Google Wave (goodbye to email?)
By IB Blogosphere • Jul 29th, 2009 • Category: UncategorizedHas Google found the next killer app?
That’s not for me to say. The way in which we communicate changes so fast that I wouldn’t bet on anything anymore. From letters to telephone to pager to email to mobile phone to texting to msn to picture messaging to Youtube to facebook. I’ve probably missed out a bunch of technologies and even put them in the wrong order, but that’s not the point. Technology and organisations like Google who push technology is allowing us to talk to one another in extremely interesting ways. And the best thing about Google…it’s all for free. That’s why I think Google’s latest development will catch on because anyone, anywhere can get hold of it and use it. So what is it?
Well, Google’s latest endeavour is an open-source web app called Google wave. To quote Google…
“Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web”
It’s quite hard to explain how it works but basically each message you send is called a wave. There is a huge number of things you can do with a wave. (To further quote Google…)
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
A really exciting aspect of Wave for me is everything is done in real time. When you contribute to a wave those who are part of the conversation see it being typed live. Pointless you may think but it can dramatically reduce waiting time for receiving messages. You can start responding or formulating your response while the other person is typing.
Other cool features of Wave is that it can be embeded into a web page and a conversation can take place live on a web page. You can also have a chat with someone through a web page but the other person can be using their Wave account to access the wave or even a different web page that it may also be embeded in. There is also infinite embedding possibilities through the Google Wave APIs.
Some may think that this is just email, with fairy lights, and possibly you’re right. But I also think that it’s a really useful communications tool. Google Wave is IM, email, document management, collaboration, sharing, real time, free and many other things.
Would this be useful at the IB? I think so. We have so many telephone conversations, email conversations, video link up’s and with each there is always annoying problems such as connection problems and dialing in issues. Time lost through trying to connect with eachother. Google Wave could provide an answer to these kind of problems through integrating many communication technologies and putting them all into one web based app.
It’s being released later this year and I’ll be putting some of my time aside to test out it’s features and capabilities.
You really need to see it to understand what it can do. The video below is a preview of Google Wave given at a Google conference this year. It’s pretty long at 2 hours, but it’s worth watching it, maybe over a few sittings like I did. Enjoy.
By any chance, are there are teachers who are using this web app at the moment? I’m using it and it would be wonderful if any IB teachers used it as well so that they could help students out just like myself.
Cheers
Wow! This is fascinating. Would this really catch on for personal communications, or does its strength lie in business communications? What are the disadvantages of someone reading your text as you type it? (Not sure if I would like that!)
Wouldn’t it be the same as conversing in person? You’d just form thoughts before you type them as opposed to while you type them.
I think it could be used for both Alissa. Most web technologies that started as for personal or informal use (Facebook, Twitter) has become integral to businesses all over the world.
Wave will work for business use as it cuts out time, not just in terms of typing and sending messages but also sharing work and including relevant people in live conversations. I agree with pandora, it does feel more like a live conversation.