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Showing posts with label Google Wave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Wave. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Google Wave is Here!




Back on June 2, 2009, I wrote the post "Google Wave: Google Docs Meets Email (& Social Networking)". At that time I was quite excited about this and I still am. They said that it wasn't going to be available until December of 2009, but I just received a Google Wave demo account (Thanks Seth) and it is quite an interesting product. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Wave, it is Google’s latest innovation in email.  Google wave is about having conversations, sharing photos and files, working with others on documents, chatting in real time, posting to blogs and lots of other things that I haven’t thought of yet.

Imagine using Google Docs as an email system. You write one version of a communication (i.e., letter) and then you share that with other Google Wave users. This document/communication is called a Wave.

Next, you add contacts. These are the people you want to have access to your new Wave. They can come to the single letter and then read, edit, reply, delete the letter depending upon what you allow them to do. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to send out 27 emails to 27 people, as you would do with today’s email. It’s a whole new concept (one video points out that today’s email system was developed the same year as the lava lamp so . . .)

The beauty of Google Wave is that you don’t have to worry about sending huge files.  They will just be at one site and then people will be able to go to the site and access what you want.  This can also be a place where you can share a large collection of photos or company files or . . . .

The Wave is more than just email. It can be a chat room or collaborative document that multiple people can edit at the same time. I would imagine that the Wave will eventually replace Google Docs. It is the next move towards a single app that “does it all.” 

Google Wave doesn’t work with regular email right now.  It is a system unto itself but they say that they are in the process of developing the interface.

A REALLY cool aspect of Wave is that it has a built in “Translator Robot.”  This means that even an a chat, if I write in French it will appear on other screens in the selected language of that user. I wrote earlier about a system in Second Life that acts something like this. (Language Translators in Second Life.)

I envision this Wave product as the beginning of a new Wave in online communication.  What do you think?

Here is a video which depicts 15 features of Google Wave:



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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Google Wave: Google Docs Meets Email (& Social Networking)


Just watched in introductory YouTubevideo about Google Wave. This was a presentation that was given at the Google I/O 209 conference (for developers). This was an early alpha demo so it crashed a couple of time in the presentation, but that is OK. They were showing this to the developers so that they would develop some apps before they release it next year.

As the title suggests, Google Wave is a new email system that merges the Central Location document concept of Google Docs with Email. This means that instead of having individual emails sent between individuals, the email will be kept in a specific place and then email would be a matter of sending invitations to the desired recipients. It makes A LOT of sense when you think about it.

Wave allows us to share photos by just copying the images into a single place and then each of the recipients will have access. They demonstrated how one person dragged the photos to the email document and it immediately appeared on one of the recipient's screen.

Blogs can be embedded in the Wave as well. It looks like the Wave is all about merging social media and breaking down the interfaces that separate them.

Since the whole system is online, it is accessible through mobile units. Unfortunately, the link didn't work in the demo, but we will believe that it works.

An exciting capability of Wave is its ability to provide collaborative writing. This is similar to the collaborative writing capabilities of Google Docs but it is IMMEDIATE. This means that your changes appear on the screens of ALL of the screens of the participants.

Wave also includes a document history capability similar to wikis. It looked like you would insert comments and track changes so it might be useful for assignment exchange between teachers and students.

I only watched the first 30 minutes but you should watch the rest to see the future.
This is AMAZING!!!

What do you think?

Z
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