For the first time today I had a chance to sit down and tinker around with Google Wave. And I have to say that if you remove all that hype that I think it’s a really cool tool. What is Google Wave? Apparently it’s a “Real Time Collaboration Platform.” OK, so what does that mean exactly?!?! Well, let’s break it down. Wave uses, well, waves. A Wave is kinda’ like a thread, or a project according to how you choose to use Wave. For now, I see a few main uses:
- As a replacement for other real-time instant messaging solutions (ie – iChat) for certain conversations where you need more interactive options. One nice thing about this is that you can see what others are typing, but you can also (if it’s not read-only) change previous blips. Since you can replay the whole session the changes are easily tracked and can help to keep everyone on the same page provided that everyone understands what’s going on.
- Somewhat of a project management tool. The most powerful aspect of Wave is that it is extensible using Google Gadgets, like you might use on your iGoogle home page. These Gadgets allow you to insert wikipedia articles, feeds, images, video, to-do lists, web pages and almost anything you can think of. This can allow for project collaboration and tracking (I could easily see a Gannt chart Gadget). You can also insert files and then use those files as part of your collaborative efforts.
- Collaborative coding. Basically, Google Wave can be a replacement for the collaboration features of SubEthaEdit, a tool I’m very fond of. This is kinda’ like using a wiki for coding, but Wave can be used as an interactive wiki of sorts. And since you can automate actions with robots you could actually build a robot to debug your code…
- Interlinking communications. There are Gadgets that allow you to link to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networking platforms that have APIs. This means that you can put a resource into a Wave, embed it on your site and have it be usable in some way in each of your other social networks.
Whatever you are using Google Wave for, you can take a Wave and insert it into a web page. This allows you to embed your collaborative conversation into web sites. And Wave is open source, so expect the innovation (and Google hopes, the adoption as well) to continue. One thing is for sure, using YouTube, Picasa, gMail and other Google tools is a much more streamlined workflow than using local files, or other online situations, etc. This is typical for vendors and not in the least bit to take anything away from Wave. If you have centralized on using Google stuff for other aspects of your organization then Wave is just another tool that, in some ways can be used to bridge the gap between instant messaging, file sharing, project management, document management, etc; in short, collaboration.
But keep in mind, it’s a “preview” solution. Google is still working the bugs out. You still can’t get an account without an invitation. In short, Wave is in beta testing. And my own perspective is also in beta testing. More as I experiment with these Gadgets and such… And if you’ve found other strategies that are working for you, please feel free to comment here!