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Google Wave might revolutionize the way we communicate online – a single application combining email, instant messaging, commenting and realtime collaboration in a form which Google calls “part conversation, part document”. One interesting result might mean saying sayonara to hello and goodbye.

Wave allows online written communication to simulate verbal conversations, in which participants interact in real time rather than at the end of discreet “messages” sent and received at various intervals. In Wave, Alice might ask Bob a question, but Bob gets the gist of the question part way through Alice’s message, and begins to compose (mentally or actually) his answer before Alice has hit “send”. Just like a verbal conversation.

So no need for the usual email etiquette of “Thx, Alice”, “kind regards”, or “best, Bob” to end every message anymore. Of course this means some Wave conversations will mimic IM chat, not email – and even IM conversations usually end when one person signs off, goes to lunch or remembers that actually they’d really better get on with some work. We all have subtle techniques for drawing verbal conversations to a close, and a similar etiquette exists for IM. But in Wave, if there’s no concept of “hanging-up” we might find ourselves developing new ways of being polite (“no you jump off the Wave, no you jump off the Wave, …”). Is a Wave conversation ever really ended, or only paused?

Wave is designed around “conversations” rather than “messages”, but as with verbal conversations and endless corporate email trails Waves may well stray off topic, breaking the metaphor. Where will the boundary be between one conversation and another? Discipline will still be required, Wave or no Wave. We’ll surely need to find some kind of equivalent to “goodbye” – or some orderly way to close a Wave permanently.

Stop the Wave, I want to get off!

As well as being potentially unending, a realtime Wave conversation will also be faster and richer than an email or IM message (though nothing new to IRC veterans). But that means it might require all of my attention – no time for multi-tasking between messenger and YouTube when I can see every character my fellow participants are writing, as they’re writing it. So will I find myself torn between the always-open freedom of the Wave and the need to give attention to something else? Will I be able to cope with multiple concurrent Waves in various states? Will I find myself even more of a “Wave Slave” than I am an Email Slave right now?

Maybe we’ll find our online existence becomes just one huge group conversation. Maybe a new “generation W” will find working while Waving as natural as walking and talking at the same time. Maybe Google will give us oldies the option to use Wave in “slow and sedate” mode, and email will become the new snail mail. One thing’s for sure: Wave has the potential to change communication behaviour just as email, IM and SMS before it making it a truly disruptive technology.

Wave image by striatic on flickr

Altogether Digital has been formed by the merger of DC Interact with Engine’s two other digital agencies, Meme London and Eyefall, and together we’ll be able to offer clients a genuinely integrated end-to-end digital capability. As someone who’s worked in smaller independent agencies for most of the last 12 years and witnessed a few cut-and-shunt affairs along the way, I can honestly say that this merger is about as sweet as it gets – we have wonderfully-complementary specialisms, but think very much alike – and we’re already working well together. It’s fantastic to be able to say with confidence that we’re going to create something new, bigger and better – more than the sum of its parts, in fact.

Eyefall specialise in (broadly-speaking) response-based campaigns, including search (PPC and SEO), and they do it properly, too – but they’re so much more: they understand the role of search within a much wider integrated approach. They’re a smart bunch – talk to them and you’ll appreciate how insightful their approach is. Meanwhile Meme’s award-winning creative work speaks for itself, and delivers results – once again it’s just so downright satisfying to be able to say how much I respect their ideas as well as their execution. We at DC fit neatly ‘between’ these two seemingly-separate approaches to digital communications – and the result is that it feels pretty seamless, covering just about every major tactical digital discipline, but not in some departmentalised kind of way. And being part of Engine means that the integrated approach will go far beyond “websites and stuff”.

There’s lots happening – we’ll be moving over to Engine’s Golden Square offices sometime soon, and I’ve got to figure out how to change my email address… but of course we’re still very much ‘DC’ – just part of something bigger.

Finally, being an (ex) geek as I am, I will just point out that the date of this momentous day is 05/06/07 (unless you’re American) which – as well as tripping off the tongue nicely – just happens to be 4 years, 4 months and 4 days after another momentous day (my wedding day, as it happens). How neat is that?

His series on Reflective London surged past a tightly-packed field to grab the glory.

If you fancy seeing the full set of entries make your way down to Rawstorne Towers sometime soon.

Hmm, I wonder if we should upload the photos to that interweb thing? Anyone know how to do that?

There’s this idea around that web design is an almost abstract skill which, in essence, makes the design disappear so that the content (text) can be read clearly. The content that the design is framing is considered for its form only – size of text blocks, line length, relative type size, positioning etc. The addition of some images and nice little graphical touches is again a purely visual enhancement. A designer’s job – in this world-view – is to ensure that the reader can read, and nothing more. Well all this is good clean living, and without doubt there is plenty that a good designer can and should learn from a study of typography.

But is this really what we’re all doing on the web? For a digital agency, this abstract idea of moving elements of content around the page for optimal visual efficiency barely scratches the surface. Sure it’s a vital skill, but hardly the heart of the matter. ‘Design’ in websites is about a lot more than this – and therefore it’s not 95% about creating efficient easy-to-read grids.

All website design says something – whether it means to or not. In other words it is not only content that conveys meaning. Some years back we coined the phrase ‘communication design’ to describe this aspect of what we do – we occasionally see this phrase around so it’s not just us. The point being that all design in itself communicates messages to the user/reader – and this of course should be used to the best advantage. So even ‘invisible’ web design says something about the designer, or about the content owner, or about the content. Maybe the intention is to say simply “don’t see the design, the content is the thing you’re here for”. Fine, then maybe it’s pure typography. But that’s quite rare these days; even the design of your blog can say (almost) as much about you as the words you write. Often, of course, ‘design’ is in fact an artefact of the creative process – it must support a proposition for instance, or express some facet of a brand, or be a visual representation of an idea – even simply cue instant brand recognition.

This is where the real challenge is, and where a real-world ‘web designer’s skill really lies. To convey meaning and express subtle, complex, difficult, interesting or stimulating messages through design, to challenge the viewer’s preconceptions and generate a response. Grids alone do not do this.

Finally – I’d better admit that I’m not a designer, so clearly I know nothing.

So my parents are staying with us at the moment. Which is nice. And last night we were having one of those quiet Royle Family-style evenings, just sitting around. There was my dad (in his mid-sixties) on the laptop (+ wifi broadband) checking his gmail account and writing a Powerpoint presentation for next weekend. Of course. And me, on the laptop, blogging, as you do. My wife, reading a magazine (she’d be online but the men had half-inched all the laptops…). And my mum – knitting…

And here’s the thing. In the background, the TV, subtitles on, muted – but still on. I know, I know – such a waste of (green) electricity. It suddenly felt to me that amidst the almost neo-edwardian quaintness of the scene the ‘tele’ had taken on a new role – one akin to the ambient / background character of radio, receiving just enough subconscious and/or occasional attention to be ‘there’, but no more.

But maybe this is not unique to those of us who know where the subtitle and mute buttons are on the remote. Is TV being relegated in this way in other people’s lives? Attention is a precious commodity, and maybe we’re just not willing to give as much of it to the box as we used to. Maybe people don’t “feel that television is important in their lives” to quite the same degree as various advertising / planning tomes have taught us over the years. TV’s not going away. But the way we use it is changing.

If we’re not even watching the programming properly, what hope has TV advertising got in this future?

So whereas other networks let you roam onto hotspots in nice useful locations (cafes, train stations, parks, launderettes, that kind of thing) – with the help of these people, for instance – FON needs that old critical mass thing in a big big way. Can this work? I really hope it does. Maybe I should stop being critical and start adding to the mass…

Not much more to say really. Other than “must get me one of those doughnuts…”