May 2009 Archives

[This blog post is adopted from an email conversation with Chicklet. Coincidentally, one of Google Wave's features is to convert an email to a blog post with just a couple clicks. Disclaimer: I'm not a Google employee so I know nothing about Wave but what's in the media; however, I am currently working as an independent contractor on a Google project.]

I mentioned to Chicklet that I thought Google Wave looked cool, and certainly others agree. She responded that she might find it appealing if she knew what Wave actually was. So after watching (some of) the Google I/O video, here's my attempt at explaing Wave briefly:

Wave is basically one step closer to bringing the whiteboard to virtual communication. Think of it as shared docs in email/IM. Here's an example of what it does well: at Woody Woo, when they bring speakers they post a blank list with 15 slots for students to sign up for a discussion with the speaker. First 15 to sign up get into the seminar. Email can't replace this functionality because (for one thing) you can't know how many slots are left (without manually counting reply-all emails). Also, if you don't have conversation threading, people's inboxes flood.

Wave solves this by combining email and shared docs. Basically the admin would send out an editable email with 15 slots and the recipients would be able to edit it. (It tracks changes so you could tell if Doug erased Amy's signup.) And of course all the edits are in one "wave" so no inbox flooding.

The challenge for Google, I think, will be interoperability. What happens when only 5% of your social/business network uses Google wave. Does each edit of a wave with MS Outlook user flood the inboxes of the outside users? Is Wave worthless to you if only you use it?

Google appears to be trying to solve the adoption problem by having Wave appear on public sites like blogs where comments become wave-y. That should help non-adopters see the benefits of wave without changing their behavior. I also think people who (like me) have their gmail window open all day will quickly adopt wave as their inbox and gradually utilize its more advanced features.

Of course, all this assumes that Wave lives up to its hype.

You can read Enjanerd's take on the 2009 WaPo Hunt here: great fun had by all. Yesterday, Chu and yours truly extended one puzzle's theme. We conversed over supper (at Jaleo) sans the second banned letter of Gene's Donny Sobel essay. The largest challenge was our confabs to the servers, where we were usually unsuccessful. (You try to order food and use only four [and a half] vowels in your vocabulary!) When we engaged each other, however, our speech generally followed the rules of our game. (Proper names were also troublesome.) Perhaps others around us observed our sentences' odd rhythms, but we hardly cared. Truly a cool endeavor, but one we probably won't repeat often.