Google Wave Now Open To All

tonyfugere writes "After a year of testing by invitation only, Google Wave has been opened to the public. From what I have seen, it looks like it could be beneficial for documenting brainstorming sessions beyond simple instant messaging protocols." (Google Wave is "also great for entertaining the masses," says tonyfugere, who links to the slightly NSFW demonstration below.)

Comments

People are using it?

[betterunixthanunix]

Wow, I have not heard about Wave in a while...I thought it had been lost in the bin of Forgotten Google Projects (FGPs).

Re:People are using it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so glad that /. came it it's senses about google wave because when it was announced everyone was so excited about it, I thought I had gone crazy to feel otherwise. Now everyone is giggling about it, asking what the point is and why exactly it's a "revolution".

Jeez just watch that video, I mean it's embarrassing.

Surf's Up!

[MarbleMunkey]

Seriously, though, I consider myself a reasonably bright software programmer, and I'm still unsure exactly what it is I'm supposed to be using Goole Wave for. Maybe I just don't communicate with enough people via electronic means...

Re:Surf's Up!

[elrous0]

So it's basically like MySpace then?

Yes, open to all...

[tarsi210]

...and still just as useless. Well, ok -- non-realtime collaborative efforts, perhaps. Brainstormings. Things like that.

But after it takes you 3 years to get everyone on Google, set up, working right (damned ad-block), etc. and THEN you can start working together -- oh, but wait, half the people don't know how to use Wave, so you have to teach them how to use it -- yes, dammit, it's more than just IM, it's all sorts of...oh, read the docs, won't you? -- THEN you can finally get down to working on the pro....

What? You have to go? Oh, I guess we DID spend the entire 2-hour meeting setting this crap up. Fine, reschedule for another day. AND ON A PHONE THIS TIME.

Re:Privacy

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

I don't understand. If you don't already have a Google account, then you wouldn't have to opt out. If you do already have a Google account, then you patently don't actually have a problem with their privacy policy, right?

WTF?

[chill]

Someone explain to my why whomever it was felt it was okay to transcribe half the curse words in the English language, but had to leave out "God Damn"?

Fuck him like a bitch is okay.
Mutherfuckaaa is okay.
All the rest is okay, but "God Damn" is censored?

Pussies.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe his point was pointing out the permeating nature of religious puritanism of this country...

It was really bold of him to attempt to point that out by not pointing it out at all and instead sounding like he doesn't have the vaguest idea of what he's talking about.

...even in some of the most educated social circles...

We know the difference between wi-fi and hi-fi. That's not 'educated'. We noisily raise decades-old complaints (a good chunk of them found in old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons...) then pat ourselves on the back as if we were the first to notice the perceived inconsistency. 'Educated' people would have attempted to answer the question themselves before spewing it noisly on a web forum. Heck, a truely educated person would use question marks to actually ask questions.

Re:My best fit for Wave;

[demonlapin]

Why is this modded funny? It's painfully true. Some friends and I have used Wave for a LOST discussion group every week, and it's pretty bad by the end of each episode.

Re:Been using it for months

[natehoy]

I think the beauty, and problem, of Wave is that it's very unstructured. It can be exactly what you want it to be, but if you don't know what you want you'll just end up with a mess. People approach it like project management software, or Instant Messenger, or email, or some concept they are used to, and discover that the people they are collaborating with are using it based on another concept.

Wave is like a big box of Lego. You can build some really cool stuff with it, if you know what you want to build up front. It can build things more easily and conveniently than many other tools. But if you just start mashing pieces together without a shared vision of what you are doing, it's a complete clusterfuck.

Well, that, and once you get past a few hundred collaborators or a few hundred posts on a specific Wave, the software slows down to a bind-bogglingly-painful crawl. But for small collaboration projects, it's quite good. If all of you decide how you are going to use it up-front.

Re:Do not tell me about this wave thing...

[MisterZimbu]

This.

Google Wave has to actually be forwards and backwards compatible with e-mails if it ever stands a chance of replacing it. That means people seamlessly being about to send e-mails to myaddress@googlewave.com and having them appear in my inbox, and having my replies (as waves) send out e-mails as replies if any of the participants in the wave is an "e-mail" participant.

And bots really don't count. It has to be tightly integrated into the system.

Re:Privacy

[somersault]

How is it a fallacy? I really don't give a crap who knows what I'm doing online, because 1) I don't do anything illegal, and 2) I don't have any moral issues with porn.

And Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole who certainly hasn't done anything to help the "dumb fucks" he refers to. He makes a living off of them in fact. He can collect all the info he wants on me, but it's pretty pointless as I either block or ignore ads on principal.