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Posted on: November 11, 2009 2:18 AM, by Razib Khan

I notice more people have Google Wave now. What do you think? I keep leaving blank messages by mistake. Am I the only one?

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Comments

I was excited about wave initially but I have to say it's faded quite quickly. I'm sure it'll gradually improve but my first impressions were that it's horribly slow and very unintuitive.

I was mainly excited as a tool for academic collaboration but as it stands it won't do the job, I can't see us doing anything serious in those tiny boxes.

I don't want to be too negative, I know a lot of smart people are working hard on it and I'm sure it'll be amazing when its full potential is realised. Also, a few more of my friends are on it now so that might inject some more enthusiasm.

Posted by: Doug | November 11, 2009 6:25 AM

Haven't tried it, probably never will. But curious anyway: What do you use (or plan on using) GoogleWave for? It offhand seems to me like a clever concept in search of a use. But maybe that's me being very 20th century.

Posted by: Ray Sawhill | November 11, 2009 9:35 AM

I don't know what I think because I haven't received an invite. Hint, hint...

Posted by: Brad Pitcher | November 11, 2009 9:57 AM

brad, i've "nominated" you.

ray, i have no idea what i was supposed to use it for.

Posted by: razib | November 11, 2009 2:21 PM

In its current form, I find it very slow and some of the functions don't work. In particular, the ability to mute and delete waves seems to be lacking at the moment and the program will often take a few minutes to recognize a simple command.

I haven't been able to thoroughly test it since no one I know has it and I just got it and thus have no invites, so I've mostly been looking at the with:public waves, but I don't really like the fact that every wave that I glance at ends up in my inbox and subsequently takes 5 minutes to clear.

Now, I'm withholding judgment for now since it's in development stage and so I wouldn't expect it to be ready for prime time, but as of now it has a long way to go.

Posted by: Meng Bomin | November 11, 2009 2:38 PM

I've just got my hands on an invite and started using it with some projects at work. I'd say there's a lot to be done to work out the kinks, but the potential is great. I'm still excited about what it could be like, even though I'm running into little stumbling blocks and shaky scripts everywhere at the moment.

At work, we use google docs to work on documentation and task tracking for our projects and so this en-livening of the docs system could be right up our alley.

Posted by: Israel | November 11, 2009 2:45 PM

I only have one Wave contact, kind of defeating the purpose, so I can't judge. However, I am seriously in search of something like wave for managing collaboration within and between labs. A repository for actual data, lists of things to do, discussion of data, etc etc. I've tried a site called Stixy...it's an interesting try but overall a bit clumsy. Anyone know of anything good?

Posted by: miko | November 12, 2009 8:20 AM

You're my hero Razib! Google wave seems to have great potential. I have to disagree with others in that I haven't noticed any major bugs. Unfortunately, I don't have any reasons to use it right now. I would use it for work, but I'm working for a "microsoft shop" right now, and I don't think I could convince anyone to use google wave, let alone get them an invite.

Posted by: Brad Pitcher | November 12, 2009 2:57 PM

i can see wave's utility as project management and collaboration tool. i've been in offices where IM usage is ubiquitous since it isn't worth to call a meeting all the time. wave would be able to replace the a la carte usage of collab tools, IM and email.

Posted by: razib | November 12, 2009 3:50 PM