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

The link you actually care about

[BitZtream]

http://wave.google.com/

Re:The link you actually care about

[BitZtream]

Should also note, its actually open to Apps for your Domain as well.

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.

Re:People are using it?

[dsavi]

Maybe this will lead to someone actually knowing what Google Wave is. I never thought I'd see the day.

My best fit for Wave;

[B5_geek]

IMHO, the best niche that Wave can fill is by replacing message boards. By merging the IRC/Email/newsgroup/BBS concept it makes it perfect for following threads of conversations, starting new discussions, replying privately to one or two individuals, embedding images and/or videos.

I would gladly donate my left kidney if all my favorite forums/groups switched over to Wave.

Re:My best fit for Wave;

[natehoy]

A few of mine tried. After a couple hundred messages, you have to type each character and wait a second or two before you can type the next one.

I finally gave up when it started taking me more than a minute to type a short sentence. I started longing for the incredible speed of BBSes and my old 300-baud modem.

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:My best fit for Wave;

[D Ninja]

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

The Wave or the show?

Re:My best fit for Wave;

[Brandee07]

My best use for Wave: FAQs.

It's honestly my only use for wave, but it's a good one. Someone asks a question, someone else answers, someone else corrects the answer, someone else provides links to citations.

An example, the wave I manage: https://wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+N0MhqpVgB

Active discussions require a very active moderator to keep the wave from getting so large as to die the slow death of lag. Most collaborative documents are better handled in Google Docs. Random "which do you like best" polls should be purged from the internet in general.

Re:My best fit for Wave;

[radtea]

After a couple hundred messages, you have to type each character and wait a second or two before you can type the next one.

I've found Wave basically unusable on my netbook with Firefox for much the same reason, even with small waves. The fastest it runs is unacceptabley slow, and this on a machine that is powerful enough to run OpenOffice acceptably fast.

Re:My best fit for Wave;

[cbreaker]

Chrome has pretty fast JavaScript, but it's not very stable. There's a game called Lord of Ultima, which uses Javascript to display everything. It's pretty amazing, actually. When you run it in Chrome, it's nice and speedy. For about an hour. Then it starts to hang, pause, choke, and it's not even worth using.

Firefox isn't quite as smooth as Chrome in the game, but it stays at that speed for days of leaving the game open.

Just another reason I see no reason to use anything other than Firefox. It just works.

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!

[John Hasler]

> I'm still unsure exactly what it is I'm supposed to be using Google Wave
> for.

The video makes that quite clear: creating a hideous garbled mess of crap.

Re:Surf's Up!

[zwei2stein]

Obligatory version of video that is actually cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HePWBNcugf8&feature=related

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.

To quote Triumph

[Sycraft-fu]

"Shhh, shhh, shhh, listen, listen closely, hear that? It's the sound of nobody giving a shit!"

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?

Re:Privacy

[nacturation]

I just opted out as soon as possible, given Google's stance on privacy issues.

I opted in as soon as possible, given Google's stance on privacy issues.

(My comment is as meaningless as yours if you're not going to elaborate at least a little.)

Been using it for months

[Ngarrang]

I have been using Google Wave for months now. It works well once you figure out how to use it and for what you can use it effectively. I have been using it to collaborate with fellow musicians. In real-time, we hammer out lyrics, instruments parts, ideas, etc. Record something, most the MP3, share the bits that way, and the guy that is the best with the mixing software does the final mixes, shares the results. It has been fast and effective.

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:Been using it for months

[fahrbot-bot]

I have been using Google Wave for months now.
It works well once you figure out how to use it and for what you can use it effectively....

I thought the same thing about my penis.
Admittedly, I can't share MP3s with it, like Google Wave, but other collaboration is a go...

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:Privacy

[BitZtream]

You can turn off the advertising on the web interface as well, just go into your settings and turn it off.

Its optional, and on by default, its also so unintrusive that I actually turned it back on just because occasionally I'll see something I actually care to learn about and I'd rather they get some occasional cash for letting me use their services for free.

You do realize that if you never give them any incentive to give you the free service they will eventually stop giving it to you ... right?

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.

Just a wiki

[tbird20d]

Is it just me, or is Wave just a fancy wiki?