Google Wave - looks promising

[Alluvial]

Apologies if this is old news - or if this should have gone in a different forum.

Google is developing a new method of communication they're calling Wave (article here). This looks very promising to me for project collaboration. Instead of using email with "reply all" when communicating back and forth with project team members, one can start a "wave" which will include everyones replies and discussions.

One nice feature is the ability to insert comments anywhere in the wave. For example, with email, if you want to respond to separate portions of someone's email, you have to snip the text apart. With Wave, you just click inside the text and insert your comment.

You can also insert pictures, which strikes me as a good way to send snips of drawing details to folks for review & comment. (As an AutoCAD user, I really like that).

It'd be great for document collaboration. People can make changes in real time, which are highlighted to show what was done, and tagged to show who made the changes. If you happen to get invited to a wave after some editing has been done, there is a cool little playback feature to show you what has transpired.

There is a demo video here. It's rather long - I had to watch it a bit at a time while doing something else.

I'm going to be keeping my eye on this one. Sign up for updates here.
I think you can even sign up for beta testing. It's going to be open source so that others can develop applications for it.

[Alluvial]

Say, did any of you dwellars ever get an invite to Wave? I'm on, and I'm happy to start a wave if anyone would like to participate.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not for us misanthropes.

[TheMercenary]

It sounds sort of like looking at the old news group responses in a different format.

[Alluvial]

I wasn't into that so I don't know.

It reminds me of message board type communication; with added capability. You can see each other typing in real time, so that the conversation flows more like a real-life conversation. Also there are a lot of add-ons, and users are encouraged to write their own. For example, there's a bot which corrects mis-spelled words; another which deletes blank posts. Someone I was waving with the other day said he'd be interested in a bot which allows you to add tags to users, and was looking into creating one.

The thing appears to be growing out in a lot of different directions. It's quite fascinating being part of it.

[Clodfobble]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Google Wave, and haven't seen it in action. Maybe it's awesome. But

Originally Posted by Alluvial

You can see each other typing in real time, so that the conversation flows more like a real-life conversation.

ICQ would do that, back in 1998. The whole thing seems like just another branded instant messenger.

[DanaC]

I hated that feature in icq. I turned it off. I so often start typing and then change my mind and edit as I go.

[Clodfobble]

Oh me too. Except I discovered that just because you turned it off, doesn't mean the other person did. I had a short but very confusing ICQ conversation with my cousin once, where he seemed to be freaking psychic until I understood that he was seeing everything I typed even though I hadn't hit "enter" to put it on the screen yet, while he thought I was ignoring him because I actually couldn't see what he wrote until he hit enter to go to a new line, which wasn't often.

[Alluvial]

Wasn't ICQ just person-to-person though? In the wave, all the participants could be typing at once.

What I think is the best thing about it is that all the communication is contained in one place. I do a lot of emailing back and forth with clients and other engineers as a project is progressing. Sometimes it's difficult to find that one email which has a certain piece of information in it; especially in expert witness projects because they seem to drag out over years. By communicating in a wave, all of that is in one place; and each of the participants can refer back to it.