Friday, October 2nd, 2009...9:08 am
Waving (and drowning) – an early look at Google Wave
Yesterday was a happy day; I was one of a lucky 100,000 to get an invite to try out Google Wave. Seeing as I’ve given over almost every aspect of my life to Google I suppose this is probably the least they could do in return!
So, what’s it like? Well I suppose the answer is ‘I’m not sure yet’. This is what it looks like though!
The first problem you come across when you start up your account is that you can’t import your existing contacts list (cos they’re not using wave) and so you don’t actually have anyone to communicate with! A quick post to twitter of your address (jinky32@googlewave.com – add me to your contacts list!) and all of a sudden you have LOADS of people to talk to – hence the ‘drowning’ part of the title!
The big wow moment for everybody that I’ve spoken to is that you can actually see people’s messages appear on screen as they type them!. Ok, so this isn’t a killer feature in terms of functionality, but I think something that claims to be as revolutionary as Wave needs something new and shiny that people haven’t seen before.
Wave also allows you to add a (currently small) number of widgets so that you can add them to your waves. By default you have a polling app installed (’yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’ for respondents) and a google map app which doesn’t work for me; it works for others tho so presumably i’m being dumb.
One of the problems I’m finding at the moment is that it’s quite difficult to stay on top of what’s going on in a wave since communication happens at all levels
People can reply to the wave, reply to individual wavelets (particular ‘posts’ in the ‘thread’ to use old fashioned terminology 
) and can also edit wavelets that you have posted! It’s a bit artificial to criticise over this at the moment tho I think cos the early waves i’ve been involved with have included about 15 people all doing all sorts of crazy stuff within waves simply to test out what they can do. Once we all get used to using Wave as a tool rather than a plaything it’ll be easier to assess how the new features stack up.
3 Comments
October 7th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Thanks for this, especially the tip about tweeting your googlewave address to get contacts.
It looks fun. I was really hoping for an invite but wasn’t lucky. I don’t think I put very much effort into my message to the Wave team! Anyway, this message is just a blatant fishing attempt to see if you have any Wave invites left over… I’d love one!
Apologies for any offence.
Best wishes.
October 8th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Sorry, all the invites went very quickly. If i’m given more i’ll definitely make them available!
October 9th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I was looking for some other content but found it and it was my pleasure reading this post.
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