Comments on: 5 Reasons Google Wave Is Not Ready

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:37:06 +0000

I understand Google Wave is just a preview. It doesn't change the fact there are still some missing key features. That being said, Google Wave has come a long way since I wrote this article last October.

They have since added some group functionality as well as revision control, which is definitely a step in the right direction. They've also added email notifications, so that at least now there is one direction of legacy support. I have been using Google Wave to track progress with the Android on HTC project, and it has been great. Google Wave is excellent for use in specific collaborative projects.

By: Ian Dunn

Ian Dunn — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:19:30 +0000

1 reason why your article is pointless – wave is in limited preview. Advanced new web technologies always go through a rough start, just go hit twitter right now and see if the servers are crashed to see what i mean. you're not doing anything productive about it, just whining about something you want to add, enjoying a ride on the google-bashing bandwagon (they're not Windows ME just yet, here), and enjoying some nice web traffic off of people's google wave searches because of your catchy “5 things” gimmick. sometimes numbered lists work, and sometimes you look like the MSN homepage.

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:37:06 +0000

By: Ian Dunn

Ian Dunn — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:19:30 +0000

By: Connected Well » Novell Pulse Enables Inter-Company Collaboration via Google Wave

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:28:40 +0000

[...] Invite. Then, after everyone got in there and sent their “hello world” waves, the thing kindof, well, died off a little [...]

By: shade777

shade777 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:16:57 +0000

All absolutely true, but as Google says, it's a PREVIEW, and can be BUGGY!
It's like alpha code. No-one expects it to be perfect.

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:09:17 +0000

lol

No, I didn't see that. It still boggles me how and why it ever became such
a popular service.

By: Terence

Terence — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:53:14 +0000

Just as long as something kills it… 8^)

Did you see the pole that Guy Kawasaki ran about, if they decided to charge for it, how much would people be prepared to pay? Do you know what 60%+ of the respondents said? They'd pay for it not to exist at all.

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:42:01 +0000

Yeah, lack of notification is another issue as well.

I wouldn't call Google Wave a "Twitter killer" though. Wave and Twitter
serve different purposes. Twitter is a poor communication tool for the
reasons you mentioned. If you want an open dialogue with someone, Twitter
is not the medium to use. You would probably use email or instant
messaging, or Wave.

Twitter is really more for sharing small bits information than it is
collaboration and communication. If Twitter ever dies, it won't be because
Google Wave killed it.

By: Terence

Terence — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:02:01 +0000

A really great post, well written, bang on target and very informative. But it missed the MOST important point. Unless you sit here glued to it (like a really need another program like that), it doesn't announce the arrival of a new message. It needs something like the TweetDeck ping, maybe a sort of soft whooshing noise (since its a a wave), but something, ANYTHING, to let you know there's been some activity. Then with this MOST important point, and all the other irrelevancies you mention, its a 'Twitter Killer'. Why put up with all that meaningless crap in 140 characters or less, from anyone and his dog, when you can have meaningless crap from only those you decide in as many characters as the buffers will transmit. Which, by the way, something tells me is going to be its downfall. Buffering several hundred thousand messages is one thing. Buffering several gazillion keystrokes is quite something else. We shall see.

By: NJM

NJM — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:25:17 +0000

I agree with your suggestion, but your headline? Come on… Co-creation is the basis for a lot of software development. Google is putting a product out there and letting people test it out so they can do exactly what you are doing: identify its shortcomings so that Google can make it a better product. To that end, Google Wave clearly IS ready. The groundwork is set and now Wave is ready to be tested by early adopters who can help identify the features of the product that should change/be added/be removed.

By: Sylvain Poirier

Sylvain Poirier — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:18:38 +0000

You missed an essential point of my concept. Maybe I should insist that, in what I envision, email users could reply by accessing the wave by a simple click, with no need of any formality of wave account creation. I define this as another use (a marginal one, just for the transition to the end of email), of the very foundational feature of my project, which is that any user of any site of the federation could directly access and use all the other sites of the federation, with the illimited accumulation of possibilities every specific site can develop in itself, with no need to create more accounts. This is a very new feature as compared to the whole hassle of the web we are all used to bear as a fatality (creating as many accounts as you need to use independent services). But this usual hassle is not a fatality, since a general technical solution is possible as I explain, and can be directly developed (in fact, it is supposed to have already been done by the developers who previously worked on my project, but I'm afraid this code may not be good enough for reuse). This can first be used as another way to have conversations between users of different sites, but its usefulness can be much wider. As I explained in my article, this feature would also solve the currently pending dead-end of Wave, which is that any link to a public wave you would like to include on a web site of blog, pointing to a different host's than the visitor's provider, would not technically let them directly access it with their usual account.

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:41:32 +0000

Your article is quite comprehensive indeed. My thoughts still remain very much the same on the topics I've discussed here.

For one, I think that email needs to be better integrated than what you've described. You are proposing that someone could be invited via email to a wave. However, in order to participate in the conversation they still need to join the wave. If they don't have a wave account (somewhere, assuming we are talking about a federated environment) yet, this is a big hassle.

It is a lot like if you get an email from someone sending you pictures posted on XYZ Picture Hosting service. However, if you want to see the pictures you need to sign up for an account. This is a major pain and a lot of people won't bother with it, so you will lose a lot of participants.

I think your idea of creating a "tsunami" for containing other waves for use within a group will work. It is definitely better than using a single wave and continually overwriting it. It would still be better to have group contact management, but the tsunami concept is a good workaround to use until Google (or someone else) implements better contact management.

By: Sylvain Poirier

Sylvain Poirier — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:34:37 +0000

OK I integrated your remark in my article. Now, as for my other ideas, what do you think ?

By: parent5446

parent5446 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:34:19 +0000

I agree that Google Wave has poor contact management (especially as far as grouping is concerned). As far as access control is concerned, as must as I would like to see it implemented (it would be a great feature), it does not make Google Wave “not ready”. Email in its current form does not have access control. You can send the email to whoever you please. Furthermore, the nature of email does not allow you to remove participants. Yet all of this does not make email not ready for release. Revision control is the same thing.

In other words, while I must agree all the features you listed would be really helpful if they were implemented, but it does not make Google Wave any less “ready” for the public.

By: GeekLad

GeekLad — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:32:29 +0000

You could build a wave with the group and just continually modify it.
However, if you're working in a collaborative group, it is unlikely you'll
only ever work on a single topic. If the entire subject matter changes, or
you're working on a new project with those folks, you would lose all the
work on the previous project if you were to use the same wave and overwrite
it with the new project/content.

By: Sylvain Poirier

Sylvain Poirier — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:09:45 +0000

I wrote an article with other ideas, including some hints related to what you mentioned, but going much further : http://spoirier.lautre.net/beyond-google-wave
But I don't agree with your claim: "Google Wave has no way to group your contacts together to build the equivalent of mailing lists". Indeed, you can form the equivalent of a mailing list in the form of a single wave: you can then bring more news to the list by adding contents to the wave, with no need to create another wave.

By: Disruptive Conversations

Disruptive Conversations — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:17:37 +0000

The Single Biggest Reason Why I Can’t Yet REALLY Use Google Wave…

I’m a big fan of Google Wave. A huge fan in fact. I’ve written about it, posted a screencast about using it in conference collaboration and have much more about it in my writing queue. I love the promise of……

By: Mark Crowley

Mark Crowley — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:52:51 +0000

I agree completely and there are many more things missing besides: not being able to remove people from a wave, to delete a wave, editing large waves, not just making responses crashes it, search filters as buttons rather than as search keywords, making a wave unpublic after making it public…its just not ready for wide release yet. They risk ruining a really good idea by hyping it so quickly.

By: Seif Sallam

Seif Sallam — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:05:08 +0000

email support isn't something big, its just done by adding a no edit permission, reply is available, the conversation way is available too, maybe support for HTML, therefore i think wave is ready. BUT Google won't do it this way, first they will use the wave interface in all their applications (Gmail, Docs, ..etc) so people get used to it then they would feel like home when they merge everything with wave