Skip to main content

Google Wave had its first birthday yesterday, but got no presents


When the folks at Google posted a Happy Birthday to Wave yesterday, it was difficult to tell whether or not they were being sarcastic or serious about it.

It's now been a year since the first Wave demo wowed audiences the world over, only for those audiences to be sorely disappointed months later to find out that they not only couldn't get ahold of invites to use Wave, but that it offered little to no usefulness once they did.
Just over a week ago, Google finally opened up Wave -- taking it out of secret society mode and gifting it to the general public. But despite the overwhelming enthusiasm of some Googlers, nobody's really buying it.

"Can you imagine a world without Wave today?" Google's official post asked.

Probably, since there's a pretty high likelihood that you've never used it. Just about everybody I know that's tried Wave has had the same experience -- which is to say that they stopped using it about half an hour after they started. Honestly, I don't really blame them.
I use Wave for work when collaborating with a partner, just because we started using it months ago and it works for that singular purpose; but using it for anything other than a simple collaborative outline just isn't worth the pain -- and I do mean pain, because between the creeping slowness of Wave and the wrestling needed to get it to behave, painful is the only way to describe it.
Take chatting: One of the major selling points that Google uses for Wave is the typing and how it's leveraged for better communication. You and your friends can see what's being typed as it's typed, and you can later edit what's been typed -- whether it was by you or someone else in the wave.
When people first saw those features in action, there was a bunch of ZOMG THAT'S AWESOME going around, but it all changed when they actually got to try it. Turns out it's horribly annoying to sit and watch as people peck out typo after mind-numbing typo, constantly backtracking to fix them as they go -- and make no mistake, no matter how fast a typist you may be in a normal setting, when your words are being broadcast in real-time, you're all but guaranteed to look like a middle-school keyboarding class dropout. As for being able to edit other people's text... it's more often a license for shenanigans than it is a tool for productivity.
Then there's that bit about Wave replacing email. Those of you out there that have used Wave: honestly, can you really see Wave replacing email? It barely works as Wave. So happy birthday Google Wave; I hope you have many more, because at this rate you're going to need as many as you can get for people to start using you.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document
1 comment
Read more

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th
Post a Comment
Read more

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a
Post a Comment
Read more