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Initial Reviews of Google Wave; Neat, But Noisy 336

bonch writes "Reviews of Google Wave are out, and opinions are that it has potential as a development platform but is noisy to use for real-time communication. Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter."
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Initial Reviews of Google Wave; Neat, but Noisy

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:32PM (#29611281)

    ...now trat's really saying something

    • by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs.ajs@com> on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:16PM (#29611761) Homepage Journal

      Twitter and Wave are communication tools. In the hands of someone who has something meaningful to say, they're powerful. In the hands of someone who has nothing to say, they're no more or less a waste of time than any other communications tool.

      • Except for if you have something to say in twitter you can't... making it more of a waste of time than other tools. At least it might waste less time by not allowing you to say much.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Exactly. If you look at different people's e-mail inboxes, some are full of primarily work-related communiques, while others are filled with idle conversations with family & friends. If you find that your inbox is filled with chain letters and unproductive correspondences, then perhaps you need to reconsider your e-mail habits and who you give your contact info to (or use 2 separate e-mail accounts). It doesn't make sense to blame the communication protocol or your e-mail client. Likewise, instant messa

      • I would argue that Twitter and Wave have the exact opposite effect. In the hands of an lucid and incisive orator, they are next to useless as a medium for the dissemination of ideas. On the other hand, for vapid, shrill and fallacious authors they are a godsend, enabling them to broadcast their general message of stupidity and ignorance to a wider field than ever before.

        In a way, they are a microcosm of the Internet itself!

        • by aj50 ( 789101 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @08:28PM (#29613097)

          I guess that holds true, but only if you use wave like twitter (which is to miss its main attractions).

          Where wave really shines is for collaboration, communicating ideas between people working together towards a solution rather than disseminating information to a large audience.

    • by martas ( 1439879 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:32PM (#29611893)
      who's trat?

      [in panicked tone]: who's trere?! HELLO??
  • by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:35PM (#29611321)

    After watching the demo, a lot of people were commenting that the major problem is that it runs counter to how the brain operates...we aren't designed to heavily multitask. Email provides a linear conversation at least. Still, it's interesting and I think that it does have uses. Perhaps the user feedback will cause it to evolve into something more manageable for a regular brain. I think the potential to assist with remote project collaboration is great.

    A lot will depending on how people use it, not what it is. There will need to be settings to help people set limits on the barrage of information.

    • by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:43PM (#29611421) Homepage Journal

      Yeah I work with an air traffic control system. The UI has to take a lot of complex information and present it to the user in the most pertinent way possible. It has to understand what is important (an aircraft which is off course for example) and give just enough emphasis to that object without taking too much of the users attention away from other tasks. It is a fine balance, particularly if you expect your UI to be used for hours at a time in a stressful environment.

    • by Zerth ( 26112 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:47PM (#29611467)

      Email provides a linear conversation at least.

      Clearly you interact with people who know that top-posting is evil and have no urge to reply to each email before reading the following responses that have been sitting in their inbox for 3 days.

      I envy you.

      • Yes, we are fortunate in that way. I do know what you are referring to and have seen it...that and people who reply ADHD machine gun style, a couple of words or a sentence at a time, covering one topic in each email, when they could have composed one longer email detailing everything.

      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:11PM (#29611707) Homepage Journal

        Gmail threads top-post emails into a coherent conversation just fine.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by value_added ( 719364 )

          Gmail threads top-post emails into a coherent conversation just fine.

          Bah. The concept of threading is as old as dirt, and despite people "discovering" it, or otherwise implementing it as a "new feature", there's plenty of people using email that still don't grasp the fundamentals. Either way, there's far more to coherency than how a given list of emails is visually sorted.

          As for Google's Wave, what I remember from the videos was that replies (at least those shown being made) were made "in-line". If that'

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

          So long as you have no experience with coherent linear conversations, yeah, Gmail provides an excellent simulacrum of what you might think one looks like.

      • by alienunknown ( 1279178 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @08:47PM (#29613185)

        I agree, top posting is awful.

        Email provides a linear conversation at least.

        Clearly you interact with people who know that top-posting is evil and have no urge to reply to each email before reading the following responses that have been sitting in their inbox for 3 days.

        I envy you.

      • Gmail to the rescue. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kklein ( 900361 )

        There is one reason why Gmail killed my email client application: Conversation view. All related messages stay together and you never have the embarrassing problem of replying before reading all of the responses. It also makes for a cleaner inbox that actually reflects how many things you've got on your plate right now. I don't know why offline email clients can get it right (Postbox is trying, but it still isn't as good as Gmail).

        The only thing that breaks it is if you have one of those annoying correspo

    • by smallfries ( 601545 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:49PM (#29611481) Homepage

      It seems that a lot of the early reviews are complaining that when they use like a real-time forum, it gets too busy. When a reviewer claims that he's chatting to 12 people at once and it's too much of a time sink - what is he comparing it to? Chatting to 12 people in a normal IM client is a huge time sink because there is always somebody talking.

      I'd like to read a review by somebody that knows what that they're talking about. Sure, it's a tool that tries to integrate blogs / forums / chat / email into a single product. But that doesn't magically mean that it can turn forum style interaction between hundreds of people into a linear two-person conversion like email.

      If anything, the combination is going to create different conventions for hybrid forms of communication.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by mujadaddy ( 1238164 )

        I'd like to read a review by somebody that knows what that they're talking about.

        Welcome to Reading. You must be new here.

      • by RabidMoose ( 746680 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:23PM (#29611833) Homepage
        Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] did a pretty good writeup on it.
      • Some jobs require teamwork to get the job done. It makes sense to have 12 people talking about something when you are all working on the same problem or all building the same thing. The fact that he thinks it would decrease productivity shows that he doesn't work in the sort of industry where teamwork is encouraged. If you work with 12 people there are instances where you will need realtime communication with all 12. Rather than have a series of meetings and brainstorming sessions you can stay at your desk

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Maybe our children's brains will function more like this if they grow up with it, and our current way of thinking will become obsolete. That seems to be the way things go. Technologies shape the way we take in and process information, and this is a huge step forward, and this technology will be no different. I think of Google Wave as stream of conscious communication over the internet between groups of people. It seems like the next logical step in mass communication.
      • by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:12PM (#29611715)

        It could be seen as an intermediate point in that process, yes. Only time will tell if the neurological structure can build itself to accommodate that or not, or if there are some fundamental limitations in the structure that would require a few thousand years of evolutionary development to fix.

        I am reminded of Stranger in a Strange Land, who's protagonist was raised by aliens to learn quite a different set of abilities, and to think very differently from humans, with the same brain. Could be possible.

    • We aren't? I mean, it's not like the brain isn't simulatiously thinking about what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the work due for the week, the work due for NEXT week, the work due LAST week that was done but needed thinking about, an old girlfriend, sex with said girlfriend, and your reaction to reading this, along with your decision to respond to it...

      We definitely think in a multi-threaded fashion, which I think is well-aligned with Google's vision in Wave.

    • There is no reason you can't use it (asynchronously) like email or like a wiki page. The point is that you can go synchronous if you want to, but you certainly don't have to since the same context offers both modes of communication.
    • by ajs ( 35943 )

      After watching the demo, a lot of people were commenting that the major problem is that it runs counter to how the brain operates...we aren't designed to heavily multitask.

      Welcome to old age. We'll set up a rocking chair for you on the porch.

      The generation that grows up with heavily multitasking-oriented tools will make us seem rather sad.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

        The generation that grows up with heavily multitasking-oriented tools will make us seem rather sad.

        Nope. Since multi-taskers do poorly on both tasks [stanford.edu], those who grow up thinking heavy multitasking is the way to go will wonder why the old farts seem so smart.

        Multitasking is great for creating the illusion that things are getting done, sure. But for real results, it seems one thing at a time is still the best way to go.

    • by nilbog ( 732352 )

      So you're proposing we downgrade wave to be more linear? I propose that we'll evolve into it.

  • by Lord Grey ( 463613 ) * on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:37PM (#29611351)
    Those that simply have to stay connected to others at all times in order to feel validated and important will love Google Wave. Right there in front of you is evidence that people are connected to you! In real time! Better than texting! It's so amazingly interactive! It's like... like... a telephone!
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 )
      Is it as cool as having 6000 friends on myspace?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Those that simply have to stay connected to others at all times in order to feel validated and important will love Google Wave. Right there in front of you is evidence that people are connected to you! In real time! Better than texting! It's so amazingly interactive! It's like... like... a telephone!

      It doesn't need to be a "real time" system at all. Everyone pays attention to the instant message/email side of Wave. People need to pay more attention to using it for things like an issue tracker or a wiki.

      An issue tracker starts out as a single idea, then may move into a discussion, and then it gets completed. Wave looks perfect, you stick the description as a new wave, you discuss it, and then once it's complete you drop the whole wave and swap in a one line summary of the problem and the implemented sol

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      It's like... like... a telephone!

      Like a telephone? LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! Phone can LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! be nice, but they have LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! a huge and very annoyLOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! annoying habit of breaking LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! your train of LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! thought.
      LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!
      LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!
      LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!
      People LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK A

  • by Zerth ( 26112 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:41PM (#29611405)

    You can set your status to "not available to chat" and treat it just like email.

    Don't look at the blinking and it can't bother you.

    • by SoupGuru ( 723634 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:46PM (#29611453)
      This reminds me a lot of what people were saying a few years ago when they pondered whether they should get a cellphone.

      "But it's always with you! People will call at all times!"

      The obvious solution is to turn it off or don't answer it and people will get the idea and communicate on your terms. You have the control of how or when to respond.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:19PM (#29611793)

        The fear is that once your friends know you carry a cell, they expect you to answer. If you fail to answer, they'll assume you're screening the call and will leave you out of the loop on the next social engagement as a punishment for breaking the social contract (screening your friend's call is a slap in the face).

        If they don't know you have a cell phone, they'll treat you the same old way through the old/slow communication channels. I got away with that for a week until they realized I had a phone.

        p.s. I almost completely missed out on the "texting" fad amongst my friends. They kept giving me shit about not having a cell phone because they wanted to be able to text me instead of call or email. I refused to get a phone for years, and then within the first month after I bought a disposable cell phone they all dumped their old texting phones and got smartphones. Now they refuse to use text and only want to use email. Well now I can just throw away the cell and continue using email the same old way. Wheee... (one has to wonder if my decision to get a phone is what prompted them to get smartphones -- maybe they felt compelled to maintain the same differential in social status).

        • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:44PM (#29611979)

          If you fail to answer, they'll assume you're screening the call and will leave you out of the loop on the next social engagement as a punishment for breaking the social contract (screening your friend's call is a slap in the face).

          Only to the terminally insecure. All of my friends know that if I don't answer the phone it's because I'm busy, left the damned thing in the car again or driving and don't have my headset with me. They know I'll call them back to find out what they wanted when I'm available.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          If you fail to answer, they'll assume you're screening the call

          Those are some pretty assuming friends.

          Of the people I know who carry a cell, they don't always answer it, don't always physically have it with them, and don't always have it on. There's really no safe assumption I can make for the reason my call didn't go through.

          within the first month after I bought a disposable cell phone they all dumped their old texting phones and got smartphones. Now they refuse to use text and only want to use email.

          I wish I had friends like yours. I pretty much have been insisting on IM and email for years now.

        • by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @08:39PM (#29613153) Journal

          I guess my friends aren't as big a bunch of dicks as yours. Anybody that'd I'd consider a decent friend knows enough about my personality to not take it personally if I don't bother to answer. If they don't know me well enough to understand, then chances are I don't care what they think anyways so whatever.

  • ... not email users.

    I can see the benefit of email like features in a chat client but not the reverse.

    Then again, I haven't actually tried it.

  • Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PeterBrett ( 780946 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:47PM (#29611469) Homepage

    Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter.

    I think he's missing the point. You don't need to use Google Wave in "real time": you can treat it just like e-mail or twitter if you want. Open the wave, ignore anyone else who's editing it, make the changes or reply you want to, and leave it to come back to it later.

    You can use Wave for anything from any level of communication synchronicity from e-mail, through IRC, to teleconference, on a completely continuous sliding scale. No other Internet communications medium we've seen before has that kind of flexibility.

    I also think that a lot of the negative reactions are because it's a paradigm-shifting technology. People don't like change; they don't like adapting to new and unfamiliar ways of working. When e-mail first started becoming widespread, many people found it impossible to understand and deal with; now it's an intrinsic and familiar part of every working environment.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:06PM (#29611663)

      Exactly.
      He is acting as if you NEED to be in there 24/7 so you don't miss things.
      Wave is literally a Wiki-IM hybrid.
      You can be instant or as relaxed as you want, it is persistent on the server-end.
      Just because all this information is there, doesn't mean you need to pay attention to it all at the same time.
      Wave won't make superhumans out of us.

      After playing around with it a little, the only potential problem i can see is people interacting with gadgets at the same time, causing collides.
      I've had it happen when a few of us were using a Google Maps gadget.

      This is the truest and best example of Multiplayer Notepad ever. IRC, eat it.

    • No other Internet communications medium we've seen before has that kind of flexibility.

      I'm, not sure I agree with that. I think you might be overlooking Skype.

      You can chat line-by-line in realtime while both (or more) parties are online.

      You can send one-off email-length messages and then ignore any response until you feel like dealing with it.

      You can message people while they're not themselves online and they'll receive those messages when they next become available.

      Include videos, pictures, files right the middle of the text.

      Add additional people to an ongoing chat.

      Share your desktop. Use co

      • No other Internet communications medium we've seen before has that kind of flexibility.

        I'm, not sure I agree with that. I think you might be overlooking Skype.

        And I think you might be overlooking the fact that, unlike Skype, Wave is an open platform. Google are open-sourcing much of their code, and developing communications protocols in an open forum that will allow others to create and run fully-featured, interoperable Wave implementations.

        I'm as excited about that as I am about Wave's user features.

  • by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:47PM (#29611471)

    ...because trying to actively collaborate with 100 people, even face to face, is noisy and futile. The fact this is his resulting opinion, in my opinion, doesn't validate his view in the least. No one has ever claimed using Wave will make humans suddenly super human; able to do things no other humans could previously do.

    Lets be realistic about the types of things people collaborate on and how its currently done today. Try doing that with 100 people or even face to face and its pretty message. And with mediums such as IM or email, its far more likely many will walk away with differing understandings of the effort. Even worse, after the fact, people will be challenged to recall why certain conclusions were reached or decisions were made. None of those are nearly as likely to be problems with waves.

    Also, what people are currently testing and using is simply a proof of concept of a series of robots and applications. These, in of themselves, are not Wave proper. In other words, as people gain more experience, the types of activities, applications, and robots which contribute and provide increased value will only grow over time. The applications which people perceived as "Wave" today is absolutely not the "Wave" people will see tomorrow.

    So the real summary is, he fails to understand what is being used. Likewise, a lack of imagination is obvious, as is realistic expectation. I'm sorry but I can't seriously consider his review on any level. He only comes off as small minded and unrealistic.

    Coming full circle back to expectations, only a handful of people are able to focus on more than single thread of conversation and predominantly they are women. Like any significantly new technology, it takes time to fully absorb and leverage all that the new technology has to offer. In this case, its very likely people will be forced to retrain their brains to better follow multiple, concurrent conversations to fully benefit from the technology. Everyone can do it, but it doesn't come natural to most; especially if you're not female.

    Simply put, Google has provided an absolutely awesome, sky is the limit, technology. If multiple killer applications are not in place which leverage Wave within a year or two, I'd declare this a failure of developers and imagination rather than a failure of Google and/or Wave.

    In this case, I'd say the reviewer has failed everyone.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      I don't need GoogleWave, I need a secretary that keeps people AWAY from me, so I can get something done.

    • by gregmac ( 629064 )

      Simply put, Google has provided an absolutely awesome, sky is the limit, technology. If multiple killer applications are not in place which leverage Wave within a year or two, I'd declare this a failure of developers and imagination rather than a failure of Google and/or Wave.

      Okay.. so what am I missing? Admittedly I haven't really spent much time looking into it - the initial PR was way too fluffy and said nothing specific.. and this is apparently too focused on one thing and not really using the full pote

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        You haven't watched the hour+ long tech demo, have you? You seem to be completely unaware of it's capabilities for collaboratively building a document, or it's extension systems that mean people will be adding new capabilities all the time. It's a lot more than just an integration of email and IM.

      • by D Ninja ( 825055 )

        the initial PR was way too fluffy and said nothing specific

        Did you miss this [youtube.com]?

    • by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:23PM (#29611829)

      Simply put, Google has provided an absolutely awesome, sky is the limit, technology. If multiple killer applications are not in place which leverage Wave within a year or two, I'd declare this a failure of developers and imagination rather than a failure of Google and/or Wave.

      In this case, I'd say the reviewer has failed everyone.

      So to summarize your post: the reviewer doesn't make any solid arguments to support his position that Google Wave is not very exciting, and you heartily assert that it's the best thing ever.

  • by xirusmom ( 815129 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:48PM (#29611475)
    I think it is going to be very useful for collaboration projects and some specific conversations. Of course, some people will stay staring at the screen the entire day, but that already happens with facebook, twitter, etc. The point is.. you don't HAVE to. I like the way you can track the conversation even if you got there at a later time. My guess there will be a first moment of wow-ness and them it will fall back to be used normally, like everything that is new.
  • Really? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I was lead to believe using Google Wave would be like having Jesus bust a nut on your face.

  • This failure can be described very simply. From an information theory perspective, an ideal thinking being should complete a task more efficiently if he or she can stay synchronized with collaborators more often. In theory, google wave's technology is superior to email and check in/check out document collaboration tools. Real time chatting would in theory prevent wasted time and mistakes and allow all the collaborators to stay synchronized, analogous to a bank of CPUs running in parallel.

    The problem is t

  • by MrCrassic ( 994046 ) <[li.ame] [ta] [detacerped]> on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:54PM (#29611543) Journal

    I played with Google Wave for a (very) short time, and it definitely has some strong potential to be a key social networking tool in the future. It's kind of like Facebook mixed with IRC, IM and email...which, in other words, makes it a JUGGERNAUT of a platform to have.

    I think it was overhyped, but so was the iPhone before its launch...

  • by MBoffin ( 259181 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @04:56PM (#29611551) Homepage

    Keep in mind that these complaints are from the same guy who followed tens of thousands of people on Twitter and complained when Facebook wasn't allowing him to add more than 5,000 friends on Facebook. If he joined an e-mail mailing list with 35,000 subscribers, he would probably complain that mailing lists as a whole are too noisy and write them off as useless. Now that he's dealing with something that requires more attention to actual individual people, he finds it harder to deal with. Well, duh.

    Sure it's noisy on the public waves, but they're public. Everyone is using it all at once... hundreds of people at a time. That's not going to be the main way people use Google Wave. Right now more people are using the public waves because they want to interact with other Wave users, and all their friends aren't on Wave yet.

  • The "tech world" is awash with excitement [today.com] for today's scheduled release of a hundred thousand invitations to preview Wave, Google's innovative new website, communication protocol, interactive environment, multiplayer online role-playing game, bulletin board, wiki, dessert wax and floor topping. Experts, all heavily consulted by the media while Parliament is in recess, say it will revolutionise how we do business, organise parties, manage projects, make friends, waste our employer's time at work, pick up girls we swear we didn't realise were under sixteen and cheat on our homework.

    I've been testing the Google Wave Developer Preview. The implications for journalists alone are stunning:

    • Collaborative reporting: Using the Google Wave interface, two reporters can take turns at the keyboard of an Internet terminal and "type" both their names at the top of an article. Then they can both write material for the article below the double byline! Incredible!
    • Record and archive interviews: We can write down the words actually spoken by an interviewee. The words can then be "saved" for use later. Amazing!
    • Timelines: The Google Wave Timeline can be used to show a timeline of events — just type a clock time and then note what happened around that time! Punctual!
    • Discuss what you read: People who read stories can write "comments" on them, by writing them in their Google Wave interface, then "e-mailing" then in to the editors for due consideration and possible publication on the "site"! Interactive!
    • Smarter story updates: Instead of adding "Updated" to the end of an updated story, we can use the Google Wave Cursor and the Google Wave Arrow Keys and edit the story text in the middle! Make those commenters look as silly in their supposed "corrections" as you know they should do!

    In conclusion, Google Wave is clearly an absolute boon to the noble institution of the Fourth Estate in its mission to protect the public good, further the dynamism of social discourse and watch the watchmen. And this is why we at News International consider Google a threat and menace to the news media and the institution of journalism that must be reined in by government edict without delay. God bless you all, and please PayPal us 20p for having read this article, you parasitical pixel-stained technopeasant. And now, Tories and tits.

  • by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @05:20PM (#29611803) Journal

    There was an article here a day or two ago with one of the lead developers of Wave. He mentioned the subject of "robots" that monitor the conversation stream. I'll admit to failing to RTFA in both cases, but it seems like Wave is intended as a low level foundation to build upon. The analogy that comes to mind is the data bus in the computer. If you try to use a computer by monitoring the 0s and 1s flying between the CPU and the RAM or the disk subsystem you won't get anywhere fast. On the other hand, if you leave that low level hardware interaction to the drivers and use a software application, the computer becomes useful.

    It seems to me, and again I didn't RTFA, that Wave will only be useful when people start writing decent robots and applications to sit on top of it. I imagine it working something like SNMP. The application only traps what is relevant for what it is monitoring, even though there are a lot of conversations going on. Likewise, in terms of collaboration or project management, there might be applications that tag certain types of communication and only pay attention to similar types of communication. Status updates would be monitored by the calendaring robot and only displayed by the calendar application. IM like communication streams might be aggregated into an Inbox like feature so that people can "mute" the conversation stream and go back to it later. I'd imagine that there will be a great demand for threading and search capabilities on those sorts of streams.

    Right now it seems like people are looking at Wave from the perspective of an individual user. Does one user need to talk to twelve different people at once? Hell no. On the other hand, your average organization has dozens if not more conversation streams taking place between departments and individuals at any given point during the work day. Different departments might not know what each other are up to in a timely enough manner to be relevant. With something like Wave tying together the various information streams (email, calendaring, wiki, etc), connections can be made between individuals that might otherwise be missed.

    Then again, I didn't read either article and for all I know Wave might just be a Twitter clone with a worthless API that can't be leveraged for anything other than talking about Britney Spears.

  • It's interesting how many of the objections to the review don't address anything technical (which they haven't seen anyway) about Wave (other than to insist that despite what anyone says "it's way cool, it's Google, it's cool by default, four legs good, two legs bad"), but instead concentrate on ad hominem attacks on the author.

  • Here's an application whose time will come: real time multi-track audio editing with multiple collaborators. I know it sounds totally crazy, but I think this could be way cool with the right robot maintaining the song and branches for you.
  • Small OSS Projects (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Idiomatick ( 976696 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @06:03PM (#29612167)
    I could see this becoming popular for small OSS projects. These can often have an IRC channel or 5, A website, Possibly a google group, a forum, a bug tracker, a gitorious site, a wiki, email, IM, and i'm sure other things.

    If this Google Wave thing gets good robots and cuts the crap in half it will be incredibly useful to small OSS projects. Not only will it be less of a pain but it will make the project more efficient and better in general. I've seen plenty of situations where half of the info sources are out of date.

    Some good tools would be importing data in a nice manner from a variety of sites. If it can just import a wiki then we will see people change much faster. Other things would be tools for programmers generally, ability to post code in a nice way, with the dif highlighted. Or perhaps something to make a todo list.

    That said it is all in the implementation. If they make it easy to add toys I can see it being used quick. It also needs to be open, private wikis spread since people can make their own. It doesn't matter if it still goes through google so long as users have a way to implement it in their OWN way on their own site, so it has to be customizable. Making an OSS client for this would help, they are replacing types of communication that can be accessed from lots of places. I also think integrating feeds of different types would help, maybe be able to email into the wave or read through email. Access through a phone ap. Basically for it to go well they need to integrate and eat all the forms of communication they are competing with. They'll be hard pressed to make this work unless the are competitive individually with each type of communication.

    There are a lot of little things that need to go right and I doubt it will happen first try. But I believe this type of integrated, combined interaction is the future of small group communication. And I haven't tried it myself.
  • by tecnico.hitos ( 1490201 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @06:07PM (#29612193)

    I always thought it would be nice if people in IMs could see what I'm typing, to feel more like a real conversation.

    Now that I think about it, it would be very disrupting to have several people with their messages appearing slowly all at once... which is not unlike a real conversation.

    You know, if people are able to see what others are typing, it may lead to strange "waves" in which people may not hit submit even once.

  • by jhfry ( 829244 ) on Thursday October 01, 2009 @06:21PM (#29612323)

    Ok, I'm a nobody... but personally, I think this is going to be a revolution in communication and to say it's overhyped is plain stupid.

    Essentially, the technology is very complicated, but the premise is something we can all follow and appreciate. We all need to communicate in realtime sometimes, we all need to communicate at our own pace sometimes, and we all need to collaborate sometimes; until now that required a minimum of 3 separate tools and mindsets.

    Google hasn't created anything really new with wave, we have all done the things wave allows us to do before... but we have never done them with the same tool. And we have never done them with a tool that allowed us to seamlessly transition from one paradigm to another without thought.

    I KNOW that this is the future of on line communication, if not Wave then something like it. I absolutely LOVE the fact that Google recognized the importance of what they were doing and created Wave as a standard that could be implemented by competitors... creating a technology rather than an application.

  • by 1u3hr ( 530656 ) on Friday October 02, 2009 @06:52AM (#29615293)
    compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter.

    Plural of medium is "media" (unless you're talking about seances).

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