Ok, really I’m talking about Google Wave.
Google Wave is a new communications collaboration tool introduced earlier this year.
For the record: Yes, I’m a Google Fan Boy, and must try anything new offered by the company. I have already converted my email to run through Google Apps. If you call me, it’s directed to one of my many phones (office, mobile, home, Blackberry) through Google Voice. I’m contemplating upgrading my mobile with an Android OS device. Call me an early adopter. It’s easy to be an earlier adopter when most of Google’s services are free. I do pay extra, though, for the Google Apps Premium edition for my photography site and email.
The promise of what Google Wave can do is pretty exciting.
What is a wave?
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
I think Google Wave will be a very useful communications tool–if adopted–whether used locally at a distance.
For business, it has project collaboration written all over it. I’m trying to examine Wave to see if it would be a cost-effective alternative to 37Signals’ products for my wife’s small business. Given that she often has staff in different locations, a real-time communications and file sharing tool could be useful.
I also think Google Wave could be a good communications tool for friends or family. I’m contemplating putting a family intranet site up on my domain, but have started to wonder if Google Wave might be an alternative or, at least, a good complement.
Unfortunately, the primary hindrance at this point with scoping out the full functionality of Google Wave is that there are not yet a lot of people I know with access . The service is in a pre-Beta testing stage, and is available only by invite. Nevertheless, as more and more invites go out, and invitations are shared by users (yes I have a few), I expect then I can really test the usefulness of Google Wave.
If have about 80 minutes, and want to really get your Google nerd on, check out this video that explains Google Wave.
If you’re already on Google Wave, please add me to your contact list. My wave address is mdlindc@googlewave.com.