As the launch date draws nearer, I can’t stop but to think how Google Wave can change the landscape of how we communicate and collaborate online. Much has been promised and we have also seen how some of the cool features can improve the way we work.
I have thought of 10 benefits that we can yield from this highly anticipated platform.
The actual benefits are certainly more than what I am about to list. But till then, this is enough to keep us hyped up.
1. Real time news all in one
To get the latest breaking news, Twitter is arguably the fastest. The only thing that is lacking is solid content and a concerted effort to make the news more informative. With Google Wave, a user such as a witness of the incident can edit, add in his or her comments or share knowledge regarding the news. A journalist’s expertise accompanied by witnesses and users’ opinions will certainly improve real time news quality.
2. Cuts down conversation waiting time
MSN, the world’s most popular instant messenger is good but not great. Often, we have to wait for the other party to type their message and hit enter before we can formulate our thoughts and reply. Fortunately, that’s not the case in Google Wave. Whatever your friend is typing at that moment, you can see it appearing real time and start formulating your thoughts for the next message. It’s like a real verbal conversation with friends.
3. Cool extensions for work and play
Akin to Facebook applications, we can expect quite some Google Wave extensions. These extensions are classified as either robots or gadgets. A robot is an automated participant on a Wave. It can read, edit and share outside content to a Wave. It can also create new Waves, blips and add and remove participants. A gadget is like an application like games and survey forms etc. If you’re having fun with Facebook applications, Google Wave could very well provide the same or higher level of entertainment.
4. Multiple users instant messaging gets easy
It is easy to have multiple friends chatting in a Wave. Simply drag and drop their avatar and they are in the conversation! Most of the time when there are multiple users chatting, it is hard to keep track of who is talking to who exactly. Google Wave helps to organize the conversation in a neat threaded fashion.
5. Easy project collaboration
Collaboration is Google Wave’s specialty. Every Wave works like a wiki or a Google doc. It places everyone’s work into one Wave, real time. This is an extremely useful tool during meetings when everyone can take notes and input their thoughts into a single Wave. At the end of the day, everyone gets the same set of meeting notes, ensuring consistency and avoiding miscommunication.
6. Retrace with playback
You’d probably feel lost when you are new to a Wave your friends just added you into. Fret not, its playback function helps you understand how the conversation or email has evolved to what it is at the current moment. Putting the playback function in the news context, you can literally see how a breaking news was first reported, commented, updated and concluded.
7. Easy file sharing
File sharing is simple on Google Wave. Just drag and drop the files into the intended Wave (with your Wave members in it) and sharing done!
8. Embedding a Wave to your site
Embedding a Wave into your blog allows you and the other users in the Wave to edit or add new content to it via Google Wave. Changes are as usual real time and comments on your blog posting via Google Wave are automatically updated to your blog.
9. Own a Wave
Just like how companies have their own SMTP email server, companies can also have their own Wave technology.
Abstract of Google explaination:
…To help potential wave providers get started, our plan is to release an open source, production-quality, reference implementation of the Google Wave client and server, as well as provide an open federation endpoint by the time users start getting access.
That means that you can either use Wave hosted on Google’s infrastructure, or you can have it hosted on your own server, without ever sharing data with Google.
10. Competition drives quality
With the number of benefits Google Wave can bring, as a collaborative and communication platform, it will certainly drive up the quality of what competitors (social sites, cloud computing products and etc) are going to provide in the future.
And guess what, we, as the consumers are the beneficiaries again!
