Google Wave Out of Beta

googlePLEXS writes "Google Wave is open to all users at wave.google.com, as a Google Labs product — no invitation needed. Google Apps administrators will also have the option to add Wave as a Labs feature for their domains, helping groups of people communicate and work together more productively." If you haven't played with it, it's worth your time just to try to think beyond the bounds of IRC/Email. It's not going to change your work flow, but I still think it's worth a bit of your time to see it.

Comments

Dupe?

[icebraining]

Dupe? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/19/1721203/Google-Wave-Now-Open-To-All

Re:Great!

[OverlordQ]

It's actually not difficult to see what it can be used with. Basically, anything you type can be a wave. Any content you create can be a wave. The problem is people see Google Wave as the product.

No, most people see it as a solution in search of a problem.

Re:So why should I care?

[Ephemeriis]

I can already send any data through email, so what exactly makes Wave worth my time?

Real-time collaboration.

Wave isn't intended to have you compose a message and send it off. And then somebody else reads the message later and replies to you. It isn't intended for a thread-like conversation.

The idea is to have multiple people contributing to a discussion more-or-less simultaneously.

Kind of like if you were to cross email with AIM, Microsoft Word, and WebEx.

Re:How do I get others to use it?

[diegocg]

Not surprising, at least, Gmail has a scroll bar. I mean, a real scrollbar, which apparently they are not cool enought for Wave.

Re:Great!

[IamTheRealMike]

Here are some interesting case studies

Re:Sometimes we do send data like that

[BrettJB]

I'm not sure if you were trolling or being serious (haven't had my morning caffeine infusion yet), but here's a real-world example of pigeon-net doing exactly what you describe:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6209735

Re:Great!

[LordLimecat]

Several points.

1. It seems (so far as I can see) to be a direct replacement for email if it gains enough adoption. All data is encypted, and (as i understand it) all senders are verified, so spam and eavesdropping problems are pretty neatly dealt with. It extends the functionality quite a bit too, allowing for native video, widgets, etc.
2. It simplifies multi-person communication vs what you get with email-- currently adding a new person to a chain of emails is rather clunky: you have to forward the chain to them, and then hope that they correctly reply-all, otherwise the whole chain is messed up and if you need to add another person, he misses chunks.
   With wave, just click the "add another person" button, and they can see the entire conversation-- unless you want to keep certain parts private (which is easy to do)
3. It consolidates messaging on the internet. Currently, you go to JoeSchmoes blog, 2 forums, and slashdot, and leave posts at each. In order to check your replies, you need to visit each site and dig around to find your post.
   With wave, the blog comments could be a wave, the forum threads each could be waves, and the slashdot comments be waves. You reply, and your inbox now reflects the subscriptions to each. You could reply from your inbox, while others reply from slashdot or the blog-- but its all one messaging system, which means that doing it mobile is now a lot easier as well (you just need a mobile wave client).

Point 3 is especially big. Its kind of hard to see the benefit until youve actually tinkered with it and seen what it can do. For example I created a blogspot account, set up a test blog, and embedded a wave with an embedded sudoku board, and added the "everyone" member. Within seconds, on my blog, i had about 3-4 people playing sudoku and leaving comments-- in real time and with no refresh. I could later check my wave inbox and see any changes that had been made.

THAT is a big leap forward IMO-- if we can have a better messaging system with unified contacts and a unified interface, thats huge. All of a sudden we dont rely on 30 different websites producing an interface suitable to a 5 inch screen; we can just look for a suitable mobile client.

Re:why you might care

[Schadrach]

Umm, Wave is a protocol, with Google Wave being the reference implementation. The protocol supports what they call "federation" -- If my Wave address is Schadrach@Schadwave.com (a third party Wave server) and yours is numbski@googlewave.com, we can create a wave with each other invited, and it will maintain it on both wave servers. However, if everyone that is part of a given Wave is one the same server, that Wave never leaves that server. It is also possible to set a Wave server to not federate or to restrict who it will federate with, allowing you to create an "in house only" Wave server or a "only federate with other branches" Wave server or whatever.

What you just said is analogous to "Your e-mail has a serious case of 'data lock'. Don't want it on the Hotmail servers? Tough luck."

There are already some projects developing 3rd party Wave servers that are moderately far along -- as in they work, can be connected to, and have the basic features in place.

Re:So why should I care?

[LordLimecat]

How shall I count the ways?

1. All server-to-server communication is TLS encrypted and authenticated. All wave origins are verified using digital signatures, so, to quote from wikipedia,

   Therefore, a downstream wave provider can verify that the wave provider is not spoofing wavelet operations. It should not be able to falsely claim that a wavelet operation originated from a user on another wave provider or that it was originated in a different context.(source)

2. Real-time communication is possible-- that is, if you so desire, letter-by-letter updates are possible. This is not possible in email, so wave is in that way "more capable". Ill leave it to marketing droids to find use-cases for this.
3. you can extend it with native widgets and/ or videos. For example, if you want to discuss where to go on vacation, send a wave with a "vote" widget, and just check the wave for results. Email cannot do this; you need to link to an HTML page to get anything remotely similar.
4. Waves can be embedded. Blog comment sections can be replaced by waves; forum threads by waves. All comments would appear in your inbox. Email cannot even hope to replicate this other than with the clunky-and-annoying "notify me when someone responds" forum setting.
5. You can easily add people to the discussion. The only way to do so with email is to re-forward the whole chain of emails to them and ask them to reply-all; or to include them in the next reply-all and hope that noone else responds first. This is a pretty glaring flaw of email that Wave fixes.
6. You can retract statements and comments and actions on a wave so that they dont appear in the finished result, though they still appear in the history (its only a superficial change). Email doesnt really have this capability.
7. Waves can be made global and public. Theres no "everyone.on.the.internet@internet.com" email address (i hope)
8. Waves can be moderated; just because someone is a member of the wave doesnt mean they can forward (copy-paste works tho). Emails cannot-- all participants have equal control.

Need I go on? Lets face it, SMTP was a decent protocol, and has lasted a long time, but its age is showing, and its really time to move past something so antiquated and problem-ridden (spam? spoofing? reply-all fun? lack of encryption-by-default?).

There may indeed be good criticisms of the protocol, but the majority of the posts here seem to boil down to "I dont understand it, therefore it must have no uses". Is it just because it was Google that released it that it must be evil?