Will Google Wave change how we work online?
In May this year, during the company’s I/O conference, Google announced that it was currently developing a “personal communication and collaboration tool” which would hybridise the best of email, instant messaging and social networking to change the way we communicate online.
The public Beta program for Google Wave was opened to a limited 100 000 users, who were each permitted to invite 5 further users, on the 30th of September. Despite Google’s assurance that the HTML5 based application would revolutionise how internet users relate to each other, the response thus far has been mixed.
In short Google Wave is a real time communication platform which combines several aspects of email, instant messaging, document creation and web search into a single browser based application.
The web interface uses the Google Toolkit, which in turn allows for ‘Waves’ to be created which contain multiple thread conversations based in real time and stored on a central server. This reduces storage requirements for users and allows for collaboration between users, on a very similar basis to that found on social networking site Facebook.
Any participant in a wave can edit the content and add participants during the process. All replies and changes are seen in real time by character. Each message is referred to as a blip and a ‘Wave’ can also hold a ‘Wavelet’ which is essentially an IM conversation between two parties.
Google Wave also offers several extensions which allow for translation into 40 different languages, spell check and drag and drop file sharing. In addition, Google plans to release the source code in order for third party developers to design extensions which would cater to niche markets.
Reception
In principle this tool could provide for enhanced project team work within the work place as well as collaborative document and content creation. Despite this the reception to the Beta version has been negative, with many users complaining that the interface is confusing and unintuitive.
Problems within the structure of Google Wave have also arisen. Some users have complained that the alteration of documents and the dragging of images into the ‘wave’ did not function correctly.
Despite this Google developers have stressed that the current version is still very much in its infancy and has some way to go before the tool is ready for release. If the company can rectify the problems and streamline its interface then Google Wave may become an entirely new, yet widely used method of communicating and working online.
Loading ...