6 ms·

Google Wave Available for Everyone

138 points by smikhanov 16y ago

mbrubeck 16y ago
And they just announced at Google I/O that they are open-sourcing their in-browser editor, and (finally) specifying and publishing the client-server protocol.
jbrun 16y ago
I can't seem to find anyway to enable it in Free Google Apps, anyone got a link?
- wwortiz 16y ago
  Looks like it isn't available for the free version: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-labs-available-today-to.html http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-lab... http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/wave.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/wave.html I may be wrong though
  - Legion 16y ago
    I tried browsing to https://www.google.com/a/mydomain.com/ https://www.google.com/a/mydomain.com/ on my domain that has Apps Standard. I get: >> Service not available >> This service is not enabled for mydomain.com. If you believe this is an error, please contact your domain administrator or try again with the following link. >> http://wave.google.com/a/mydomain.com http://wave.google.com/a/mydomain.com I don't see anywhere in the Dashboard to enable it, either. Bummed.
    - edanm 16y ago
      Try going to the "Add more services" link. It's on the main Google Apps domain management page, right next to the "Service Settings" header (the header of the sections which has things like mail, calendar, etc.). Worked for me, and I'm on the Standard Edition.
  - markbao 16y ago
    It's there - you just have to go to Add Services. It's available on free too.
- doki_pen 16y ago
  I just tried wave.google.com and it worked for me.
Maro 16y ago
It's still slow as hell, lagging behind as I'm typing.
- viraptor 16y ago
  To expand on your post a bit: Used it for some courses during my masters. It was a painful experience. When you get to ~100 entries (simple text), it starts lagging so much, I could type a couple of lines of text, that would slowly get updated for the next minute. You cannot easily save images (preview, right click, save as... works). There's no serious way to print. When you work with others you either start mixing answers and questions with someone editing just below you, or start a new section for everything and allow the wave to explode to >500 entries of silly stuff. "Stuck" statuses still occur (waves that are always read, or always new). And there are loads of other small problems I'll skip here... I really waited for the Wave, but now that it's as reliable as it was in the sandbox, I don't see how it can be useful for me.
  - blasdel 16y ago
    Were either of you using Webkit browsers?
    - Maro 16y ago
      It's a lot better on Chrome, but it's still choppy. I'm on a fast Macbook Pro.
    - viraptor 16y ago
      Yes - both Webkit and Gecko. Webkit handles considerably more posts nicely, but also has its own maximum. Those terrible lags were on Gecko.
- Detrus 16y ago
  Does the thing use web workers anywhere? I still get script timeout errors. This thing needs a high end workstation to run, it won't work on netbooks. They need to port it to NativeClient or make drastic changes. It just doesn't perform in JS.
anigbrowl 16y ago
Finally! I've had a sandbox account for the longest time, but for some reason they wouldn't give me an invite to my main account. Edit: contact import from mail still seems a bit ropey...) there's a HN wave if you search for 'news.Ycombinator, which has about 21 people on it. It's been moribund since October but I guess we can start adding to it again...
stingraycharles 16y ago
Are any HN'ers already using Wave to collaborate within their team? If so, for what purposes, and would you mind to describe your workflow?
- maxklein 16y ago
  Here, I described my workflow: http://blog.cubeofm.com/on-how-google-wave-surprisingly-changed-my-li http://blog.cubeofm.com/on-how-google-wave-surprisingly-chan...
  - mseebach 16y ago
    Anger and fights seems to be a big part of your workflow...
    - maxklein 16y ago
      Why do you say that?
      - stingraycharles 16y ago
        Well you do talk a bit about fights becoming more structured, but I get the impression that you're talking about "emotionally engaged" discussions there.
- _Lemon_ 16y ago
  I tried, however it just meant another thing to have open and to check regularly. We stick with IRC for conversations and e-mail for the matters that take a little longer to resolve. This suits better because e-mail and IRC are open anyway for customer contact all day long.
- elblanco 16y ago
  We usually break up a project into large tasks and make a wave for each task. Various assets for the task are stuffed into the wave and everybody comments or provides info directly into the wave. Usually each task/wave has a few people working on that part of the task, and the rest just go in if they need to. There's also usually a "Master" wave for meta-discussions and overall project coordination as well as final assembly. Waves are generally setup with a header "wavelet" we use for channel meta-data/notifications/schedules and such, so they don't get buried down in the wave someplace. Everybody edits those, but in general the agreement is to pretty much just leave the waves you put in as-is and don't mess with anybody else's. As often as not, if there are just documents, we just make it in google docs and link to the doc in the appropriate wave. We've found that's the best way to handle collaborative document editing. We haven't had a chance to take advantage of the new docs features yet, it probably would have saved us even more time since we had to export out the final document into MS-Word for final editing and insertion of various diagrams and such. One thing that would be nice, now that we've done a few projects like this, is the ability to hierarchically organize groups of waves. Right now we have to be careful to name the waves well...like "Project 4459:Phase A" or some such and search for them. It's completely replaced using groups for us and various other collaboration sources, the asset management is just much better since it ties the discussion and assets together. However, it would be nice to just have a list of attached files to scroll through sometimes. On our last project, which lasted about 14 weeks, we got everything done on-time with this, but with far less frustration, less problems with organization of stuff, only a small handful of emails (it would have easily been thousands of emails bouncing back and forth) and really very few face-to-face meetings considering. By way of comparison, a similar project I worked on resulted in thousands of emails, twice weekly multi-hour in-person meetings, constant phone calls, and when summing up the work a mad dash to find lost project assets. I felt like I could have done 3 or 4 projects simultaneously like this with all of the saved time instead of just one. We also set up lots of one-to-one or one-to-few sidebar waves for private discussions. Basically it's a meta-discussion organizer for artifact production for our projects.
Quiark 16y ago
..now when nobody cares anymore...
AlexBlom 16y ago
Wave is still alive?
akshat 16y ago
While it is too early to comment about wave specifically, I wonder how a big company would handle a flop of such a product. A flop being lack of expected level of usage.
- c3o 16y ago
  Like they did with http://www.lively.com http://www.lively.com maybe?
jpablo 16y ago
When they released buzz I was thinking than that was wave for everyone. I wonder if they will still try to push wave as an independent product or it will just die slowly in the background without anyone noticing.
- th 16y ago
  Buzz serves a similar purpose to twitter while Wave seems like to a mix of Gtalk, Docs, and Gmail. How is Buzz a "wave for everyone"?
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  I think it could be a fine independent product, but they'll need to be be bit more hands-on and responsive than usual to make it effective. Biggest problem I see right now: every time you leave a wave and return, the state of the wave is not saved. so if you have selected 'hide inline replies' in order to have a high level view of a wave with multiple sub-threads, the next time you access it all the subthreads are expanded again, and it's not immediately obvious which changes have taken place. This may be OK for small teams of friends or single-topic discussions, but is severely limiting for hub & spoke discussion models, an area in which it otherwise has great potential. Also, I'm not too sure about the 'username@googlewave.com'. It seems a little perverse to create a parallel namespace, although perhaps the purpose of this is to avoid a repeat of the buzz launch where people found themselves signed up to something without even knowing what it was.
Tycho 16y ago
I was reading Paul Graham's essay on "essay writing" today, and he mentioned how he lets thoughts flow freely onto the page but occasionally needs to back-track several paragraphs if some thread of the discussion led to a 'dead end.' It would be a cool experiment for a talented blogger/essayist to compose something in Google Wave and then make the Wave public. We (the readers) could use the playback feature to examine what stuff was cut, what the editing/refinement process was. Of course the whole point of cutting material is that you don't want the world to see your unfinished work... but on the other hand as a one-off it might garner some more attention/publicity than usual. Sigh. If only I was a talented blogger...
- anthonyb 16y ago
  Etherpad did this for one of Paul Graham's essays, but sadly they were bought out and it's no longer there. Apparently it was at http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/13sentences http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/13sentences
- eru 16y ago
  > Of course the whole point of cutting material is that you don't want the world to see your unfinished work... Not always. You might just want to cut something out to enhance the flow of your argument. In movies they often cut scenes out, but put them on the DVD as bonus material.
rogermugs 16y ago
if i could receive and send email from it, i could switch to it as my primary platform. then i could make use of the additional features when others are on wave. as it works now its just not doable. why?
mark_l_watson 16y ago
I am not sure about Wave. I was a beta user, then got accounts for family and friends, but the uptake seems really slow. My enthusiasm level is good, but: As a practical matter, the only money I have made on Wave was writing one how-to article on Wave Robot development. None of my consulting customers have expressed any interest in custom Wave development.

138 points by smikhanov 16y ago

And they just announced at Google I/O that they are open-sourcing their in-browser editor, and (finally) specifying and publishing the client-server protocol.

jbrun 16y ago

I can't seem to find anyway to enable it in Free Google Apps, anyone got a link?

wwortiz 16y ago
Looks like it isn't available for the free version: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-labs-available-today-to.html http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-lab... http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/wave.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/wave.html I may be wrong though
- Legion 16y ago
  I tried browsing to https://www.google.com/a/mydomain.com/ https://www.google.com/a/mydomain.com/ on my domain that has Apps Standard. I get: >> Service not available >> This service is not enabled for mydomain.com. If you believe this is an error, please contact your domain administrator or try again with the following link. >> http://wave.google.com/a/mydomain.com http://wave.google.com/a/mydomain.com I don't see anywhere in the Dashboard to enable it, either. Bummed.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Try going to the "Add more services" link. It's on the main Google Apps domain management page, right next to the "Service Settings" header (the header of the sections which has things like mail, calendar, etc.). Worked for me, and I'm on the Standard Edition.
- markbao 16y ago
  It's there - you just have to go to Add Services. It's available on free too.
doki_pen 16y ago
I just tried wave.google.com and it worked for me.

Maro 16y ago

It's still slow as hell, lagging behind as I'm typing.

viraptor 16y ago
To expand on your post a bit: Used it for some courses during my masters. It was a painful experience. When you get to ~100 entries (simple text), it starts lagging so much, I could type a couple of lines of text, that would slowly get updated for the next minute. You cannot easily save images (preview, right click, save as... works). There's no serious way to print. When you work with others you either start mixing answers and questions with someone editing just below you, or start a new section for everything and allow the wave to explode to >500 entries of silly stuff. "Stuck" statuses still occur (waves that are always read, or always new). And there are loads of other small problems I'll skip here... I really waited for the Wave, but now that it's as reliable as it was in the sandbox, I don't see how it can be useful for me.
- blasdel 16y ago
  Were either of you using Webkit browsers?
  - Maro 16y ago
    It's a lot better on Chrome, but it's still choppy. I'm on a fast Macbook Pro.
  - viraptor 16y ago
    Yes - both Webkit and Gecko. Webkit handles considerably more posts nicely, but also has its own maximum. Those terrible lags were on Gecko.
Detrus 16y ago
Does the thing use web workers anywhere? I still get script timeout errors. This thing needs a high end workstation to run, it won't work on netbooks. They need to port it to NativeClient or make drastic changes. It just doesn't perform in JS.

anigbrowl 16y ago

Finally! I've had a sandbox account for the longest time, but for some reason they wouldn't give me an invite to my main account. Edit: contact import from mail still seems a bit ropey...) there's a HN wave if you search for 'news.Ycombinator, which has about 21 people on it. It's been moribund since October but I guess we can start adding to it again...

stingraycharles 16y ago

Are any HN'ers already using Wave to collaborate within their team? If so, for what purposes, and would you mind to describe your workflow?

maxklein 16y ago
Here, I described my workflow: http://blog.cubeofm.com/on-how-google-wave-surprisingly-changed-my-li http://blog.cubeofm.com/on-how-google-wave-surprisingly-chan...
- mseebach 16y ago
  Anger and fights seems to be a big part of your workflow...
  - maxklein 16y ago
    Why do you say that?
    - stingraycharles 16y ago
      Well you do talk a bit about fights becoming more structured, but I get the impression that you're talking about "emotionally engaged" discussions there.
_Lemon_ 16y ago
I tried, however it just meant another thing to have open and to check regularly. We stick with IRC for conversations and e-mail for the matters that take a little longer to resolve. This suits better because e-mail and IRC are open anyway for customer contact all day long.
elblanco 16y ago
We usually break up a project into large tasks and make a wave for each task. Various assets for the task are stuffed into the wave and everybody comments or provides info directly into the wave. Usually each task/wave has a few people working on that part of the task, and the rest just go in if they need to. There's also usually a "Master" wave for meta-discussions and overall project coordination as well as final assembly. Waves are generally setup with a header "wavelet" we use for channel meta-data/notifications/schedules and such, so they don't get buried down in the wave someplace. Everybody edits those, but in general the agreement is to pretty much just leave the waves you put in as-is and don't mess with anybody else's. As often as not, if there are just documents, we just make it in google docs and link to the doc in the appropriate wave. We've found that's the best way to handle collaborative document editing. We haven't had a chance to take advantage of the new docs features yet, it probably would have saved us even more time since we had to export out the final document into MS-Word for final editing and insertion of various diagrams and such. One thing that would be nice, now that we've done a few projects like this, is the ability to hierarchically organize groups of waves. Right now we have to be careful to name the waves well...like "Project 4459:Phase A" or some such and search for them. It's completely replaced using groups for us and various other collaboration sources, the asset management is just much better since it ties the discussion and assets together. However, it would be nice to just have a list of attached files to scroll through sometimes. On our last project, which lasted about 14 weeks, we got everything done on-time with this, but with far less frustration, less problems with organization of stuff, only a small handful of emails (it would have easily been thousands of emails bouncing back and forth) and really very few face-to-face meetings considering. By way of comparison, a similar project I worked on resulted in thousands of emails, twice weekly multi-hour in-person meetings, constant phone calls, and when summing up the work a mad dash to find lost project assets. I felt like I could have done 3 or 4 projects simultaneously like this with all of the saved time instead of just one. We also set up lots of one-to-one or one-to-few sidebar waves for private discussions. Basically it's a meta-discussion organizer for artifact production for our projects.

Quiark 16y ago

..now when nobody cares anymore...

AlexBlom 16y ago

Wave is still alive?

akshat 16y ago

While it is too early to comment about wave specifically, I wonder how a big company would handle a flop of such a product. A flop being lack of expected level of usage.

c3o 16y ago
Like they did with http://www.lively.com http://www.lively.com maybe?

jpablo 16y ago

When they released buzz I was thinking than that was wave for everyone. I wonder if they will still try to push wave as an independent product or it will just die slowly in the background without anyone noticing.

th 16y ago
Buzz serves a similar purpose to twitter while Wave seems like to a mix of Gtalk, Docs, and Gmail. How is Buzz a "wave for everyone"?
anigbrowl 16y ago
I think it could be a fine independent product, but they'll need to be be bit more hands-on and responsive than usual to make it effective. Biggest problem I see right now: every time you leave a wave and return, the state of the wave is not saved. so if you have selected 'hide inline replies' in order to have a high level view of a wave with multiple sub-threads, the next time you access it all the subthreads are expanded again, and it's not immediately obvious which changes have taken place. This may be OK for small teams of friends or single-topic discussions, but is severely limiting for hub & spoke discussion models, an area in which it otherwise has great potential. Also, I'm not too sure about the 'username@googlewave.com'. It seems a little perverse to create a parallel namespace, although perhaps the purpose of this is to avoid a repeat of the buzz launch where people found themselves signed up to something without even knowing what it was.

Tycho 16y ago

I was reading Paul Graham's essay on "essay writing" today, and he mentioned how he lets thoughts flow freely onto the page but occasionally needs to back-track several paragraphs if some thread of the discussion led to a 'dead end.' It would be a cool experiment for a talented blogger/essayist to compose something in Google Wave and then make the Wave public. We (the readers) could use the playback feature to examine what stuff was cut, what the editing/refinement process was. Of course the whole point of cutting material is that you don't want the world to see your unfinished work... but on the other hand as a one-off it might garner some more attention/publicity than usual. Sigh. If only I was a talented blogger...

anthonyb 16y ago
Etherpad did this for one of Paul Graham's essays, but sadly they were bought out and it's no longer there. Apparently it was at http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/13sentences http://etherpad.com/ep/pad/slider/13sentences
eru 16y ago
> Of course the whole point of cutting material is that you don't want the world to see your unfinished work... Not always. You might just want to cut something out to enhance the flow of your argument. In movies they often cut scenes out, but put them on the DVD as bonus material.

rogermugs 16y ago

if i could receive and send email from it, i could switch to it as my primary platform. then i could make use of the additional features when others are on wave. as it works now its just not doable. why?

mark_l_watson 16y ago

I am not sure about Wave. I was a beta user, then got accounts for family and friends, but the uptake seems really slow. My enthusiasm level is good, but: As a practical matter, the only money I have made on Wave was writing one how-to article on Wave Robot development. None of my consulting customers have expressed any interest in custom Wave development.