Google Wave: First Impressions
Like an excited little kid on his birthday, I practically squealed when I synced my mobile phone’s email client with my Gmail account and saw that a certain correspondent whose email ID was wave-noreply@google.comhad sent me an email with the subject line Your invitation to preview Google Wave. I jumped out of bed, turned on my laptop and accepted the invite and started Wave-ing. It’s been a couple of hours since I woke up and I took a break only to brush my teeth and wash my face. I have been Wave-ing since seven in the morning (here).
Here, I present a visual journey through Wave, captured with screenshots. Since I have no contacts associated in Wave, I cannot tell you how it works as a collaboration platform. It does, however, look very interesting. So without further ado, here are the screenshots with explanations. Click through each picture to see a larger version.
The extreme left side is divided into two bars, Navigation and Contacts and reminds one of Gmail’s extreme left sidebar. The center is the message view with each message having the picture of the contact who is participating in the wave, while the extreme right bar is the Wave view. Doctor Wave is shown as a contact, while an embedded video of him introducing us to Google Wave is in the Wave bar. Notice the previewsubtitle to Google Wave on the top left.
Clicking on new wave takes us to a composer that feels similar to Gmail’s rich text formatter. The screenshot gives an example of some of the features. The first line is the subject line of the Wave. Add participants to the wave by clicking the +’ button, or dragging contacts from the Contacts panel. Add tags and files at the bottom of the Wave for organizing and sharing information, respectively.
You can reply to a message by simply clicking the lower border of that message (known as a blip). The same formatting options are given, while a built-in spell checker allows you to correct your errors (more on this in a following screenie).
Copy paste a YouTube URL and voila, you get an option to embed the video! Some more multimedia can be embedded, methinks. For the sake of this post, I have stopped at just one.
The final embedded video (of Monty Python, no less!) along with the spell checker (called Spelly) that manifests itself as a small blue button with a downward pointing arrow when your cursor hovers next to the wrongly spelled word.
Final Word:
Though it seems novel, it is not as much fun without contacts. I will be sending a few invites in due course of time and collaborate information with people to see how well Wave does as a collaboration platform. Check in again for a post detailing the collaborative prowess of Wave!
UPDATE:
For the Developer Preview, check this earlier post by Unitechy.
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Author: Kaushik
A mobile technology lover and a Strategy and RPG-game fanatic. I also enjoy astronomy and programming. I am a biotechnology engineer learning through this fascinating subject while poring over computer science. Hit me up on Twitter for moreTCA Lakshmi Narasimhan has written 443 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at kaushik@techie-buzz.comComment Using Facebook
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Do forgive the numerous grammatical errors this post and the screenshots are riddled with; I wrote this post quite early after a six-hour sleep! =P
Congrats on getting the invite. Looks like, I wasnt so lucky.
Hey there…
Good Roundup. Wave does look cool and promising. Could you be kind enough to send me an invite? :)
destinyspride@gmail.com
Thanks in advance
Pease send me an invite. I would be wery happy if i could try it out :)
So basically this is like a chatting application for mobiles right?
Looks cool.
Cheers,
Johnny
We have big, Big, BIG plans for a collaborative social network at our website wavecenter.com. If you guys give us one of your invites, when we topple Facebook as the leading social network you’ll be able to say “we gave those guys their invitation to Wave”!
Even if you think I’m full of it, couldn’t hurt to hedge your bet, right?
Hello, I’m from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Would you please send me an invitation? Will be very gLad if you do so.. my emaiL address is rafi2006 at gmail dot com
Hey,
I was almost in tears when I went to wave.google.com and got “Your Google Account has not yet been activated for Google Wave.” (well not really BUT..).
Your prolly gonna be sick of people asking, but would I possibly be able to get an invite!!
Liked your post too man, good read!
- Guy.
Google is not messing around, and I foresee that Google Wave will literally become a wave that will sweep all before it. The Google juggernaut just keeps rolling on, and there is seemingly no end to their new tricks.
From Chrome the web bowser, too soon to be released Chrome the operating system, through to this now, there is just more and more great stuff bearing the infamous Google brand coming on line all the time.
I remember when we needed a invite for gmail.
If you have enough of invites for me could I get one? explorecomputerworld@gmail.com
Google Wave looks cool, but I’m still wondering whether it will have wide appeal. It seems to be the answer for some niche areas (for example, school study groups who are not in the same room or project teams at different locations), but whether it will appeal to the general public is open to speculation.
I have heard google wave is better than sex, as there is no chance of me having sex could you make this virgin happy by sending an invite
@Brett
I tried myself not to laugh :-)
It would be great if Google Wave is integrated into other technologies such as Google Sidewiki (chat with others viewing the same website) or iPhone (chat or follow a chat on the iPhone).
Google Wave’s most important innovation and it look cools, in my view it is the introduction of the search engine. For a long time, we have been pulling things off the net by prompting search engines. Google has developed wave powered by algorithms that deliver search results without human provocation. It can also be added to a wave to perform automated search-based actions. It is like having an electronic researcher or content provider profiling each user’s mode of thought in real-time, and actively participating in the wave.
it’s very cool dude..i also tried it..