There are very few things right now that are compelling enough to draw me away from my day job for even a few seconds but I just had to post about Google Wave. Since receiving my invite into Google Wave this last weekend I have been using it here and there when I find a little time.
In the last week there have been an abundance of invites that have been sent out, many of which have been to friends of mine. Thankfully this helps to have active “Waves” with people I know. I admit that I have not been able to spend a lot of time with it, but I am having a hard time seeing where Google Wave fits into my life. Some of its features are intriguing and possibly revolutionary, but why would I make a point to use it beyond curiosity?
For those that are unfamiliar with what exactly Google Wave is here is a video that introduces it:
The concept is to basically have a threaded conversation with other people. The most interesting part is that you can see what other people are typing, as they type it. While this sounds interesting, it is most helpful to see just how many spelling errors other people make, which you then get to watch them correct, before they finish their message. I can also see where this could get people into trouble who would normally have time to delete their comment before sending something that would get them in trouble.
Another thing that I dislike is that when you hit enter on your keyboard, it does not send the message. There is however a handy little shortcut to accomplish this… Shift+Enter. But that still makes me ask the question “Why do I need a shortcut to do this?”.
There are a few other little quirks with it that really make me wonder what is the point to it but the biggest thing that makes me not want to use it is the lack of a standalone application. I understand that Google wants the world to use their new “Operating System” aka Chrome, but I don’t want to have to keep a browser open all the time to know when I received a message in Wave.
I would love to hear other peoples feedback on Wave. Do you think this is something that has a future? Or is it just a cool piece of technology that will never have the Google Beta tag removed and will eventually fade away?
If anyone is wanting to give it a try you can go to http://wave.google.com/wave and apply to be a part of the beta. I also have a couple of invites left so if you are interested in one of them let me know in the comments section and if I have any left I will send you an invite.
For the average user Google Wave will be Gmail on steroids, nothing else, it will make it really fun to send attachments, videos, pictures and links among friends and to chat, etc…
However, I think this tool will be most useful in a setting where a group of people do collaborative work with each other, think music band, programmers, designers, brainstorming, planning…that kind of situations. It is definitely meant to be for an organizational setting like churches, non-profits, business, etc. If you are in a situation where you are sending lots of emails with attachments among a bunch of people back and forth then Google Wave should be your dreams come true. But let’s not stop there…the bots, gadgets and extensions is what’s going to take GW to the next level, basically the sky is the limit, I know that sounds like cliche, but once we start having good bots, gadgets and extensions you could basically be able to do absolutely anything on GW.
On the other hand before we get too quick on the judgment here I think we need to remember that right now it’s in its “Preview” stage, they didn’t even slap the Beta label on it, so of course is going to be half-baked and with lots of bugs and kind of crappy. I’m pretty sure in a year it won’t even look the way it does now.
I must say though I was kinda’ disappointed it doesn’t work quite like it was shown in the video…we also need to take into consideration ALL what’s doing in REAL TIME…there is nothing out there like it…definitely ahead of its time…
Will it catch on? Big, big paradigm switch from good ol’ email to something like Google Wave…I don’t expect anything drastic to happen overtime, after all, they are re-inventing the email and even the email technology took a while to fully catch on…What I think will happen is that other players in the industry will come up with similar technology and then everyone (users) will eventually adopt the new way of communicating (Wave) and then it won’t be a matter of using Google Wave or not but which service/app do you like better…