Google Wave

[Mercy]

Google* is my digital pimp. Actually, Adobe is but Google is at least my favourite john. Google has just released a preview of their newest goodie, Google Wave (http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html). They call it their interpretation of what email would be if it was invented today (too bad Al Gore beat them to it) but it is so much more. I think of it more as one big, virtual sandbox where multiple people can communicate using all the nifty, virtual gadgets the digital world has to offer. Honestly, I still have barely a grasp of its capabilities but it looks neat. Unfortunately I do not know anyone else who is using it yet. Right now it is "invitation only" to gain access but I know I am not the only nerd on AGN. If any of our members have it and would like to test it out with me, I would be much obliged.

-m.
*I am not, in any way, affiliated with Google or any of its subsidies; I just like their products

[Icey]

I'm waiting on my friend to give me an invite. He posted on his facebook yesterday that he has 10 invites and is willing to give them out; I asked for one. Once I get it (pretty confident I will) I'll glady invite you

[Mercy]

Icey, I already received my invitation and have seven left to give out, but thank you for the offer. If your friend does not give you one, let me know and I will send you one of mine. It takes up to several days for the invitations to go through so do not fret for a few days.

-m.

[Icey]

Ah, gotcha. I misread your post, sorry.

[gdorf]

I've been sitting on a Google Wave account for a few weeks now. Its exciting technology but I am experiencing the same problem as you -- there is no one to talk with. I sent invitations to a few coworkers, but so far we haven't felt compelled to use it for any collaboration. Send me a PM and I'd be happy to try it out with you.

[The_Amaster]

*puts on his best begging face* Hey, guys, we've all known each-other for a while, riiiiiight? Any chance I could get one of those invite?

[Mercy]

I wanted to see what the "groups" function was all about anyway so I set up a group for Google Wave users on the forum. You can access groups through your profile. This should give us a way to hook up easier.


-m.

[AtmaWeapon]

I wouldn't go so far as to say Wave will fail, but it's not going to be the amazing success that Google seems to expect. Gmail was incredible because until it came out, no one thought to use AJAX to make web mail act like a desktop client. It instantly obsoleted every other web mail package. Every now and then I check in on Hotmail and Yahoo mail and they *still* lag far behind Gmail; I don't get it.

Email itself was well-accepted because at the time it was released there was no way to send messages to people cheaply and reliably; fax machines were for the rich, long-distance phone calls were expensive. It was also very simple; spend an hour reading the RFC and you could send an email from any machine that could telnet to an SMTP server. Wave is somewhat complicated to understand at first, and the programming API seems to join Java, JSON, XML, and maybe some form of REST in a way that is going to flummox anyone that doesn't want to devote full-time attention to writing things to work with Wave. I can check my Gmail from my Blackberry, but I'm going to have to wait until Google writes an app for Wave because there's no way the Blackberry browser will handle the HTML/CSS/JavaScript features that Wave requires. That's ignoring the fact that Wave practically requires a keyboard and mouse.

Wave doesn't really introduce anything new; it tries to improve several existing technologies but doesn't sparkle. I don't see any earth-shattering improvements like Gmail had. IM can do what Wave does, but isn't designed for multiple users or document generation. You won't stop using IM for things like "Hey do you want to see a movie at 8?" because Wave will take much longer to set up the conversation and you'll have to decide if you want it archived or cluttering up your inbox forever. IRC chat rooms can be used to do what Wave does, but aren't as structured. You won't stop using IRC for chat because Wave isn't as robust and most people's IRC chats aren't worthy of "archive forever". Email can do what Wave does, but it's not as convenient. You won't stop using email because you can send and receive email from a Speak 'n' Spell and it's fast; you also don't need document collaboration and threaded discussion to tell your friend you'll be 10 minutes late. Word with comment-tracking features can do what Wave does, but multi-person collaboration is difficult. You won't uninstall Word because you'll still need fancy page formatting features and there are some documents that people cannot legally allow Google to save for them. Phones can do what Wave does, but time zones and phone charges make it impractical. You won't throw away your phone because you can speak faster than you can type, and if you're calling to make sure the baby's OK you don't want to wait an hour for the babysitter to remember to check Wave. The common thread here is that Wave takes a very complicated scenario that all of these technologies fail at and does it well. Unfortunately for Wave, 90% of people only care about the simple scenarios these technologies excel at.

It's fun for some things. I'm participating in one that's spading an unknown game mechanic in Kingdom of Loathing. It's a great idea and would work, except Wave craps out as soon as we get about 100 posts into the Wave and the Google spreadsheet crashes roughly every 300 edits. We could have planned our Thanksgiving potluck using Wave and saved some agonizing phone tag. I write a lot of programming tutorials and Wave would be nice for getting feedback before I submit them. Yet while I use Gmail multiple times per day, I can only see myself using Wave a few weeks out of the year.

The closed beta is the worst possible way to release a product like Wave. You need to collaborate on something with 10 or 15 people to really see it shine. When I got my invite, I had 1 contact: the random person on Something Awful that sent me an invite. Now I've got 4 contacts who all logged on, posted "hooray thanks for the invite" and I never saw them again. It'd have been a lot easier to get what it was if, say, Wave launched on a Wednesday night and Google invited all members to a Wave discussing and analyzing the airing episode of MythBusters. Or if they launched it on the night of a big Obama speech and invited everyone to a Wave discussing it.

So yeah, I'm a big nerd that's spent way too much time analyzing Wave. It's because I follow a lot of tech nerds and they wouldn't shut up about how awesome Wave was until more people started using it and we realized that it wasn't really that good. It's not the best thing since sliced bread, it's bread with peanut butter pre-spread on it: perfect for making peanut butter sandwiches but you're SOL if you want cheese toast.

[SUCCESSOR]

Invite me!

I can also used my invites for forum members as I have maybe 2 friends I may invite. I can hardly get anyone I know on GMAIL.

[Mercy]

Atma', well *thhpppppppdt*

I already got that it seems way too...involved. Complex is not quite right because none of its functionality appears particularly difficult to use. My biggest question was about moderation controls. If anyone can edit anything anywhere at any time in a wave, it seems chaos should ensue. I remember a time when our IRC channel would have been a spammy hell-hole without op's so I am curious to see if Google implemented any controls and if so, how.


You won't stop using IRC for chat because Wave isn't as robust and most people's IRC chats aren't worthy of "archive forever".
Can you explain what you mean by Wave not being as robust? From what I can tell, Wave can do all IRC can do and then some. And it allows for things such as inline images and video. As far as archiving goes...waves can be deleted and IRC chats can be archived ( I still have a bunch of old ones from #AGN...blackmail material). I fail to see the difference there.

You should see your Blackberry app. soon. I am curious as to what model of BB you have if it lacks a QWERTY keypad & directional button or touch-screen. I do not expect Wave to be the future, but I do expect it to alter the way social networking is implemented in the future. The social networking scene seems to be Google's main target although it appears to lend itself to business networking a bit better.

I appreciate your insight because it confirms a few things I suspected. Unwieldy was probably the term I was looking for earlier. If it were not a Google product, I would not touch it. I refuse to sign up for Facebook or MySpace or any of the social networking sites even though I appreciated at their inception that they were the future. I only joined Blogger years ago because it was the easiest way for several of us to contribute updates to my UO guild's website but I do not keep a personal blog. Twitter is the epitome of over-inflated and anemic egos in my opinion. I can neither fathom the person who feels the need to give the world a blow-by-blow of their most mundane moments nor the person who wants to know them. But I hear Twitter is starting to wane except for marketing purposes and is fast becoming the glorified IM/email service it was really designed to be. Even my time in IRC lately has been more of a fluke as I was there mostly to discuss matters related to the Edibles' forum and the new incarnation of AGN. The internet is a new society, seperate but fast becoming equal to RL™ societies. Just as BBS's were the forerunners of our current forums and even blogs, Wave may very well usher in the next incarnation of virtual communication. And I like new gadgets, even virtual ones.


-m.

[erm2003]

I got an invite for Wave but I haven't jumped on it yet because I haven't had much time. If I get the ball rolling this week I will let you know. I may have a few friends who will be interested in trying it out too.

[Icey]

Okay, I'm on Google Wave now. Is there a place where everyone is sharing their contact info, or should we do so via PM?

[pkmnfrk]

Okay, I'm on Google Wave now. Is there a place where everyone is sharing their contact info, or should we do so via PM?

I apologize for not contributing to this topic, but I can't help but point out the irony.

[Icey]

I apologize for not contributing to this topic, but I can't help but point out the irony.

Hey, I positive repped you. *shrugs*

[Mercy]

I apologize for not contributing to this topic, but I can't help but point out the irony.
It's all good. I got the irony but this just seemed to be the best source for finding other people who would be interested in trying it out with me.

As far as coordinating times to be on...that is why I set up the group. I was afraid it might be easier to coordinate from there.

If anyone else is interested in joining up either let me know in here or join the group. It's "Cowabunga" because I was feeling silly at the time and thought that was wittier than "hang ten". Google Wave, surfing references...I am so lame some times.

-m.

[AtmaWeapon]

Can you explain what you mean by Wave not being as robust? From what I can tell, Wave can do all IRC can do and then some. And it allows for things such as inline images and video. As far as archiving goes...waves can be deleted and IRC chats can be archived ( I still have a bunch of old ones from #AGN...blackmail material). I fail to see the difference there.
If Google goes down, Wave goes with it (and it does go down from time to time.) If we're talking corporate chat, you can put the server in your data center so if it's down, so is everything else your company needs to work so no one's getting anything done. If we're talking private server, Wave could be more robust depending on your setup, location, and how much effort you put into it. (Something I'm holding back as another point is for some reason I have this idea that two servers can look like one virtual IRC server but I've got a pretty good feeling I'm wrong and I'm too lazy to look it up.)

Google's deletion policy is dubious; there was lots of gnashing of teeth a few years back because the Gmail policy made it clear that deleting your emails just made them invisible to you; Google would hold them for an indefinite period of time. I believe Google clarified the wording but still, you're putting your trust in a company that's got *way* too much power to be trusted. If it's an IRC log on my machine it's gone when I zap it, barring advanced hard drive forensics.


You should see your Blackberry app. soon. I am curious as to what model of BB you have if it lacks a QWERTY keypad & directional button or touch-screen. I do not expect Wave to be the future, but I do expect it to alter the way social networking is implemented in the future. The social networking scene seems to be Google's main target although it appears to lend itself to business networking a bit better.
Oh I'm sure I will, and I do have a QWERTY and scroll wheel, but my experience with blackberry apps is that no one puts any effort into polishing the UI. I haven't fooled around with the SDK so I can't say whether it's limitations of the API, but everything I use on the BB feels ghetto. Maybe it's different on touchscreen models, or maybe it's the result of having phones with vastly different capabilities to support. No experience with the iPhone though I expect I'd probably like the UI a little better. My main point is that you need practically no computing power or facilities to send and receive email, but Wave has some fairly complicated requirements. Email was adopted quickly because nerdy teens could hack out a mail client in an hour. Hacking out some kind of wave client looks like it'd take a week or so and may not have full functionality. From my slightly educated viewpoint implementing email vs. Wave support is like the difference between writing "The Pokey Little Puppy" vs. "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" from memory.

I'm curious how the unwashed masses are going to respond to Wave. I saw a lot of glowing praise initially because Google hand-picked a bunch of bleeding-edge tech journalists and early adopters. Imagine that, people who make money off of reporting on new stuff loved it! Now I'm seeing more general confusion because until the vast majority of your Gmail contacts are on Wave the service is not much different than Google Docs. I'm waiting for some kind of killer new feature or an open beta; this invite-only stuff is stupid for something that relies on social interaction. Imagine if Facebook tried to start today invite-only!

[Icey]

*puts on his best begging face* Hey, guys, we've all known each-other for a while, riiiiiight? Any chance I could get one of those invite?

Amaster, did you ever get an invite? If not, PM me your e-mail address and I will invite you.