder infections and dying babies, sometimes right next door to each other at the same time. ER's are built for safety, not speed or even convenience. The fact that in the US, they are primarily the only type of physician that can be seen 24/7 without an appointment is an unfortunate effect of our health care system. But, we have to care for the sickest patients first, and you can never predict when the next ambulance is going to roll through the door. So, ER's suck at estimating wait times. But, you will, eventually see a doctor.

Now, I understand that you have a disclaimer that says that people should call 911 for Emergencies, and that they will not use your service for life threatening emergencies. I don't think that's not going to keep you from getting sued when Uncle Bob dies of his massive heart attack that he though was a bad burrito and put his name on your waiting list. That's also not going to help you sleep at night thinking about how you might have prevented Uncle Bob's death.

I'm not trying to flame you. I'm really not trying to be nasty. I'm just trying to communicate what a big, big, huge mistake I believe this application is. Please, shut it down.

I dont like the implication that techcrunch and last.fm are both equally innocent victims in this.

techcrunch's traffic no doubt rose well above average during the whole affair, they have a few detractors questioning their legitimacy, but where are they? techcrunch deleted every comment that wasnt calling for the death of last.fm from each post.

whereas last.fm, they may have had some extra traffic, but they have had quite a few people deleting accounts, 3 posts on the worlds largest(?) tech blog along with threads on slashdot and a long list of people in their own forum worrying about being sued for using last.fm.

combine that with the ridiculous practice of posting these attacks on friday nights and the fact that techcrunch were the only people to hear from this tipster, its hard to pass off techcrunch as the innocent victim.

O'Reilly just blew up my buzzword-o-meter with "Federated Wave Clouds" and "a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud."

So instead of sending messages to someone we just send it "in the cloud" and our federated waves generate a response?

Maybe O'Reilly intentionally reinforces vague and confusing terminology in order to publish more books explaining what should have been stated using simple terms in the first place.

Let's give it a try: Google Wave adds structure and web functionality (think embedable widgets) to conversations in a more meaningful and semantic way than normal text-only threaded email and IM. A Wave server uses an XMPP extension to allow peer-to-peer communications thereby removing reliance on sole providers for communications infrastructure.

The number of people answering "yes" to this post might be underrepresented by selection bias :)