Google Wave- My First Feelings

I think alot of people are feeling the same way. We have no one to Wave with..lol.. and alot of people dont know what the wave is all about. It will take some time like Twitter did when they first started

micro m2 2gb

Document Collaboration tool? I have just (Today), been able to attach documents to Wave for the first time by using Chrome and Gears (i have no idea what gears are). It sit's on the wave as an attachment and does not allow any comments within the doc. When attaching the file as jpeg, Wave supplies its own viewer, but still no commenting or collaboration from within. Although Wave seems to have potential as Collaboration tool, It does seem to be annoying IM at this point. Once a Document can be extracted to the Wave and commenting from within, then i think were on to something.

I waited enviously (not patiently) to receive a Wave invitation, because it sounded like an amped-up Twitter with some neat functionality.

My reality: I had to dig to find people in my network to wave with. Then we all kind of sat there, making up dumb topics as we tried to figure out the interface. Two days later, I stopped logging in and haven't looked back.

That's not to say there won't be something there for me, someday (I think I abandoned Twitter at first, only to come back 4 months later and 'get' it). But for right now, it's the Super Deluxe model and I only need the Premium.

PS - I have never, ever understood what the big deal was with Pulp Fiction (or Uma, for that matter). Maybe I'm just wired wrong!

Does anyone have qualms about handing all our data over to Google. When using docs, calendars Gmail maps etc etc - although they all work really well and seem to do everything we want them to, are we supplying them with all the information they need to keep selling things we don't need to us?

At the moment, I am also unsure what will be the benefit of using Wave, but look forward to what will be uncovered by some smart cookies!

Me and my first Google Wave contact started a wave and learned a couple of things. We started off more like an IM conversation, but played around with our replies, sticking them into each other...

Smart smart video, that musta taken time, but why'd irans and north k's leaders have to be evil?

Let's stick with past world figures to imagin-hate, so we don't get led to descrimin-hate present world figures. Thank ya!

I feel as if people are constantly trying to convince themselves that they like it. Just because Google puts something new out, doesn't mean you have to like it. Let's face it, if you're not working with other people on a collaborative project, there's not much need for it's use. If you just want to share and gather info from various people, there's another tool that has already mastered that--it's called Twitter.

Google Wave is also an excellent way to communicate and send files to your customers. Since I do a ton of stuff on the other social networks, It will make connecting easier for me and other people who use social networking.

I think Wave has similar functionality to services such as zenbe.com (projects and doc collaboration module) and alyall.com (media and photo sharing module), both of which never got off the ground. It will be interesting to see the adoption trends of Google's new tool.

Still have some mixed feelings about it myself. It *could* and *can* be a really cool tool, but right now it's not shaping up to be something as promising as the hype made it out to be.

That video is about as far as I've gotten into Wave aside from sharing with a few friends. Hasn't reached critical mass yet so not a lot of fun to tinker with yet :-)

THANK YOU for the Gizmodo video. It makes sense now!

Thank you so much for this it made my day. As usual Chris.

Wave is a place for innovators right now. It will come along. Until then, most of us will not get it.

Chris, What did you learn?

There are people around here in #nwindiana that are bigger fans of it than I am. Too me, it's a WYSIWYG editor away from being really really cool. I have the API, but I'm not that cool with PHP yet to do much with it.

Chris Keller of The Times of NWI used it on their blogs this week during President Obama's address to the nation regarding sending troops to Afghanistan.

(might have to login to see it)
https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:wa...

and given the collaborative potentials, Google Wave was a great platform. Part wiki, part chat, part insert-google-widget-on-the-fly. The content isn't searchable, which would make me consider alternatives, but the user experience shows signs of being absolutely worthwhile

Wave is neat but it's still so rough. Hopefully it will get more refined and easier to use as time goes on. I agree with Hockley that it's a solution waiting for a problem. I like Google docs too but both you need to have a use for each. Can't wait for the nxt Brogan/Smith book

That was funny... Pulp Fiction is a fav cult classic for me and the use of Wave was interesting.

I've been trying to figure it out too Chris and yeah, a few tips in there I saw. Thanks for sharing it.

The video is awesome.

How about this experiment Chris? Schedule some time for writing a blog post, and let us all know. Then, write it in a public wave, while we help you out (references / relevant posts / links) etc.

Just watching this will be awesome (should be captured on video). I'd seen a video which featured Paul Graham writing a post, with the various edits etc. kept intact. This will be that, done is a collaborative manner!

Doh! Just remembered wave has playback, so no need to capture on video.

When I first saw the Google Wave video presentation a while back, I was encouraged. I was one of the first to sign up for an invite. But, when I got into it, I was largely disappointed. It doesn't look at all like what I'm used to with Gmail, which I've become accustomed to over the past five or six years of using that. It's great for collaborative projects, but as a simple email client, it's too complicated and clunky for me.

I agree both with your assessment (IM-but-more-annoying) and with Gina and Scoble. There is tremendous potential here for collaborative work and I think it'll be very interesting to see how you and Julien come to work on it. I still find it clunky and slow and rather glitchy, but given time to iron out the bugs and really Google-ize it, this could become IM+email-but-more-useful-and-probably-more-annoying-too.

I am not sure about google wave either, but there is too much potential to ignore.
What I like about it is it's collaborative nature; which at times can get confusing - just try take part in a conversation with 10 people all responding on different 'lines'
It's power just be realized when integrated within an application - something that could benefit from collaborative waving e.g. Programming IDE or Editors

Ha - I used / use this exact same video on my blog and to show Wave to people! Great isn't it?

A couple of adventurous non-profit UK bloggers have started a third sector wave (open to public) and it's been great to kind of pool all of these experts and professionals (from fundraisers to tech types and comms people like myself) all in one big collobrative conversation.

It's like opening up the cc field in an emourmous email to a bunch of people you had no idea were even out there :)

At the moment it's kind of 'hellos' and pleasantaries - but if know the forward thinking third sector, they'll soon be some great collaborative working for the greater social good! You can find me at robmdyson@googlewave.com. Thanks for this post, Chris - and love the newsletters.

I think it will be a game changer, even though it isn't there yet. It has some rough edges, will benefit MASSIVELY from a developer community that is get to be gathered, and to some extent is fighting massive inertia (regular email works good enough for most people). But I reckon it will be pretty big. I don't think that is a radical statement at all. I think it is kind of obvious to anyone who has used it.

The problem with Google Wave at the moment is not everyone has access to it yet.

I would love to start some document/idea collaboration with the many people I've met over the course of my new online venture but unfortunately some share the same view as I do and don't use Google Wave much yet as not everyone has access to it, so we stick to means we've always been using in the past.

Will be great once it becomes more accessible :)

I love pulp fiction but can't view the video at the moment (don't worry it's me not you ;) - my 3-4 year old macbook is starting to show it's age a little bit and running very slowly!

Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com

I'm not sure of it's usefulness yet. But, I think there is potential

It's still a solution in search of a problem I think. The UI still needs lots of work to be truly useful.

Hmm. I think it's a great concept but nobody that I collaborate with is really interested in using it or trying it... So I really don't have a use for it!

Chris, I've been using Google Wave for a bit now and have found it quite effective for focused collaboration issues. I put up a screencast showing how it can be used for collaborative note-taking at conferences:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/ett/2009/11/03/emerging-...

I've subsequently done "live-waving" at several other conferences and it's worked great because at the end there is an excellent set of notes recorded and annotated by several people that I can refer back to later.

I've also used Wave for a couple of internal collaboration processes. We use Google Docs normally, and so the process before was to start a Google Doc and then send everyone an invitation to join. Now, we've sent a new wave invite and started writing directly in the wave. It's a similar process... and has worked well for us. I'm reluctant, though, to do too much internal collaboration until Google fixes the access control so you can remove people from a wave, something I wrote about here:

http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2009/11/...

I continue to be intrigued by the *potential* of Google Wave... let's see how it evolves.

Wave is pretty cool but it's still got a ways to go. I wouldn't say it's the latest, greatest invention like many are saying but I can see it possibly replacing email. For me, the biggest downfall as of this moment is the small number of contacts actually on Google Wave. Makes it not so fun to use.

I called it Collaboration on Steroids. Literally Google Wave is IM, email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Collaboration, IRC Chat, forums all rolled into one and on steroids.

I think it has lots of potential, just that so many people are hooked into Facebook, Twitter and Google apps right now that Wave is slow on the update. But mark my words, it will soon be the way to go.

If anyone is interested, I wrote a blog post on my thoughts of Google Wave, would appreciate your comments.

http://www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/Blog/Entr...

Yeah, but the question is: Do you really want your 500 Mafia War friends on Facebook collaborating with you on documents?

More to the point, I have enough grief with the folks I HAVE to collaborate with (outside of coworkers) via email without having to deal with real time "Iron Chef" (Bamm!) input!!!

I see your point. But I am very selective who I follow and who I collaborate with. I don;t think one needs to blame the software, but how people use it.

Facebook is an entirely different animal. I think Wave has potential But just like anything, it can and probably will be abused.

Like the majority of the commenters here, I've been singularly unimpressed with Wave so far. We've used it internally and externally on collaborations and test runs, and it's not really given a reason to make extended use of it yet.

Of course, the problem could be that it's from Google, who have never really been the best at showing how things can really be put through their paces.

Interesting. I know there are a number of us who are on Google Wave but are still struggling to figure out how to make it work. I know it will be cool and very useful but haven't had time to play around with it enough yet!

I played around with Wave, felt faint and realized I needed a whiskey. I'll be an alcoholic before I figure it out.

I played around with Wave, felt faint and realized I needed a whiskey. I'll be an alcoholic before I figure it out.

I have to confess, I've looked at Google Wave 3 or 4 different times. I've passed out my invites. I've watched a couple videos. I'm just not getting it yet. The Pulp Fiction vid is probably the best demo I've seen so far. Somebody sent me a link to Google's official video. It was over an hour long. I don't have that kind of time to invest in a technology I may or may not use, especially when nobody I know is recommending it - Yet.

That said, I'm not giving up just yet, and I'll continue to investigate.

I got my invite to Google Wave earlier this week and I can say I am not very impressed. I had high expectations that Wave never met. As a collaborative tool I can see the benefits. Yet it's overall functionality is still lacking. I would like to see a reason on why I should abandon Gmail and Docs for this program.

You know what else is an almost "infinite strip of paper"? Toilet paper

Hahahahahah!

Yeah, but a roll of Toilet paper is really not infinite, is it? I guess you've never ran out. I get your point, you don't like wave but your analogy does not really work.

My only comment: I'm floating in unchartered waters.

Thanks for the post Chris. We've recently begun integrating Wave as part of our daily standup meetings (scrum shop here). We have a single wave with all engineers as members and then each mornings meeting is it's own wavelet. Each engineer logs in and bullet points the items they will be focusing on that day. We then have a global conference call and bulk edit simultaneously. Everyone is on the same page. Meeting lasts 10-15minutes (tops). The benefit to us is the realtime, multi-user edit capabilities. It negates the need for us to have someone capturing notes for all and then distributing. We have seen our fair share of bugs.. mainly with performance during initial login. We are still in evaluation mode ...

Lots of potential for Google Wave but not there yet. I think it helps to think of Wave as more of a platform, which is it, than an application. That's what most people are missing. When you think of it as an open platform, all kinds of possibilities reveal themselves. But that will be up to the developer community to run with. Give it a few years and let's see what develops.

I haven't really spent enough time with Wave to give it a fair shake, but I have to admit I am not overly impressed so far. And like many, I love Google, Google Apps, Maps, Gmail, you name it. But Wave has me confused and shaking my head most of the time when I try to use it.

Hey Chris, thanks for the [honest] post...
So... instead of writing a book on Wave, why won't you just write a Wave and publish it as a Wave? I'll still buy the audio version (hopefully it will be streamed through Google Voice and cost less than than I paid for Trust Agents on Audible).

Personally, I don't have a clear opinion of how much better collaborating on Wave would be, I'll post something once I do :)

Because I can't sell a Wave for $24.95 and pocket $1.40 a copy leftovers after the publisher shows up. : )

Not yet I guess, but maybe, you'll be able to sell $5 waves and pocket $4? Time will tell... I'd pay for it, if it's good.

"...writing a book on Wave..." - I meant- writing using Wave.

I find Google Wave to be a great tool for collaborating with my team. I run a small design studio and we all work from home. Before Wave we would be sending emails back and forth all day long. Wave, even in it's early stages, made working on projects for us much easier.

Yes it does look confusing at first and it's still a bit rocky, but I can see it being a great tool for the right people. The fact that Google made it as open source and are giving developers free license to build on it is what will make it successful. It'll need to hit critical mass before it will become useful for majority of users but I have no doubt it will happen.

Yes...I watched this video before I had even seen Google Wave as my "own"....so....needless to say I had really high expectations. Then, I got Google Wave and then just stared at the screen...Tweeted about it. Had some laughs. Sent out some invites. Favorited (for later) and RT'd some help videos, posts, etc. -- and then haven't ever revisited it myself at all!

My plan? Log into it this Sunday night for the 2nd "Weekly #140wave event" (a Google Wave reunion organized by @shaunacausey for the #140conf LA peeps)

Did you hear that Google gave ALL the #140conf LA attendees a Google Wave invite? Very Cool.

I can speak more about Google Wave experience when I actually have one. LOL.

xo. z

I see it as a good brainstorming tool and IM on steroids. Other than that -I am not sure yet. I do like how Google puts stuff out and see what people do with it and then moves with the user, rather than letting commercialism drive design, though - so it will be interesting to watch what develops.

RT @ilovetypography: “google wave was built to show younger people how older people feel when they attempt to use the internet.”

Brilliant preview, really made me laugh. My thoughts on Wave is that it will have some value, at some point. But right now it's way too clunky and really isn't doing anything new that you can't do elsewhere.

Really cool video!!! I yet to have learned to utilize Wave effectively but I'm sure eventually I'll get it.

Chris,

That's brilliant... yes, you are right. Love it.

Now, I still don't know WTF to do with it except I'm thinking of reverse mastering some movie scripts!

Perhaps I'll do something mind-altering, watch this again and see if I have any more clarity on WTF to do with The Wave?

Keep me posted as you continue to unravel the mystery of The Wave!

In Strength we Trust,
Shawn Phillips

The best analogy I have heard for the adoption and application of Google Wave is that it is a lot like man discovering fire.

They know it is something very different and very powerful, but have not idea a) how to start it, b) how to control it, or c) how to use it.

In the learning process, there will probably be a lot of people who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get it to work, but discover they are using the wrong tools for the wrong job; others will suffer mild burns; and potentially a few destructive explosions.

The creative, patient or relentless however are likely to discover productive uses for this revolutionary new tool - just like fire kept people warm and did a great job of cooking food.

Two critical missing elements are context and conversion. There needs to be a logical framework for using the tool - currently, Google Wave may be a bit too abstract for a lot of people to grasp and a bit too difficult to implement for a lot of people to adopt.

In terms of momentum, Google Wave seems like a great crowdsourcing tool to enhance interactive participation at conferences (much better than Twitter hashtags.)

I have gone on record predicting its ability to revolutionize the travel agent - traveler relationship for collaboration on complex trip itineraries, but there has not been much activity in the travel space aside from Lonely Planet's Trippy gadget.

A key catalyst will be a business creating a cool turnkey application that provides genuine utility - not just an independent widget, but an integrated process. Once that occurs, competitors will rush to follow and the wave will start rolling.

A lot of garbage may be produced throughout the learning process, but I can't help but remain optimistic that Wave will provide a revolutionary new way for individuals and groups to communicate and collaborate.

This sums it up very well. As a naturally curious hunter gatherer when it comes to new web based stuff, I tend to give these tools a try but in the same vein as Chris, I'm usually not smart enough to deconstruct and reassemble them with a geeks critical eye. My focus is recognizing a potential use and in the case of the Wave as a useful collaboration tool, I do see it becoming very useful as it develops.

Bizarrely the most appropriate technical demo I've seen so far. I agree with Penn, we have yet to see both real uses, and the real library of functionality of Wave. It has possibility... Assuming El Goog doesn't bloat it too much, and it hits critical mass and adoption. In that order, please.

My feeling is that if you don't "get" Wave, then you are not the target audience.

There is nothing wrong with the tool itself. I've seen a lot of "social media types" saying "I'm not quite sure what I'd use it for, you'll have to convince me before I'll change".

Of course, you wouldn't be able to use a jackhammer to do your work either, right? But does that mean a jackhammer is a solution looking for a problem?

I don't have much use for things like Basecamp myself, but that doesn't mean I think it is a solution looking for a problem, it just means I don't have any problems that might possibly be solved by Basecamp...

I've been using it, but the only thing I come up with is, "It's Basecamp, Live". It still feels overly taxing on bandwidth, and although cool, it's either a game of wait and see what others will do with it, or experiment and push the platform for yourself. Its only enemy, much like ours, is time.

Good point, that I will extend a bit - it's "Basecamp, Live - for Free - that you will eventually be able to host by yourself, behind your corporate firewall".

I work in the nuclear industry, and there is no way no how that we would ever be allowed to use Basecamp. But something like Wave (or another tool like it), if we could host a server ourselves... that might be okay.

You're right too - wait and see, or see what you can do with it. I've chosen option #2, and am forming my own opinion rather than listening to Blogger X.

For something specific like collaborating on a written document - i.e. the outline of your book - I guess it would be useful. But as "the new way emailz work lyk omg" - I just don't get it. I've done very, very little with it in 2 months.

My favorite description of Wave so far has been that it lets young people know what old people feel like when they try to use the Internet. I've not been able to devote the time to exploring it that I've wanted to, and every time I attempt to, I just get confused and intimidated and then go play Peggle for ten minutes and forget about it.

Google Wave is going to have to give me some pretty good reasons to use it instead of other collaboration tools out there. I recently used it while helping a client pull together an e-book and I wasn't exactly impressed. Two things irritated me immediately. One, yet another open browser window to keep track of. Which means of course that several times during the course of my day I accidentally closed it and missed messages. Two, the more messages and documents we added to the wave the s-l-o-w-e-r it got.
Demonstrations like the one in the video do make it look pretty darn cool, but as of yet I don't see reasons to see it as the next BIG thing.

The lack of notifications of new waves bothered me immensely, too. If you are on a Mac, though, there is a great option in a free program called Waveboard, available at:

http://www.getwaveboard.com/

It gives you a separate icon in your Dock that shows a little number on it whenever you have new waves waiting for you. It also has some other interesting features like letting you print out a wave.

HYSTERICAL! Still not sure I understand WAVE, but I love a good Pulp Fiction reference! Thanks for sharing Chris!

That video is hilarious.

Wave is a solution looking for a problem. It's not really intended to be an app on its own. It's real purpose is to be the glue that binds a bunch of other apps into a kind of super-collaborative app. The messaging platform is where the real value is going to be, IMO. In Google's ideal world, Wave would do for apps what Microsoft hoped that RTF would do for documents.

Not a big fan of Wave. Normally I hate pimping my stuff, but I said all I had to say over here:

http://www.inspir-it.com/reviews/google-wave-re...

In the words of my friend Stefan, Google Wave is "Slow IM with folders."

Here is an article that gives more uses of Wave- http://lifehacker.com/5381219/google-waves-best...

OMG! That was the funniest use of Wave I've ever seen in my life! I'm literally crying... Chris thanks for that post. Whew, I needed a good laugh today. Awesome! :)

Wave was pretty confusing for me until I read this excellent blog post by Jason Kolb. Wave has a way to go, but I understand it better having read this: http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2009/09/why-goo...

Thank you for sharing the link to Jason Kolb's blog post. After reading it, I have a much better understanding myself of what Wave's potential is. Makes a lot more sense to understand it as the platform it really is.

Google Wave is a really great solution that's waiting for a problem. The consensus amongst the geek crowd I've chatted with is that it will probably become a platform on which interesting things are built, rather than becoming interesting on its own.