Wave hello to Google Wave
Google has launched Google Wave, which it described as “a personal communication and collaboration tool” (reference: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/).
The Guardian describes Wave as a “browser-based tool that combines email, instant messaging and real-time collaboration [which] could have impact on journalism”. The article then goes on to explain how Wave could impact journalism: “Google Wave could speed up the collaborative journalistic process from research to writing, including quotes, enriching articles with pictures and videos. Stories could be corrected by subeditors using Google Wave, while readers could suggest changes and use the tool to discuss the article”.
Taking its name from the name for communication in Joss Whedon’s Firefly (reference: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/146353,opinion-googles-wave-drowns-the-bling-in-microsofts-bing.aspx) and with error messages being quotes from the TV series, Google is truly showing its geekiness with its latest product.
To officially launch Wave, 100,000 invitations were sent out (many of which are currently being sold on eBay, with some selling for over $100), but who got them?
Four types of people got Wave invitations:
- People who signed up very early via the request form
- People with accounts on the Developer Preview of Wave
- Paying users of Google Apps
- People who were invited by someone already using Wave
OK, so you got your invitation and want to try it out, or you didn’t get an invitation, but want to see what you’re missing - what’s so cool about Wave?
Wave has lots of features:
- Waves (different sections of Google Wave) can be embedded on any website
- Attachments are no longer needed, simply drag and drop your file for everyone to have access
- It’s completely real-time, so you can see what someone else is typing, character by character
- Playback - you can “rewind” Wave to see what previous happened
- It’s possible to develop various extension and add-ons for Wave, because it’s open source
- Because all conversations are shared, Wave could be said to be a type of Wiki because anyone can add and edit information to a conversation
- Language and grammar - Not only can Wave autocorrect your spelling, but its autocorrection function is so advanced it can tell the difference between words such as “been” and “bean”
However, not everything is shiny and happy in Google Wave:
Internet Explorer (not even the newly-released IE8) isn’t powerful enough to run Wave due to its JavaScript limitations and inability to render HTML5, so Google have isolated the majority of internet users. To combat this, Google released Chrome Frame, a plugin for IE which allows Wave to be run within IE. However, most likely, only a minority of IE users will install Chrome Frame, so Google has still lost a large number of potential users.
Another problem is that many users are finding Google Wave quite unintuitive, with hundreds of new terms and features being introduced, which will just confuse may users and may even drive them away.
With invitations only being sent out yesterday, it’s too early to tell whether Google Wave will be a success. But with all the hype that has come before its launch, Google Wave has a lot to live up to to satisfy the 21st century internet user.
