Understanding Google Wave

I’m not going to explain a whole lot of stuff about Google Wave. Just my experience. I’ll leave the explanations to other material that I’ve either read or watched, and point out those references along the way.

Getting Psyched

One day I happened to watch the Google Wave Developer Preview at Google, which is a one-hour-and-twenty-minute-long video.

I was intrigued.

Google Wave seemed to be a total redesign of communication in a cutting-edge, well-thought-out model.

Never mind that it’s hard to explain and still in development.

I signed up for an invite, and then patiently waited a couple of weeks.

Getting Started

Not knowing anyone who had Google Wave, I was stuck looking at start-up waves that came pre-loaded.

As soon as I received some invites to distribute I sent them out and it was only a day or two before I was ready to start waving.

After reading some articles about how Google Wave is used effectively, I decided to start an event plan for my daughter’s wedding.

I had one person help collaborate the information for the wedding wave. And then everything stopped.

Only two of the six invites I sent out were accepted. It’s hard to use Google Wave with no collaborators.

What is Google Wave?

It’s hard to define in simple terms, but the following video does a great job of conveying the concept. It was done in response to Google’s one-hour-and-twenty-minute-video at the developer conference.

And here is Google’s slimmed down version. (Eight minutes is better)

What is Google Wave good for?

Right now Event Coordination and Collaboration of documents, presentations, etc. seem to be the most promising.

You can read more about Google Wave’s potential in these articles:

Five Best Collaboration Tools, at Lifehacker.

9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams, at Mashable .

5 Big Real-Time Web Trends of 2009, at Mashable.

What are the drawbacks?

Google Wave has to be accepted and used by others, but most people don’t sign-up as early adopters.

It’s not easily understood or explained.

It takes time and effort to learn.

An Innovative Use of Google Wave

Here is a great video found at Tech Crunch in the article: 2009 As Told In Google Wave

Begging for a Complete Understanding?

If you’ve come this far and want more, here are a couple of articles:

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: Get Started with Google Wave

Get a Google Wave Invite

You can actually request an invite from Google here→ Request an Invitation to Google Wave

I have 19 Google Wave invitations to give out and will do so if you request one in the comments section of this post. Of course after the 19 are gone….

Update

Google Wave has a new feature where you can help test email notifications for your waves.

Related posts:

1. Getting Started with Google Reader
2. Add a Google Sports Calendar
3. Why You Need Google Reader
4. iPhone Push Email + Google Voice = Free SMS Messaging
5. Using Google Alerts to Monitor Information That Interests You

Tagged as: collaboration, event planning, Google Wave, Wave