Well, by now you’ve probably all heard that our information overlords over at Google have started to unlock the gates on their modern day answer to an age old problem — communication. So Google Wave is starting to show up in the wild and everyone wants a glimpse.
And we do too. So, welcome to Google Wave Week at Web.AppStorm
Part of the issue with Google Wave is that it’s a little hard to figure out at first. What is it? How does it work? Who can it benefit?
Well, during the course of the week, we’re going to do our best to answer those questions. When Google first introduced Wave earlier this year, it was demoed in a very long video. I know a lot folks didn’t see the need to sit through the demo and so there are still a lot of people a little uncertain of what all the fuss is about.
Luckily, some folks have set their minds on explaining to real people just how Google Wave has the potential to change the way we use our computers to communicate. The video here does a great job of describing the underlying concepts behind Wave and the problems it was intended to solve.
Hopefully that helps you understand the cause of all the commotion.
Wave Giveaways
Well, last week I had the good fortune of obtaining two — yes, that’s right, two — Google Wave invites. And since I can already sense your inevitable envy and anger at the injustice of this, not to worry … I’m in a sharing mood. One of the invites I received came from a Web.AppStorm reader, so it’s only fair that the invites go back to you all.
So everyday this week we’re going to give away one Google Wave invite. Starting right now. Post a comment and mention how you think Wave may change the way we communicate in the next year.
And then check in again tomorrow for another chance.
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Well hopefully in the next year Wave will start to replace email so that everything we do will be far more collaborative, organized and structured.
Hey Chris,
Thanks for this post.
I’m interested in seeing how Google Wave’s real-time nature will expand to mobile devices, enabling real-time, on-the-go communications.
Cheers,
Matty.
Hopefully Google Wave will eliminate the need for multiple emails, attaching docs, pics, info etc and have it all in once place.
First of all i think it would be a great innovation in email and social conversation and also an awsome tool for a simultaneous work in docs and other google apps.
Cool idea! Been trying to get one.
I am excited about the project management / collaboration possibilities of Wave. As a web design / development business that has remote contractors and employees as well as international clients, I’m looking forward to using this as a live-streamed project management tool.
The philosophy Google has on this is right. Extensible, organic collaboration and communication.
Plus, the integration with Google Apps is killer.
We’re wanting to potentially integrate it with activeCollab as well.
Google Wave could change the way we communicate by improving on the existing email functionality and adding extra (and very cool) functionality.
I think that google can change the all communication thing if they put it in every day habits of users. Also developpers will have to follow and make the tool even more outstanding. I know that at my office everybody is very excited by what google is preparing !
(excuse my english, it’s not my native language)
I think Google Wave will be very effective at helping small businesses collaborate with one another by tying some of Google’s already popular apps together. After watching many demos I can see how it’s possible to create “waves” to build a time line of interactive information. I does have it’s personal merits but I think small businesses ranging between 2 – 100 employees will benefit the most from the real time sharing of data.
Google Wave seems interesting, but i don’t understand what the fuzz is all about. An invite would be appreciated.
I am looking forward to Google Wave for Project Collaboration, seems like the next best thing to in person
I think that by next year, google wave will be dominating all ways of communication. Real-time chatting, development discussions, file-sharing, social network, online games like Omerta, forums, wikis (Wikipedia will still live), etc.
I think it will be an easier way for clients to work with freelancers on a number of projects.
Wave is really going to change my life. Combining email, filesharing, chat, blogs and many more! Wow!
Wave is really the next big thing after the http protocol.
I am following wave for a while now, and I am really excited about it. I really think this is not an hype, but really a stayer that is not only going to change my life, but the life of every single person that communicates with the web.
Everybody is going to use wave, simply because the fact everybody else does. Of course will people write extensions to use wave, and there will be desktop applications to use it, but the main thing is: we are going to combine simply everything.
Just… wow!
I think google wave could make communication easier for older people. They wouldnt need to learn stuff like ‘how to receive mails / what is rss / how does a forum work’ – google wave could unite all web communications in an intuitive way. that is, in my opinion, one of the possible innovations of google wave.
I believe Google Wave is a phenomenal tool. The meshing of services and communication tools and the way we interact with each other on a personal and business manner is going change and improve in a big way. I’m an avid Google user and I would appreciate a Wave invite.
Thank you.
It looks like Google re-invented online communication. Or maybe just thought of how i should be instead of the way we work now. I’m curious about Google Wave and would be very pleased with an invite.
I would love a invite ‘caus I think that if google wave becomes the “new email” it will change how we all use our computers for work! I’m a student so for me to be able to work this seamlessly with my classmates and professors would help out to make the project we are working on so much better, and we would be able to finish faster! I think google might be on to something huge with google wave and I would love to test it out!
Wow, just personally. As a photographer this sounds great! I could invite all the crew, my assistant, the makeup artist, art director, etc. Everyone has the same information at the same time and we can all plan and prioritise the shoot together. Sign me up!
I have to be honest and say that I don’t think Google Wave will change the way we communicate in the next year, I sincerely doubt that. But, I do believe that the people who switch to Google Wave – whenever possible – doesn’t go back to e-mail as we know today, so perhaps over time, more than a year, Google Wave may change the way we communicate.
I think I’m a future user of Google Wave.
- Henning
Wave will change how conferencing and sharing media is done. That much is obvious. I think the efficiency of it all is what’s really going to stand out. The fact that everything can be done in real time will be huge benefit to the online world.
I think, if i understand it right, the wave will be the backbone of all communications, facebook, myspace, chat, emails, etc. All these communications will feed to the wave, with one central invite location to whomever you want to share it with. Or maybe I’m wrong…??? I probably am. I need another video like the one above. Need to see the rest of the 96.5% the wave can do.
What Luke said too sounds good.
Hello Wave,Bye Bye IM.
another fibber pffffffffffffffffffft
It’ll be interesting to see how this improves communication between clients/my co-workers.
Google Wave, if implemented well, will change not just the way we communicate… it could change every single task people have to do online!
In this Web 2.0 world where APIs and Web Services abound, web applications are steadily becoming less about the actual web sites. Popular services like Twitter have only become so because of the openness with which they can be accessed and manipulated by third-party systems – hence why Twitter is everywhere in hundreds of different forms.
But Twitter is a communication tool, and therefore not a hugely supportive example of what I’m trying to say.
I bet that everyone has at least one web page they check every day on a regular basis. Maybe you have a slew of them: and I don’t just mean the social networks and your GMail…
Wouldn’t it be great to consolidate all of these websites into one portal? A bit like iGoogle, and some transformations that GMail has taken on (adding calendar, docs etc etc)… but more: Not just showing you feeds and stupid widgets (a passive portal), but an active portal that enables active participation in all of these different systems from one central location! Now that would be my ideal.
Say you’re on a wave and someone asks you to do something in your corporate CMS. You’ve gotta open up the website, go to the CMS and do what you need to do. That 2 second job may take just under a minute. Not arduous, but the added time soon mounts up! (And there are more complicated tasks I can think of!)
What if Wave became your dashboard… the bots, charged with juicy API goodness, can be dropped into a wave to complete even complex tasks in no time… without even switching tabs in your browser!
If your task involves a series of websites (for instance CMS admin, domain registrar, online accounts package etc.), this could be even better. You could have bots that communicate with each other (mashups!), pulling in multiple APIs, whilst keeping the user in a single wave.
It’s not just another communication or collaboration tool… it’s a real game-changer, turning the ‘Send & Receive’ task into a journey to your central hub… communication, collaboration, and CONSOLIDATION!
This is what I want to do with Wave.
I’m looking forward to rich conversations with coworkers, sharing mockups and feature ideas.
Well, its Google. So its definitely going to be the de-facto and the fact that Wave is real-time, thats the next-gen buzz. Ok, so next year I might be discussing the project I’m working on with my boss in the UK and other team members scattered around the world through Google wave. Thats for sure.
BTW thats a nice video on Google wave.
Think about how email changed the way things are now … Wave is just an upgrade or better, replacement.
Well Google Wave I think can revolutionize the way companies interact with their clients. I think that they will be able to communicate real-time (more so than those Live Support chats) by showing screenshots, writing documents, and IMing. I think that over the next year Wave will become the future for communication and collaboration over the web. We’d most certainly love to explore it for our company.
Google Wave is going to change the way that I plan for football tailgating. Sorry, I hope you weren’t thinking that Google Wave was going to help me cure diseases and solve world hunger. At least not yet! Anyway a long time ago we used email to plan things for our tailgates but as the video demonstrated, that email quickly got out of control. So we started using a message board. It was never the optimal solution and it’s been out of date for awhile now. Threads get out of control, people forget to check the board, there is no way to have side conversations. It’s time for our tailgating group to step up our communication and Google Wave is going to do that for us.
Well Google Wave I think can revolutionize the way companies interact with their clients. I think that they will be able to communicate real-time (more so than those Live Support chats) by showing screenshots, writing documents, and IMing. I think that over the next year Wave will become the future for communication and collaboration over the web. We’d most certainly love to explore it for our company.
I think that Google Wave will encourage collaboration along with our current form of email.
I guess now people can even correct me on my grammar Live! Anyways, I think we can even cut the communication lines shorter, especially when the mobile version arrives…
Wave is hopefully going to be a complete game changer. I work in new media education in the UK and if i get my hands on the an invite I’m planning on starting to create whole courses around using Wave to collaborate between students. no more email, wikispaces, forums. It’s all going to be done through Wave I hope. Please give me an invite to get started on this!!!
jajaja, change!! modified all the way data tranfers all over the web, one of the most things I like is that you can now would exactly now where you conect with your app and this way you can distibute your information so you only send the information refered to the place you are coneccting from
I love XMPP ‘s synchronus chatting abilities, which is why I look forward to Wave
Like nearly everything google is doing, it will kick the whole communication on the internet business to a new and probably better level.
I’d love to be a part of this.
I can’t wait to try google wave. Email is going to be one of many industries that’s going to take a hit from the wave. I can see it being a replacement for all those online collaboration tools, like the ones 37signals develops.
Because it’s an open source platform, I’m very interested to see if / how developers are able to monetize their google wave applications.
In truth, I have absolutely no idea. I expect Wave will be like a new pair of sneakers that everyone buys because everyone is talking about them but once you bite the bullet and try a pair yourself, you wonder how you ever lived without them.
Well, I think Wave will just speed up und unclutter all the mail-traffic with clients und co-workers as seen on the video.
And (as shown on the presentation of wave by google) it will also give you a way better overview of your blog-comments etc. It all comes up to a central “center” to manage and read it all. To instant-reply whereever you are.
I am so much looking forward to test it. Would be pretty happy if I could get that invite!
Best regards from germany, Oliver
Yes, Google Weave will replace the E-Mail!
Google wave would make it easier to communicate with my clients spread across 5 timezones, and allow us to gather the knowledge usually lost or only in notes. This would avoid reverting to a previous choice becasue no one can remeber (what I call the history problem – why do we do it this way, because we always have).
The first I have to do is understand what google wave can do for me… and the first step of this first step is to catch an invite… so please, help me!
First off I think that this is going to mainstream what basecamp and campfire have been doing for awhile. Project collaboration will be MUCH easier, I am very excited with where this could go
I think it will improve communication with my clients.
I wonder if this will in any way alter the communication strategies of other platforms (e.g. Outlook, Lotus Notes).
I don’t think Email will ever go away; there’s far too much marketing tied up in Email today, but if I could separate newsletters from collaboration, that would be awesome.
I feel that Wave is going to be one of those apps like Twitter that is going to bring a huge change to the way we look at the web. Like Twitter I believe it is slowly going to be inter-graded with sites all over the web, from: Facebook to Blogs to Forums.
With wave the web is going to slowly begin to function is ways we didn’t know existed and change the user experience to something simpler and faster. This type of technology is one of the steps we need to make in-order to bring about Web Tops and move away from operating systems.
i’m hoping it will make it simpler to keep a dialog with my clients open and flowing consistently. i work in music and am constantly sending out mix revisions and getting requests from the artist, label, producer, managers, etc…it would be amazing to have a centralized communication hub where all the files/comments could be located.
Me and my team can use Google Wave as a means to collaborate when working on projects. The text/document editing feature was a great idea as we could edit a specific text/document on the fly which everyone can see and comment!
Going to see if I can get this implemented in the work place, make it a happier place
btw — sorry for the double post — not sure what happened there
Awesome!
As a freelancer I work out of my house, with people all over the world (NY, MD, CA, OH, India, Australia, etc.). Google Wave can really change the way I communicate with these people but making us more organized, focused, and direct.
Thanks!
It will really improve collaboration.
Google Wave will make communicating and collaborating online much, much easier. It would ease my freelance job very much! E-mailing clients and collaborators will be history in a year from now!
I only pay attention to innovations that will actually make my life easier. Wave will do that, but only if I can only get my hands on it. Thanks for giving me hope.
I’m honestly not sure what Wave will bring, but I’m sure I’d come up with something if I could play around with it.
This is going to be huge for my small business. My partner lives in another country, so communicating over IM and email has always had it downsides. Real-time viewing and message history will make collaboration a breeze. I can’t wait to get my hands on a invite… hint, hint.
Personally I think Google wave won’t change our way of communicating at all. To me it seems that it’s just a combination of existing services wrapped in a unified interface. In fact, I actually think it’s completely overhyped.
For as long as I can remember, there’s been a breakdown in complete online collaboration between my friends and I because of everyone having email accounts with different providers (Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail etc). This has generally been due to the seeming preference of email provider in the geographic location of each friend (UK, US, Canada, Japan, Australia etc).
Google seems to be among the first to step up to the plate with a truly workable solution that I can see everyone in my “clan”, at least, adopting. It predict will make my life easier… but first I have to be able to get in there with an account so I can start digging around and building up a solid “reasons to adopt” case for my friends.
Thanks for this opportunity guys!
Like what everybody else has said only shorter, I really think it will change the way we communicate, mainly on projects, but I can easily see that spreading further.
Of course it is hard to tell in advance which technologies will be successful and how people will use the – e.g. Paypal initially planned to offer their service to allow for money transfer between mobile devices, but people used it for a completely different purpose.
But I think that Wave has the potential to replace a lot of technologies. Not only does it include the features of Email, IM and Wikis, it is also extensible for arbitrary other uses (see e.g. the chess bot example or the Wave based workflow modelling done by SAP). Furthermore, the whole API is completely open. While other services such as Facebook also allow limited types of extensions and services, they are closed and do not allow interaction with other services. As Google published the Wave API, third party providers can host their own Wave servers and allow for communication with Google’s users.
I see Wave as what Web 2.0 promised to be. Web based interaction between multiple parties. If the Internet community adopts it, it will make a whole lot of things a lot easier. No more merge conflicts when writing documents in a group of people – as everyone is able to see the changes done by others in realtime.
Wave is one of the most influental (if not the most influental) Web technologies that has been revealed in this century.
I think Wave has the potential to change blogging and journalism and make it much more interactive.
One other unconventional use could be with online dating. I know couples that date online like to share their lives as much as possible, and it’s kind of inefficient right now with hundreds of emails and attachments getting confused. Wave could make it much easier to communicate quickly and share photos with that special someone.
Do we really need to explain why wave will change communication? It’s a Google product. ‘Nuff said.
Google Wave could change the whole way that I interact with my freelance clients and eliminate so much of the re-hashing that takes place in e-mail threads.
I am a college Student (in the UK, High School in US) and I am struggling to find a good way to take notes in lessons. Especially Physics, Computing and Chinese. I think the document collaboration features mixed with chat in Wave could be really useful as I can take notes in a lesson, then my friends can add their contribution, and using chat we can discuss our answers to questions. Also, the live translation could be useful for communicating with my pen-friend in China.
Google Wave would help my business help the non-profit organizations that I do so much work for. Many times, due to their limit of funds, I’m trying to save them time and expense by doing things remotely and via phone, web conferencing, etc. This will help a lot in communicating the next step in development of their web sites and internet advertising.
Thanks!
Bill Watkins
Bills Web Biz
Maybe it’s too obvious to see, but we’ve been surfing for years without any wave to catch. We were just paddling about on the internet.
Finally there will be more action and fun as there will be waves, long, big, small, fast, slow waves. You can make a wave or you can catch an existing wave.
In the old days we had to get things moving, in the future the waves will take us places.
Surf’s up!
Hopefully we will see a real time translator for Google wave so that various people can talk to each other with everyone seeing text translated into their own languages.
That would be pretty cool!
Anyway, it looks like it is here to change the way people communicate.
Google Wave will change the way of teamwork.
Everything will be simpler and centralized.
I’m skeptical that Wave, or any other single thing will “replace email.” For group-intensive
applications, email has serious limitations and Wave may come to dominate that space. We should recall that Lotus Notes was an early attempt at the same thing. It’s important to remember too that a good deal of current legal frameworks make assumptions about data retention and also about the sequential, single-origin structure of email communications that will have to be accommodated.
I think that Google wave will be huge after people get used to it. I mean it seems excellent to be honest. First of all as the guy in the video says its gonna get rid of the problems with common email secondly its like a combination of facebook and twitter and gmail which is awesome. Its is useful for both businesses and educational institutions, as well as us the people, and therefore it of course targeted at a very large audience. I would predict that Google wave is the next twitter, think it will catch on pretty quickly if Google does everything right!
I personally think that it is inevitable that the concept of google wave will eventually be adopted as primary means of on-line conversation, due to its ease of use and amazing possibilities, the question is whether or not the internet is ready and whether or not google does it right (I haven’t got it so Ic ant judge).
By the way opera had their own shot at re-inventing communication with their new unity tool, which I think is pretty good, but not quite complete, I must also mention that it does bear quite a lot of resemblance with what google wave promises to be.
Googlewave will change the online teaching and learning. I think it will save lots of money for many schools and universities.
I think Google wave will change our whole outlook on communication. I imagine that someday my grandkids are going to look at me incredulously and ask, “You used email??”
Unfortunately, for email to be a thing of a past for me, I need a Google wave invite…
As I work on a bunch of projects, with a bunch of different people – it takes me 50% of my time simply to catch up with all the conversation. We’ve tried moving that conversation into structured processess, web-apps are the latest attempt to capture conversation. However, these new apps lead people to believe that they have to do MORE work.
It seems to me that Wave is “tweaking” the standard process and will grow peoples usage, rather than introducing a new thing…. I like this idea.
Wave is going to the next level. Hopefully, it will replace the aging communication platform that is Email. Redefining the way people communicate along with becoming more efficient and faster. It’s truly awesome. It’s… Google
All online communications integrated in just one platform = the future = Google Wave
Lots of times.. when I’m sharing a GoogleDoc with someone… and it says FirstName Lastname is also editing this documetn. I want to see their edits RIGHT AWAY. With Google Wave, I could.. I want an invite *please
I think it will change the way that I teach my high school students technology!
Cool thanks! That video is great, and it sounds like google wave will really be solving the mess that I am only too familiar of that emails gather in mass as they travel around the place. Everything Google does is pretty revolutionary though so I’m sure it’ll have a fairly big effect on the way the world communicates.
Google wave seems like a personal wikipedia site that you share accessibility with friends on individual wiki’s. It will be incredibly useful for school projects, or work collaboration, or any projects you are trying to accomplish that involves more than two people.
I think if non-profit/small organizations utilize this free tool, it could really speed things up and actually increase the quality level of everything they produce.
there is a lot of improvement required in Google wave yet
I think it would be better than Basecamp or Highrise in some cases. Imagine… Simplified project and resource managament integrated with email, grouping contacts, embeddable API!, real-time editing etc.. And everything will be for free… I’ve recently watched a video from Google I/O Developer Conference and I’m impressed so…
please, send me an invitation
I really want to test it and share my UX experience with google.
Thanks!
Peter.
Over the next year, i think we’ll see a lot of the other big guys, e.g. microsoft, trying to copy Gwave in their own way. this’ll cause them to compete by adding lots more features to each, thus improving one another greatly.
Answer to what if the email is invented today !
Google wave will probably be the future since the protocol is now the old unsafe email BUT can be replaced in the future (without knowing it changed) so we can go onto a safer system which does not allow spam (or better said: does not allow sending without telling “who you are”).
This technology + the all new experience of views makes Wave VERY interesting for me. I also like to see how Google designed this (interaction design and graphic).
I’ve been very interested in this project for a while now! Personally I think Wave will define the new ways of “Web 3.0″ might even go beyond that to be a starting point for 4.0!
No more needs for products like bascamp and other collaboration apps!
Google wave will make it possible to have these features insider your website
Anybody have invites, I like to join discussions here about wave.
First I didn’t understand what the benefit of Wave is, but while watching the video many ideas crossed my mind. I especially like the combination of both email and instant messaging and the very useful conversation playback. I’m a student and working on a small project together with my classmates and even in such a small group communication is the most critical problem. I think that Wave will make it easier for people to work together and put the problems of communication on the side line.
And last, but not least it will be fun to use.
From a business point of view it will allow collaboration on a scale that is unthinkable. Where most businesses ban IM applications Google Wave will allow teams to share information, talk over ideas and generally communicate with a much richer set of tools.
I agree with Ahmad — with Google Wave, I don’t think that Collab tools will be needed as much once Wave makes it’s splash
Thanks for the generous offer! I can’t wait to see how we can effectively push communication forward and be more efficient with our time and resources. Exciting times.
I would love have an invite!!!
I guess all the invites for this have gone. I haven’t really worried about getting it, but that maybe because i didn’t sit through the incredibly looong video. The short one doing the rounds that explains briefly what it does is excellent, and solves a problem that has lead to arguments, disciplinaries in my work place, and has just generally boiled my piss. The problem of people not “replying to all”. It really does make me mad. I’d love to try it now, so if you have any left for today please send one my way and i’ll give you my take on it.
Hopefuly it will keep my pee cool lol
Regards
Stefan
can i got invite please ?
A friend referred me to The Wave. I had never even heard of it before. Google really needs to get the word out. I get lots of computer publications, attend a computer user group and visit technology sites. If Google’s Wave was mentioned, it sure skipped my attention.