What is Google Wave?

Written by: Catherine Liu

I recently came across an article in Times Magazine about a new communication tool called Google Wave. It has yet to be fully released, and is therefore not too well known. Even those people that have heard of it oftentimes do not know exactly what it is. One way to become acquainted with Google Wave is to watch Google’s explanatory video filmed at the Google Wave Developer Preview I/O 2009 Event. However, if you don’t have the time and energy to watch an hour and twenty minute long video (who does?) here are the essentials of what is discussed so you can get an idea of what Google Wave is, what it is used for, and how to use it yourself.

What is it?

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” that is going to be “an open system of communication”. It builds on the idea of e-mail, but instead of treating the conversations as individual messages, an entire conversation is treated as a shared object hosted on a server. This means that users can enter a "Wave" and be able to see the original message, all of the replies, photos, documents, and anything and everything that has been said. To put in simply , a "Wave" is essentially a long email thread where everyone "replies to all" -- but instead of a cluttered and confusing email chain, it is all contained on one simple, easy server.

The Basics:
•Click "New Wave" to begin a new thread, and type a title in the first line.
•Once you finish typing your message, click "Done" and it will ask if you would like to add more users. This is when you choose who will receive the message and therefore have access to this "Wave".
•When you receive a message, you can reply to it by simply splitting apart the message and inserting your response directly in the part of the original that you want. It is sort of like editing the original message to add your own thoughts.
•When users happen to be on together, you could do a wave "IM". The difference between regular IM and the IM in Wave is that every character you type is transmitted as you type, even before you click done or enter to send your response. You can also choose to disable this function so no one sees what you are typing until you hit "Done". This is really cool, and is some sort of middle ground between chatting online and chatting in person.
•You can add a person to an ongoing conversation. (Usually with e-mail, the newest person to the conversation would not have access to the previous conversations/emails.) You would place that person into the Wave and they would have access to the conversation and the original message as well (to access the original message and previous edits or additions, click on "playback"). The new participant can now join the conversation with ease (very useful for group conversations).
•You use "Private Reply" when you don’t want all the participants to see the message you write. You may also add participants you do want to see the message by adding them to the private reply thread.

Pictures:
•To attach pictures, you simply drag them into the wave. You can upload and download pictures, create group photo albums, copy images from one Wave to another new one, etc.

Embedding
•You can embed the whole Wave onto a webpage - a cool feature that expands group viewing capabilities much further.

Extras:
•You can use Wave on mobile devices
•New Spell Checker: It doesn’t just find your word by matching it up with words in the dictionary…it takes into account the context of the word so it helps you find the word you need even faster! Sometimes it automatically corrects your errors!
•Gadgets and Games: Play games (like soduku, chess) with all the benefits of Wave's playback
•Translations: Wave translates your sentence automatically into your desired language. Currently there are 40 languages available and it will translate between any pair of languages you choose.

My first impression of Google Wave is quite positive. It is a new, more convenient way to communicate, combining already existing communication forms into one easy-to-use space. Wave allows for real time communication among large groups of people. It is a whole new way of sharing online.

For More Information:
wave.google.com
code.google.com/apis/wave
www.waveprotocol.org


Edited by: Sara Saldi

Campus MovieFest at NYU

Comm Club is excited to finally be gearing up for the school-wide event, Campus MovieFest. 2010 marks the third year that Comm Club has sponsored the festival. Campus MovieFest is a program that provides students with HD Cameras and MacBook Pros (complete with editing software) completely free of charge, allowing hundreds of students to produce their films and compete against other NYU student filmmakers. Students borrow equipment for one week in order to complete a 5-minute short film on any topic or genre. This allows a chance to win recognition as well as prizes. Campus MovieFest's goal, as outlined on their website, is:

"To showcase the next generation of moviemakers and empower people everywhere to share their stories with the world a vision that has provided students the chance to learn skills that will be beneficial throughout their lives."

NYU's Top 16 films will be showcased at a red carpet Grand Finale on April 23 in Cantor. Winners then move on to a regional competition hosted at Lincoln Center, which will be part of the TriBeCa Film Festival this year!

For those of who want to participate, sign up on the website at http://wwww.campusmoviefest.com and come to Kimmel 905 on April 6th to start filming! CommClub is also looking for volunteer judges (as long as you're not competing, you can judge!) to watch student-films and eat pizza. We look forward to seeing you at the upcoming CMF festivities!

Please contact us at nyucommclub@gmail.com with questions or to participate!

February Monthly Meeting

Hello Comm Club! Just wanted to remind everyone to come to our first general meeting of the spring semester. It is tonight, February 23rd at 7:00pm. We will be in the MCC Department (239 Greene Street on the 7th floor).

We are excited to see everyone and hear your ideas about events for the spring semester! We already have some amazing stuff planned including free studio tours, show tapings, movies, and more.

Special guest and former Comm Club President Aaron Azpiazu will be there talking about Campus Movie Fest, an exciting event taking place later on in the semester. You definitely don't want to miss hearing about it, it is a fantastic opportunity!

Looking forward to seeing you all! And as always, there will be FREE food provided!

MC’s Weekly Top 10 Media List

Hello, fabulous readers, and welcome to the first installment of a new weekly feature in the NYU Comm Club Blog where I, irreverent cultural commentator that I am, give you the 10 most notable media events that happened this week .Let’s get started!

10. A family portrait of the Obamas taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz has hit the internet. The picture is cute and everything, but when I heard Annie was taking the photo, I was both confused and mystified at what it might look like. I had a feeling they wouldn’t be going for the Miley Cyrus “sheet wrapped around naked back” imagery. Sasha and Malia are too classy for that. But instead, it’s just a typical family portrait. Oh, and where is Bo? Maybe he urinated on Annie’s digital equipment and was kicked out or something. Anyway, take a look for yourself:

9. Everyone start protesting now- the popular website Hulu.com, which allows visitors to watch recent episodes of popular TV shows, has announced it will start charging in the near future. That’s like having to start paying to listen to the radio! Most likely, the site doesn’t make enough money just off the advertisements shown throughout the episodes. I don’t care. Make the advertisements longer, do whatever you have to. Paying actual money to watch something I could watch on TV for free, such as Courtney Cox’s latest antics on “Cougar Town” goes against my basic moral principles.

8. Some bright person decided to start a rumor that Kanye West died, and it turned into a trending topic on Twitter. Some people actually believed it. Why? Because earlier in the week, Kanye premiered a video on his site where he is graphically murdered. And they say those who insist Americans can’t tell fantasized violence apart from reality are crazy. But I digress. I’m sure ‘Ye was thrilled with the free publicity. In fact, it actually wouldn’t surprise me if he started the rumor itself. You know he couldn’t stand Balloon Boy stealing his spotlight. This displays yet another example of the wide influence of Twitter, as the social networking site becomes a place where actual news breaks out.

7. Lil’ Wayne pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a gun here in New York on Thursday. Why this is news, I’m not sure. He will be sentenced in court in February and could serve up to a year in prison. Watch for his sales and critical acclaim to spike notably in the coming months. We all know the media loves when celebrities act up. About a year ago, rapper T.I. was also found guilty of criminal possession and sentenced to prison. But not before racking up #1 hits and Grammy nominations. Anyway, I don’t really see what the big deal is about this. When I see Weezy, I expect him to be packing heat the way I expect an old lady to have packets of contraband restaurant ketchup.

6. This is certainly convenient- Google has announced that they are adding a “music search” feature to their site soon. You’ll be able to type in a song or artist name and instantly get links to purchase or stream music. I’m not yet sure how this is all that different from going to Google’s main page and just searching the name of the song you want followed by “mp3”, but the new design of the word “Google” (featuring a shiny musical note instead of the two “o”s) looks cool, and maybe that’s what’s most important after all.

5. Everyone set your TiVos and DVRs immediately, because on November 16 at precisely 4 p.m. on ABC, Oprah’s talk show will be graced by none other than Sarah Palin. She will be promoting her memoir, “Going Rogue”, or as I would have named it, “Going Off-TelePrompTer”. Anyway, this is shocking news since Palin has rejected offers to be on the show in the past, most likely because Oprah basically picked McCain’s opponent as our president. What Oprah (Gayle, Stedman, African school for girls) and Palin (moose) have in common, I’m not sure, but this will surely be an event.''

4. NBC’s decision to give Jay Leno his own talk show every night at 10 p.m. seems to be having some negative, yet predicted, consequences. Due to Leno’s lack of popularity and competition from other network's shows, viewers are dropping off of NBC before the 11 pm news comes on (which is not great for the affiliates). Leno’s show also takes away time slots where other shows could have had a chance to prosper. Perhaps some of NBC’s promising new shows would not have been cancelled if they were given the opportunity to score better ratings in a later time slot. For instance, "Southland" might have fared better as a 10 p.m. drama. None of this is great news for the network. However, I don't think Leno or his chin are going anywhere anytime soon.

3. In an interesting political-media development, the Obama administration has called war on conservative Fox News. A quick Google search reveals many opinions on both sides of the war, with some publications praising Obama for going after the network, and others cautioning against it. This news came as a surprise to me as I suppose I always thought there was a tacit understanding between politically skewed networks and the administrations in power. The incident all started when Obama appeared on all the major networks, except Fox News, to talk about health care in response to some comments made by FN commentators Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace called the administration "crybabies" in response to the incident. The fighting's been on ever since.

2. For the past six months, the media has been consistently and annoyingly reporting on the drama surrounding Jon, Kate, and their 8 paychecks, I mean children. Here’s the latest update in case you care- Jon is trying to get on another reality show. Shocker. When I saw that headline, my mind jumped to the obvious choice- “The Biggest Loser”. But it turns out he wants to be on a CBS show such as “Survivor”. The only way this would work is if you stuck Jon on an island and had that evil-looking possum thing that lives on Kate’s head chase him around for a month. I would be a faithful viewer to that one. Of course, it's debatable if another network would want to take a chance on Jon given that he was recently sued by TLC for violating his contract. (Jon claims he decided he didn't want his children around the cameras anymore). I have a feeling his desire for a new show is a result of the fact that, given that Kate is now raising the children while Jon picks up 22-year-olds and hangs out with Michael Lohan, the old show will be much less focused on his wonderful presence. Also, Jon was recently court-ordered to return the money he stole borrowed from his and Kate’s joint account- to buy more flashy, cubic-zirconium earrings, no doubt.

1. Speaking of events making me lose my faith in humanity, we have now arrived at this list’s #1...Balloon Boy. Last week, when it was discovered that a boy had apparently flown away in a hot air balloon, the public watched spellbound as authorities searched for him. Turns out he never left the ground- the little boy was hiding in the attic the whole time. The father, Richard Heene, called the media before the cops when his son “went missing”. There has been a general consensus that the media greatly overreacted to this incident; for a while, it was certainly the most repeatedly covered story on all news outlets. This feeling of irritation has certainly only increased with reports that the whole thing was a set up and the father is seeking his own reality TV show. Recently, the mother herself admitted it was a big hoax. So, that leaves the father as the only delusional maniac left still claiming it really happened. With any luck, either the police department sues him for every penny he’s worth, or we send him up in a hot air balloon headed for Mars. I’m done.

Michael Cavarretta is a freshman in the Communication department and a new writer to the blog. Feel free to email him at mwcavarretta@gmail.com with any comments, praises, or criticisms about this week’s post. Actually, forget about that last one. You can just keep those thoughts to yourself.

Written by Michael Cavarretta, Edited by Sara Saldi

October 30th MCC Graduate Conference Open to All Students

Hey Comm Club!

The MCC department's graduate conference is occurring on October 30. It is an open event for any student interested in attending! There will be a number of informative panels with topics that include media activism, vision and sound as a commodity, and the politics of memory. Think you might be interested in attending? Want to find out more information about the day's events, panelists, etc.? Check out the schedule below:

Event Time:
Friday, October 30, 2009
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Location:
Helen Mills Theater
137 West 26th Street

Schedule:
9:00 Doors open & Coffee served

9:15 Welcome
* Marita Sturken, Chair
* Rod Benson, Director of Graduate Studies

9:30 Panel I – Vision, Sound and/as Commodity
* Jamie Berthe, “Deconstructing Tarzan or Reconstructing Racial Hierarchies?”
* Melissa De Witte, “Memory and the Spectacle: Phantom and fantasy in a new economy of the image”
* Jennifer Heuson, “Soundscapes of the Black Hills: An acoustemology of the American West”
* Faculty moderator: Martin Scherzinger

11:00 Panel II – Politics of Memory
* Lisa Gitelman, "Daniel Ellsberg and the lost idea of the photocopy"
* Hatim El-Hibri, “Sectarianism, Maps and Beirut: From the French Mandate through the end of the civil war (1920-1991)”
* Christine Weible, “How the creation of museums and memorials at the site of the ex-ESMA is impacting collective memory of the Dirty War in Argentina”
* Scott Selberg, "Cognitive Fever: Remembering Alzheimer's at the National Library of Medicine"
* Faculty moderator: Nicholas Mirzoeff

12:45 Lunch served

1:30 Brian Larkin, Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, “The Mobility of Images and the Ethnography of Value: Cinema in Nigeria”

2:45 Break

3:00 Panel III – Media Activism
* Victor Pickard, "Crises and Opportunities in the Ongoing Struggle for Public Service Media"
* Evan Brody, “(De)scribing Disease: Capitalist HIV imagery and cultural memory”
* Dwaipayan Banerjee, “Media Activism in its Local Place: Lessons from Bhopal”
* Marco Deseriis, “The Faker as Producer: Politics of fabrication and the three orders of the fake”
* Faculty moderator: Allen Feldman

4:45 Reception & Drinks served

If you have any further questions, please contact us at nyucommclub@gmail.com

Compiled by Caitlin Pirraglia, Edited by Sara Saldi

Our Second Monthly Meeting Updates

Hey everybody! First, we want to thank everyone who came to our second monthly meeting this Wednesday. We had a great turnout, and we loved how enthusiastic you all were! For those of you who couldn’t make it, here is some of what happened:

• First we discussed the Media, Culture, and Communication Undergraduate Conference. This is a conference that occurs in the spring every year. MCC freshmen are required to attend, but everyone is welcome. This year, Comm Club was approached to help plan the event. This is an awesome opportunity, especially for the freshmen, because we have the ability to make this mandatory conference really cool. We started brainstorming some ideas for topics, speakers, and an interesting format. We always need more ideas and help. If you’d like to help out with this, please email us at nyucommclub@gmail.com
  


• The second order of business was about the blog (the one you are reading right now!). We really want to get some new writers and expand our subject matter. This blog shouldn’t just be about NYU Comm Club happenings – it should be about the world of media! Please contact Sara Saldi at sjs491@nyu.edu if you have any interest in writing a blog entry for us (or even start a column!). It can be as fun as an article about your favorite TV show or as serious as an interview with one of your professor. Remember, having your writing published looks great on your resume.
  


• Now that we have our budget, we can really start planning events. At the meeting, we tried to get a feel for which events people were most excited about (an NBC studio tour was one example. A cupcake branding taste test was another). Though these events were ideas proposed by the E-Board, we are always looking to hear about what YOU guys want to do. Always feel free to approach us with ideas.
  


• Abi and Natan briefed us on the Social Media Society, a professional society focusing on the world of social media. The Comm Club was able to attend the launch of this brand-new society (click here to read one of our past blogs about it). We hope to form the first student chapter of the Social Media Society. Abi will be keeping us posted!

If you have any further questions about what happened at the meeting, please email nyucommclub@gmail.com.

The next Comm Club Meeting will be Wednesday, November 18th at 7:30. Be there!

Comm Club Attends BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands 2009 featuring Microsoft, Audi America, KFC and Cisco

I had the pleasure of attending BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands panel today as a “Delegate" of New York University (according to my badge). As I had expected and hoped, the conversation that Burt Helm, BusinessWeek’s Marketing Editor, moderated ended up focusing on Social Media. Each executive (from Microsoft, Audi America, KFC and Cisco) had his or her own perspective on how it can and should be used as a marketing tool.

Here are the live notes (condensed and edited to the best of my ability) from this panel. Please pay attention to the bolded inserts which are my attempt to comment on the statements they made from the perspective of an NYU student and Comm Club Vice President. Also stay tuned for embedded video from youtube.com/fastforward, once they put up the content.

Apologies for the poor image quality.

Monday, September 21, 2009 2pm-2:45pm

Panelists:

Javier Benito – (JB) Chief Marketing Officer, KFC

Scott Keogh – (SK) Chief Marketing Officer, Audi of America

Marilyn Mersereau (MM) – Senior Vice President, Cisco

David Webster (DW) – GM. Brand and Marketing Strategy, Microsoft

Moderator:

Burt Helm, Marketing Editor, BusinessWeek

Jez Frampton, CEO of Interbrand, gave the introduction.

Interbrand is the firm that provides the statistics each year for BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands.

OPENING COMMENTS:

JB (KFC): Our biggest challenges….are all related to disposable income, how do we make sure consumers are spending money on our brand and making it their brand of choice.

SK (Audi): In my role it’s incumbent to keep optimism in the system because if it turns the other way there are a whole bunch of problems.

MM (Cisco): – We watch the Cisco ranking by Interbrand very closely… My job is to teach people at Cisco what branding means, to teach our inside executives what the brand means….Our second biggest challenge – we grow through acquisitions…130 companies…We acquired Pure Digital who thinks there Flip is a great brand too. “ARE WE A HOUSE OF BRANDS OR A BRANDED HOUSE? THIS IS ONE OF THE CHALLENGES WE DEAL WITH.”

I capitalize this quote not because she was yelling, but because it really stood out to me as something important to consider when dealing with such a big brand. This is of course something NYU probably deals with on a daily basis. There is Steinhardt, Stern, Gallatin, Tisch, but there is also this one larger NYU brand that appeals to many of the thousands of students who apply.

2:14PM

QUESTIONS:

BH: David Webster: Asked about the launch of "Bing", a new online search engine

DW: Is it Bing, or Bing by Microsoft? These are key questions. People needed to know that it was from somebody they had heard of. In order to even have the credibility….by in large around the world consumers have an enormous trust in Microsoft.

BH: How do you silence bloggers and press versus perception of actual customers, how do you go about thinking about that.

MM: When I do something outbound, when we talk about a new product, our server business, we launched on blogs, where technologists were talking about it first. Then, later on, more traditional media. Most marketers tend to focus on outbound stuff…” She finished off her statement basically saying how often marketers tend to try to find new customers instead of trying to find already existent fans of their product. As the best social media practitioners in advertising have already been teaching, the uniqueness and importance in social media is the ability to let the fans of your brand come and find you. It is very important to be out there in different social spaces so they can find you when they start looking.

SK: We have all sorts of mechanisms to track things. We get back to people. Enthusiasts make sense, we’re an enthusiast brand.

BM: How does Microsoft play in social media?

DW: If you looked at “echo chamber.” Critical thing is when people are actually influential and how to engage them. We have been very active. We have 10,000 bloggers at the company, Twitter accounts for every sub-brand.We crowd-sourced the creative we ran on TV –took user-created videos and put them back on TV. We used it because it allows you to have a conversation. But, don’t get distracted by 5 people, if you overreact to negative statements it will feed into their empowerment.

BM: Last Social Media question for Scott: Is Social media the best marketing medium for building trust, is it useful period?

SK: I’m asked by many people at Audi, why don’t we make this a social media cause, or uploadable. The odds to make it become a viral success is small. Often we just need to focus on selling cars and investing in the future. Social Media from our point of view would be more for customer service, customer relations environment. Not just a pure marketing tool.

The rest of the panel was extremely interesting and due to Advertising Week’s policy on recording I was not able to capture it. I did however ask the first question when the panel was opened up to questions:

My Question: “This is a question for David from Microsoft. I am a student from New York University and every year I notice that most students are purchasing Macs. What is Microsoft doing to compete in this market and to make their computers as sexy as Apple’s products seem to students?”

DW: We have an entire team dedicated to this. For operating with bookstores, the fact that our products are much cheaper compared to Apple’s products, especially during the economic downturn. We are heavily invested in .edu engagement. Also, we have other brands with a “high degree of relevance and engagement.” If you have a Xbox, with a PC you can connect them and get high-def movies, etc.”

The second question from the audience was: What social media spaces do you engage in?

DW – I tweet, I Facebook, personal blog, post videos occasionally on YouTube, I dabble in pretty much everything. I blog through Facebook to over 150 of my team.

SK: Twitter, Facebook

MM: Social Media as a broadcast, “I see a lot of guys from high school that remember me”

-Natan Edelsburg, Vice President, Communications Club