Google Wave

Google today previewed a new product called Google Wave. As Google terms it, it is a “new tool for communication and collaboration on the web”. Little vague, but put simply, they are not only combining the best elements of email, instant messenger and social networks, they are doing it all in a browser environment.

The basic idea is that you can communicate by any means and it is all centralised in one place and different people that might join a conversation at a later date can see the history of a conversation and respond to a particular point in the message not just simply replying to a long email message

To get a better understanding of how this works, check out the sub-site over at http://wave.google.com. You can also sign up to be notified of when it is ready and even help out with bug testing and some user surveys.

The video below is the full developer demonstration of Google Wave. Video is about 1 hour and 20 mins, but the first 30 mins focus on the UI.

UPDATE: Excellent review over at Tech Crunch of Google Wave- “Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web”

Trent Collins on May 29, 2009 | Filed Under Reviews

2 Comments

a_web_designer  on May 29th, 2009

Knowing Google’s minimalist approach in layouts, it may be a better alternative to Facebook. I am not sure if I heard it right that one can integrate Google Wave to your website. So must be good stuff especially if I am wanting to get natural traffic (non SEO) . Look forward to beta test myself.

trentc  on May 29th, 2009

The presentation gave an example of Wave integrated into a site. They showed a comment being placed directly on the site and showing up in the Wave interface at the same time. Not bad.