On Google Wave...
An article posted on Nov 28, 2009.
I recently received an invitation to join Google Wave. Having heard so many comments regarding it being "Email 2.0" and the next big step in internet communications, I signed up and was eager to see what the big deal is.
For those of you who don't yet have access to Google's newest lovechild and haven't been reading the blogosphere lately, Wave is supposed to be a collaboration tool that allows you to communicate in real time (using text and files) with those critical to whatever you're working on.
After having used the product for a respectable time period, I'm not amused. Don't get me wrong. If you're looking to collaborate with a group regarding something on the internet, Wave might be a great choice. However, it begins to feel like an ugly mixture of email, message boards, and IRC (online chat).
Having been on IRC, an instant online chat protocol, for years, I have grown accustomed to instant communications about ideas and projects. Get a group of people together in a chat room, and you can discuss what you want to work on in real time.
Google Wave takes this concept, and makes it available in both real time and a stored copy that you can "playback" if you miss the meeting. While this could be useful, I don't think it's as much of a step forward as people like to think it is. Sure, you can share files, invite contacts more easily, organize waves, etc., but at the end of the day, you're still just mixing message boards and live chat. This isn't the most revolutionary thing I've ever seen.
For those of you who need a good collaboration service and have invites to Google Wave, by all means, try it out. However, to those that think that Wave will revolutionize group thinking, I would beg to differ.