Google Wave – Best thing since the email?
"Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year."
- Google, May 2009.
To me, Google Wave is essentially a combination of Email, Forum, SVN, Sharepoint, and Instant Messenger. The approach they've taken to the modern internet communication is revolutionary. I can see a whole new terminology evolving around this new service, with people saying 'Wave me' instead of 'Email me' (Firefly fans rejoice).
The things I would love to see is:
- Mobile device integration - (This is potentially a platform that could revolutionize mobile communication - Maybe even a viable SMS / Mobile email replacement)
- Voice / Video support
- Flexible privacy / Identity Management controls - (ability to hide your address, not let people find you through other contacts, etc.)
While the transition away from email may be only a pipe-dream, a viable platform has really never existed, until now.
The main issues with this platform (as demoed) will be ones of Privacy and Security. Misrepresentation, defamation, and creative copyright issues may become an issue as well, especially with the ability to edit other peoples posts. I expect these issues will be addressed by Google in the future, and we've got to remember that what was demoed was an early Alpha.
So, could we be looking at the future of communication? Discuss
Bootnote
The Google Dev's appear to be Firefly fans. Did anyone else notice Firefly terminology such as "Wave me" and "Shiny"?
Links
Google Wave - A Developer's Eye View - Courtesy of The Register
Twitter: tristanfindley
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June 22nd, 2009 - 14:40
Unfortunately I haven’t found out much more about this, outside of the online tech-demo that was published by Google last month. Google were pretty generous by giving those 500 Developers at the conference accounts on their Alpha test-platform. While I would love to get my paws on one of those test accounts, I don’t see it happening any time soon.
In recent weeks I’ve talked to people regarding the system, and the major concern that most voice is that of privacy, and simplicity.
While Wave is a very powerful solution, it could end up like trying to crack a nut with a sledge-hammer. Sometimes you only need to send a quick communication (which requires no response) to a person, or you wish to announce something to a large group of people but don’t want them all commenting or replying on sections of it. This is the case of my current usage, where I sometimes receive service-updates or outage-alerts for our central university services.
The concern of privacy comes from the usage of mailing lists sending out a mailshot, advertisement, or customer information, and instead of using BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy), they use the ‘To’ field, or ‘CC’ field. This means that every recipient gets every email address of every other member signed up to that service. This is increasingly common with non tech-savvy friends who forward an ‘interesting email’ to you and 5 other friends. That email usually contains all of the email addresses for previous recipients, and the other people who were sent it usually have your email address included in their copy. Once this is forwarded to two or three more people, your email address becomes needlessly known to people that you’ve never even met.
While this last problem is already an existing problem with email, I would hope that with Google Wave, it would be possible to address these issues. Especially when you start using Waves on public web pages.
When I finally manage to find out some more information about Wave, I will create some more articles. Hopefully I’ll manage to somehow get an early test account, so I may publish a first-hand account of what Wave is really like
June 30th, 2009 - 01:17
Nah, lots of Australians use ‘shiney’ as positive expression.