Good riddance to Google Wave.

I never understood what the fuss was about.

Wave may have been clever programming, but it didn't do anything other applications already did better. In fact Google has better tools for most Wave tasks.

It did instant messaging although Google already had one and a half tools that do the same job very well.

Wave did communications. Why bother when Gmail is so much better?

Wave was a collaboration tool. Who needs that when collaborating on Google Docs is so easy?

There was a social media twist to Wave, but Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are all simpler to use and way more polished.

Wave had a bad user interface and was difficult to use.

More importantly, it was difficult to understand what was going on and what one was supposed to do.

Google Related Links is a tool to help push traffic around a web site.

In theory it does the same job as Zemanta's Interesting Articles feature – it allows you to add a list of related stories and Google searches to pages.

At the moment there's a test page at Googlelabs: http://relatedlinks.googlelabs.com/.

It isn't as elegant as Zemanta – and it certainly doesn't integrate well with WordPress. But its results are interesting. I tested the service on my earlier post: Windows 7 is great. Its price isn’t.

Here's what it came back with:

Related Links by Google
Norton's troubled Internet Security Windows 7 beta at Bill Bennett
Microsoft's Security Essentials is almost un-noticable at Bill Bennett
Layoffs no panacea | Bill Bennett
Norton Internet Security – the alternatives at Bill Bennett
In memoriam Twitter at Bill Bennett
When Outlook trumps Gmail at Bill Bennett
Go East young man (or woman) | Bill Bennett
Computer security guide – what are the main threats? at Bill Bennett

Related Searches by Google
windows 7
windows 7 download
windows 7 review
isn
isn't it

As you can see only two of the eight "related links" are directly relevant. Although another might just qualify if we are generous. And only one of the five 'related searches' is useful. That's 3 and a half out of 13 or around a 23 percent success rate. Obviously some work is needed.

My plan was to use Google Docs exclusively for two weeks. I wanted to test its viability as a Microsoft Word alternative.

The experiment fell at the first hurdle. I caved in after two days because my productivity dropped too far. Worse, I made many more errors with Google Docs than with Word.

Let’s set the scene. I’m a professional journalist. Typically I’d write 10,000 or more words a week. That’s close to 2000 words each workday and a few more on the weekend. When you’re tapping out that many words, the tools really matter.

Productivity hit

My productivity dropped 25 percent when I switched to Google Docs. This may have been temporary – maybe my speed would pick up as I became familiar with the software. But the price was too high – a 25 percent productivity drop means I working 33 percent longer to produce the same output. This is not acceptable.

What was the big problem? Google Docs requires more mouse activity than Microsoft Word. Both applications offer a full set of keyboard shortcuts and many of them are the same. However scrolling up and down the page to read my work was considerably harder in Google Docs.

Cutting and pasting copy from other documents was also harder. And curiously I had problems switching between web browser and Google Docs. Switching between a browser and Word using alt-tab is easier than control-tabbing through a large number of open browser tabs.

Just to make sure the problem wasn't related to the browser, I used Google Docs with Firefox and Internet Explorer. I also tried using Google Docs in a separate browser Window.

Two days into the experiment my wrists were starting to ache from the extra mousing. I didn’t experience serious pain – I bailed out before reaching that point.

Never mind the quality, feel the width

Speed is important. So is quality.

My other problem with Google Docs was proofing. That’s the business of rereading your words to find and correct mistakes or improve the text. At first I struggled to find why my proofing was so bad. Then it hit me. Text in Google Docs extends across the entire width of the screen – while Word text is restricted to relatively narrow columns. Proofing is harder with wider text columns.

There maybe ways to work around these problems, but I need to get on and earn a crust, so earlier today I went back to Microsoft Word – a better experience.

A press release from Nielsen (not online at the time of writing) says Mozilla Firefox is winning New Zealand  users away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

It is, but Microsoft's browser still accounts for a 60 percent market share. According to Nielsen, Internet Explorer dropped from 72 percent to 60 percent between July 2006 and July 2009. Over the same period Firefox climbed from 11 percent to 20 percent. The remaining market share goes to rats and mice – with Google's Chrome picking up just 3.2 percent of the market.

At the current rate, it'll be at least two more years before Microsoft's market share drops below 50 percent – and longer again before Firefox goes past Internet Explorer.

Nielsen's press release doesn't explain what it means by market share. However, the company manages a net measuring business where it tracks traffic to a number of commercial websites. Browser information is included in the traffic information, so it's reasonable to assume Nielsen  adds up each browser's share of the total traffic to these sites. Because Nielsen's clients are among New Zealand's busiest sites, it is a reasonable measure of total share.

What Nielsen doesn't measure is the way many users, myself included, switch between browsers for different jobs. I'd also like to see data on which versions of the various browsers are used.

There's also no mention of mobile browsers – which may still be very much a freak show – but are likely to grab market share quickly now New Zealand has two reasonable mobile data networks.

http://nz.nielsen.com/news/index.shtml

Google's plan to steal author copyright is the flip side of New Zealand's asymmetric copyright regime.

The Stuff.co.nz website has a story this morning saying New Zealand authors are angry about Google's plans to scan and digitise their books.

As the author of a popular book I understand why they are upset. It seems odd the New Zealand government, like so many others, is happy to bend our laws and traditions to give extraordinary levels of copyright protection to the huge movie industry corporations, but is unwilling to stand up to Google when it wants to strip the rights of local copyright holders.

Could it possibly have anything to do with the local authors not being able to finance teams of expensive lawyers and political lobbyists?

Here's the current state of play:

• A child in New Zealand downloads a movie from a huge multinational reducing its profits by a tiny amount – perhaps there'll be one less caviar egg on the table at the next Hollywood indulge-fest. The child will lose its internet connection, pay a huge fine and could face a criminal record.
• A huge multinational can steal intellectual property from a New Zealand author, wiping out their livelihood and reducing our cultural treasures – Maori have a good name for it Taonga.

Does this add up? There's something asymmetric going on here.

Authors are knowledge workers and deserve your support. You can read more here:

NZ authors protest Google book plan – technology | Stuff.co.nz.
The Great Google Book Grab
Google steals taonga, rips off law commissioners
New Zealand Society of Authors

Incidentally, if you're an author with a taste for technology, you might like to include your name on the New Zealand media people on Twitter list.

Gerard McLean asks Do you know how to do anything?

He says people with identifiable skills to fall back on will be better placed to survive the downturn.

I've already found this is true. After a spell in management, I've gone back to my roots as journalist and freelance writer. I now earn a decent crust writing thousands of words each week. That's because I know how to do something.

McLean isn't perfect. He spoils his otherwise insightful post finishing with:

We don’t need more knowledge workers or consultants or bloggers. What we need are people who can actually do things like write code, design stuff, make pottery, edit video. And we need people who can do more than just one step in the process.

We need craftsmen. And lots of them who can also lead.

Well that’s just plain wrong. People who write code, design stuff and edit video are all knowledge workers by just about any accepted definition of the term. People who can do more than one step in the process are higher level knowledge workers. So are craftsmen. And craftswomen too.  Those who can do these things and lead other people exist even further up the knowledge worker food chain.

Halfdone says New Zealand has about 200 notable blogs. Google's Blogspot accounts for half of the total. WordPress.com is a shade under 20 percent. Typepad has only a four percent share and the rest are not immediately obvious.

Why does Blogspot (also known as Blogger) dominate?

Its technology seems dated and Blogspot sites look inferior to WordPress.com sites.

WordPress is intimidating for beginners, but far more flexible and, once mastered, is easier. It makes better use of graphics and  has many useful built-in features.

Blogspot dominates

At first, I assumed it is because Blogspot, being owned by Google, has a higher profile. It is easier to find and the Blogspot name is more descriptive of what it does. These things matter for raw beginners.

Safety may also be a reason. People know who and what Google is, so they feel comfortable. WordPress is obscure by comparison and something of an unknown.

There could be a mercenary reason. Blogspot allows users to place Google Ads on their blogs, which, theoretically at least, means they earn money. Not much. In fact, I doubt if anyone below the top ten New Zealand blogs has seen as much as a dollar from Google advertising.

WordPress doesn't allow Google ads on its hosted blogs. Occasionally WordPress may put one of its own ads on a WordPress.com blog.

Scrubone, who runs Halfdone, suggested the reason for Blogspot's success is that it's been around a lot longer than WordPress. This is true and it is a likely reason, even though many Blogspot sites on the list are recently created. Being the incumbent in a technology market is often enough for success.

As the 1990s flicked over into the early 2000s, Linux briefly looked like it might challenge Microsoft Windows as an alternative operating system for everyday PC users.

The open source operating system has come a long way since then. And Microsoft scored a huge own goal with the confusing, incomplete and often downright annoying Windows Vista.

Yet Linux has barely managed to break out beyond its hard-core following of geeky devotees. Windows now faces bigger threats to its monopoly than Linux.

Meanwhile Linux struggles to gain traction. It isn't hard to see why.

It is almost a decade since I wrote for the now defunct Australian Linux Today website run by Internet.com. At its peak, posts would attract tens of thousands of reads, and hundreds of comments. Being slashdotted is addictive.

Linux doesn't pay

Apart from the odd loon, most of the discussion and debate was informed and intelligent. Internet.com couldn't make Linux Today pay, at least not in Australia. The parent Linux Today site lives on under the Jupitermedia banner.

The demise of Australian Linux Today echoes the broader problem with Linux and its inability to reach a wider audience. We had bankable traffic, but nobody in the Linux business bought our advertising.

That's because nobody in the Linux business has much of a marketing budget. That's because hardly anyone in the Linux business makes money from the open source operating system. Which is turn is down to the fact that Linux is given away.

There was no profit to support the kind of thriving ecosystem that underpins Microsoft Windows.

There's not much today either.

Or, more to the point, there's not the money to fund the kind of thriving ecosystem underpinning Google, mobile computing and the world of Web 2.0 websites-cum-services-cum-applications now  threatening to outflank Windows.

Linux, open source software, or something similar, underpins most Microsoft challengers. And Vista's annoyances aside the threat of Linux and open source did much to prod Microsoft into improving its act. Today the company and its products are massively improved.

Linux is good, but unpopular

Today's Linuxes (is that a permissible plural? Perhaps I should write Linuxen) are good. There's not much in Vista the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.10 fails to offer. Kubuntu is possibly better. Fedora and OpenSuse maybe less consumer-friendly, but are still plausible options.

It's great that companies and people freely give their own time and energy to open source projects. Long may that continue.

Linux users operate at the frontier and continue to pioneer new ideas and technologies that will permeate into the mainstream. But I can't see Linux ever climbing out of its geeky gravity well and being truly mainstream. That day has passed.

Linux may find its way under the bonnet (hood if you're American) of mainstream technologies, but I doubt it will ever be the face of day-to-day computing.