Google announced Wave on May 27, 2009 – only 5 months ago. Since that time, there’s been a lot of excitement, hype, anticipation, speculation, and, in some cases, bad information. I’d like to share with you what I’ve managed to learn about Wave so far. My only promise is that I will stay away from the hype and speculation, and to the best of my ability I’ll avoid any bad information. I admit to being a little excited by what I’ve seen.
Mostly I’m doing this because so few people have been able to land an invitation to use Wave, and so many e-Learning practitioners want to know what Wave is about. Today there are about 800,000 users in the preview. “Preview” is kind of a funny word. Wave is not released. It isn’t even in beta. It’s in “preview,” which is apparently a step before beta.
One thing you should know, if you receive an invitation in the coming weeks, is that Wave is changing every day. Lots of features, ones that you might expect to work, are non-functional or not implemented. That's why access is limited. Wave is not intended for widespread use at this point. You can't moderate conversations very easily (yet), conduct a Webinar (yet), or even get things back out of the trash (yet). What worked yesterday may not work today, and what works today may work differently tomorrow, or it may be gone. So when you get your invitation, be patient. My guess is that it will be a year before Wave is stable.
What is Wave?
Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool" (the official description). It is Web-based: all you need to use it is a browser or a client, such as WaveBoard (more about that later). Wave combines capabilities that function in a way analogous to e-mail, instant messaging (IM), text chat, discussion boards, wikis, and certain social networking features (or will combine – remember, I said a lot of intended features aren’t available yet). It can already communicate outbound to external sites and systems, such as Twitter and Weblogs, and it can send messages to users via conventional e-Mail.
Wave can function as a synchronous communication platform when users happen to be online at the same time. It can function asynchronously when they are not. If you have a chat session with another user in real time, Wave will save the session as a wave so that you (and other users whom you select) can come back to read it and even edit it later. Because the software stores the history of a wave (conversation thread) in the wave itself, users can follow a discussion and changes to the discussion (wiki-like editing) later.
(Editor's note: We are following the usage of the Wave development team on the official Google Wave weblog, when it comes to capitalization of the various terms used in discussing Wave. So, for example, "Wave" refers to the tool itself, while "wave" refers to a discussion thread or other content created by or stored in the tool.)
A wave can be public or private, and soon the person who started a wave will be able to make it “read only.” Users can collaborate on documents, which may be separate files that are uploaded from their desktops or the documents may be text and graphics inside “blips” (individual posts) within a wave. There are extensions that will do spelling and grammar checking, and there will soon be one that will translate to and from numerous languages.
I should repeat myself: everything about Wave changes constantly. By the time you read this, or by the time you get a Wave invitation, some of what I’ve just written may no longer be true (though I expect it will be), and much more may have been added to Wave. Don’t expect too much yet (many current users are expressing dissatisfaction because their expectations were so high), but I believe that it is very much true that “the best is yet to come.” One way to keep track of what’s going on is to follow the changes at http://www.waverz.com/news .
Collaborative software has been a hot growth area off and on for almost 20 years. The first examples were groupware, such as Lotus (later IBM) Notes and (what is now Microsoft) Groove. These first systems were complex, and placed heavy storage requirements on individual desktops, so it was only natural that Web-based apps would evolve. These are now evolving into what might be termed “cloud-based” collaborative tools, of which Wave and the numerous social software applications are prime examples.
What does Wave look like?
By default, Wave has a four-panel interface. (See Figure 1) The user can re-size or minimize these panels. When minimized, the panels dock at the top of the browser window and can function as drop-down menus. This is handy when working on documents or when there are large graphics in a wave.
The Contacts panel
Icons (generally photos, but not always) represent users. To add a user to one of your waves, drag and drop the user’s icon from your Contacts panel (see Figure 2) into the wave. You can remove a user from a wave that you started, although at present you must use a robot to do that, rather than being able to drag the icon back out. When you first get your Wave account, any contacts in your Gmail address book who also have Wave accounts will automatically appear in your Contacts panel. (You must have a Gmail account to use Wave, by the way.) You can also add Wave users to your Contacts by searching for them, or by opening the “Manage Contacts” link and typing their WavID.
The Navigation panel
The Navigation panel (Figure 3) provides control over what you see in the central panel (more in a moment), gives access to your account settings, makes it possible to store searches and waves, and also gives you a trashcan where you can drop waves that you no longer need. “Inbox” is for incoming waves. “By Me” is a link to all of your Waves. “Requests” is a link to waves to which (untrusted) users who are not in your Contacts invited you. “Spam” is self-explanatory; I haven’t seen any spam yet, but I have heard that it is already showing up. Using the Folders and the stored Searches in the Navigation panel is essential to efficient use of Wave – you will be amazed how quickly you accumulate waves, both public and private.
The Search panel
The center panel (Figure 4) is called the Search panel, mainly because the Search box is at the top. But if you open the Inbox link in the Navigation panel, any and all waves in it will appear in the Search panel. The same is true if you open, for example, one of your folders. The ribbon at the top of the Search panel makes it possible to Archive or Mute waves (placing them temporarily out of sight), to move waves to your Inbox or to Spam, and so on. The ellipsis at the end of the ribbon opens up a drop-down menu of other functions, such as moving a wave to a different Folder.
