I’m not using many of the frilly plugins. I’m just using it for conversations.

One trick we do a lot: put the “good” or “clean” stuff at the top of the wave, and then use the bottom part for the conversation. Then, we can run up to the top, edit the “good” part, and keep that as the master copy.

Things I wish it had: groups for contacts, so that I could ping the HBW group in one shot; Export to DOC/PDF so I could send the “good” Wave to people not in the wave; sidebar chat, so that we could see our chatter in the upper right but dump it below, while looking at the “good” part of the wave.

But I’m not pushing it. In fact, I’m keeping these notes more for people thinking on innovating on Wave, so that they can see how users are doing things with it, and so they can adapt and advance their product ideas accordingly.

What I’m NOT doing is just waving to wave, or chit-chatting. I appreciate that people are interesting in just kicking the tires, but I’m not really available for that. I’m using it for projects and plans right now, but much less interested in general chat.

That said, I have an idea for a paid “Wave-only” event some time in the near future. Stay tuned. : )

For me, Wave has become my go to place to think, to share, to coalesce, to make projects happen. In fact, when I look at my online ecosystem, here’s what I do where:

• Facebook: connect with friends and family.
• LinkedIn: share professional networks.
• Twitter: communicate in real time, and find the new good stuff.
• Google Wave: work on the future.
• Blog: think and muse and share and publish.

It’s tucked in there nicely.

What about you? Are you there yet? Are you finding much value yet? What are you collaborating on? What matters next?

In an article about Google’s Approach to Social, Liz Gannes at GigaOm quoted David Glazer, director of engineering, as saying: “Everything is better when it knows who I am,” said Glazer, who is responsible for working on developer platforms that include social aspects[.]

Google’s new approach to social media:

“Who I am, who do I know, what do I do,” said Glazer.

You can read the article for more context, but I want to take it somewhere different.

Does your company know who you are? Do they know who you know? Do they know what you do? Maybe. Probably. Somewhat.

Does your company know who your customers are? (yes) Do they know who your customers know? (sometimes) Do they know what your customers do? (not as sure)

People expect a certain level of customer service as table stakes to the game. In the new, much more wired world, I believe we’re asking for more. I want my airlines to know just how often I fly, which seat I tend to choose, how often I upgrade, and whether I normally check my bag. Think about how helpful they could be if they did something with that information.

As we move into another year of social, where location and mobile is playing much more a role, I think people will want the companies who serve them to know we’re there (checking in with Foursquare would tell them this), who in the company interacts with them and in what ways. Imagine Best Buy knowing that Corvida is roaming the floor, seeing her most recent tweets that she’s looking for accessories for her Motorola Droid, and knowing that she’s blogged seven times (5 favorably, 2 neutral) about the company.

Remember, I’m talking about this being opt in. Privacy freak-outs, save your juice for Mark Zuckerberg’s crazy privacy situation.

What more could we all do with a socially integrated customer experience?

I’m working on this right now for a potential new client partner (remember, at New Marketing Labs, we prefer to turn our clients into partners). As we explore how much more value can be derived from the blend of customer-centric business communication and social software, I think we’ll find that better understanding the traits David Glazer mentioned above (who are you, who do you know, what do you do), as well as a few more (where have you checked in, what have you said before, what do we think of you), and we’ll possibly see some better customer experiences.

What do you think?

And then I saw the light.

I went from a guy who hated Google Wave to telling Kodak’s CMO on stage yesterday that Google Wave would be the one app I’d ask to salvage if I could only save one app running today. So how? Why? What’s that about?

There are two things I’ll do with this post: explain what “the light” is to me on Google Wave, and then talk about this thing we do with new technologies.

The Light

Google Wave has been described as different things from different people. It’s been called a replacement for email (I don’t feel that way, but it’s a replacement for one way that we use email). It’s been called Google Talk on steroids (even less so). It’s been called Google Docs for groups (closer).

Google Wave allows for multi-person collaboration. It’s an easy way to work out plans and ideas and concepts with a group of people. Once you start ( here are my first feelings about Wave), you go from total uncertainty to sharing some tips to wishing it did some things better, to using Google Wave for task management.

I’m using it to propose a new book with Julien, to propose a different book with (can I tell them? You tell me later), to hammer out the details of my new soon-to-be-revealed company, to start a side project with a good friend, and several other collaborative efforts.

The “light” is that this tool is better than email about going back and forth, and also, if you use it well (I’m learning to keep the “blips” at the top as the “gold” stuff, and use the blips below a certain point as the “chatter”), then you’ll see obvious and instant reasons for using it. But if you have no obvious collaboration project to try it on, it doesn’t immediately make sense.

In a way, it’s like being given a new device that not many people have. It’s just not useful. (See the network effect.) So, once you get some collaborators and once you get a project rolling, you’ll immediately see the value.

How We Process New Technologies

We process new technologies the way we consume most everything in our lives: “what’s in it for me?” And from that, we also ask, “Why should I change the way I am?” The “escape velocity” of the status quo is often too high to care about and as such, we don’t really feel the urge to switch.

Why should I check out Twitter? It just looks like people talking about their cats. I’ve got serious work to do.

I joke that there’s this cycle where we write a dismissive post about a tech, and then we write about why we ended up falling in love with it about 30 days. This post is that in a way. I used to really crap on Google Wave, and now here I am praising it.

Should we dismiss tech right off the bat? Probably. Should we revisit again? Yes. I think as business people, it’s just not in our best interest to follow every shiny objects. But should we stay open to reconsidering a technology after a fashion? Absolutely. Without this last part, we close ourselves to potential new improvements to our process flow. Imagine never adopting email. Imagine never getting a cell phone. Communications technologies like this are important, and do change how we do business.

Make sense?

There might be other ways to be using it. You might be hosting weekly chats and/or writing blogs in there, or whatever. That’s all swell. So far, the way that I’m using it differently than email (because NO, I don’t feel it’s a replacement for email – at least not in its current state), is in collaborating on something fluid that will eventually be static.

What’s worked well for me, so far, is as follows.

Tips for Google Wave

• Make two or three “sections” inside the wave, making the “main body” section the “top” one, where all the “official” work goes on.
• Make the “second” section of the wave be the “chat” section, where you talk back and forth “outside” the document.
• Make the “third” section of the wave be the “scratch” section, where you keep bits of ideas.
• Use folders heavily.
• Use tags heavily.
• Keep collaboration down to a few people (too many cooks, that sorta thing).

In this method, I’m working on planning out my new business, working on a new book with Julien, and a few other projects. I did a few proposals with Justin for New Marketing Labs that way, too.

And You?

What’s worked well for you so far?

My Google Wave Wish List

• An Android App that lets me view/edit my waves.
• A Notifier function so that I know when someone works on a wave.
• A “hide these folks” for the people I’m not actively collaborating with, OR some way to keep “most-tapped contacts” up top.
• One button trash. C’mon. Don’t make it a CHORE to remove a wave.
• More ways to edit. I like the “Post-It” style comments in spreadsheets. Can’t do this easily? Seems silly.
• Gears support for Wave. This wasn’t just an obvious out-of-the-gate need?
• Simple export to multiple formats, not just movies. I want a document export. I can’t write a book with this if I have to do swathes of copy/paste.
• A two-wave format. In one usage, I used one part of a wave for the “body” of the work and the second part as the “chat window.” Seems like there’s another/better way to do it.

So, those are my wishes. What do you see/think/know about it?

Just read this post on Mashable saying that Google confirms they’ll have an operating system for computers out for late 2010. This is a huge move. A new OS isn’t to be taken lightly, and yet, today I was having the conversation with Rob Hatch that neither of us really use native apps that often. We live in the browser.

This doesn’t hit for another year, so let’s not all go crazy. And yet, think about this.

MSFT has decades of experience. Apple does, too. Linux isn’t a big slouch.

Would you go full-Google?

Photo credit MikeBaird

In an age when competition and pricing are opened up online and when your product is your ad, you need to spend your first dollar on the quality of your product or service. If you’re Zappos, you spend the next dollar on customer service and call that marketing. If the next dollar goes to advertising, there has to be a reason — and if the product is good enough, that reason may fade away. . . .

He’s not wrong, and yet, some degree of advertising will always be necessary, because it’s product news. We need advertising to know of things like feature changes, new opportunities, and shifts in the status quo.

How much impact does most advertising carry? Less and less, I imagine we’ll all answer, and why? I say it’s because of this: most advertising fell off its original premise: to inform.

Here’s where I betray my allegiance to the premises laid out by people like David Ogilvy (that link will be the 3rd book about or by him that I’ve read in as many months). I think the reason we say advertising no longer works is that we stopped receiving useful advertisements. Entertainment overtook function.

I think Jeff Jarvis is right, insofar as where he chose to go with his premise. In his thought-provoking book, What Would Google Do?, Jeff talks a lot about what comes next in a world where ads have stopped working. The book is essential, I’d offer.

Thing is, I think advertising is far from dead. Further, I think there’s the potential for a renaissance of quality advertising. I think the tools are here. I think the opportunities are powerful. All that’s required next are the minds and the passions to deliver the new (and by new, I might mean very old) advertising to people who seek to be informed instead of entertained.

What say you?

Photo credit marxchivist

Quite interesting. It did pick some really interesting recommendations, and I subscribed to a few. What I also liked was that it let me sort them into folders in-line, meaning I didn’t have to do a lot of frivolous navigating to put the feeds right where I wanted them.

Pretty useful when looking for something new that you haven’t found via other sources.

Has it been around long?

First off, Google Latitude has the ability to spread ridiculously fast. In its mobile form (and that’s really the only version users should care about), they’ve got versions working for Android(naturally), Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile. Missing (and what the hell are you thinking?) is the iPhone version. It’s the right tool for our phones, and it’s a great tool for those of us who don’t have only two locations in our daily map: work, home.

And yes, for some of you (I’m looking at you, BrightKite), this announcement is a bit scary. If I’m a mobile map-like product, I’ve just been served notice.

But, where this gets interesting is that the applications between Google Local, with its voting features and its review features, and now with Google Latitude with the ability to annotate the world ( I’m a bit obsessed with the concept), we’re on to something. Do you see it?

Sidebar: If you haven’t read William Gibson’s Spook Country, now’s the time to pick that up. Laced into the plot are ideas for where this could be really interesting.

Data overlaying real space has been considered in many ways before. How could we put digital markers up? How will notation by friends (because really, throwing spammy ads all over a map just means I won’t read your map) change how I interact with businesses? When I get to Denver, will I check Latitude to see which of my friends has marked the map to where the best sushi is, the most fun of the three hotels over by the school?

That mix of local, of maps, and of annotation is powerful. Storytellers, marketers, journalists, and others who think about information as more than something to read while eating cereal, I’ve put you on alert.

Dream harder.

Want to see if it works for your phone yet? Go to http://google.com/latitude from your mobile device and see what happens. (This works on your desktop browser as well).

You can find your profile here

But I tell you what: I’d get that profile really pretty, and I’d start thinking strategically about which Google results you might want to seed with your own perspective. Now, this might only work on Google “Local” searches, which is what I did, but hey. If that’s a starting point, it might roll out everywhere. And if that’s the case, again, allow me to “whoa.” Because that means my contact info and bio is on every review that someone *might* see every time they Google.

I’ll take some, thanks.

What say you?