What can I do with Google Wave?
Posted in The Gnovis Blog
Google Wave. I’ve heard people talking about it for a while now. Some have gotten invitations. I have not. For this week’s gnovis Round Up, I’ve compiled some info on what Google Wave is and what it can do. Now that it has been up and running for a few weeks, look over the reactions and suggested uses from around the blogosphere. Check it out. Let us know if you use it and why (Jason T: now we all know not to expect an invite from you any time soon 😉 ).
If you have one, shoot me over an invitation and I’ll check it out myself.
Don’t know what Google Wave is? Neither did I. Luckily the site whatisgooglewave.com has all the answers:
[Google Wave] is a web application and computing platform designed to bring together e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking, with a strong collaborative focus, mixed with spellchecker and translator extensions, which are able to work in concert, in real-time.
Still not getting a clear picture? Check out this very cute video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo&feature=player_embedded
Zach Wittaker on ZDnet.com writes:
But maybe the long of the short of it is that it just doesn’t even feel slightly ready yet. There’s no particular way to get started, no easy way to begin, and I was immensely confused when features which weren’t available yet opened up a draft wave to explain it… [It] is too tricky and fiddly to get working with comfortably.
Chris Crum on WebProNews is generally positive but skeptical of the hype:
It seems cool and potentially useful. Worst case scenario, it is just another tool that you can use if you want, which may or may not make your life (and work) easier. Best case (for Google at least), it becomes like email (or to a lesser extent Facebook) in the sense that it is practically unavoidable to use because everyone you know uses it and if you don’t you will be out of the loop. At this point, I’m just leaning toward the former.
On Neowin.net, Max Majewski sees faults but looks forward to future benefits:
Google Wave won’t make the world a better place, or even reverse the damages we’ve done to nature. It can help inspire such thinking, though; since it makes spreading news and ideas easer yet…. As soon as people realize in what ways using a wave could render even the most obscure project crystal-clear, Google Wave is the refulgent victor.
Zombie Journalism explains 4 potential uses for Google Wave specifically for journalists:
1. It’s a newsroom budgeting solution
2. It’s a reporting collaboration tool
3. It’s a community conversation tool
4. It’s a public Wiki or crowdsourced story
Richard MacManus on ReadWriteWeb offers a few uses for Google Wave in the University:
Overall, it is clear that Google Wave has potential to be very useful in the education system, particularly as a real-time collaborative note-taking tool. Three students experimented with just that in a lecture; the resulting notes were said to be “more complete” than if Wave hadn’t been used.
After sending out 9 invitations, the Electric Educator published the responses from several educators. This is just one example. Check out the rest:
One of the advantages of Google wave will be “Globalization”. This way people from different cultures who speak different languages, can communicate with each other. Thus, bringing them closer to one another, another step in the direction of making this world a real “village”.