Ride the Wave! Hands-on with Google Wave Preview

Back in late May, Google unveiled an early developer preview of a new "online tool for real-time communication and collaboration." Google Wave merges message boards, e-mail, social-networking, wikis, and instant messaging- with drag and drop document sharing and live transmission to boot. Live transmission means that every character you type will instantly appear to other participants of a wave thread.

By Mike Keller
Tue, October 13, 2009

PC World — Back in late May, Google unveiled an early developer preview of a new "online tool for real-time communication and collaboration." Google Wave merges message boards, e-mail, social-networking, wikis, and instant messaging- with drag and drop document sharing and live transmission to boot. Live transmission means that every character you type will instantly appear to other participants of a wave thread.

Google Wave: A New Kind of Mega-Application
Slideshow: 10 Cool Things You Didn't Know About Google

I've been using Google Wave for the past few days and while the interface sports a slick and nicely animated polish that I can assume we will eventually see in other Google products like Gmail, it is still clearly a work in progress. For example, I quickly found out the embarrassing way that you cannot yet remove contacts from a wave once they have been added. Sorry to those who I accidently added to my test threads. I don't actually want you to give me any "bean soup."

Speaking of which, the phrase "Can I borrow some bean soup" was used in the Google Wave introduction video to demonstrate context-driven, on-the-fly spellchecking. While it did accurately correct "been soup" to "bean soup" as promised, spellchecking isn't yet as speedy or accurate as I'm sure it will be in the finished product.

One of the most exciting features of Wave that does work great is Playback. With Playback, you can step through a complicated message tree chronologically, so additions and edits appear as they were submitted. This is particularly useful to a late-comer in a conversation or for reviewing a long, branching thread.

In true Google fashion, Wave is cross-platform (including mobile), open source, and extremely extensible with Google Wave API's. There are already several great add-ons, including extensions for video teleconferencing, Twitter integration, and of course collaborative games, such as Sudoku. Shiny!

Regarding Wave's mobile integration, I tried my luck with iPhone's Safari. Skipping the warning that my browser is not yet supported reveals a pretty decent, though sluggish and slightly incomplete mobile interface. It's definitely not as slick as the desktop interface; still, I was able to view and post waves like a charm, which was enough to get me excited for the future of the product.

On September 30, Google released 100,000 public invites to Wave. If you didn't already get one, you can sign up for the next round of invitations here. I know you're anxious, but if you don't get an invite right away, don't fret- much like Gmail, more invitations will be released as Wave matures and is more suited for public use. Of course, there's always eBay...

Watch the loooong introduction video.

Follow Keller and Geektech on Twitter.

You are here: Technology Topics » Advice & Opinion

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

HP NonStop SQL Fundamentals whitepaper

This whitepaper offers a detailed look into the fundamentals of HP NonStop SQL solutions. See how this system delivers unprecedented levels of application availability with fail-safe data integrity and meets the needs of enterprises with large-scale business critical applications.

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter