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!

[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.