Google Wave

[PeteAtoms]

So I got an invite to Google Wave the other day from a member of this forums (thanks Genocidicbunny )

Google Wave is a self-described "personal communication and collaboration tool" announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. Initially released only to developers, a "preview release" of Google Wave was extended to 100,000 users in September 2009, each allowed to invite twenty to thirty additional users. On the 29th of November 2009, Google accepted most requests submitted soon after the extended release of the technical preview in September 2009, these users have around 8 invites to give.

It would be interesting to get a wave going, for those who already have it. I have no contacts yet, so I've only really been waving to myself

I found a pretty good online intro to what Google Wave is and some info on general usage:
The Complete Guide to Google Wave

I've found it to be a little daunting at first, and a little boring without any contacts to wave to (hence the creation of this thread).

One of the hangups I have encountered thus far, is the inability to empty/delete the contents of your Trash folder. And there isn't really a place to adjust any settings. But it is only the preview, and I have high hopes that a bunch of other features and fixes will be included with the official release.

So, thoughts?

PS - If anyone wants an invite, PM me. I want to save a few for friends and family in the future, but I'm willing to share a couple. And anyone else who wants to offer invites, this would be a good place to do so.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Its not a great conversation tool. IRC and IM are much better suited for that. On the other hand, it is great for collaboration.

 

[Mise]

I have it. I don't understand what to do with it.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Yeah, I don't see it replacing conventional e-mail or IM/IRC anytime soon (or at all).
It does look really handy in terms of collaborative projects, writing, etc. I can see it being really useful to RPG players, online forum games, or even the NES games here at CFC.
I don't really have anything to collaborate on with anybody, so the only thing I can really use it for at the moment is some sort of messenger, but e-mail and IM already do that job pretty well.

And I just read this morning that Google has taken ownership of EtherPad. I didn't even know about EtherPad, but it seems to be a very similar service to what Google Wave is supposed to be.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

It would be a lot more useful for collaboration if everyone could get in. As it stands though, because of the invite only system, the number of people is pretty limited.

 

[PeteAtoms]

What keeps someone from creating 8 other free emails (hotmail, gmail, live, yahoo, aim, etc) and sending themselves 8 invites? And if each of those 8 additional accounts is also allotted 8 invites, a person can get 64 invites...

Its an abuse of the system, but I don't see why a person desperate to get more of his friends invites, wouldn't do this...

 

[Mise]

I've got 15 invites left btw... PM me your email if you want one.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

What keeps someone from creating 8 other free emails (hotmail, gmail, live, yahoo, aim, etc) and sending themselves 8 invites? And if each of those 8 additional accounts is also allotted 8 invites, a person can get 64 invites...

Its an abuse of the system, but I don't see why a person desperate to get more of his friends invites, wouldn't do this...

Thats possible, but its also quite a bit of a hassle.

 

[PeteAtoms]

I gave my brother on the east coast an invite the other day, and we've made two waves so far.

It was pretty cool to see both of us typing in real time. Despite the novelty, it doesn't really do much or have much of a point. It makes having a realtime conversation actually a little bit difficult. Traditional IM programs have the upper hand in this regard, plus we could see each other making all of the typos we would normally edit before sending, but that was interesting What it will do, that traditional IM won't, is let you continue a conversation when one person logs off. I guess IM programs now can make logs of conversations, but with Wave, your conversation is persistent.

Coming back into a conversation can be hard though. My brother made quite a few edits to his previous comments (and mine ) and I had a hard time noticing them. Something that he edits in the fourth or fifth reply became unnoticeable to me, we had about 20 replied sections, and I didn't notice all of the edits he made until he pointed them out. But there is the playback feature, which is far from perfect.

The playback feature does a frame-by-frame replay of all the replies/edits that get made, but it is clunky, and when you skip to the next frame, any minor edits are impossible to find. It would be a lot better if they magnified or drew your attention to it somehow.

I haven't gotten around to trying out any gadgets yet, that is still on my to-do list though.

EDIT: And apparently I was given more invites, I now have 23 to share

 

[El Koeno]

It seems like a nice way to organize a football team. Doing it by e-mail is a bit of a pain, because many e-mail are sent, so your inbox gets stuffed easily (my uni has 80mb inboxes ), and it's hard to keep track of who's coming. I use a blog with a schedule, at which people can leave messages if they play or not, so all information is accessible to everyone, but it's still a bit of a pain to keep everything up to date. It seems wave is suited for this just right. But most of my team mates aren't very tech savvy. That, and having to send everyone invites kind of beats the purpose of making it easier for everyone.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Use google calendar for that. It allows you to create a public calendar where everyone can mark their availability.