Google Wave

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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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.

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.

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

By Brad Pitcher (not verified) on 11 Nov 2009 #permalink

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.

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.

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?

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.

By Brad Pitcher (not verified) on 12 Nov 2009 #permalink

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.