Google Wave

[Rommel]

First of all, if you need to know what Google Wave is and what it does, check out this e-mail:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo"]YouTube- What is Google Wave?[/ame]

Is anyone else here on Wave? What are your experiences so far with it?

[thedaxxman]

Funny video. Google Wave sounds pretty interesting although I've just found out about it. I'm not sold on it though. I'm kinda stepping back on the monopoly that is google.

[RageProphetXIII]

I just got it. But I have no one that uses it. So I haven't had much luck trying it out to it's potential.

[jmhc74]

Ok, here is a link to an actual demo on Wave. Seems to be more of a non-business app....but here you go. Seems very cool...

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

[Rommel]

Well, I've been playing with Google Wave for two weeks now. My experiences are mixed.

When you treat Google Wave as what it truly is, "a hosted conversation", it works great. In other words, if you use your waves as if they were e-mails, it's great. I like how you can add links to youtube and Wave will detect it's a video and embed it into the Wave so you don't have to click on the link. I like how you can do Google searches inside the Wave and output the results in real time with whoever you are talking with.

However, Google is also pitching Wave as an all-in-one service. They say that you can use this for document collaboration. I tried doing that with some friends in college. We all had this big Operating System homework, so I asked them if we could use Wave to work on this project. They said ok. Right off the bat, I noticed that this is not Wave's forte. Here are my three main concerns:
1) The playback tool is annoying because people can see the mistakes you made and there is no way to hide that you're a dumbass.
2) Editing and replying in a document gets really messy real fast. After everyone adds their comments, what could've been a 1 page document becomes a 3 page document. There are ways around this, and you can copy the contents of the wave into a fresh wave without the comments and edits, but this is cumbersome and annoying.
3) Lack of features. This is an early version of Wave, but the fact that there is no way to embed or create simple tables annoyed the heck out of me. We ended up doing the tables in Excel and then attaching it to the Wave, but this defeats the whole purpose of the "hosted conversation."

Also, Google Wave crashes... A LOT. I worked on the above mentioned project for say 8 hours total, and during that time, Wave crashed on me about 10 times. Luckily, no content was lost. I don't believe this to be a major concern in the future, as this is a very early release of Wave and Google programmers are literally the best in the world. They'll figure it out.

All in all, I really, really liked Wave as a substitute for e-mail, but not as a project collaboration tool like they try to advertize. If you like to blog, e-mail, or any of those one-to-many type of activities, Wave will be great for you. But if you want to use Wave for a many-to-many project (e.g. a group project), it still has a way to go. I would wait until the final release, but I still don't think it's a good idea. Try Google Docs instead.


Anyways, if you want to "wave" me, my wave address is: rommeltj@googlewave.com

Google Wave is invitation only for now. I still have a couple of invites to give away. If you want to check it out, let me know.

[keyser28146]

Hmm

I see a lot of potential here, but the invite only Beta seems like it is really buggy.

I tend to use programs like Celtx for screenwriting, since it's free and does a great job, or OpenOffice... something everyone in a project can get and use without it costing them anything or worrying about "which version everyone has"

[jmhc74]

Similar to what Apple did with the cell phone I can see Google Wave changing the lanscape of email. The question of whether Wave itself pans out is not the point...BUT I've got to think other competitors are looking at this and putting their own twist on this.