TJS start a Google 'Wave'

Google Wave has been billed as the most hyped new event since Google launched Gmail.
The project has been headed up by the Rasmussen brothers, famed for developing big hitters like the mighty Google Maps. Before we go too much further and get too carried away however, it's worth remembering that Google is developing a reputation for getting excited about projects and then getting distracted by the next big thing. Remember, for every Google Maps, there’s also a Google Lively.

At the Google I/O conference back in May this year, Lars Rasmussen, Google’s software engineering manager, suggested that Google Wave was Google’s take on what email would look like if it was re-invented today. He remarked that email was a system that was invented some 40 years ago, long before the conception of the world wide web as we know it. Email simply mirrors snail mail, while instant messaging is a textual version of a phone call. Things have become rather more sophisticated recently with blogs, wikis and bulletin boards among the more en vogue other ways of communicating.

So what is Google Wave?

At its most basic level it's a way of communicating / collaborating with either one, or a great many people. It is therefore billed as a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to roll email, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking all into one.

But is it a solution looking for a problem? Or is it likely to cause the next digital tsunami? Time will tell.

Finding our way around

Once we'd got hold of our hallowed invitations, we simply headed over to wave.google.com and signed into our Google accounts as normal. Here you’re presented with an email-like view. In the top left of the screen is the navigation bar with folders where you organise your ‘Waves', with an Inbox and related folders. Below this are your contacts. To the right are your list of 'Waves', (similar to your list of email in a client such as Outlook). Finally on the right is the Wave itself.

Select a ‘New Wave’ and a box will appear into which you can type, with a toolbar at the top for basic formatting. What’s immediately noticable is that if your contact is logged in at the same time, they will see what you're typing as you hit the keys (with a little satellite delay!) As they type their name appears as a moving cursor, so you can see who is writing what.

Typing into a new box is known as a ‘blip’. You can reply to this by hovering the cursor over the bottom line of the blip, which will bring up a 'reply' arrow. Clicking this will create another blip immediately underneath. This enables you to interject into any part of the 'Wave' or conversation as you require.

We like the fact that you can see who is logged in and online by looking for a green dot next to each of your contacts (as already seen in Gmail's Chat window).

Every step of the Wave is captured and recorded, so that when somebody logs back into the Wave later on they can see exactly what’s happened step-by-step by hitting the ‘Playback’ button. Users can also run through to get quickly to the part of the Wave they want. It’s akin to going through an email chain in the same way as you would scan through a video.

A nice feature that really sets Wave apart from instant messaging is that you can actually go in and edit everyone else’s comments too, making it more of a live Wiki. Although there is the temptation for the pickier members of the team to go in and tidy up any grammatical errors in others' posts, should they be so inclined.

Wave could therefore be described as a mix of email, instant communications and a Wiki. This is where Google Wave is pitching itself as a full blown collaboration tool.

Having Google Gears installed enabled us to drag and drop images into a blip which, when you double-click them, open up into a nice full screen gallery slideshow. You can also embed YouTube videos directly into a blip too (although I've not found a good reason to other than for its novety factor!)

In addition to pictures and videos, you can also embed applications, known as 'extensions', 'gadgets' and 'robots', which we understand can range from games such as Sudoku to serious business applications.

With a bit of digging on Google I managed to unearth a clever robot codenamed Aunt-Rosie, an automated extension enabling you to translate (live!) into one of over 40 languages as you type. Fantastic to see, although anything more challenging than "Où est le singe? Le singe est dans l'arbre" and I'd need to recruit some of my French friends to see if the results actually got across the message accurately.

In Summary

As committed users of the internet and Google products I have to admit that at first time I logged in it was a little hard not to feel overwhelmed . The ability to reply to messages at any point, and respond within one blip or by creating a new one, a Wave can soon become a messy place. I guess Wave style and etiquette is something that will need the limited patience of it's users to evolve and develop over time.. or rapidly find itself land on the same lonely shores as Google Lively.

RMG