Google Wave: Grab Your Board, Surf's Up!

I love everything Google, as seen by my most recent post on The Next Great Generation. So when I heard about Google Wave I just had to have it. It was new and exciting. Finally my a friend of mine, Melanie Wong, was able to send me an invite and my life is forever changed.

As soon as I got my invite I set up my account and presto! I was on the Wave bandwagon... But what came next? I only had two contacts (Melanie and Dr. Wave). What was I supposed to do? How did all of this work? It was a lot to take in and understand. When people asked me what I wasn't I didn't even know what to tell them. A combination of chat and e-mail? That just wasn't sufficient. It just is Google Wave.

Finally, Melanie and I collaborated on an article together, via Google Wave and it all made sense. We were able to write together and talk in real-time. We could see what each other was typing and editing. It wasn't just that I sent her my work and copied and pasted it together with hers. It really was a team effort.

Gizmodo had a post about how the Declaration of Independence would have been written today via Google Wave. In a way, you can kind of understand exactly how it works with this example. Multiple people working together to write or collaborate on an article, idea, project and so much more.

However, as much as I love Google, it isn't perfect. Wave is still in preview. It's kind of slow and a bit buggy. They haven't ironed out all of the kinks and there is room for a lot more improvement. Today, I wasn't able to send out more invitations because they shut down for maintenance. I got Gmail while it was still in beta and I know that they worked through all of the kinks there. It is possible that Google Wave will be a huge milestone in Internet innovation.

The bottom line: The idea is great and I know that I will definitely be using it in the future.