Is it ‘cos I’m geek?!

Well yesterday my google wave invite came through from one of the wonderful people I follow on twitter! I have a few invites but am getting friends and twitterers on wave first, sorry, but you can request one from google from here or ask around on twitter like I did!

Overall

So far, I love it and I can totally see it catching on. Basically it is a combination of IM and email, meaning that you can attach photos and documents to it and have a history of the conversation, like email, but also add other people and have a real time discussion, like IM. You can see what people are typing as they type which means that you can reply before the other person has even pressed “done” making the conversation a lot smoother and quicker.

Main Features

One of the main selling points google is using on wave is the “playback” feature which allows you to quite literally playback the conversation as it happened. Exceptionally useful for new additions to the wave who need to catch up and see how the wave has developed. It’s pretty interesting to watch as the conversation develops, you can not only see each “blip” in the order that it appears, but also any edits are highlighted meaning that you can see the original idea and how it became what it is now.

In my opinion the main selling point should be the language feature. On google wave you can set your language to, in my case, English and every “blip” sent is immediately translated into English meaning you can communicate with anyone in any language with no need to be sat with a foreign dictionary by your side! You could have a wave with British, French, Italian, Chinese and Russian people in it and everyone of you would be able to view the wave in your native language, invaluable for business! Alongside that you can easily add maps and weather reports and even stock reports to the wave.

The drag and drop function for attaching things to the wave is also very useful and the other people in the wave can see each photo as it uploads from your machine. There is also a “download” button that downloads all the photos posted by everyone in the wave, or you can view them all as a slideshow. From what I can see so far the same is true of documents.

Bots and Extensions

There are also bots on wave which can do all sorts! From conversation bots so you can wave even if you’re alone, to twitter and blog bots. Yes, you can tweet directly from wave, you can get all your updates to wave and you can search twitter all from wave. Also you can blog directly from wave, I haven’t tried it yet, but from what I see you can send a whole wave to blogger (obviously!) including the photos. The example google uses is organising a BBQ with friends, followed by discussion of said BBQ and photo, all uploaded to your blog in one easy click. Not only that, any responses to your blog are added to the wave so you can view them without even opening your blog!
Alongside this you can also set up wave to work as an RSS reader. I have no idea about RSS but I know a lot of people use it so I thought I’d mention it!

For organising social events, which will no doubt be my biggest use when it is released, it is fantastic. There are extensions to allow people to click “yes”, “no” or “maybe”. There are also polling options.

Geek use and novelty items

For the geeks and role players among us, there is a dice bot that allows rolling of dice, making role play easy. You can also create a wave within a wave, a “ping”, so each player can have a private wave with the GM/DM that other players can’t see, but both that player and the GM/DM can see it in the same window as the original wave. Genius!
The wave in wave idea obviously has other applications but I thought the best example was role play (how geek am I?!)

For novelty value there is a “pirate speak” extension, that turns anything you type into pirate speak, much like the facebook option! Also a “swedish chef” speak for those who want to say “bork bork”. There are also games, so far sudoku, hangman and rock, paper, scissors.
Other useful extensions are a wikipedia one which can replace specified text with a link to it’s wiki page and a URL to pic bot which replaces the URL of photos with the image itself allowing you to see the photo in the wave.

In my opinion

My biggest problem with wave is the scrollbars that they are using. They are small and strange, I can’t get used to them! Obviously with it being in beta testing it has some glitches and can be slow if there is a lot going on, but other than that I think it’s fantastic, I’m totally hooked!

Links to better explanations!

You can google or youtube “google wave” and that will give you loads of information or just check out these links:

Quick explanation of wave, “15 features” is a simple explanation of 15 features of wave and this is google wave’s official overview. Hope that helps all you non geeks out there!