Hello blog readers!
As promised, this is a review of Google Wave, and yes, after this review I will be giving out one free invite to a lucky reader. Alright now without further ado; I present to you; My Google Wave review.
When I received my Wave invite I was ecstatic. There is a certain prestige that comes with having Google Wave, especially if your friends are as geeky as mine. So when I logged on the guy part of my brain wanted to click everything. After doing this for a while I thought to myself, "This is cool, but who is going to use this?" Initially it is very hard to imagine one using this is ones everyday life. One thing that I couldn't get over was the cluttered nature of the thing. Anyone can edit any part of the wave and that can get messy pretty quickly.
As I used it for a while I started to come around. I could see how people would use this. Google describes it as "Email-2.0" but I don't think that this will replace email. I had an opportunity to work on a project with a friend who also had Wave. Google wave is a great tool for collaborating on projects, but thats it. The difference between this and something like Google Docs is that when you use Google Docs you are left with something finished that you could hand in to a teacher or boss. Wave works more like a brainstorming session or a meeting. It's really good for planning and discussing, but it won't produce a document. In ots of cases all that one is looking for is an easy way to collaborate over the Internet.
Wave gets easier to use the more you use it, it is actually quite intuitive. One nice feature for users with Google gears installed is that you can actually drag and drop files from your desktop into the Wave. I also like how Google incorporated bots into the system. There are loads of bots you can use, all with a different but useful function. These range from a phycatrist bot, to a Twitter bot, to a blogger bot , and even a bot that translates your message to a different language as you type. There is lots of potential for Google wave to grow through bots and through extensions, which are rather limited right now. On thing that I'm not fond of is the live typing feature. I haven't found a way to disable this yet but it is really irritating. As the name implies it lets all other editors of a wave see exactly what you type, as you type it. At first this seems like a great idea, but for a terrible speller like myself it can be rather embarrassing. I can recall a conversation on wave I had with my friend where he typed "Half naked" instead of "Half baked". He corrected his error but not before the other editors of the wave had seen it. This is a really negative for me, but I'm sure in the future there will be a way to turn it off. Another useful feature is "playback". This lets you go through the wave in chronological order and see how it has progressed.
In conclusion I'd have to say that this is a great product from Google. Its still a little halfnaked baked but keep in mind that it is still in the preview stage. I think that people will use this service and it will be quite successful. Good Job Google, keep up the great work!
Finally, we come to the part of the post where I give away an invite to a lucky reader. If you havn't read the post yet and you just skipped down here to get the invite, go back and read the post then come back. Done? Ok, here is the deal;first person to email the Guys On FOSS email account (guysonfoss@gmail.com) gets it, please include the email address you'd like me to send the invite to in your email. I'd also appreciate it if you left us some feedback on this review.
If anyone would like to converse with us on Google wave and you have an account already you can do so by adding us to your contact list with this address: guysonfoss@googlewave.com
-The Thoth-
As promised, this is a review of Google Wave, and yes, after this review I will be giving out one free invite to a lucky reader. Alright now without further ado; I present to you; My Google Wave review.
When I received my Wave invite I was ecstatic. There is a certain prestige that comes with having Google Wave, especially if your friends are as geeky as mine. So when I logged on the guy part of my brain wanted to click everything. After doing this for a while I thought to myself, "This is cool, but who is going to use this?" Initially it is very hard to imagine one using this is ones everyday life. One thing that I couldn't get over was the cluttered nature of the thing. Anyone can edit any part of the wave and that can get messy pretty quickly.
As I used it for a while I started to come around. I could see how people would use this. Google describes it as "Email-2.0" but I don't think that this will replace email. I had an opportunity to work on a project with a friend who also had Wave. Google wave is a great tool for collaborating on projects, but thats it. The difference between this and something like Google Docs is that when you use Google Docs you are left with something finished that you could hand in to a teacher or boss. Wave works more like a brainstorming session or a meeting. It's really good for planning and discussing, but it won't produce a document. In ots of cases all that one is looking for is an easy way to collaborate over the Internet.
Wave gets easier to use the more you use it, it is actually quite intuitive. One nice feature for users with Google gears installed is that you can actually drag and drop files from your desktop into the Wave. I also like how Google incorporated bots into the system. There are loads of bots you can use, all with a different but useful function. These range from a phycatrist bot, to a Twitter bot, to a blogger bot , and even a bot that translates your message to a different language as you type. There is lots of potential for Google wave to grow through bots and through extensions, which are rather limited right now. On thing that I'm not fond of is the live typing feature. I haven't found a way to disable this yet but it is really irritating. As the name implies it lets all other editors of a wave see exactly what you type, as you type it. At first this seems like a great idea, but for a terrible speller like myself it can be rather embarrassing. I can recall a conversation on wave I had with my friend where he typed "Half naked" instead of "Half baked". He corrected his error but not before the other editors of the wave had seen it. This is a really negative for me, but I'm sure in the future there will be a way to turn it off. Another useful feature is "playback". This lets you go through the wave in chronological order and see how it has progressed.
In conclusion I'd have to say that this is a great product from Google. Its still a little half
Finally, we come to the part of the post where I give away an invite to a lucky reader. If you havn't read the post yet and you just skipped down here to get the invite, go back and read the post then come back. Done? Ok, here is the deal;
If anyone would like to converse with us on Google wave and you have an account already you can do so by adding us to your contact list with this address: guysonfoss@googlewave.com
-The Thoth-
Congratulations to our lucky reader who has just won himself a google wave invite!
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