May 31, 2010
Google Wave Turns 1
Google Wave, the strange, neither here nor there Google app is turning over it’s first year. Recently at the Google I/O Conference, some new life has been breathed into the application and there seems to be a renewed buzz in the online community. The pre-release version lacked some functionality and a clear purpose. It actually had, and now still has, a tremendous amount of potential. In the last year, improvements in the stability and development of extensions have allowed the benefit of such a “real-time” oriented application to become evident. If you are not familiar with Wave, it’s a hybrid employing the length and editing tools you would find in an email client, with the “real-time” content delivery instant messaging offers. Additionally, you can now “publish” waves to any webpage and also review the collective work as via a playback feature and see how a given “wave” has formed.
The most recent release is a maturing application that can be used immediately for sharing, distributing, editing and publishing a collaborative workflow to a group of any size. I can see now what had driven Google to create such a unique tool. Like many other great idea that have launched, user adoption is going to be key in the success of Google Wave. It’s ideal for groups that work remote from one another or instances where seeing a linear progression in a conversation is required. If you haven’t had a chance to try it, wave.google.com is open to anyone with a Google ID. If you want to get a strong grasp as to what Wave is capable of, I recommend Gina Trapani’s book The Complete Guide To Google Wave. Google also has a dedicated Wave Blog and there is technical documentation for the Wave protocol as well. A Wave to accompany this post is also available.
