Google Wave: The Future of Email

Wouldn't it be great if I could see into the future with some quartz crystal ball or tea leaves? Fortunately for me, all I needed today was YouTube. The video link came from GoWeb 2.0, which is a visual web-apps index. I saw this video below, which captures a Google presentation to developers at a conference. They are highlighting and previewing their new email service called Google Wave. It really does change the way that communication happens. Check it out:

Technology's Power in Death

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because my father passed away unexpectedly last week. It's amazing that writing a sentence like that is so easy, yet the experience of it is so hard. What has made it easier is email. I was able to use email and Google search engine to find old friends of Dad's to whom he hadn't spoke in years, and decades even. Through email, Dad's seat partner in high school, with whom he used to trade notes and pose as her "date" for when she was dating boys her parents didn't like, showed up at our beachside memorial. I had never met almost half of the people at Dad's memorial, and they knew this part of him I never knew. That was wonderfully freeing. He had a life before me and I'll have a life after him. I am once again dazzled by what technology has done for me.

My mother, a technology whiz in her own right, has used Windows Movie Maker to create these tear-jerking videos composed of photos and mementos from his life. She even made a basic Web page for him. Can I add that they have been divorced for a hundred years? She's just that kind of Mom.