The Tech Desk: Google Wave

August 4, 2010

RIP Google Wave: 2009-2010

When it was announced last year, all of us at The Tech Desk were pretty excited about the launch of Google Wave. Google Wave endeavoured to combine instant messaging, email, and sharing into a new real time collaboration tool. However, Google Wave never achieved the audience that it hoped for. With this blog post on the Official Google Blog, Google is officially phasing out Wave at the end of the year.

Did you use Wave? What did you like or not like about it? Do you think it could have survived if it was not an invite only release for so long? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

June 4, 2009

Google Wave, The Future of Email?

Google recently made a huge splash at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco when it announced Google Wave, a new take on email and online collaboration. When I first saw it, I thought it looked like a Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Gmail mashup with an Outlook style interface. Here's a screenshot to give you an idea:

As you see, there is a lot going on in this interface. As Google describes it:

"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."

For a complete rundown, I would recommend visiting the "About Google Wave" page. Also, if you have time, I would encourage checking out the video below in which Google Wave is demonstrated. The video is lengthy, but incredibly interesting.

This looks amazing to me, and seems to take a greater step toward faster, more manageable online collaboration. You can try to sign up to "know when Google Wave will be ready" at this page if you're interested.