To Wave or not to Wave ?
I’ve had access to Wave for a tad over a week now, and so far I have to say that I see the potential, but I will withhold judgment until it’s a final product, or heck, even a Google Beta(tm).
The integrated communications platform that is Wave allows one to combine communication mechanisms in new and interesting ways. For example, by adding components from Ribbit to allow voice conferencing, or by using the included map component to collaborate on a map. These extensions, coupled with the core real-time text platform, create a compelling communications system. It will only improve as a system as more extensions are added.
I like the interface, but it does crash on me a lot. Personally, I’ve had the best luck running it in Chrome. I looked through the API documentation and some of the extension examples, and felt both were a bit under developed. I’m sure Google will flesh these out, as they’re critical to developer uptake, but I found myself unmotivated to even tinker around, which is unusual for me. I’m usually an early adopter, and enjoy tinkering with things. The crash frequency, and UI lag of the preview version have certainly been off putting though, and have slowly eroded my desire to use the tool, for now.
At any rate, the real-time nature of a wave is interesting indeed, and I’ve certainly found it handy to communicate with multiple people in this fashion. Many times, a conversation has ended quickly simply because all involved got the point as a participant was only partially through writing a particular sentence. At least in my usage, it certainly has sped up large group communications, better in fact than anything I’ve encountered before. I’ll be keeping a close eye on these aspects of Wave since they’ll be the most useful to me personally. However, I will be surprised if Wave pans out as an end all be all communications paradigm shift, as touted. It will definitely have its place in ones repertoire of communications tools though.