Google Wave is the Wave of the Future

by Willy Lim
(Singapore)

Google Wave: The Wave of the Future

I had just finished watching the Google Wave Preview video and was blown away at how Google Wave has the potential of changing the way we communicate and collaborate forever.

The video is 1 hour 20 mins long, but never one moment boring. Every demo sparks new ideas as to how in future people can work and interact with each other.

Here are some highlights from the video. You can slide to that particular point to listen to the details.

1) 0:04:30 What is Google Wave?
Product, Platform, Protocol

2) 0:05:07 Communications Reinvented: What is a Wave?
Email vs Wave

3) 0:07:55 Real-time Interactive Email
Real time (character by character) instant messaging type conversations.

4) 0:15:21 How attachments work in wave?
Simply Drag n Drop attachments, with thumbnails appearing real-time to the receipient's Google Wave.

5) 0:20:40 Bloggy: Embedding Google Wave into blogs
You can respond to the embedded wave on your blog and the message will appear real-time in the recipient's Google Wave.

6) 0:25:26 Google Wave on mobile devices
You can use Google Wave on mobile phones.

7) 0:27:04 Real-time updating of photo captions
You can change the captions on photos and they will be updated live to the blogs which have embedded the wave.

8) 0:27:39 Collaborative authoring of documents
You can perform discussion and collaborative content authoring together using one single tool - Google Wave

9) 0:31:35 Using "Playback" to keep track of changes in collaboration
You can use the tool "Playback" to track the entire history of the wave and find out who made changes to the the document.

10) 0:35:38 Real-time collaborative editing
Everyone can edit the same wave at the same time and then changes are transmitted real-time to all collaborators.

11) 0:40:16 Organizing Waves
You can use folders, searches and tags to find waves you created.

12) 0:41:46 Real-time indexing of waves into search database
You can instantly search newly created waves.

13) 0:43:25 Google Wave as a Platform
Developers can use Wave Extensions to develop new tools and extend the functionality of Google Wave.

14) 0:43:56 Spelly: The most intelligent spellchecker on the planet
A spellchecker that matches against context and a language model build from the entire web.

15) 0:45:39 Linky: An intelligent linking robot
This robot is intelligent enough to automatically hyperlink your text if it is a url.

16) 0:49:08 Yes/No/Maybe gadget: Polling tool in Google Wave
An interesting interactive polling tool that is real-time.

17) 0:51:30 Real-time games in Google Wave
Sudoko and Chess games in real-time. And you can even use "Playback" to record and watch the progress of the whole game.

18) 0:52:30 Maps gadget: Real-time collaborative planning of trips.
Google Maps in real-time, allowing collaborations for planning trips.

19) 0:55:15 Polly: Forms in Google Wave
Forms can be edited in real-time, collaboratively.

20) 0:57:22 TWave: Integrating with Twitter
Wave extensions can be used to integrate with Twitter and other social media. You can update in Google Wave and the tweet with appear in Twitter. Also when people respond in Twitter, the tweet appears inside your Google Wave, all in real-time.

21) 1:01:40 Buggy: An extension that tracks bugs
An example of how to use Google Wave to integrate with existing work flow.

22) 1:05:20 Google Wave as a Protocol
Google allows developers to develop their own proprietary "wave" system, and yet be able to still communicate and collaborate with other "wave" systems. This is somewhat similar to people using different email systems, but yet are still able to email each other.

23) 1:12:25 Rosy: Real-time translation robot
This is a demonstration of real-time, word-by-word translation. This is TRULY AMAZING!

24) 1:15:08 Summary of what Google Wave is about
Just watch this part if you are a high level decision maker. It basically gives you a run-down of what Google Wave is and what it can do.


Some of my thoughts about Google Wave:-

1) Traditional email may become obsolete
With interactive real-time Google Wave, who needs email anymore?

2) Social media interactions will become real-time and more lively.
Comments on social media such as blogs will become real-time and the quantity and speed of conversations will increase dramatically.

3) Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn will face huge pressure from Google Wave.
Google Wave is really Email + Instant Messaging + Document Collaboration + Content Sharing + Networking in real-time. Social networking sites are having just a subset of what Google Wave can do.

4) Social media content sites like Flickr, Youtube, Slide.com etc, will experience increased in growth.
With Google Wave enabling real-time content sharing and making it really easy for people to do so, more people will share rich media on these social media content sites.


So how would Google Wave change the way people communicate and collaborate? Share your thoughts!