Riding the Google Wave
With the Beta invites now arriving we’ve been testing out Google’s new service ‘Google Wave’.
Google’s official description of Google Wave is that it is an online, real-time communication and collaboration environment. If you think of a combination between Instant Messaging (e.g. MSN Messenger) and Email, then that’s a pretty summary.
So what does it do?
The primary feature of Google Wave is that it allows you to create conversations (or Waves) between you and one or more of your contacts. Once a Wave is started, all those involved can collaborate in real-time, each seeing what the other is writing.
In addition to simply adding text, Google Wave offers a rich-media environment, which means you can add videos and images to the wave also.
How’s it going to benefit me?
In principle, rather than emailing or using Messenger to communicate and collaborate with colleagues or friends, Google are hoping that you use Wave. The benefit of this is you will have access to each Wave individually and view the conversation from start to finish.
What’s next?
It’s going to be interesting to see how Google Wave develops over the coming months. Whilst it’s still in Beta, new announcements are being made regularly. Some recent announcements include:
- Google Wave App store – A solution for 3rd party developers to build add-on’s for Google Wave.
- Google Wave API – An interface to enable 3rd party solutions to integrate with Google Wave
- Google Wave Federation – Google will allow 3rd parties to host their own Wave server and use it privately and connect it to other Google Wave servers.
At Quba we like collaborating as a team and also with our clients so will certainly continue to evaluate Google Wave as it develops.
If you’d like to see it for yourself, you can request an invitation to the Beta here – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/.
Alternatively if you have access already, let us know you’re Google Wave email address so we can send you a Wave.
