Google Wave

Google Wave is taking your traditional browser and connectivity to a whole new level. They have been able to combine Email, Networking, RSS and communication to a new level.  They provide real time chat through the web via your normal browser. This chat also acts like email if users are unavailable.

Real Time Interaction

When we say real time, we aren’t talking about Instant Messenger talk where you hit enter to send your message, the other user will be able to see what you are typing as you type. You can also add or remove a variety of privacy settings to include or exclude anyone involved in the conversation. The neat thing about this is that you are able to have a more active conversation (like a phone conversation), and someone can start responding to what you are typing as you are typing. You can instantly change your email like instant messenging application in to a chat forum by inviting others in to the conversation, so that everyone could have a group conference online in real time without a telephone.  This is great for a work environment. This isn’t simply a chat utility, this will allow you to integrate media, pictures and audio in to your conversation creating a virtual portal for everyone to interact on a variety of scales.

Collaborate On A Whole New Scale

A major focus of Wave is being able to collaborate when creating. Wave also allows you to combine discussion and content collaboration together by working on ideas and easily exporting them to other internet applications or social sites. The neat part is you can have a team of 2-50 individuals working on editing an online idea and you can watch the project evolve, and you can also play back the discussion and changes as they have occured at any point during the project design.

Interactivity

Amazingly the Google Wave application will tie in to and export to a variety of other Google apps such as Blogger, Orkut, Mobile and many more.  This is a great application that acts like glue between a large number of the powerful online tools and simplifies connectivity online.  I compare it to an operating system that helps a large number of great online apps collaborate properly and easily.  This is only in Beta Mode and shows a lot of promise. This utility is based around “thinking outside of the box” to make the web more interactive and powerful on a large scale, and I am excited to see the product evolve.

Grammar & Spelling

This application also has impressive spelling and grammar checking tools that are just as smart as a word processing program, but not too picky to be annoying (just enough so you don’t look dumb online with silly grammar mistakes).  This spelling tool is based around a massive language model from Google’s impressive knowledgebase from definitions and search trends.

Open Source Opportunities Are Endless

Another neat thing about this application is the fact that it is open source, so that developers can improve upon the application and usabilty, and users get the benefits of an excellent and well created infrastructure with scaleability and a large number of options.

Those Who Benefit Most

I can see exiting potential for this program, especially for software engineers that work together with teams on coding and software development – because everyone could offer contributions and improvements to the code in real time, instead of making slow progress and submitting updates through a traditional workflow.  But as I think about it more, it could be super viable solution for almost anyone.  Think about a journalist that can easily go over a last minute publication with the editor in real time, this would be a beautiful tool to expedite situations such as this.  It can even be a valuable tool for arranging ideas such as business plans or strategies with your co-workers online.

Company Interaction

Say you are the owner of a company with 500 employees, and you require all of your employees to be active in Google Wave. You could hold a company meeting or you could send out company polls to help improve interactivity – and you can also playback all online conversations as they took place to see how things evolved (so you can go back and review a change if you weren’t completely satisfied with a specific change you made 5 minutes before).  In my opinion, they should tie this solution in to a phone environment where companies can talk through VOIP as well, this could be helpful for small meetings.

No Need To Tweak Out

To all of you twitter fans have no reason to worry!  Google Wave will definitely interact with this application, and I assume that in no time it will become interactive with all of your favorite applications online (because Google Wave is an open source app).

Functionality

This is a kick butt application, with amazing functionality and I have only touched the surface of this application and it’s potential from watching videos and reading reviews. I believe that Google’s idea for Google Wave is to be able to manage all internet activities from one centralized place, and I think they have a great foundation to do so!  It also allows you to use the great functionality of neat applications such as Twitter, and then use additional benefits that Google’s infrastructure may offer to these applications (such as searching, exporting, importing, etc).

Use Google’s Version Or Use Your Own Version

You can use a web based version of Google Wave or you could also put your own Wave system on your intranet or your own server so that it is a completely separate software entity to meet your own needs!  What is even cooler is that even if you use your own Google Wave system, it will still interact normally with other Google wave users on other systems.

Amazing Translation

You no longer need to go to school for 4 years to learn french to do business with another country :-)

Something else that is amazing is the translation tool. You can work with your fellow employee that speaks french (and you speak english) and as you type and work together, Google will be the interpreter in real time!  This is an exciting and amazing technology.

Let’s Recap

To recap, Google Wave is the ultimate software piece to improve productivity, communication, efficiency and collaboration online.

Joel McLaughlin – Dataflurry.com