I have a Google Wave account. I’ve had it for a couple weeks now and have had time to familiarise myself with it enough to write a review.
In a nutshell, Google Wave is a pimped combination of email, instant messaging, and live document collaboration. It tries to combine these three functions into an interface that is easily accessible on the web. I think it’s best to split my review into these respective parts.
First I will talk about its function as email. If there’s something I’m really against, it’s unnecessary function duplication. I would like to stress my use of the word “unnecessary” here, because function duplication as an innovation strategy is actually incredibly good. Google wave is the perfect example of “unnecessary” function duplication for its use as email. It provides no extra benefit at the moment. It is simply what GMail is except inside a smaller window and formatted like a chatlog. But is it so bad? Now there are still a very limited number of bots you can use (small extensions that allow you to insert interactive “widgets” or manipulate the conversation in some way) but as time passes, I predict the number of bots will increase, and thus really make Google Wave’s use in email very, very different. One example is the “yes, no” widget, which allows anybody in the conversation to place themselves in the “yes”, “no” or “maybe” category – useful when organising an event.
Am I willing as a customer to give up my email for Wave? No. In the future? Maybe.
Instant messaging – it’s absolutely terrible. I’ve seen the Windows Live Messenger program do better. Inconvenient, clunky, extremely distracting (real time typing!), and gets confusing real fast. With shortcuts it’s barely manageable, but without, it’s a lost cause. Once you get more than 10 people in a single conversation (even with 5 people it’s absolutely terrible) you’d wish IRC were more mainstream.
Live document collaboration – admittedly I haven’t tested this as extensively as the previous ones but personally I wouldn’t go near Wave’s “live collaboration” with a 10 foot pole. Allow me to use an analogy here – let’s say you were a designer. A digital graphics designer. I can guarantee you that anybody doing this as a profession will not touch the computer unless they have a superbly clear idea of what they want in their head. Even if this were the case, I can again guarantee that discussions with other designers about their ideas in any collaborative environment or even with themselves would be done with their hands, a writing utensil and something to make marks on. Like “paper and pencil”, you know? It’s this process that Google is trying to digitize. Admittedly sometimes technology helps – but for things like these nothing beats face to face, or at least a good conversation over the phone.
Ok – but what about the application itself? It’s quite stable on my Firefox 3.5.something on Gentoo amd64. QtWebkit doesn’t display it properly (KHTML? Not a chance). It’s speedy up until I try to use the playback feature on a conversation, and I’ve been in a Wave with over 100 people with … well, yes, a lot of lag, but it displays and still can be used if you’re a very patient person. Google Wave seems to be crossing the uncanny valley in a way I haven’t seen before – there is a form of “window management”, including docking, minimising, maximising and restoring. There are very many desktop-like effects, such as their interesting implementation of a scrollbar (think touchscreen device) – and many toolbars littered here and there, but overall it puts me off more than attracts.
However an important point to notice is that Google Wave is still not much more than a poorly implemented clone of what the desktop world has refined over the years. The web was designed as a standardised freeform canvas to present information, which is why websites are not desktop applications and desktop applications are websites. Scrollbars? Drag and drop? Right click? I’m sorry – when was the last time you used a proper application? Admittedly Google Wave is composed of three main areas as introduced through their loooooong video – one of them is to do with an API. This obviously means that there’s nothing preventing a future implementation of a Wave Client, but until then, Google Wave shall continue to receive my polite disgust.
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At my college we use a different tool for working on our projects online.
Its free and needs no installation since its online, go to http://www.showdocument.com
pretty useful for me since i usually do my projects on the laptop. -chrisman
I haven’t used it yet but I am happy you didn’t do the usual Google love review that I often see. I may really love Wave but I am so sick of hearing about how great things like Google Docs are. I mean come on, we had that stuff 15 years ago. The word processor is like notepad online. Anyway, I am actually hoping Wave tops other Google apps.
So far it does seem as far as online applications go Wave is topping other Google apps. However when comparing against desktop applications – there really is no competition. We’re reinventing the wheel in the most crippled of environments (and I use that statement with caution – the web is a canvas and should be seen as one).
One should also realise that the majority of Google apps aren’t that great. Google Sites is one such example – I don’t think Wave will be any different.
I understand where you are coming from in this post, but most disruptive technologies are hard to understand how to use at first.
Many of my colleagues that are a little more senior (read: old) have a hard time with IM. They tend to write like a ton of text like it’s an e-mail. I am sure they would have similar complaints about IM because they like e-mail.
It took me a while to figure out how Wave could work best for me, but now I am just amazed. From presentations to documents to task planning to blogging Wave is so versatile.
I think people will establish some ground rules for large scale collaborations and chats and the developers will obviously improve the structure. I’m not a complete Google fanboy (no Android for me), but I think if you start using Wave as a replacement for documents you’ll start to see it’s power.
I would say that my stance relies on Wave being a _web_ application. Many of its flaws are simply due to the restrictions and inflexibility of a web interface. If wave were reimplemented as a desktop tool, then the interface could be moulded around an existing workflow – allowing people to discover new features, use it more efficiently, and of course, speed up the way to creating conventions on how to use Wave as a collaborative tool. I guess only until Google reaches that stage can Wave truly be useful for people and people can discover- as you say -”How Wave could work best for me”.