In September, 100,000 lucky beta testers, select businesses and developers were given the opportunity to preview Google’s newest product, Google Wave. The highly-anticipated product was first announced during the Google I/O Developers Conference in May, 2009.
Wave promises to revolutionize online communication by combining aspects of email, blogs, photo sharing, Wikis and instant messaging. Once the program is rolled out, users will be able to communicate and collaborate in real-time from work or home with the new online tool.
Waves, interactive documents and conversations, allow participants to collaborate on videos, text, maps, games and photographs. Users will be able to edit, reply, interact and playback waves at any point, all at the same time. Other users will be able to view the edits, letter-by-letter or word-by-word.
Google Wave - The Wave interface is divided into four sections or panels: Navigation, Contacts, Inbox and Current Wave or conversation.
- Besides text, Waves can also include pictures, polls, maps and widgets.
- Waves can be embedded in other websites, blogs or added to social networking gadgets.
- Besides working on work-related projects, users can work on interactive puzzles together.
- The Ribbit Conference Gadget allows users to communicate with others in real-time using an audio connection. Users can add, mute or disconnect individual participants during the conversation.
- A spell correction system provides contextual suggestions.
- Google Wave includes easy desktop drag-and-drop file sharing.
- A rich text editor is included.
- Waves are live.
While draft mode features and permissions configurations will be rolled out later, tweaks and various improvements to the program are ongoing.
Creating a Wave - Starting a new Wave is simple to do.
- Click on “New Wave” to open a new conversation.
- Drag-and-drop friends and colleagues from the contacts box and begin typing.
- Add people via Gmail accounts or from personal address books. Currently, the removal of participants is not functioning.
- Edit conversations by clicking on the downward facing arrow at the top of a message.
Wave Lingo - Despite the fact Google Wave has not been released to the general public, the up-and-coming application includes many new terms.
- Waves are containers for collections of threaded conversations consisting of one person, groups or robots. Waves store historical information.
- Wavelets are subsets of larger Waves and serve as containers for one or more messages called Blips.
- Blips are the basic units of conservation. They consist of individual messages that appear on wavelets. Blips can either be drafts or can be published. Blips can have other blips, known as children.
- Twave = Twitter + Wave.
An HTML 5 application built on Google Web Toolkit, Wave has been in the works for over two years. Lead developers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the brothers behind Google Maps, hope the new platform will make online communication more efficient and productive in today’s fast-paced world. Speed and ease of use are critical in the ultimate success of web applications. Thus far, Google Wave appears to have both. Currently, no general release date has been announced.
To request an invite to try out Google Wave, visit the website.
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