Google Wave - thoughts so far?

[murraybiscuit]

I see there's been a thread on invites and then it all went quiet. Perhaps because the conversation had moved. Or perhaps because everybody got bored...

Anyway, I tried it out the other day, chatted for a few hours with 3 friends and haven't opened it since. I like the idea of spanning the 4 areas of conversation online:

1. Forums
2. Email
3. IM
4. Facebook / social media

Strengths:

1. Nice chronological flow
2. Nice media integration
3. Simple googleish interface

Weaknesses:

1. Not great for realtime chat - alerts stay in browser and out of sight, no public chat, no friend finder, no email alerts.
2. Slow in FF 3.5
3. I can see a bit more integration happening with google voice, gmail, google talk, etc in future. For now, it seems pretty 1 dimensional.

How did it work for you guys?
Perhaps a poll?

1. It's not really doing anything new, facebook does most of this already
2. It's immature, but has potential for some people, in specific scenarios
3. I could see a use for this on a daily basis
4. This is going to change the way the world communicates - revolutionary

 

[hj2k_x]

///needs invite

 

[rurapente]

me too

 

[Scooby_Doo]

an invite would be fantastic.

 

[S1ght]

As I am lacking contacts there's not really much I can do to test it at the moment, so my 1 contact and I messed around on it for a bit. Tried a couple of the extensions. For the notification it's kind of annoying that you don't really get notifications when a wave is edited or added, but a way around this is we found an XMPP extension where you add that to a wave and then you add the bot as a contact on gtalk and all notifications get sent there.

Otherwise I haven't really found much use for it so far, am still waiting for my wave to let me send out invites so can't help anyone there I'm afraid.

 

[murraybiscuit]

yeah, i've just added the xmpp contact.

i don't have any invites. you either have to be a 1st or 2nd round invitee in order to send invites.

i guess once people's friends are actually on the site, it could become more useful. for now it's a big empty room

 

[mh348]

I also want an invite.

 

[murraybiscuit]

do a search for the invites thread.

 

[Viva]

I have a few invites left, PM me and i'll send you one. It's not a direct invite though, just a 'nomination for invitation'.

 

[LazyLion]

*** Blank Stare ***

That about sums up my thoughts.

It is about as useful as ..... e-mail at this stage.

 

[DJNgoma]

2. Slow in FF 3.5

That's why it's called Google Chrome .

1. It's not really doing anything new, facebook does most of this already
2. It's immature, but has potential for some people, in specific scenarios
3. I could see a use for this on a daily basis
4. This is going to change the way the world communicates - revolutionary

I rate it a 2.5 to be honest.

/Offtopic
I've got a few invites myself, even got invites for Google Voice but the service isn't available in Soth Africa.

 

[Viva]

Wave is quite slow at the moment, but we have to remember that it is still very early. I have confidence in Google that it will be rock solid by the time it hits beta

 

[Asha'man X]

I don't know exactly what they trying to achieve, as it seems to me that there are better tools out there that do the same job.

One thing that interests me is that it doesn't support IE. Yes, I know there are other browsers out there, and there is Google ChromeFrame for IE, but unless they somehow support vanilla IE, or Microsoft brings out a new IE soon, Wave may not exactly take off. After all, IE still has the majority market share.

 

[SlinkyMike]

I don't know exactly what they trying to achieve...

You and everyone else who has posted in this thread so far.

What I see in GW is a truly revolutionary document management system.

Imagine all of those disparate spreadsheets and word docs that are typically generated by a project; business or workgroup - think of the way they are typically managed: shared network drives; sharepoint etc.

Now think of how many people actually use those cumbersome, unwieldy structures.

Ok, now imagine that all of those docs are available in a wave, annotated with relevant comments; signed off inline; available anywhere at any time and searchable like your gmail inbox!

For people like myself and a great many others this is a godsend, basically what they have done is make document management look like email which means people will actually do it and that to my mind at least is why it is a revolutionary and very relevant development.

If you cannot think beyond social networking or web 2.0 or whatever you will (and have) missed the point.

I don't doubt that people will find tons of uses for the technology but at its heart I believe that DM is where it will be used to great effect.