First, let’s start with the basics:

What is Google Wave?

Supposedly, it is the future (and the death) of regular emails, combining email, chat, conferences, file sharing platform etc…But Instead of trying to explain it, and you trying to understand me, I will simply direct you to the official page, explaining what Google Wave is.

Here is the long video that demonstrates Google Wave.

You still don’t understand Google Wave? You are not alone! Check this site that lists what Google Wave is easier to understand compared to things like: Sarah Palin, Women etc…

Once you understand the concept of Google Wave (or not), and wrapped your heard around starting a wave rather than emailing somebody (or still think like a lot of people: “uh?”), the question I hear the most is:

What do we do with Google Wave?

What’s the use of a Wave? You can use it as simple email, where you can answer specific part of it, as a chat tool, as a video conference tool. It has lots of gadgets and applications. You can use it for group projects, sending invitations to an event and including a Google Map. You can share photos and files, play sudoku with your friend etc… There are lots of use of it. Take a look a the official site for further details. I swear this page is more user friendly than the about Google Wave and doesn’t have an hour long video to watch.

Okay, now we know what Google Wave is and how and when to use it. I have had Google Wave for about 2/3 weeks now.

Now what?

Google has announced that they have reached their first milestone and made available one million invitations. Like Gmail, Google Wave is invitation based only. When I first got my account, I didn’t have any invitations to forward. I then got 8, then 23. It seems to me that they are desperate of having new users. Well, so am I!

The reason being is that I want to give Google Wave a chance. I believe it is a cool concept. I usually like Google’s new tools or applications. However, I feel lonely. Because they restricted access to “invitations only”, and they didn’t released invitations for a while, not very many people are on Google Wave. The result being is that I don’t often check Google Wave because not much is happening there. I don’t know when I get a new wave because email notification for that would defeat the purpose, and I don’t log in often because to check, one more time, not much is happening there so I forget about it.

Between the people who have not heard of it, the ones who have heard of it and don’t care, the ones who have heard of it, desperately want in but have not received an invitation, there isn’t a whole lot of people left on Google Wave. The main benefit of it that I see is for “group wave”. Well, that’s going to be difficult if only 2 or 3 people in the group have Google Wave.

What do people think about Google Wave?

The feedback so far are:

What Wavers like the most:

The wave itself: The concept of a wave as a central place to communicate and collaborate is what people say they like the most.

One place to discuss and work together: The next most popular is the ability to use Google Wave to work together and integrate messages and documents; many respondents have indicated that existing methods and tools don’t meet all of their needs.

Extensions: Close behind the collaboration features, survey respondents liked the ability to extend Google Wave’s functionality through gadgets and robots.

What Wavers don’t like:

Invitations: The biggest request so far has been for more invitations to wave with friends and colleagues. We understand it’s hard to communicate and collaborate if you have no contacts so we’re working hard to make Google Wave scale to a large number of users.

Integration with other tools: People want Google Wave to be more integrated with their existing tools, like email. They also want to be notified when they get a new wave as their current collaboration processes are built around email, instant messaging and other similar systems.

Speed: The next largest issue has been about the speed of the system – people stated that sometimes it is too slow.

(source=http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2009/11/your-thoughts-on-waving-so-far.html)

I believe the invitation issue is being solved right now, as they released a whole bunch more. The speed issue is directly linked with the fact that Wave is web-based run. The browsers don’t have the full capacity to support it yet but it will get better in the future. On a personal note, I have not noticed a speed problem.

For the positive points, here is a list of some extension you can add: http://wave.google.com/help/wave/extensions.html

Personal View

To me, as stated above, I like Google Wave for group discussion the best. However, the coolest feature (not available yet) is Rosy, a real time translating robot. Check this very cheesy video to see how it works:

If you have any comments about this article, things you would like to add, or if you want an invitation, please use the comments feature to this post to contribute to this post or request an invitation.

Tags: Google Wave