Google Wave!, that’s the trend now. People are screaming for Google Wave invitation. Check twitter, facebok, emails, blogs, forums, everywhere, all are requesting or talking about wave. The truth is that many of them don’t know what really it is. Everybody is asking for it and so all think that its something big.
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What is Google Wave?
Google wave is not another facebook or myspace or orkut or twitter or simply not a social networking site. Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.
Consider a real-time situation: We are a group of people are working on the same project but working from different locations of the world. In a project, we have to discuss the project details with everyone in that group or have to prepare a document. So what we do? First we discuss the things via email or phone and then someone in the group creates a draft copy of the document and sends to all. Then everyone in edit that document and sends back. One will collect all the documents and can you imagine how much difficult it is to find the changes made by others in copies of the same document and how much time we have to repeat this process to create a final document?
But using Google wave, we can do this very easily. First we create a new wave and add all the others in that project to the wave. We discuss about the project in that wave. Waves are real-time, so in most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character. We create a the document in a wave and everyone can work on that document at the same time. Every changes you do will be updated in all the other’s document. So it is like we are sitting together and working on the same document. All the confusions can be cleared at there itself and you can finalize the document. If we want, we can share files, photos, videos etc. If later, you want to add some one else to that group, you can add them to your discussion and he can see all the past conversation and files in that wave. Also we can send private reply to our friend/project mate.
What is a Wave?
In google wave, everything you do is as a wave. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. For example, I got the option to invite my friends to wave as a wave.
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
Some of the main features of Google Wave
- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.
- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.
- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.
- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.
- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.
- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.
Gadgets
You can add gadgets to your wave. For example, you can add a poll gadget to create a poll or a game gadget to play with your friend. Also you can add maps, videos etc.
Security
One of the main feature is that Google Wave is open source and you can install it on you local server. Why we want to run this on our own server? As I said before, Google wave is an online communication and collaboration tool and so this is very useful for companies and organizations for the communication between their employees. In such a situation, security is an important factor and no organization/company wants to save their data in some other server. Since Google wave can be installed on our own server, companies can install it on their own sever and setup and an environment so only the people working in that company have access to their wave server and so data is secure.
Conclusion
Google wave is not a messenger or a social networking site, so it will never replace facebook or twitter or orkut or yahoo/MSN messenger. If you want to communicate with your friend through wave, then your must must have an account in the same wave service. So this will not replace your gmail/hotmail or any other mail service.
Need a Google Wave invitation? Click here
Watch this video to get a detailed idea about the Google wave
One Response to “Google wave for dummies”
Ecologie umana
2 years ago
Please send me a Google Wave invitation. Thanks in advance.
trimit.scrisori [at] gmail.com