6 ms·

It's slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve? If it's not obvious to you what problem it solves, then you've s

by swombat 17y ago

It's slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve? If it's not obvious to you what problem it solves, then you've spent too long away from corporate environments with their massive, unwieldy threads of emails flying about, full mailboxes, and other email issues. The problem that Wave solves is blindingly obvious to anyone who uses email as a primary tool to work with teams. Whether it's the right solution is another question altogether, but the problem is definitely there.

thismat 17y ago
It doesn't really solve this problem when corporations don't want to trust their data to google. It's well known that gmail doesn't comply with HIPAA/SOX and doesn't offer any kind of guarantee on data when corporations use it, this is a huge issue for adoption in the workplace by many corporations. I could be missing something though, is Wave something you can install locally and have control over? It's not Google's style so I'd guess not. If I'm mistaken, I'm more than willing to be enlightened.
- tumult 17y ago
  Yes, it's an open protocol. http://www.waveprotocol.org/ http://www.waveprotocol.org/ It's still being revised and edited. There are example clients and servers based on the actual code Google is using. It would have taken you about 5 seconds to search for this, btw. :]
  - thismat 17y ago
    Indeed, I could have searched and dug around for it, but work is calling and I wanted to get in as much hackernews as possible before starting the day. Thank you for the link, will be reading up on it later as it looks very interesting.
  - mbrubeck 17y ago
    Not only that, but it's a federated protocol (like email), so your company can set up its own Wave server, and you can communicate through it with users on any server.
    - tumult 17y ago
      It is, but federation doesn't work yet. They're saying they're aiming for the end of this month for working federation on the sandbox, which I eagerly await :]
axod 17y ago
If that's the case I think they should narrow and focus. If it's a tool for corporates to communicate, 'mailing lists 2.0?' then it'd be cool to go that way. Being marketed as "It can do everything!!! It's the new internet!", which seems to be the current strategy, could pay off, but maybe not. Likely only with geeks wanting to play with technology. I'd be really surprised if it takes off with consumers quite yet.
- sp332 17y ago
  They need to get buy-in from geeks first, otherwise no one will write programs for it.
  - isamuel 17y ago
    This is probably true. But if the purpose of Wave is to be "Collaboration Tool for Large Corporations to Share TPS Reports," isn't it doomed with most hackers anyway? Who would want to write programs for that?
    - axod 17y ago
      ...and in XML :/ eugh
- elblanco 17y ago
  It definitely is over-hyped. I think it has to do with the focus seemingly on the developer addons and bots and such vs. the collaborative communication medium. Perhaps they thought they had to differentiate from message boards or IM or email or IRC?
- roc 17y ago
  It's not just a tool for corporates though; they're just a handy example because at their scale the problems are unavoidable. If you have to coordinate communication and collaboration among any group of people, Wave will help. Though if it's only 2, 5 or 10 people, it's more likely you can get everyone to agree on convention and get by with older tools.
- 17y ago
elblanco 17y ago
Agreed, I get around 100-200 emails a day. Most of them are just continuations of a single conversation between the same 2-3 people. On top of that, because email can get unwieldy, we often just fall back on IM for many things. Wave seems almost obvious except that it wasn't invented earlier.
mrshoe 17y ago
The problem is definitely there, but, after using wave for a couple of months now, I don't think it's the right solution. I would echo a lot of other reviews: it's too complex and ambitious. This applies to the protocol/platform as well as their initial client. There's just so much going on and it's trying to do so much at once that it's very unwieldy. I think simplicity is an important feature if you want new software to gain traction, and especially if you want new protocols to be adopted. I think simpler tools like http://shoptalkapp.com http://shoptalkapp.com (disclosure: co-founder) do a better job of solving the problem you describe. And the tools we use to build it, which are gradually being open sourced at http://dieselweb.org http://dieselweb.org, make real-time web apps pretty accessible to developers. Having used the wave client and read about the protocol, I just think both are too complex to really gain traction. All the bugs in Gooogle's own wave client are evidence that it's not an easy platform to write apps on, at least at this point. I'm sure they'll continue to pour tons of resources into it, and maybe they'll turn it around. Time will tell.
tybris 17y ago
If I don't want to wait I use jabber. If I DO want to wait I use e-mail.
akrymski 17y ago
I think CampFire solves most of these problems much more elegantly.
- kburn 17y ago
  I'm not familiar with Campfire. How well does it scale teamwise?
  - akrymski 17y ago
    It's effectively group chat. I believe 37 signals themselves use it. Scales well to most situations, where you have groups of under 20 people working on any one project at a time.

by swombat 17y ago

thismat 17y ago

It doesn't really solve this problem when corporations don't want to trust their data to google. It's well known that gmail doesn't comply with HIPAA/SOX and doesn't offer any kind of guarantee on data when corporations use it, this is a huge issue for adoption in the workplace by many corporations. I could be missing something though, is Wave something you can install locally and have control over? It's not Google's style so I'd guess not. If I'm mistaken, I'm more than willing to be enlightened.

tumult 17y ago
Yes, it's an open protocol. http://www.waveprotocol.org/ http://www.waveprotocol.org/ It's still being revised and edited. There are example clients and servers based on the actual code Google is using. It would have taken you about 5 seconds to search for this, btw. :]
- thismat 17y ago
  Indeed, I could have searched and dug around for it, but work is calling and I wanted to get in as much hackernews as possible before starting the day. Thank you for the link, will be reading up on it later as it looks very interesting.
- mbrubeck 17y ago
  Not only that, but it's a federated protocol (like email), so your company can set up its own Wave server, and you can communicate through it with users on any server.
  - tumult 17y ago
    It is, but federation doesn't work yet. They're saying they're aiming for the end of this month for working federation on the sandbox, which I eagerly await :]

axod 17y ago

If that's the case I think they should narrow and focus. If it's a tool for corporates to communicate, 'mailing lists 2.0?' then it'd be cool to go that way. Being marketed as "It can do everything!!! It's the new internet!", which seems to be the current strategy, could pay off, but maybe not. Likely only with geeks wanting to play with technology. I'd be really surprised if it takes off with consumers quite yet.

sp332 17y ago
They need to get buy-in from geeks first, otherwise no one will write programs for it.
- isamuel 17y ago
  This is probably true. But if the purpose of Wave is to be "Collaboration Tool for Large Corporations to Share TPS Reports," isn't it doomed with most hackers anyway? Who would want to write programs for that?
  - axod 17y ago
    ...and in XML :/ eugh
elblanco 17y ago
It definitely is over-hyped. I think it has to do with the focus seemingly on the developer addons and bots and such vs. the collaborative communication medium. Perhaps they thought they had to differentiate from message boards or IM or email or IRC?
roc 17y ago
It's not just a tool for corporates though; they're just a handy example because at their scale the problems are unavoidable. If you have to coordinate communication and collaboration among any group of people, Wave will help. Though if it's only 2, 5 or 10 people, it's more likely you can get everyone to agree on convention and get by with older tools.
17y ago

elblanco 17y ago

Agreed, I get around 100-200 emails a day. Most of them are just continuations of a single conversation between the same 2-3 people. On top of that, because email can get unwieldy, we often just fall back on IM for many things. Wave seems almost obvious except that it wasn't invented earlier.

mrshoe 17y ago

The problem is definitely there, but, after using wave for a couple of months now, I don't think it's the right solution. I would echo a lot of other reviews: it's too complex and ambitious. This applies to the protocol/platform as well as their initial client. There's just so much going on and it's trying to do so much at once that it's very unwieldy. I think simplicity is an important feature if you want new software to gain traction, and especially if you want new protocols to be adopted. I think simpler tools like http://shoptalkapp.com http://shoptalkapp.com (disclosure: co-founder) do a better job of solving the problem you describe. And the tools we use to build it, which are gradually being open sourced at http://dieselweb.org http://dieselweb.org, make real-time web apps pretty accessible to developers. Having used the wave client and read about the protocol, I just think both are too complex to really gain traction. All the bugs in Gooogle's own wave client are evidence that it's not an easy platform to write apps on, at least at this point. I'm sure they'll continue to pour tons of resources into it, and maybe they'll turn it around. Time will tell.

tybris 17y ago

If I don't want to wait I use jabber. If I DO want to wait I use e-mail.

akrymski 17y ago

I think CampFire solves most of these problems much more elegantly.

kburn 17y ago
I'm not familiar with Campfire. How well does it scale teamwise?
- akrymski 17y ago
  It's effectively group chat. I believe 37 signals themselves use it. Scales well to most situations, where you have groups of under 20 people working on any one project at a time.