My Thoughts on Google Wave: It's Complicated

Published November 4, 2009 @ 20:23 in Technology

XXXI've been beta testing Google Wave for about a month now, and... well... it's complicated.

I want to love Google Wave, because it's a bloody seductive premise, but it's just not intuitive enough for mass appeal. I'm one of those bleeding edge guys when it comes to web apps and I have a very hard time wrapping my feeble brain around Google Wave's advantage. I can't tell you how many folks I've been waving with who just throw up their arms and exclaim "I don't get it!". It's so hard to figure out, and life is so short...

And chatting via Wave is dangerous. Unlike every other IM that sends your message when you press "Enter", Wave sends each character over in real-time. Typos, mistakes and awkward pauses while you check your thesaurus or Wikipedia are fully exposed. It makes you not want to chat. How's that for improved communication?

Wave is supposed to be email were email invented today. It's very ambitious, but possibly too smart for its own good. Besides, Google has already re-invented email for the better. It's called Gmail.

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7 Responses to "My Thoughts on Google Wave: It's Complicated"

Oliver
November 4, 2009 / 20:48

I'm still hoping for an invite. They're really hard to come by.

Toronto Mike
November 4, 2009 / 20:52

As soon as they give me another batch of invites, I'll offer 'em up here.

Adrian Bashford
November 4, 2009 / 21:07

Wow... All I have to do is remind myself of all those emails that I wrote and DID'T send to decide... I shouldn't do wave!

The_Voice
November 5, 2009 / 00:54

I think it will be useful once the federated version is released. That way companies can deploy it on their own servers without worry that confidential information will be sent into the Google cloud. In a corporate environment, I see it being invaluable.

laura w
November 5, 2009 / 05:40

For web conferences you should try http://www.showdocument.com ,
Great for online teaching and collaborating. I use it for working on my designs with other in my field.
Its free and pretty simple - you just upload your file and invite others to view it together.
- Laura W.

James
November 5, 2009 / 09:13

Your description of the chat functionality reminds me somewhat of early versions of ICQ. There's a reason I dropped it for anything else.

codexofdreams
November 5, 2009 / 10:44

After browsing forums for hours, I finally got my hands on an invite.

One problem. I have one contact.

Wanna add me? :)

Oh- and when they send me a batch of invites, I'll link here with a couple :)

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