Google Wave – Great Potential For Collaboration
TweetGoogle Wave is a communication tool, currently in an invitation-only beta test mode. It is an interesting application which seems to take the best of email, chat rooms, instant messaging and blogs and combines them into a communications mashup.
When you open Wave, you can see it’s a little bit different than other applications.
Screen shot of the main Google Wave page
In the left column is the main navigation menu and the contact list. In the center is the Inbox. When you click on a wave in the Inbox, the wave appears in the column on the right.
I won’t go into detail how everything works. When you first get into Wave there are a number of great tutorial videos embedded in the default “starter” waves to get you going.
There are a few things I like about Wave which I think make it a potentially valuable collaboration tool:
It’s secure. Wave is HTTPS encrypted, which helps keep conversations safe from “prying eyes.” Waves are only visible to those who are invited into the wave. Even within a wave there is the capability to respond privately to one or more persons. For those who are afraid of Google knowing too much, I’m afraid there’s no way around the fact that this is a hosted service and Google is the host.
Conversations Are Threaded and Organized.When working with disparate groups and/or remote vendors communications can sometimes be a challenge. Emails are sent, but perhaps not everyone needing to see the message is copied. Conflicting messages can go back and forth causing confusion. Waves are organized chronologically, and are also threaded with replies to individual messages indented. Since everyone invited in the wave can see all conversations, it’s easy to comment on anything within the wave. This helps make communication easier and smoother.
Screen shot of a Google Wave Conversation
It’s also quite nice that you can embed images and other files within a wave to help disseminate information efficiently.
Conversations Are Searchable. One challenge with email is the difficulty in finding something you know you read. Even the best email application lacks a good search tool. If there’s one thing Google knows, it’s search. There is a search box above the Inbox which will allow you to search through all your waves to find the keywords you enter in the box. This is something I know will come in quite handy.
Screen shot of the Google Wave Inbox
There are a number of plug-ins available with more on the way which will make Wave even more easy to use and useful.
There are some things I would like to see in Wave as it moves from beta to final release:
- Email Notification - I know Wave is supposed to replace email, but that’s really not going to happen. It would be great to have an email notice when you have a new wave invitation. It would also be handy if you could “ping” someone via email within Wave when they haven’t responded to a message.
- Ability to Add Plug-Ins to Existing Waves - From what I can see, you can only add a plug-in to a wave when it’s first created. I’d like to have the ability to add a plug-in to an already-existing wave.
- Color Coded Anonymous Icons - If someone doesn’t upload a picture or icon to their Google profile, their picture is the “anonymous” person. It would be nice to be able to color code those icons so one could differentiate between icons in their own wave view.
All in all, though, I think Google Wave has a lot of potential. I don’t think it will replace other online communication means, but it could be a great tool for collaborating on projects.
