7 ms·

Google Wave: Our First Hands-On Impressions

30 points by mcxx 17y ago

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
I know everyone in the tech community is drooling over this, but I'd give it 50/50 odds at best. The real advantage it has going for it is that Google can throw a lot of weight behind it and maybe push it through with sheer force of will. Here's the problem with Wave: what is it? Every blog post I've read about it struggled with how to explain it. I read this entire post and I'm still not sure of how I'm supposed to use this thing or what pressing problem it solves. Even the videos I've seen are super long, presumably because you can't really show it off in 60 seconds. "Well, it's kind of a mix between email and IM, but also with wiki functionality and social networking...oh, and it's got these crazy widgets and media sharing and stuff. Hmmm...you really have to play with it to understand." 97% of the people I know wouldn't get that, and don't have the patience to figure it out. It seems like it's just too flexible, that it can be used for a million different things, which makes it hard to know how to use at first. Think about almost every successful web site out there and how easy they are to explain, especially when they first launched. You would have zero trouble explaining Google, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, etc. in a 60 second video. Wave is like FriendFeed on crack, and FF is already dangerously close to being too much for most normal people to grok. I just don't see it catching on.
- flardinois 17y ago
  I agree, Wave is really hard to explain, but once you see it in action, it actually becomes a lot easier to figure out. Maybe one way to think about it as a more structured version of Etherpad, only that you can use it for collaborative editing and messaging at the same time.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    That's really the exact opposite direction that I would go in for explaining this to a non-geek. "Ether-what?"
    - catch23 17y ago
      well this is a geek site. when explaining it to non-geeks, you could just say it's email on crack.
    - Network_Punk 17y ago
      Hah, I've told someone it has the everyone-can-edit style of Wikipedia and from then on they assumed it was for research only and were confused as to why we'd need "another one". Sigh.
- 8plot 17y ago
  You might be right, but I think it's wrong to dismiss it just because it's hard to explain. Sometimes great new technologies are difficult because there is less to compare it to.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    To be clear, I'm not dismissing it...I'm looking forward to playing with it. I just don't see my friends using it, and if no one I know uses it, why would I?
    - catch23 17y ago
      Also to be clear, their stuff is truly beta which is why they are limiting the users to a small set of developers. Sometimes while using the site you'll get a 500 error that will force you to refresh the browser page.
    - Devilboy 17y ago
      Just wait 'till it's integrated into gmail
- sahaj 17y ago
  i remember having a hard time explaining why gmail is a better email solution to friends. they'd say: it's just email, what's better about it. sometimes, just because things are difficult to explain doesn't mean they are difficult to use.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    Yeah, but you could have just said "It's web-based email like hotmail or yahoo, but faster and easier to use. Plus you get tons of storage." Done.
    - Network_Punk 17y ago
      "Why would I need more storage? Oh, and Hotmail is fast enough for me and I know how to use it." People are resistant to change...
      - nimrody 17y ago
        Many people still don't get it and use hotmail and similar services (Hey... they have cute icons :) Seems to me like gmail enthusiasm is mostly the realm of geeks. Some people even dislike the automatic threading.
- catch23 17y ago
  It is an amazing way for google to push their gadget platform though. I'm an early beta user of wave and I think it's pretty cool how you can just "email" a bunch of your friends a gadget that works inline the conversation. So you could email your 10 friends a poll widget to decide the best time to meet for lunch. The robot api concept of theirs is interesting, but I don't see immediate useful applications of it just yet.
  - calambrac 17y ago
    Really? The spell checking and translation demos didn't strike you as useful?
- Network_Punk 17y ago
  Ask people what they want from current services (email is the one 99% will understand) and work out how Wave could be used to meet that need. i.e. Instead of emailing a new attachment everytime a document is changed, tell them to put the text in the email and how they can continue to edit it. Does anybody know how Wave is going to deal with Spam? I assume you are not limited to sending waves to people who have added you as a friend or contact.
  - sahaj 17y ago
    "Does anybody know how Wave is going to deal with Spam? I assume you are not limited to sending waves to people who have added you as a friend or contact." i'm really hoping that is the case. it'll be more like a phone call in that sense. before you get to answer you can see (the number) who the call is from. this will really cut down on the spam.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- derefr 17y ago
  Here's a one-line summary of Wave: it's like Outlook. It's a big... PIM... thing, with lots of features, that you live in, and grow completely dependent on, especially when your coworkers (or, with Wave, friends) use it. s/Wave/Outlook/ in everything you said, and it lines up almost perfectly.
  - calambrac 17y ago
    That's a summary of the Wave client Google demoed. It's not a summary of Wave itself.
    - derefr 17y ago
      Well, there's no use summarizing Wave itself. Protocols aren't able to be grasped easily without examples of clients that use them. What really needs to happen to show off the power of Wave is for Google to create a few other Wave clients.
  - roc 17y ago
    It's like Outlook... smashed together with IM, Biztalk and Sharepoint.
- luckystrike 17y ago
  I found this explanation quite crisp and useful: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/ http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/
- mixmax 17y ago
  When Marc Andreesen invented the browser nobody understood what he was doing or why it mattered. If you want to do disruptive technology it will often be hard to explain at first.
  - mrduncan 17y ago
    I think the title of inventing the browser would go to Tim Berners-Lee, although Andreesen was responsible for the first mainstream browser. I'm anxious to see whether someone will come along behind Google and do what Andreesen and company did for the web browser.
- ThomPete 17y ago
  The very fact that people are struggling with it makes it a great contender for one of those things we didn't know we wanted. People struggled to find out what twitter for 3 years but now people are starting to see the idea.
- calambrac 17y ago
  Where is this "Wave is difficult to understand" meme coming from? It's a protocol for real-time collaborative document editing. Done. The fact that there are a ton of features building on this concept doesn't detract from its underlying simplicity. Even if Google's client is overwhelming, it's a protocol - there are plenty of opportunities for others to come in and compete on simplicity.
  - roc 17y ago
    It's coming from people who have a vested interest in it not upsetting the apple cart. The more geeks talk about how a robot here and there turns it into X, Y or Z, the more non-geeks are distracted from the fact that on Day 1 it's just email/im/collaboration done better.
- stan_rogers 17y ago
  It's more of a Lotus Notes (with Sametime) on lithium than FriendFeed on crack -- it solves many (but not all) of the same problems (without, of course, the need to be backwards-compatible to the 1993 version). And like Notes, there is going to be a sharp divide between those who "get it" and those who don't. Like Notes/Domino/Sametime, it is replete with features that allow real-time interaction between users and time management. But (also like Notes) it's biggest feature is that allows "meetings" to become unstuck in time while generating tasks, workflow and approvals in a way that simple email or a wiki cannot. I would expect that shops/orgs that "get it" will find that it quickly becomes an indispensable tool, and those that don't but adopt it anyway will find it a horribly clunky way of going about things in the same way they would have done without it.
oliverkofoed 17y ago
I can't help but wonder why they didn't try harder to fix spam. As far as i've been able to tell, it'll be same-old/same-old: Mark as spam, possibly automatic filters. It seems to me that part of the answer to the question "What would e-mail look like if invented today" should be "there would be no spam". Couldn't it be done by request/approve like on Skype/Facebook or something more advanced like reputation or something?
- flardinois 17y ago
  having talked to the guys on the Wave Team, it is clear that they are still trying to figure these things out. They are just now opening it up to more users and seeing usage scenarios they didn't even think of themselves. I'm guessing spam wasn't really an issue they had to deal with so far, and from what I've seen, there really is no spam on the site yet. Also, given that you invite your own contacts to join a 'wave,' chances are, spam won't be a huge problem as far as I can see.
  - bjelkeman-again 17y ago
    Discussion on the subject of spam. Where Andrew Ower (Google) says: We're fully aware that any platform that achieves critical mass will be subject to abuse and are working to prevent this from troubling users. http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread/thread/2043f11aeae26b8e/28711db1ad34c3ad?#28711db1ad34c3ad http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread...
ntoshev 17y ago
In its early days ICQ had a mode that allowed you to see what the other user typed before he hit "send" - just like google wave seems to do. I hated it - I like to edit my message and make sure it's right before others see it. I see value in others getting updates without hitting refresh, though.
- noss 17y ago
  They recognize that. It is in their pipeline, watch their 1h20m demo.
- davidw 17y ago
  The unix 'talk' utility did that sometime back in the 80ies (and still does).
  - ralph 17y ago
    ytalk(1) is the modern version.
- spohlenz 17y ago
  I don't really see why all the Wave articles are touting this as such a big feature (or is Google doing this, in which case seriously?). It would not surprise me if this ended up changing later anyway.

30 points by mcxx 17y ago

I know everyone in the tech community is drooling over this, but I'd give it 50/50 odds at best. The real advantage it has going for it is that Google can throw a lot of weight behind it and maybe push it through with sheer force of will. Here's the problem with Wave: what is it? Every blog post I've read about it struggled with how to explain it. I read this entire post and I'm still not sure of how I'm supposed to use this thing or what pressing problem it solves. Even the videos I've seen are super long, presumably because you can't really show it off in 60 seconds. "Well, it's kind of a mix between email and IM, but also with wiki functionality and social networking...oh, and it's got these crazy widgets and media sharing and stuff. Hmmm...you really have to play with it to understand." 97% of the people I know wouldn't get that, and don't have the patience to figure it out. It seems like it's just too flexible, that it can be used for a million different things, which makes it hard to know how to use at first. Think about almost every successful web site out there and how easy they are to explain, especially when they first launched. You would have zero trouble explaining Google, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, etc. in a 60 second video. Wave is like FriendFeed on crack, and FF is already dangerously close to being too much for most normal people to grok. I just don't see it catching on.

flardinois 17y ago
I agree, Wave is really hard to explain, but once you see it in action, it actually becomes a lot easier to figure out. Maybe one way to think about it as a more structured version of Etherpad, only that you can use it for collaborative editing and messaging at the same time.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  That's really the exact opposite direction that I would go in for explaining this to a non-geek. "Ether-what?"
  - catch23 17y ago
    well this is a geek site. when explaining it to non-geeks, you could just say it's email on crack.
  - Network_Punk 17y ago
    Hah, I've told someone it has the everyone-can-edit style of Wikipedia and from then on they assumed it was for research only and were confused as to why we'd need "another one". Sigh.
8plot 17y ago
You might be right, but I think it's wrong to dismiss it just because it's hard to explain. Sometimes great new technologies are difficult because there is less to compare it to.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  To be clear, I'm not dismissing it...I'm looking forward to playing with it. I just don't see my friends using it, and if no one I know uses it, why would I?
  - catch23 17y ago
    Also to be clear, their stuff is truly beta which is why they are limiting the users to a small set of developers. Sometimes while using the site you'll get a 500 error that will force you to refresh the browser page.
  - Devilboy 17y ago
    Just wait 'till it's integrated into gmail
sahaj 17y ago
i remember having a hard time explaining why gmail is a better email solution to friends. they'd say: it's just email, what's better about it. sometimes, just because things are difficult to explain doesn't mean they are difficult to use.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Yeah, but you could have just said "It's web-based email like hotmail or yahoo, but faster and easier to use. Plus you get tons of storage." Done.
  - Network_Punk 17y ago
    "Why would I need more storage? Oh, and Hotmail is fast enough for me and I know how to use it." People are resistant to change...
    - nimrody 17y ago
      Many people still don't get it and use hotmail and similar services (Hey... they have cute icons :) Seems to me like gmail enthusiasm is mostly the realm of geeks. Some people even dislike the automatic threading.
catch23 17y ago
It is an amazing way for google to push their gadget platform though. I'm an early beta user of wave and I think it's pretty cool how you can just "email" a bunch of your friends a gadget that works inline the conversation. So you could email your 10 friends a poll widget to decide the best time to meet for lunch. The robot api concept of theirs is interesting, but I don't see immediate useful applications of it just yet.
- calambrac 17y ago
  Really? The spell checking and translation demos didn't strike you as useful?
Network_Punk 17y ago
Ask people what they want from current services (email is the one 99% will understand) and work out how Wave could be used to meet that need. i.e. Instead of emailing a new attachment everytime a document is changed, tell them to put the text in the email and how they can continue to edit it. Does anybody know how Wave is going to deal with Spam? I assume you are not limited to sending waves to people who have added you as a friend or contact.
- sahaj 17y ago
  "Does anybody know how Wave is going to deal with Spam? I assume you are not limited to sending waves to people who have added you as a friend or contact." i'm really hoping that is the case. it'll be more like a phone call in that sense. before you get to answer you can see (the number) who the call is from. this will really cut down on the spam.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
derefr 17y ago
Here's a one-line summary of Wave: it's like Outlook. It's a big... PIM... thing, with lots of features, that you live in, and grow completely dependent on, especially when your coworkers (or, with Wave, friends) use it. s/Wave/Outlook/ in everything you said, and it lines up almost perfectly.
- calambrac 17y ago
  That's a summary of the Wave client Google demoed. It's not a summary of Wave itself.
  - derefr 17y ago
    Well, there's no use summarizing Wave itself. Protocols aren't able to be grasped easily without examples of clients that use them. What really needs to happen to show off the power of Wave is for Google to create a few other Wave clients.
- roc 17y ago
  It's like Outlook... smashed together with IM, Biztalk and Sharepoint.
luckystrike 17y ago
I found this explanation quite crisp and useful: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/ http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/
mixmax 17y ago
When Marc Andreesen invented the browser nobody understood what he was doing or why it mattered. If you want to do disruptive technology it will often be hard to explain at first.
- mrduncan 17y ago
  I think the title of inventing the browser would go to Tim Berners-Lee, although Andreesen was responsible for the first mainstream browser. I'm anxious to see whether someone will come along behind Google and do what Andreesen and company did for the web browser.
ThomPete 17y ago
The very fact that people are struggling with it makes it a great contender for one of those things we didn't know we wanted. People struggled to find out what twitter for 3 years but now people are starting to see the idea.
calambrac 17y ago
Where is this "Wave is difficult to understand" meme coming from? It's a protocol for real-time collaborative document editing. Done. The fact that there are a ton of features building on this concept doesn't detract from its underlying simplicity. Even if Google's client is overwhelming, it's a protocol - there are plenty of opportunities for others to come in and compete on simplicity.
- roc 17y ago
  It's coming from people who have a vested interest in it not upsetting the apple cart. The more geeks talk about how a robot here and there turns it into X, Y or Z, the more non-geeks are distracted from the fact that on Day 1 it's just email/im/collaboration done better.
stan_rogers 17y ago
It's more of a Lotus Notes (with Sametime) on lithium than FriendFeed on crack -- it solves many (but not all) of the same problems (without, of course, the need to be backwards-compatible to the 1993 version). And like Notes, there is going to be a sharp divide between those who "get it" and those who don't. Like Notes/Domino/Sametime, it is replete with features that allow real-time interaction between users and time management. But (also like Notes) it's biggest feature is that allows "meetings" to become unstuck in time while generating tasks, workflow and approvals in a way that simple email or a wiki cannot. I would expect that shops/orgs that "get it" will find that it quickly becomes an indispensable tool, and those that don't but adopt it anyway will find it a horribly clunky way of going about things in the same way they would have done without it.

oliverkofoed 17y ago

I can't help but wonder why they didn't try harder to fix spam. As far as i've been able to tell, it'll be same-old/same-old: Mark as spam, possibly automatic filters. It seems to me that part of the answer to the question "What would e-mail look like if invented today" should be "there would be no spam". Couldn't it be done by request/approve like on Skype/Facebook or something more advanced like reputation or something?

flardinois 17y ago
having talked to the guys on the Wave Team, it is clear that they are still trying to figure these things out. They are just now opening it up to more users and seeing usage scenarios they didn't even think of themselves. I'm guessing spam wasn't really an issue they had to deal with so far, and from what I've seen, there really is no spam on the site yet. Also, given that you invite your own contacts to join a 'wave,' chances are, spam won't be a huge problem as far as I can see.
- bjelkeman-again 17y ago
  Discussion on the subject of spam. Where Andrew Ower (Google) says: We're fully aware that any platform that achieves critical mass will be subject to abuse and are working to prevent this from troubling users. http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread/thread/2043f11aeae26b8e/28711db1ad34c3ad?#28711db1ad34c3ad http://groups.google.com/group/google-wave-api/browse_thread...

ntoshev 17y ago

In its early days ICQ had a mode that allowed you to see what the other user typed before he hit "send" - just like google wave seems to do. I hated it - I like to edit my message and make sure it's right before others see it. I see value in others getting updates without hitting refresh, though.

noss 17y ago
They recognize that. It is in their pipeline, watch their 1h20m demo.
davidw 17y ago
The unix 'talk' utility did that sometime back in the 80ies (and still does).
- ralph 17y ago
  ytalk(1) is the modern version.
spohlenz 17y ago
I don't really see why all the Wave articles are touting this as such a big feature (or is Google doing this, in which case seriously?). It would not surprise me if this ended up changing later anyway.