The simplest way I can think of to describe Google Wave is this: think of a collaborative MSN, that’s basically it. Currently, Google Wave is in a preview state. You can sign up for it, but you are in a (very long) queue for invites. I signed up several weeks ago and have had nothing from Google, as yet, I managed to scrounge an invite from a Twitter user that I follow (thanks Susan!).

A word of warning: do NOT buy Google Wave invites through eBay (and other such places) as inevitably you either won’t get the invite or it will only be a partial invite where you don’t actually have a full account. Culpa mea.

Anyway, Here’s a look at the Google Wave screen:

the main Google Wave screen

It has a layout similar to most email applications. Top left is the inbox and what-not, below that is a list of contacts, in the middle is a list of waves (ie: discussions) and on the right is the actual discussion its self. You can see in the above screen that you can embed YouTube videos in to a discussion. You can also embed images but, for reasons unknown to me, you need to have Google Gadgets installed on your PC to be able to drag and drop images to discussions, this is quite limiting I think, but… this is a preview, hopefully Google make inserting images easier. You can, like emails add attachments, but they are always at the end of a wave, can’t be in the middle.

To get going you can best think of it as being like email, you start a new wave, add a contact (or several), write the message and click ‘done’. The person receiving the email can then click to reply. If I’m online and looking at the original wave, I can see the person actually typing in their reply, in real time, which is a nice touch. Only problem, at the moment, is that you can only ‘wave’ to other Google Wave users. You can’t send a wave to just any old email address.

This is me replying to a wave...

Creating and editing a wave is done using rich text, so you can bold, highlight, indent and so on. Clicking the green jigsaw piece (top right) lets you enter a url for a Google Gadget which you can insert in to your email. It would be nice to have a list to choose from, but there’s not, so you need to hunt the internet for a list of gadgets. Same with contacts, you can add contacts which are actually ‘bots which give added features. In this screen (below) I’ve added the easypublic user which means when I add him to a discussion, that discussion goes public and anyone can see it.

This is a public wave which anyone can see and participate in...

There are a ton of public waves, you get these by entering:

with:public

into the search box. Think of these public waves as being like an open forum, you can pop in and read posts and easily reply to them too. Speaking of replying, you can also send pings (a quick Q&A for want of a better description) and private replies. Private replies are like a private message (PM) on a forum that only you and the receiver can see, these are sometimes shown as a wave within a wave:

A standard wave. The blue bar signifies that wave as being private...

Surely a wave is between you and the receiver? Well, yes. And no. At any time you, or the receiver can drag in a contact who can read through the discussion and then toss in their tuppence worth, hence the collaborative link.

Now, this is where things can get controversial… readers of the wave can also edit the entire wave. So someone who has come in at the end of a long discussion could, in theory, go back and edit the original wave that, let’s say, I wrote! This is good for collaboration, but it’s no good if you want to use Google Wave as an email application, which some people seem to think it is, it’s not. Google Wave is for collaboration, brain storming, presentations, and so on.

I can see the uses for Google Wave, but at the moment it’s a bit of a misunderstood child. Will it take off? Probably, as no doubt Google will, eventually, let anyone join, and for free. Like I said at the start, it’s really just MSN on steroids.

I like Google Wave and will probably play around with it more, but I really can’t pass judgment on it until it is out of preview and has more features. Feel free to give me a wave at: ronnietucker@googlewave.comSimilar Posts:

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Tried to upload them to YouTube, each is only a few minutes long, but after a looooong upload (on my crappy broadband) it tells me they’re too long!

I’ll put them on Google Video then! Hmf!

Google, I hope you’re having second thoughts about that purchase of YouTube. Sell, SELL, SELL!!  Similar Posts:

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