This guest post was written by Martin Seibert, a German Internet media consultant.
Google Wave is a hot topic at the moment. The ambitious group collaboration and micro-messaging platform started rolling out in beta via an initial batch of 100,000 invitations two months ago. Many people still want invitations. Among those who’ve tried it, some criticize it, some praise it. For now it has a lot of usability problems that are described below. Yes, you should look at Google Wave. But there is no need to desperately long for an invitation yet.
Nevertheless, this post outlines how you’ll probably use Google Wave in the future and also gives you advice on how to implement it in your company or your team of coworkers. It also reveals some big usability problems in the current version. Those issues aside, I would like to show you the advantages of the “wave” once again and describe some cool use cases that might make you love it at some point in the future.
Introduction to Google Wave
If you don’t know the wave yet, you might want to see this movie:
Advantages of Google Wave
- Innovative interface
The user interface of Google Wave breaks new ground and yet is not unfamiliar as its layout resembles the inbox of your mail application. The timeline that lets you recap how the wave has evolved and changed since your last visit is something that even wikis don’t have today—a feature that will surely be copied extensively in the future due to its intuitive usability. - Waves activate participants to contribute
Furthermore, the user interface motivates further contributions to the wave. This is an excellent way to convince a lot of people to participate. - Real-time collaboration
It is a completely new experience to actually see your friends, colleagues and contacts type in and change content in real time. No other application apart from a few client-side chat tools currently offers such a service via a web interface. If you’re a tech geek, you’ll love that part of Google Wave. It is a powerful innovation when it comes to real-time communication and collaboration. It is competing with the well-known comforts of email, wikis and chat, but in a lot of use cases, I think Wave will win.
What is Google Wave good for?
Brainstorming, early concept creation and discussion is what I see Google Wave being used for extensively in the near future. It can also serve as a multi-user note-taking platform for meetings and sessions in your company or university. If you want to organize an event collaboratively, Google Wave will most likely replace wikis. That’s a punch in the gut for all creators of wiki software. These are just the most obvious uses. As more people use Google Wave and become comfortable with it, they will begin using it in entirely new ways. The real-time communications it makes possible will override its weak points because of the greater efficiency it allows for any group trying to work together. One day the wave is gonna rock! But that is not today. 
Google Wave is overly complex (Steve Rubel)
Robert Scoble put it this way: “This service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity.”
What he means is shown in this video I have put on YouTube:
If you look at the public waves being updated at a speed that none of us can follow, you will understand how especially non-tech-savvy users will find it overly complex. I hear them say: “I just don’t want to know all this stuff.”
Even if “all this stuff” is relevant content from your teammates, you’ll have to filter and sort it all out to make it manageable. I believe it’s possible, but Google Wave users will have to learn how to do it.
The interface after login with an open wave
Disadvantages and usability problems
- Missing revisions with rollbacks
There is no professional revisioning system in place yet. If somebody messes up your wave and you want to undo it, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise: You have to do it manually. So folks, please do not delete too much content on waves. - No permanent hiding of replies yet
At the same time, Google Wave does not offer a way to permanently hide replies. Result? The main text in the wave is disturbed by images, boxes, colors and text from all participants. This can become a real mess and might even prevent you from reading the important content. The Google Wave team should definitely address this.
(Look at the screenshot above and see how nice the small “+” sign fits in. That should be the default.) - Why can’t I invite everybody yet? Closed preview kills value
Right now Google Wave is not suitable for real usage as too few people have an account. If you can’t invite everybody, the value of a wave decreases dramatically. - Where are notifications for updates of the waves I follow?
There are no means of monitoring waves. This is Google Wave’s biggest weakness. I don’t get an email, Gtalk alert, or any other notification in the communication systems I already use today when there is new activity in a wave. As I am still heavily using RSS feeds (in contrast to other TechCrunch authors—by the way, almost 4 million TechCrunch readers use RSS feeds as well), I’d love an RSS feed of the waves I want to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, this isn’t yet an option. - Too slow for a real chat
For a real chat, Google Wave is much too slow. The performance of live transmissions varies from good to very poor and back without any understandable pattern. Today, you’ll want to keep using Skype or Jabber clients for chatting. I expect this to change, once we see local implementations of Google Wave in companies. Most of the server power can then go to the companies’ employees, clients and partners. - Google Wave is unstable
If there are peeks, Google Wave seems to have trouble with the load of lots of users. Here is a screenshot that I see way to often.
- Portability: no exporting of waves possible yet
There isn’t an export feature to my beloved wiki yet. I’d love to have the wave content “natively” (not as an embed) in my Confluence, Foswiki (TWiki), XWiki, Mindtouch, DokuWiki or MediaWiki whenever I want it. To Google and wiki vendors: please give us that kind of portability. - Google accounts should not be required
Why do I need a Google Account to participate in a wave? That is a big problem if you want to engage with clients and non-tech-savvy users. - Who is really online?
Google Wave tries to display who is online by showing a green dot on the profile picture, but it’s not reliable yet. In fact, I’ve even seen people writing content who were identified as being offline. - Remember: don’t share confidential information in waves
As soon as you invite somebody to a wave, he can access it forever. If the discussion reveals secrets you don’t want to share with all participants, you’re out of luck: there is no way to get anybody out of the wave. The only chance you have is to create a new wave from the existing one. If you don’t want to do that, you’d better keep confidential information out.
- No markup editing like in wikis
There is no source code view in Google Wave that you would want to use as an experienced wiki user to control what appears and how. - Waves lack readable URLs
Waves already have permanent URLs. But how readable is this? “https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Be-cg7PN0A.1″. The Google Wave team will have to come up with more readable versions that are short and self-explanatory. This one should instead read: “https://wave.google.com/wave/google-wave-learnings-advantages-usecases-and-usability-flaws/252Be-cg7PN0A/fullscreen/”
To-do’s for you to use Google Wave in your company
The following list to be a bit premature. As one cannot install Google Wave yet, this is just a checklist to help you prepare for it.
1. Technology
- Server infrastructure and a good sysadmin: You will clearly need a server and a skilled admin to set up a Google Wave server, if you want to use it in your company. If you want a lot of employees, partners and clients to use it, you should prepare to invest in good hardware to make the real-time experience a good one. Up until now no one has been allowed to install the preview version of Google Wave. This means that nobody knows how difficult or easy it will be to install it and how easy it will be to connect it with other public wave servers. Still, it should be helpful to have a sysadmin around who knows what he is doing.
- HTML5-compatible browsers: Google Wave is an HTML5 application. If your company still works on Internet Explorer 6 or below, you will not be able to use Google Wave flawlessly. Therefore, make sure all participants have access to up-to-date browsers.
- Fast web connection: A decent web connection for both servers and clients is highly recommended to have a good real-time communication experience.
- Firewall configuration: Your admin should know how to configure your firewall so that your Google Wave server can communicate with the world.
2. Organization
- Define the goal of the wave and make sure everybody understands the purpose and the content of your wave. If you don’t, a lot of “side-noise” will arise.
- Create wave guidelines: You should set up guidelines for your wave participants to make sure they understand what the wave is for.
- On-boarding: Make sure that everybody you want to work with has a Google Wave account. (I know, this is quite difficult today. And that’s why Google Wave isn’t that useful yet.)
- What application is to be used? Differentiate the systems in your company so that everybody understands when to use emails, wikis, chats, databases and when to use Google Wave. How to set them apart? I don’t know. This will emerge organically.
- Give Google Wave a purpose: Make sure people understand how to use Google Wave. You don’t want them to turn it down before even testing it thoroughly. That is especially true for the non-geek users.
- Not too many wavers on one wave: You should beware of inviting too many people because you can’t kick them out afterwards.
3. Culture
- Do not delete content without permission: My brother had created a new wave to evaluate Google Wave. We were all filling in texts, comments and arguments. Within a very short period of time, a really cool document had evolved, and I thought: “you should make this a blog post.” So I started to restructure it, changed arguments and content into text, and deleted the comments afterwards. The bashing and flaming that triggered from people who were angry with me for killing their content was enormous.
- Make rules and copyright clear: After I had restructured our wave and taken all the bashing for deleting the obsolete comments, the first participants asked if they could use the content in their blogs. We became aware of the as-yet unanswered question: “Who owns a wave? Who may do what with it? Who is allowed to use its content?” Make sure to clarify this in advance with your coworkers.
- Be aware of the complexity: The basic use and advantage of Google Wave should be clear to your employees once you roll out Google Wave. If the purpose is not clear, its complexity will quickly drive away many of your colleagues. Good luck trying to convince them to come back.
- Get ready for live feedback stress: A special problem in a wave is that you get answers to what you write while you’re still writing it. Every other means of communication leaves room to formulate and write your message first. In Google Wave the stress of a personal meeting with live communication can occur. (See the video above if you don’t know what I mean.)
- For now, consider only inviting geeks: Today, nobody can really control documents in waves, and there’s no real revision yet. And waves change a lot. Therefore, it’s better to invite people who can give good feedback. The more wavers, the more complex a wave will become.
Overall evaluation and outlook
If you criticize Google Wave, you should keep in mind that it is a “preview” now. It’s not a beta, and it’s not a final release. The Google Wave team has set out to create “email as it should be in 2010″. And from what I see, they have a good chance of doing so, but 2010 is less than two months away. However, I am willing to bet that this piece of software will eventually overcome Robert Scoble’s criticism.
For professional collaboration, I still recommend the wikis mentioned above. But if you’re into real-time collaboration, Google Wave will eventually be your choice. Just make sure to bring advanced web skills.
Sources
A lot of the content for this blog post was created in a wave. As no one knows who owns the content in a wave, I would like to list all who participated: mseibert (That’s me!), jseibert, eicker, bfri, Silke, Sam, Gerrit, Ton, Paul
Ahhhh, Google ruling the world. It’s so evident here in the SF Bay Area.
It may suck, but I won’t be using it.
iWont
Is this guy mentally ok? First, the article is about “why google wave sucks”; then the article is fanboyism at its best.
Take your meds, kid.
there’s nothing wrong in being a bit neutral
It sucks as in vacuum-cleaner, which is good.
Add to that, the invites aren’t real time. I sent out all my 8 invites and still none got ‘em. There’s no one to wave with me
To my eyes, It looks like Outlook express 5.1 copy.
Google has copied microsoft, just added some messaging features on a web interface and calling it as a wave…. Good Job Google….
I agree on the Outlook express comment. google is starting to go down the microsoft path, monopolistic practices and stealing other people’s technology – like wave and like “google OS” which is just linux with a new badge slapped on
I have wave, as have a bunch of other people I know, and yet noone is using it
Is anyone actually doing anything useful with wave or is everyone just talking about it?
I am… I’ve used it to collaborate on a few whitepapers with my friends. And although it may look a little bit like Outlook Express, it’s really nothing like it.
And the invites seem instant for me… I *just* sent one to my sister, and she got it about 10 minutes later… that’s about normal for a preview release.
It’s really nice for collaboration on documents, actually, because not only can you edit a document at the same time with another person (no merge conflicts!) you can also start a discussion right in the middle of the text, and then delete it when consensus has been reached.
I like google, but wave sucks!!! the article sucks too.. fanboy… article packed in sheeps….
Quite frankly the product sucks. Google better nix the thing.. start from scratch before Microsoft does it.
Do these guys ever do any usability studies.. I mean the thing is so messy… one just wants to scream and run away…
LOL
google wave is a bad idea, and will fail completly despite desperate fanboism like of that of the author of this piece.
the information gigoloogle wants to be THE hub of all information flow on the web, and everybody is cheerleading! this is to stupid and dangerous!
Chrome OSucker is yet another piece in the agenda of the vacuum cleaner cloud of google! Their arrogance is unmatched, even by Microsoft.
and yet people are still blind!
sad
a bit biased, eh?
less than or on par with writers on this site
biased? wave is trending (or spaming) on twitter for month now!
It is useless and anoying piece of software, and yet only because it is google people keep praising it! That is the real bias here!
Google lost its focous! IT should go back to be a marketing corporation, and NOT try to dominate all areas of tech buss one by one!
HIstory repeats itself, first as a tragedy (microsoft) then later as a FARSE (google)
It is a useless and annoying piece of software… sounds like twitter is also…?
Like most of Google’s products, it’s extremely overhyped but underused. Some IT departments are already blocking it (Websense, etc) as “Chat/Instant Messaging;Web Applications” – I can understand that because in addition to “Who owns the Wave?” the question of “Who owns WHAT is ON the wave” is a legitimate one.
Same with Google Voice. The bug kerfuffle about Google Voice not being allowed on the iPhone is something that really only affects a small number of users. From the FCC: “1.419 million users, only 570,000 of whom actually use it everyday.”
So true.
All your data are belong to YOU !!
Don’t surrender to Google.
Thanks for the reminder, Ballmer.
No one is forcing you to use Google’s products. However, the many rumors about Google taking people’s data and selling it, etc. are likely not true. Google makes a lot of money off of advertisements, and besides a few other small things, they’re fine!
And even though I may hate Microsoft, I would give them my data.
If you’re really that worried about it, use GnuPG…
yeah… just take it or leave it… simple thing lol
Klaus,
WTF, you are talking about? You can criticize Wave and not like it but your comments are insane…
I am not insane! I just have memory! Do you remember in the 90s people used to freak out because Doktor Bill Gates would allegedly ’spy’ on what was played on Dvdroms?
Today people go hysterical about Google which is thousend times more agressive on the amount of information the control from not only all users but from all the web!
This BEAST should not be left unchecked! I use google products (some of them) but I praised the arrive of Bing! I hope it grows FAST. 40% market share it would be ideal – to make benefits to everyone!
I am not sure if the company is arrogant but it keeps trying to replicate past success and shake the world from every angle but (not counting those applications acquired) failed miserable on most fronts except the search engine that keeping those smart and under-performing employees happily kicking (don’t take me wrong, it is the kind of leisurely job I like). Android? Yes I think it is a master stroke not heard of for a while. But wait a minute, I don’t think the mobile business model will change in the direction that Google hopes, and at last will be orphanaged.
I’m reminded of the time a friend of mine, the founder of a small software company (now defunct) said, “There’s no point in developing a Windows version of our software, Windows is just a fad!”
I’m also put in mind of the time Westinghouse rejected a new invention, because it was an interesting novelty, but would never have a serious application, the TELEPHONE!
OMG.. so chrome is okay and won’t suck? And then all of a sudden Google Wave will suck? Err… I think those 2 apps should be swap.. The word “will suck” is more fitted with Google Chrome OS. Why?
Some people still has no clue what google wave is.
here’s the reason why google wave is one of the best: http://bit.ly/google-wave-why-should-you-use-it
“It’s one of the most “expected” BIG-BANG of Google this year and for year 2010 when its fully released. One of the reason why the Yahoo-Microsoft Tandem was once again stupefied and now scratching their heads.. “WOW GOOGLE BEAT US AGAIN?”"
Still don’t understand the “why it is the best” part. Best for idiots maybe.
Wave is NOT special. It’s a bad CHAT ROOM. Nottin’ more.
@marco
perhaps if you still want to live in the 90’s . but next year.. behold, you might be surprised you became the dumbest of all the dumb egg heads coz you don’t how to use wave
Scary to read that some PR and marketing makes users believe that a forum is now IM+Email.
Good luck in your forum next year, Diabl0.
@Marco
Hopefully you’re not peeing your pants now – on the way to 2k10… GLHF
why in the world does your mind go to a forum? and an IM+Email? LOL… , you need some serious help du-de
Agreed… Wave does stuff that isn’t easy or not possible on any other platform. Document editing is amazing.
It isn’t a forum, nor IM, nor E-Mail. It’s an entirely new form of communication, that’s open (as in Wiki and as in open-source), real-time, and free (beer!).
This is trash. Some valid points, but most of his comments suck.
This is a preview build and it will continue to improve over time. I want to save this post and then rub it in his face in a year or two. Just wait…
At least someone has common sense here
This post and all the comments show that Wave is a big deal. Complaining about the UI now is like complaining about an amusement park where the rides aren’t all built yet, just the monorail to take you around.
Most important: Wave is about communication, and most of the venom in these comments is from people who don’t want to communicate. They only want to shout out their complaints and leave. If they don’t like Wave, that’s good, we don’t really want them inside anyway.
More here: http://bit.ly/59HOQD
Completely agree and well said. There are some great benefits to this, especially how it links to google health. Obviously there are some privacy and security issues that need to be addressed when dealing with sensitive information, but the technology is great.
Any article that contains the phrase “Today, you’ll want to keep using Skype or Jabber clients for chatting” is pretty well out of touch as neither has any appreciable market share in IM. (Looking at wikipedia it seems as though jabber has about 2 points in germany)
Well, Jabber is pretty popular here, as is Skype. Most teenagers still use MSN/WLM, but that’s mostly because they don’t know about anything else. Most of their internet time is spent on Facebook, WLM, and YouTube. They tend to use whatever everyone else is using, too, so for something to really penetrate that market it either has to be completely new and cool, or have a lot of people know about it.
Just look at Firefox, and how long it took to really catch on… now nearly everyone I know has heard of it, and most use it. There is always a possibility, it’s just difficult.
Because Wave is a new concept, I think it will catch on. It’s also exciting for developers, because it does a lot E-Mail can’t do, and a lot IM can’t do, and a lot of stuff that is just plain new and cool.
Sorry, I tend to rant on and on when I hear people who actually haven’t had a chance to use something in a good way. Use Wave for something it’s good at, don’t try to use it for things that E-Mail/IM/Forums/whatever already do well.
Jabber is the basis for Google Talk/Chat…
The information Gigoloogle re-invented the CHAT ROOM! omg, that ‘genious’
Please TC & Co. stop this Google/ Twitter hype : any “0 value” project Google does it’s gold, any insignificant Twitter related fact it’s a scoop
Google Wave sucks IT’S OFFICIAL . I just counted the negative vs positive comments…like 100:1 .
It’s also official that Google has the YAHOO Syndrome : we try to do anything to be everywhere….we miserably fail…until death.
About Twitter : the hype it’s over, visitor growth is flat … the fall is coming soon.
Sorry but this product will change completely or die completely. It is truly abysmal and pointless.
i wont use google wave. noone will use google wave. it is a glorified chatroom that lets you embed vids. there is no wow factor. its overhyped by google fanboys. non-fanboys can see past the google logo and see theres nothing enticing about it. NOTHING.
you keep bringing up its revolutarionary for collaboration? yea, just like google sites was revolutionary. oh wait, noone uses that either after a few years.
but zomg, it lets you resize text? revolutarionary!!!!
You should apply for the job left vacant by Don Dodge, the famed ex-Microsoft evangelist.
Your intellectual and visceral prowess, not to mention loyalty, will no doubt impress the Microsoft leadership.
o sweet days when ICQ were the REVOLUTION in human communication and colaboration!
godgle wave = EPIC FAIL!
Use GoogleWave, iWont !
Never.
Ever.
Google Wave promises sound like Lotus Notes promises: the ultimate collaboration tool.
Windows,
I dont think you understand the implications and technology behind Wave. I hate Google to have ownership of all internet but that does not mean they are stupid.
In fact, just because they are as good as they are, I have a concerns.
It is our (users) duty to keep them innovating but keep them honest.
Prejudiced views like yours did great harm to the world community in old IBM days. We let run MSFT to with our money.
Now Google is a company continuing to innovate. Let us help them doing it and still keep them under tight leash.
You are so correct!
Wave is an open technology, there’s nothing saying that you have to use Google’s servers. You can still communicate with people on other servers too. It’s completely distributed, like Jabber and E-Mail are in that sense.
It doesn’t really matter who provides it to you. Use whatever you feel comfortable with.
At the moment, Google’s client is the only one worth using, but I’m sure more will come in the future.
Exactly!
me and my friends are actually using it as an IM replacement, nice to see the possibilities, but I agree, lots of bugs, you have to be patient with it
If we give the Wave team some time, I assume, that they will be able to incorporate the usual Google “coolness” into the product.
I would love to see that.
If you were looking for a magic new widget – Wave is not it. If you are looking for a better way to collaborate, I think this has great uses. It is not everything for everybody. Thanks for the +/- on WAve just the same. I appreciate the issues better now and look forward to getting more out of WAve.
I agree. If you look for something, that you can use now and that is for free, Foswiki is your choice for the enterprise. If you can afford to pay something, choose Confluence wiki.
If you want to collaborate in real time: etherpad.com might be something for you.
etherpad.com was the first thing I thought of when I saw Google Wave. My company uses etherpad.com when collaboratively writing a document or brainstorming on strategy. The simple interface is really nice.
Google Wave seems to have more capabilities than etherpad, but will the complexity and extra noise turn us away? That’s what I’m interested in finding out.
I am hoping for Etherpad.com, that they will find their niche. The product is too good to die.
On the flipside, I sent them a mail 2 weeks ago. No answer yet.
Etherpad rules. I find it is significantly more useful than Google Wave, and it doesn’t need an invitation. You’ve got your writing panel, you’ve got your IM panel, have a ball. It’s easy to see who’s written what by the colors (there’s no similar way to differentiate when more than one person edits the same wavelet at once), it’s easy to chat at the same time, it’s just plain easy.
In fact, I would say that where the article says, “No other application apart from a few client-side chat tools currently offers such a service via a web interface.” it is just dead wrong.
Etherpad rules. Wave drools. (*)
(*) At the moment. I suppose it’s possible Wave could improve in the future. But it would take considerable improvement to be as useful in collaboration as I find Etherpad.
+1 for Etherpad. It focuses on one thing — collaborative text editing — and does it well. Compare to Wave which seems to a solution in search of a problem.
hm…. Looks exactly like google docs to me..?
Don’t forget that Wave is still in “preview”. I am loving it.
You have wrote that one can’t get updates (Disadvantages #4) . True. But I have discovered a robot to overcome this problem : http://blog.arpitnext.com/2009/11/use-google-wave-from-gtalk-to-get-updates.html
As I wrote above: “If you criticize Google Wave, you should keep in mind that it is a “preview” now. It’s not a beta, and it’s not a final release. The Google Wave team has set out to create “email as it should be in 2010″.”
Just admit it and be done, it sucks big time. We will have to wait for someone else to launch this technology, Google team is clueless.
Oops – it should be “written”
Google Wave is great for brainstorming sessions.
Wave won’t kill email, but it is here to stay.
I’m a Google fanboy, but frankly I dislike Wave. It tries to do everything without being good at anything. Putting everything together in one complex app makes things easily “bloated.” While you can get the same effect having several small apps open in tabs. The “working together on a doc” already exists. The “having a central place for all your info” exists also. Even the “real time messaging” does. Wave isn’t anything new, it’s just the next attempt at mashing up everything.
You could have a valid point here. Just as Steve Rubel said: “However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve? In many ways it’s overly complex. In fact it’s too complex for the era of the Attention Crash where all of us, especially knowledge workers, are crying for simplicity.”
Wave solves the timezone problem. It works really well if you have a small distributed team working across timezones where their working partially days overlap.
When everyone is online they can communicate fast (IM style). When some folks are offline (asleep!) it works in a slower (email like) mode. ( all the time collaborating wiki style on the same document)
The beauty of wave is that the switch from synchonous
to asynchronous is seemless.
There is a lot wrong with it at present, but it is a preview, and a load of invites went out last week, so I don’t expect a shortage for a while.
it’s and early tech preview the finished product might not even look like that, it’s and ambitious effort so i’ll for at least for the beta stage to to judge the damn thing, i still have high hopes.
Hi,
don’t forget it’s BETA! I think Google Wave have many nice futures but everybody must find his own way to use it…
Goole Wave is maybe the next generation of Web… Not Wave the plattform but the technology what google use for the Wave plattform…
It’s not even in beta. It’s a preview and the real point of Wave was the protocol (one which they’re still not ready to let us use). Google are likely releasing it the way they are so that they can improve both the protocol and the UI to fit the use cases people find for it.
Google Wave is complicated for people because they are using it despite having no real reason to do so. As a freelance web developer who’s had clients that don’t know how to put images into an email properly, Wave has been a great help (when Google is nice enough to send my client the invite I request). I can discuss various points of the design with the client, give them screenshots of the progress and they can comment and attach their own images (logo, annotated screenshot or inspirational image) easily without confusion as to why it showed in their email client but I didn’t receive it.
I’ve also used it to join in a live roleplay session (something that’ll work a lot better as Google improves the stability of the platform) and plan an event.
Wave isn’t a forum, or a replacement for email. Of all the current communications platforms on the net it is most like a Wiki but with the ability to limit the editors and viewers.
rollbacks are good on wave, you can see all the history of the wave…I dont know why he says the opposite.
Wave is beta, needs to improve a lot.
A rollback means, that you can revert changes with the click of a button. That is a basic principle from every wiki. Google Wave simply does not support it yet.
it sucks bad. I mean it doesn’t even do copy & paste!!
Oh. I missed that one.
Actually it does copy and paste. But not as seamlessly as we would hope.
I had it “work” for about 24 hours once. “work” means it would accept “ctrl+v” and do something (=crash).
Then it was turned off again, and the best work-around I found was to use the “link” tool.
Lot’s of bugs, but the lack of notification a wave has been updated is a real pain. Since I only have a few friends using it, I don’t need it open all the time, but I never know when someone is on to collaborate with.
A long way to go, and has potential. Maybe its really an experimental platform for something else?
Why are you waiting for someone to be online? If you’ve got an idea, record it. The point of the tool is to collaborate whether or not people are online.
I described to those who I invited to participate in the testing of Google Wave this way: “More private and more topic-driven than Facebook.”
For me, personally, Google Wave is great for specific topics — for instance, I set up a Wave regarding a recent article about some historian claiming that the Shroud of Turin is real, and my friends and I have been having fun chatting back and forth and using very “colorful” language in our criticism, which I kind of refrain from using on Facebook, being self-conscious that other “strangers/friends” might read it.
As some one who is outside the computer industry, I can see the enormous potential. TechCrunch readers probably need no prodding to accept invitations should they come their way. But, I recommend people to seek out invites and try it.
To those who have not tried, no amount of descriptions and videos could do justice to actually trying it out. It’s like showing somebody a gameplay video of a yet-to-be-released video game — yeah, you get excited, or uninterested, but when you have the video game in front of you, everything feels different.
Google is upping the invite numbers to those of us who have been testing. People I invited also just got 8 invites themselves as well.
Yes, I think you are right. And it is much easier to criticize than to build such an app. So lets give the Google Wave team some time to fix such bugs.
And then we will see, how that will turn out as an email killer or not.
Don’t forget, that they plan to let you install your own version. That will rock!
We’re actually using it as a replacement for Fogbugz, and for ad-hoc things like meeting agendas, and for any document/plan/etc that we need to collaborate on. It works relatively well for both of those tasks. Sure, it’s not polished yet, but it’s already clearly useful.
You will fail miserably, you are using a collaboration tool in the place of a bug tracking tool, and aside from that it still proves the concept that Google Wave is a tool for no clear purpose.
I would also feel, that a free wiki like Foswiki or Confluence (commercial) or a bug tracker like Jira would be better for you.
Thank you for your feedback. It’s great to see there’s such certainty in the world.
However, I’m afraid I must report the opposite: it’s working just fine. Perhaps this is in part due to the fact that we don’t like to keep hundreds of bugs open.
Nobody likes open bugs. But there will be a point, where you cannot fix them all. Just see the list of bugs in Google Wave above.
It’s now a month later, and many of the bugs in wave you have listed have been closed.
er…limited public beta ??
i think its fair expect some problems. don’t over do it.
@Yano – agree with you.
I feel that this analysis is a bit pre-mature as Google Wave isn’t a complete product yet. One thing is for sure, Google Wave will have a lot of users including me!
I won’t be using it if it continues to be slow as hell (i.e. iGoogle). Way more distracting than email and chat! Google needs to do some serious re-thinking as there are many good things in it still.
I see Google wave being an innovation for the sake of innovation. It doesn’t solve any particular problem. The technology behind it is interesting though but it would need some more creative application.
the problem with wave is that people want to try it, so they start one because they want to, not because they need to.
it’s like painting. if painting was new, people would be all over it, buying blank canvasses, throwing paint all over it. not that anything good comes out of it, but hey: at least they can say they paint.
that’s how it is with wave right now. too many people throwing paint, not enough that actually paint a picture.
I am guilty of the above as well, desperately wanting to try this new thing, but then I put it aside as a failed experiment.
UNTIL I suddenly NEEDED to make a wave:
I was emailing back and forth with a friend about jailbreaking and the essential cydia apps, tips about tethering, push notifications, and general customization.
at a certain point we were starting to lose overview in the string of emails, so we started copying the old parts with it, until we decided to move it all to a wave.
now the wave has turned into a clear guide about JB-ing and we have invited a bunch of friends to help us build the database of tips, tricks and essentials.
what I’m trying to say is: don’t try to make a wave, but use a wave when you need to.
eric.
PS: there is a pretty nifty wave notifier for the mac menu bar out there.
Is that Wave public? Will you publish it’s URL? sounds like a Wave I, too, need to join.
until waves can have followers (view only) and administrators (view and edit), I am not too snappy on making my waves public. I don’t want people that I don’t know editing my wave with stuff I possibly don’t agree with.
@eric
One of the few rational comments i have seen this list of comments.. Thanks for that comment
“It is a completely new experience to actually see your friends, colleagues and contacts type in and change content in real time. No other application apart from a few client-side chat tools currently offers such a service via a web interface.”
That’s incorrect, it’s not exactly new to the web, as both Adobe’s Buzzword, ConnectNow both have this feature. Flash applications in general have done this kind of connectivity for years now, but nothing in an application as mainstream as Google Wave. With ConnectNow you can even share your screen, and even share files, something that is not possible in Google Wave. Plus Adobe gives developers access to all the components used in ConnectNow to build their own multiuser applications, but Adobe doesn’t quite have the same PR as Google does.
As you said. The apps you named are not “that” widely spread yet either. I saw this live typing also in etherpad.com and in SubEthaEdit on the mac. But it will be new to a lot of users.
Why did you say that you can’t share files in GW? I’ve seen that done. Even at the time you wrote your comment.
There are two crushing disadvantages you haven’t mentioned:
1. Google Wave is not open source. I can’t download the source code and manage my own server. That’s a show-stopper – I can build an open source email server, IRC server, open source Jabber server, or any one of a dozen other communications and messaging protocols. There are even open source Twitter equivalents! I can’t contribute to the project, join the “Google Wave” project.
2. Google hosts the data in “the cloud”. I am dependent on Google for privacy, security, regulatory compliance, etc. Again, that’s a show stopper.
#1: Completely and totally FALSE.
Google wave server is open source. You CAN download the source. You CAN run your own server. And you’ll eventually be able to federate your server with others including Google.
You might also be surprised to learn that Google wave is an extension built atop the Jabber protocol.
#2: If you took the time to investigate you might find Google’s data security infrastructure may be vastly superior to your own.
Only tinfoil hat types tend to not trust Google purely out of principle, for fear of misuse or spying.
PS 2: like mentioned in the article: there should be a way how to export a finished wave as a webpage. there will be a lot of Wiki’s created this way.
also: the ability to make a wave public viewable, but only editable by a select few.
eric.
So go read the Wave Gadget API docs and start writing an extension. It’s not hard. If you believe in open source then this is the way to get the features that you want. What you’re asking is nearly trivial to implement.
The Wave team is very busy working to improve the scalability, squash bugs and improve the APIs that developers will be using to add all these new features.
Curious.
I just want it to hurry up and either replace gmail or talk, because right now, I have no reason to sign on to it.
i agree that there’s a little too much hype about wave but it seems like it’s the the new cool thing to leave a comment saying “wave sucks, wave no one will use it” …it’s still in preview! remember when people had doubts about facebook and twitter?
i initially got 8 invites, enough (for now) to give out to people i want to work on things with. it’s been really useful for brainstorming and keeping notes with a small group. i agree that it won’t totally replace email but will cannibalize it to some degree (think looooong email threads, forwarding messages to various people, etc.). I just got another 8 invites, seems like they are slowly but steadily opening it up to more users.
Google builds their products according to user feedback… revealing them before they’re ready, along with useful feedback from the community i guess they also get alot of annoying people complaining.
Good article. I’m a fan, have been using it on some projects, and have a nearly identical pro/con list in my head.
I believe that even if Google fails on the UI, someone else will deliver a good experience atop the fundamental protocols and the mechanism will emerge as significant.
One thing I think you should clarify, however, is that you said “don’t share confidential information in waves” and explained why. Your reasons were valid, but are largely mitigated by “Private Reply” which, I suspect, is there for exactly this reason.
I partly agree. But the private reply is another pretty nasty concept in a wave.
Just imagine, you hold a conversation and somebody else makes fun of you: everybody can see it and comment it but you. You go on in the wave as if everything was fine. #nasty
How does that feel. I would rather see private replies not used.
You got a point dude! that’s really nasty
I imagine that Google designed the tool mainly for use by professionals, and didn’t care so much about how children use it.
I’m not sure that it sucks. It might be even worse: Very few people really need it and will invest time to build up a network of their collegues/friends. Everyone has to become a Google member, set this up and so on. Only few will care.
Wave could be an answer to a question nobody asked.
Good phrase: “Wave could be an answer to a question nobody asked.”
But we could just as well not be ready to understand the question. Maybe Google is just ahead and we will be in need of Google Wave in the future.
Until that time I will keep on focusing on Foswiki and Confluence.
How many times to people have to be reminded that it is in preview mode right now? All these issues will be gone when released. Is anyone paying attention???