Google Wave

How many people on here got a Google Wave invite? I just got mine today, what do you guys think about it? I think I can easily see it taking over email in the future, but not anytime soon.

I applied a while back but I haven’t been invited. Also, I think there was already a thread on the google wave, did you search?

edit: The google wave was mention at http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29090&highlight=google+wave, but it does not seem to have it’s own thread.

Had mine for about a week now.

I did start a ‘Wave’; and it’s just started to get participants in there this evening.

Sean
Team 499
Programming Mentor

Got mine a week ago. Sent a couple invites out to some other guys on my team, and we’re kind of playing with it. Not entirely sure what I think of it yet. Of course, they just got they’re invites today, so I’m only now getting a good way of playing with it.

I am trying to use Wave, but really having a hard time figuring out why. It doesn’t seem to provide a capability I don’t have else where.

It does pull together email and IM functionality, but I’m not sure I need that.

So, I don’t think it is the killer app that Google would like to think it is, at least I am still trying to figure out the answer to this question: Why?

I just got my invite, can some of you give me your addresses?

I have been watching Wave for a while, applied for an invite but never got one. If any of you guys have some remaining and wouldn’t mind giving me one, that’d be awesome(assuming everyone is still getting 10 invites to hand out).

From what it sounds, it could really revolutionize the way we use the internet. But without trying it, I can not give a definite opinion though I am excited for its release.

GBillet, if you send me a PM, I’d be happy to send you an invite. I’ve still got a few invites left.

I’m in the same boat. I applied a while back and haven’t gotten an invite. Looks interesting though.

I just learned about Wave today – there’s a HUGE possibility that this will replace Microsoft’s NetMeeting as the leading corporate collaborative work environment. It’s all web-based, companies can put their own proprietary portals in it while keep the actual data private if need be, and documents literally come out of conversations. I like the idea of responding to individual pieces of a document, yet that conversation doesn’t come out in the final product. Just wait – as speech-to-text evolves more, meetings will literally take place at a desk without participants having to type 70 words per minute to keep up…

The biggest things I see for the engineering world are better Systems Engineering opportunities for collaboration across geographical work sites. CAD, Schematics, drawings, pictures, manuals, documents, illustrations, etc will all be possible in the future. Multiple people working on these things at the same time is critical, and Microsoft’s answer is sharepoint – which lacks the fundamental idea of being able to work on a document at the same time.

Eventually I foresee full VNC windows and/or videos into Wave as a new vehicle to take classes over the web. Eventually I think more remote control from various people around the world will evolve, so that (e.g.) someone in LA can control a different part of the same robot that someone in NYC controls.

At the end of Google’s announcement and the I/O, they did concede that Wave’s success is contingent upon the open source development community’s ability and drive to create API’s and extensions into existing communications mediums so that Wave will ‘talk’ with non-wave applications. So long as that happens, I believe Wave will catch on.

I finally got an invite, tip 'o the hat to Greg Needel. Early adopter that I am, my user name is Billfred.

I’m interested in trying it out, though I’ll need a few [strike]co-conspirators[/strike] collaborators to get much use out of it. (And no, I don’t have any invites yet–or if I do, they haven’t made it obvious.)

I seem to be asking the same question. Its cool but doesnt seem to have any unique purpose.

Google and the internet as a whole have successfully over-hyped yet another product. I got an invite about a month ago (Thank you Matt Keller), I must say, it definitely is not intuitive how to really use it. My account on wave has basically sat stagnant. Hopefully as more users get accounts and features are added I will find more uses for it, but for now it seems to simply be an unnecessary alternative to that which I already use (email, IM, etc.)

Agreed, but I do think it has potential once more of its “cooler” features are released. :yikes:

-RC

It’s basically seemed like an automatic message board between friends for me. E.g. kinda pointless. Collaboration is better done with Google Docs or Facebook.

Google Wave is like the iPhone – it’s crap without all of the apps that are developed for it (the difference is that Wave will be the corollary to world domination whereas the iPhone is the corollary to socialism in the telecoms world…). I believe that after a substantial amount of community development, you will be able to visit web pages that are Wave portals and not even know it’s Google Wave unless you know what Google Wave is.

For example, think about how AndyMark’s website could be redone under a new Google Wave architecture. Andy could answer questions if he were online, and we could all post photos of the products in action. Additionally, we could post feedback on technical aspects and there could be a portal for requested features, parts, etc. We could even have a chat started during FRC build season in order to facilitate helping each other out – that way Andy could focus on the larger picture yet the teams with questions still get a remarkable amount of customer service. Finally, to purchase the products, the Wave app would wrap the customer’s shopping cart Wave into whatever existing format the current back end requires so that the payment system doesn’t have to change.

There are other numerous advantages in online education, especially within the math and Physics world. Playing back a wave would allow us to see equations being manipulated on the fly, and if professors (or other FRC teams…) were online then a chat could be started at any point during the ‘lesson’ in order to ask questions about any individual piece of the equation or lecture that the student doesn’t understand.

I think the biggest challenge is how to associate a website’s current user database with a Google Wave user database without forcing users of the website to sign up for a Google account. (e.g. I’m JesseK on CD, but not JesseK@google)

A few years back, I set up a “Kickoff Central” site which included a chat, links to the manual postings, webcasts, etc., and other tools for those watching the kickoff remotely. I’ve thought about the possibility of setting something like this up again using Wave, but have not yet been able to dig around in the system enough to figure out what it would take to set something like that up.

If I get a chance after setting up a few other things I’m working on, I’ll dig into Wave and see what I can get accomplished.

If anyone has any invite’s can you send one my way.

I have about 5 invites i’d be willing to spare for some robotics people. message me =)

As others have said, google wave is pretty much hype in my opinion. For friend-to-friend communication, I have facebook, aim, gmail, and Digsby to tie them all together, on top of the fact wave is still in beta and the only friends on are those I sent invites to. When/If facebook, myspace, twitter*, and gmail** become fully integrated in wave, just maybe I might use it for F2F.

On the other hand, for business collaboration, with a few (dozen) programmers to spare developing an app, Wave would work wonderfully.

As I said before, its still in beta. Its also still very slow (at least for me). I’ll like it better when it goes full public I hope.

*found out twitter has a robot for wave but i don’t know how it works
** as far as i can see, gmail contacts can not be imported yet. I also don’t know if i can send messages to my mail contacts through wave.

I have had one (1) conversation on it that was neither a. testing wave’s ability or b. couldn’t have worked equally well over email. This is because a. few people have access and b. I haven’t changed my mentality to wave being my main online communication medium. I think wave can live up to google’s hopes, it will just take time and some work. That one conversation went great and I see wave becoming more instrumental on teams in the future.