Tuesday, January 26, 2010

My google wave post just broke :( but google fixed it :)

About 3 months ago, I wrote a google wave gadget, which allows users to collaboratively work on a google wave gadget within google wave.  I've gotten a bit of publicity out of it and its all been great.   Sadly, tonight, the wave that I created to document my gadget has crapped itself, collapsing under the publicity of its own popularity, with more than 200 blips and 500 participants.   The main blip in the wave now has no content whatsoever, and I can't view its history to repair its view.

This is a bad sign.  I like google wave, and I want to support it as a new way of communicating that is easy, effective and efficient.  The problem is that I can't trust it.  If its going to destroy information on me, how can I rely upon it?  Sure, its in beta at the moment, and I probably shouldn't complain, but I'm disappointed.  Its got a truckload of participants now, and I understand that that brings a lot of complexity, but I don't want to loose data.  If I could restore its state it would be fine... The really sad thing is that I'm due to deliver a presentation on my gadget tomorrow night, espousing how good google wave is and how it can be used.   What am I going to do now?

Time to address reliability issues Google.

Update: I've asked google to look into the problem, and it looks like somebody accidentally deleted all of the content in the wave.  This could have been a simple PEBKAC, or a more complex interaction of network latency causing the google wave software to do something unexpected.  It is beta software after all, so these things are to be expected.  It wouldn't be a problem at all, except I can't get access to playback to retrieve an older copy.

Never fear however, the dynamic chaps at google have had a look at my wave, and apparently there are over 30000 revisions to it.  This was a bit much for the javascript engine's tiny little brain and it broke.  They've fixed it now, and all is back as it was.  Thanks Christian!
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