Tech: Some thoughts on Google Wave

So having had my wave account for a couple of weeks now, I figured it was time to get down a few thoughts about the service. And before anyone asks I don't have any invites left at this stage; I gave my last one away on Twitter on Saturday night.
As we all know, there has been a lot of hype regarding the wave. To me this is typical of Google. It is exactly what they did with Gmail and to some extent what they did with Android; make it available to the select few, put a couple of videos and screenshots on select sites on the internet and let the hype build in an organic fashion. So is it worth the hype? Well yes and no. Any claims that it is the future of communication online are a little far fetched to me at this stage. It takes a lot of getting used to and Lifehackers guide to wave has proved invaluable to me. Having said that and as one of my mates tweeted, if you need an instruction book then something’s rotten in Denmark. Did you read an instruction book on how to email back in the day? Or to SMS? Or even to Twitter?

It is however very cool that you can drag and drop documents and files from any folder on your hard drive directly into the wave. The live typing feature, if a little weird at first, is also very cool. Adding various bots to the waves themselves is also a very useful feature. These include a Twitter bot so you can tweet from directly within, Amazon so any keywords found in your wave will then be searched through the Amazon website and you are fed back the latest deals and prices and Wikipedia so again any keywords that crop up are searched and fed back to you to you. Also according to an article on Engadget yesterday Google themselves are getting ready to set up an app store (is that the buzz phrase of the last year or what?) for wave. This will mean that anyone that can see a particular use and has the coding knowledge will be able to write their own apps for the service.

Now obviously these bots/apps are useful in their own right, but what about an actual use for wave? Well the best two I can see so far are as a collaboration tool and as a live Evernote style notebook. As a collaboration tool it is genius. I am currently working on a film project with an old college friend of mine and the ability to post location pictures, script updates and casting notes is invaluable, especially when you consider he is over 30 miles away. And of course it’s all totally live and editable. I am also involved in the Lincoln Tweetup (#FridayDrinks/@FridayDrinks) and we have just started using wave to organise dates, food etc for the meet ups.

The second way I use the service is as a live notebook. The editability of the wave proves extra useful here as anything I delete or edit is highlighted within the document, providing a very useful workaround to the good idea/bad idea/good idea again jitters that I am sure any creative person will appreciate.

Overall I find the service very useful but in my own way. I cannot give you a blanket use for the service because there doesn’t appear to be one. Make of it what you will I think is the general consensus. Wave is very good at many different things and it’s pulling these things together in the right way that make it for me. If you are using wave in your own way let me know in the comments below. Also if you want to connect with me I’m wilsonpip@googlewave.com as well as my production companys account thegrainsilo@googlewave.com.

-Pip