Bing and Wave

It is getting increasingly hard to keep up with the new releases and technologies that the real geeks are developing.

This week we've seen Google announce Wave and Microsoft announce Bing. Totally different products but with similarities. The first similarity is the use of really simple words as brands. The second is that these are products that are "sort of like what we know but not quite".

Wave is supposedly something that integrates email, instant messaging and collaboration saying a "Wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more". Bing is supposedly something more than search, it will be helping users make "specific decisions". Bing in this sense is a bit like Stphen Wlfram's Wolfram Alpha, though it is unclear whether like Alpha this depends on information being formatted into the data set accessible by the tool.

I can't help feeling that both of these are missing the point, and both are over-buying the appliancised PC. My experience is people like thinking and they like the tools that help them do so. So Bing looks like it is off the money. As to Wave I'm just wondering what they are offering that isn't what Skype can already deliver - plus I really worry about "the cloud" as a computing machine.

Meanwhile I noticed that Austar (through their owner Liberty Global) is promoting the integration benefits of the Digital Living Networks Alliance.

In related digital news Ruprt Murdoch has declared Newspaper future is digital. Exciting and interesting times ahead.