Google Wave dev preview hands-on and impressions
By Ross Miller 
posted Aug 6th 2009 1:00PM
posted Aug 6th 2009 1:00PM
After an impressive debut at Google I/O, the company's newest experiment and collaborative chat client has been making its way into the hands of developers in the lead-up to a torrent of new testers on September 30th. We had a chance to stop by Google's San Francisco office last week for a guided tour of the latest build of Wave with creators Lars and Jens Rasmussen, and have since then spent the better part of our free time working through the ins and outs of the new communication platform. Does it live up to the hype, even in this bug-infested interim build? Read on to find out.
"Everything's shiny, Capn'. Not to fret!"
Firefly fans may instantly recognize that quote, but participants of the Google Wave dev preview tend have an almost Pavlovian aversion to the phrase. For them, it's a signal that you've managed to find a bug that's crashed the program, grinding your experiences to an abrupt halt. "We're working hard on three things right now," said Lars, "stability, speed, and there's a stack of usability problems that recent users have uncovered for us." On its September 30th launch, there won't be any surprise features from what we've already seen shown -- "nothing new, but less of the 'shiny,'" he said, referencing its fail whale error screen. Our first ten minutes with the web app were apparently pretty typical for new users, tinkering around with every feature as we write and edit each other's incoherent babble, watching in a stupor as characters materialize on screen in real-time with the other person's typing.
The interface is easy to adjust to, especially for those familiar with Gmail. From start up, you've got your navigation and contacts on the left rail, your inbox in the middle, and your current open waves on the right. Any window can be minimized, and doing so will send it to a tab along the top row adjacent to Wave's logo, and can be fully accessed from there as drop down windows. Honestly, we found this preferable to having the non-wave windows propagate the screen, as it cleared up valuable screen real estate and gave us more room to spread out multiple wave conversations. Unfortunately, its system for organizing multiple open windows was puzzling: with five waves open, four vied for space in the left column while one particularly empty wave hogged the right all to itself. It was pretty illogical, and we've got no idea at this point how to drag them around and fix, but we're willing to go on faith for now that this will be remedied before too long.
One of Google's initiatives to attract business / enterprise customers is the ability to create your own Wave server that doesn't live in the cloud, and as it was explained, any part of a wave that's privy only to people on the enterprise server, including private in-line replies to public threads, will exist only on the local server, while portions shared publicly or with a member outside of the server will co-exist in the cloud.
Extensions
Other than an ad hoc wave listing extensions, there's no integrated database for developers to show off their wares. To our surprise, though, Lars said the team is toying with the idea of an app store with revenue sharing. He was quick to point out this was just one of many monetization strategies being floated around at this point, but we gotta say, it's definitely an intriguing idea.
Mobile
The web version's built around the HTML5 standard, and something Lars is excited about is that it's the same code base with only five to ten percent effort to make it work on mobile, by his estimates. A native app has been discussed, and while it would allow access to the camera, address book, and compass (as Latitude has shown, GPS is already web app-friendly), it'd take an "extraordinary amount of work" to build native software vs. just sticking with a web-based solution. We gotta imagine bypassing the app store would be nice at this point, too, but going native is still an option at this point. For the most part, there's expected to be a feature parity between the desktop and mobile versions, with one key exception: editing. It's something that's not quite a part of the HTML5, but the Rasmussens said they work close with the standards body and are hopeful they can fix that.
Put plainly, Wave is a message board in a constant state of self-editing flux. To put it another way, it's a collaborative text editor on steroids -- as our mobile editor Chris Ziegler quipped, "I think Wave's capabilities actually exceed human capacity to interact." There's a lot of great ideas here, many we'd love to see find their way into other Google apps, but we're still trying to figure out just how this will fit into an online world already dominated by numerous social networks, messaging clients, forums, and microblogging services -- something that'll proper render itself more clear as it moves from dev build to public beta. It's not that we don't think Wave will be successful -- and make no mistake, we are enthused -- but calling it "revolutionary" might be setting the bar a bit too high. Those 100,000 spaces opening up September 30th got filled just hours after the I/O conference, so if you signed up any time in the aftermath, you're gonna have to hold off a bit longer. In the meantime, it's probably best to pare down those exorbitant expectations while you wait.
Fix the link
So it's Wikipedia meets IM?
meets Google Docs too, it seems. I'm intrigued.
If anyone can remember Writely.com before it became Google docs. I think this Wave thing originated from that. Just my opinion.
It's e-mail meets IM meets message board meets facebook. Personally I can't wait. I can't wait to not get 50 separate e-mails every day as a conversation between me and my friends while we're at work at our separate jobs, because not all of us can use AIM at work. So we have these ridiculous e-mail discussions that we call threads. It's like an unorganized message board. Google Wave will undoubtedly fix that for us, as long as it's not blocked by anyone's network at work. No more copying and pasting to reply to certain things, because you can reply to a comment in the middle of a discussion. No more typing a long drawn out question only to find someone already sent the answer while you were busy typing, because it's all real time.
It may not catch on huge at first, but just due to the small differences and improvements Wave makes on literally e-mail, IM, and social networks, it will certainly grab a good chunk of their users.
i seriously dont get what the point is/benefit is to have someone to see what you are writing in real time. i would never wanna have a conversation like that. i mean, hopefully you'll at least be able to turn it off. because there have been waaaaay too many times that i've been typing something, then backspaced it right back (especially drunk convos).
@SimbaDogg
There is an option to disable the real time typing!
@Levi
Good call. I have to do the same thing with e-mail (no aim) and it sucks.
@SimbaDogg
You don't get the point of why someone would want to see what you're writing in real time? You ever have a conversation with someone in real life? You know, where they hear what you say as you say it? You've never taken back something you've said out loud? Maybe GoogleWave we'll make talking to people online a little bit more natural. I can't image that being that bad of an idea, but that's just me...
Whoops! Will, not we'll...
The video isn't working for me. anyone else?
The mobile video is private.
The Youtube videos are marked as "private"
I still don't get why anyone would want this.
if you're trying to coordinate a project across multiple mediums with a bunch of people, it could be very useful. Say you've got a large conference your company will be hosting. You've got everything from keynote speaker presentations, powerpoints, incorporating graphs, financial charts, seating, catering information, product prototype videos, etc. This gets everyone, all on one page.
"I still don't get why anyone would want this."
That's as silly as claiming why would anyone want 'TCP/IP'.
Wave isn't a product. It is a set of fundamental technologies that radically enhance virtually every type of social or collaborative Net application that exists today.
It is not going to be until some time next year when the first real Wave based apps start rolling out and enough Wave servers are setup outside of Google for it to become obvious just how game changing Wave is going to be for the Net.
Not sure I get it either, maybe they'll sort out these bugs and it'll start to look like a useful product.
I guess I'm still not sure if this works independent of Google, like a Bit Torrent program works without a central hub, or does that EULA say that all of my communications become property of Google Co. LLC and all of their subsidiaries, and 4th cousins, for ever and ever, so say we all, in excelsis deo.
"I still don't get why anyone would want this."
Same thing was said about telephone at the brink of 20th century.
Wave will enable collaboration on everything across the planet. Whether its a source code, legal document, party plans, business strategy, project plans, product description, sales brochure, research paper, etc etc etc... I would kill to have wave when I was writing "team" papers in school.
Google, pretty please approve my beta access =) with cherry on top!!
Many products just like this already exist.
I'll gladly not use a Google version at my office.
I don't get this neither. U know why email is so popular? It's simple. This thing tries to do everything - from email, to IM, discussion board, ...
I still don't get what WAVE is - it's too complex for one reply, it's too confusing for tracking of the whole project. There are solid solutions for project tracking (calendar, contacts, messages, documents, tasks, repository, ...).
I think it's based on XMPP, or compatible with it. So you'll be able to run your own servers.
When I first heard about Wave, I thought that it was a really cool idea. I still do, but I don't think I'll have any use for it as of now.
i've no clue what this wave thing is.... does it replace google chat and gmail?
must be a kids thing.... i feel old.... :(
Is it me or does Google's UI and colors look as if they were produced by Fisher Price?
Big nose.
Wrap-up
Put plainly, the clown writing this garbage doesn't have a F-ing clue what Wave is or means for the future of Net communications and collaboration.
"does it live up to teh hype?"
Absolutely embarrassing. Wave isn't some game or cellphone that fanboys are rooting for or against.
Wave is a set of protocols and technologies that are in the early stages of fundamentally changing the way:
* Email apps
* Instant messaging apps
* Collaboration apps
* Version control apps
* Message board apps
are written and implemented. Every single one of those types of app developers are looking right now at either embracing Wave or being left behind by new competing products built upon Wave tech that makes their existing product look like a TRS-80 compared to today's modern desktop computers.
Are you a member of the developer preview or something?
amen to this. [end talkback]
Hey, what do you expect... every thing here on Engadget gets commented on by end users who have no idea what the hell they are talking about.
Par for the course here. Anyone with any understanding of underlying technologies and standards can easily see how this particular application has the potential to really change up collaboration on the interwebz.
But the question is whether all these advancements for those applications are really needed? I think those changes to "advance" the way these technologies work are unnecessary.
Sent from my Tandy TRS-80
"every thing here on Engadget gets commented on by end users who have no idea what the hell they are talking about."
this hurts
btw, you clearly have no idea what Engadget site is for
Absolutely. Wave is both evolutionary and revolutionary.
Whether the tech is 'needed' or not is irrelevant. Once people start using Wave, they won't know how they lived without it. (and how ghetto regular email really is)
show me one single revolutionary technology Google created except their search engine (which is more roll over competition with acquisitions)
I think too many people are either: thinking this is the second coming of jezuz, or this is the most worthless piece of crap evar.
It is what it is, and whether or not it ends up being popular or revolutionary is not something we can foresee at the moment. It's interesting, who could argue against that? We can say we *think* it will be amazing (or terrible), but we don't *know* anything really. So just chill...
You hit the 'NAIL' on it's hat! It's exactly as you say ..
Studies have indicated there's a change in how we accomplish our work and with what kind of tools. Applications must come together in a ' Single' interface where all required functionality is presented to do one's job. Of course combined with Enterprise Class Security.
Wave, as you have said it, is a set of protocols that can enable this kind of functionality. It's no wonder that a 'MAJOR' player in Enterprise Social Networking software, who also have a vast market share with a other Collaboration solutions, have already adopted Google's Wave-Protocol suite to embed in their solutions. Results of that shall be announced by the end of this year!
So yes! Within in that respect 'Wave' is indeed revolutionary!
Marcel Ramaker
I'm glad this megacorp promises not to be evil else I'd have qualms about conducting the entirety of my digital communications under their eyes.
But if they're really evil they'll have no problem with lying about not being evil!
Huh?
Wave is a completely open spec and open source set of technologies that are designed to run on any server and function in a federated capacity with no central controlling authority.
Google will have no more ability to control and monitor Wave traffic than they can email on the Net.
Yes the first servers are Google based, but that is only due to the fact that Google initiated the project. There are already early non-Google Wave servers that people are developing on that are 100 percent independent of Google.
@Dr. Snacks
Sorry O/T, but you win for the funniest name ever chosen.
Wave is an open effort that allows anyone to run as server. That means that Google only gets the information that it is handed. Much like Google only has emails that are sent or received by its users. Don't want Google to have "the entirety of my digital communications", run your own wave server. Problem solved.
@yoyodyne
thank you for injecting reasoning into this comment.
the most amazing thing about Wave is the federated protocol, I cant wait to try this thing out.
Sorry. But I suppose there really is nothing left now to fit into "the entirety of my digital communications" considering Google Voice, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps and Google Docs - Google Wave would be pointless overkill.
@Dr. Snacks
You forgot the up cumming "Google Porn". Porn makes up a *large* part of my digital communications. If google truly desires to dominate the internet, it will have to *penetrate* the porn segment. what are the internets for if not porn?
I have access to the Google Wave Dev Preview, And While It Is Slow, and Lags some, And tends to crash. The server is a little slow. And It Crashes Pretty Often. Once they fix the minor issues they are having, and release it to the public, I can see it becoming very popular. Some of the things people are writing for Wave are simply amazing.
Yoyodyne:
Coffee? Tea? VALIUM MAYBE?!
Really. Take some and relax.
This yoyodyne idiot works for google and is in full force to try to protect this crap project from being trashed like the majority of googles other products. Google stick to search - all of your other products suck; the only products that are succesful are buyouts like map's which you bought from keyhole; and your search engine is ripped off from the university your so called 'founders' claim was theirs.
I can't blame you if you think google's products suck; I wouldn't be surprized if you thought every product created in the past decade sucks either, because based on your response, im quite certain your head is so far up your as* you probably haven't seen the sun for at least the past 5 years. Look around and see how much open source goodness google has given this world...............dumbas*
um, so what the hell is the point of being able to edit others' entries? rewriting sad, sad conversations with your girlfriend?
"I [strikethough] hate you! we need to end this now [/strikethrough] love you! Have sex with me now!"
Collaboration for work. Someone writes something. Someone else modifies it for draft v2. Somebody corrects some spelling or grammar for draft v3.
Or: One person puts out a link in a chat thread. But the link has a typo, and somebody else fixes it. The destination changes locations, and the person who moved it also changes the link.
See some usefulness now?
I want to test Google Wave so badly! Check this out. You know how the beta test signup page has a message box where they say you may type ascii art? Well, I made this for mine. Paste this in your Terminal (osx or linux) and press enter:
curl -L http://tr.im/asciiwave3 | tar -xzO | ruby
(just open the link in your browser to preview if you're paranoid and a spoiler)
"That page doesn't exist!"
Aw man, they broke gist downloads :( Oh whell, try this:
curl -L "http://gist.github.com/raw/152050/7bcf0e1fed9c7ab9519bcbfad5f06664577ca4e7/wave.rb" | ruby
i'v been in this pre view for a while now and can already see incredible things happening.
Well worth the wait for the first "public beta"
are you kidding? you don't see where it fits in? have you ever tried to actually USE microsoft sharepoint, or the Blackboard system?
Wave seems to be the perfect replacement for at least sharepoint. And as an employee of a university helpdesk, i can't wait for it to come out
Can't Stop The Signal.
Glad to see Firefly's alive and kicking.
Is there anyway I can get in on this sweet action?
If we're going to have news about Google Wave, does that mean we can expect to see more Windows Live, Yahoo! and AOL news here?
there is quite a lot of articles about Windows 7 .... AOL is a live as snake in your pants
@JimboJones: Maybe I wasn't clear, but I was pointing out that Engadget put a post on a Google product, but they never seem to have anything about "Windows Live" or Yahoo! or AOL. To me, it seems that those types of post would belong on Download Squad (a sister site) rather than on Engadget. If Engadget feels they should post Google news, why not Windows Live, Yahoo! or AOL news?
sorry, I did not get the original post. I kinda agree with you, they should do the same what they do with most mobile posts. Post title, few sentences and link to engadget mobile.
I think that not that many people read their other sites and thus they post everything to engadget (which is kinda weird).
I don't see them posting a lot about other Google beta programs so i'm guessing they are treating this one a special case. Like news flash this is something for everyone which I agree this new system could leak onto other scenes for new tech.
About the real-time translation. Rosy Etta, the bot that does the translation has been on vacation for a while, so you can't use her at the moment. It's awesome playing in the Sandbox.
I am so psyched for this; anyone know if it's possible to get in on the developer preview? Or if we all have to wait until September 30th to try it out?
Bandwidth hog. I'll always prefer plain old-fashioned email.
Also, do you really need to see the person typing in REAL time? Usually it suffices to just have an icon that shows that they're presently typing, without actually showing what the hell they're typing. That way the person can make corrections, think, etc. and THEN press enter when he's ready to send the message.
I've used the dev preview (friends account) and you really don't appreciate it until you try it. You can start typing a response before they're even half way through the sentence, it's amazing. It dramatically speeds up communication. The better question is why NOT start sending the text as it's being written?
I don't think you guys get it.
Google Wave is as much about the protocol and technologies behind it as it is about the super duper real time collaboration. You have been focusing on the interface. Think the bigger picture!
Google Wave's aim is to be email on steroids not a message board on steroids. It's unifying all your communication in one place. Someone can be using waves and communicating to someone with a regular email address! It is completely backwards compatible. It is an open protocol which anyone can use. Facebook can use it!
It's not a social network, or a message board, or an IM, or microblogging service. It is a technology which aims to integrate with all of them. The underlying architecture which can be encorporated in all of the above and a way to centralise all of this communication.
All the real-time interface stuff and bots which can be plugged into it are added bonuses! And that seems to be all of which you understand about it.
Agh, it's almost information overload!
Almost.
Zenbe has already created something very similar to this.
http://www.zenbe.com/shareflow
And Zenbe has said that they will incorporate Google Wave once it's stabilized.
for those that have tried it out....how is it as far as sorting and prioritizing the information? I seem to agree with the previous post that it almost seems like information overload. I mean "Sometimes you gotta just unplug man.....what do you think Dejour?"
Spinning status logo next to 3G = constant connection = dead battery.
I love Wave, but I don't have any contacts, so it's hard to interact (my username is Californian). I'm working on my extension, but it's not that ambitious. I hope that when the 100,000 invites go out, someone will come up with a "new user" Wave so that we can meet new people. Better yet, people in the dev sandbox now should be able to give out invitations.
Having viewed the demo vid I,m blown away. This is a totally new and awesome way to comminicate and collaborate, everything we already use but rolled into one app, way cool!!!!
I work with computers and have to ask do we really need more of this? I mean people use Email, IM's, Facebook, Text Messenging on mobile phones and much much more. Sorry but I see this kind of technology driving people further and further away from real life, people need to get out and meet each other in person. How many hours of your lives do people spend sending text messages or logged onto Facebook? If it's more time than you spend in the real world then you have a problem.
the idea is to use LESS of all this.
each of the technology gets used for certain situations, because it has certain features, but as well, mainly, because it has certain limits (email being a prime example of how it is terribly non-fitting into corporation worlds actually, pure chaotic, most information gets missed, deleted, lost, and reply-copied around much too much).
with wave, we get rid of most of the limitations of those tools. we can still work like we would with mails, but all the mails of a topic are together, replies are just the reply, without the original text, edits are visible as such, revertable, etc. you can use it like a chat, discussing a topic you work on (over email before), directly with the actual content and data. you can discuss it with a lot of people like in a forum, but still directly on the data. and you can publish it, having it hosted like a document like in sharepoint.
it is about reducing complexity, about removing the needs to think "how do i give this information best to my friend/coworker/whoever? do i want an email 'offline written and sent', do i want an sms for short info, do i want to phone him and distrupt him from what ever he's doing, do i want a realtime chat to not distrupt him, do i want to public discuss it with him and everyone else in some forum, do i want to present it as a document that he can edit?"
nowadays, we have tons of options, and questions that arise, both with pros and contras.
wave removes those questions. that's why it's great.
think about that..
(oh, and the fact that it's distributed like mail servers is awesome. i would hate this great technology to be hosted only on googles datamining servers. having it open (and thus, closed, in a company, if you want) makes it available everywhere, and thus awesome)
Fact Check: The Invites have not even been sent.
Seriously, in our 40k+ employees company only a few people master the art of effective Email, Calendar and Meeting skills. Google Wave is overkill, to put it plain and simple.
Lots of people want to see Google Voice, Contacts, Gmail, and Docs more integrated. Maybe this will be the way of doing it. Rather than modifying the old systems, they may be creating the new infrastructure to support the single, coherent, integrated system. Plus a whole lot more.
please send an invite to my work scheduler plzplzplzzzzz
Whoops... WILL* not we'll
I think you may still be able to beg for a Google Wave invite here:
http://www.freegooglewaveinvites.com/google-wave-invites/index.php
I'd love to try Google Wave.
Can someone forward me an invite at danny.palmer@gmail.com
Thanks
Could someone please forward me a google wave invite.
danny.palmer@gmail.com
Thanks
Vax Notes->Lotus Notes->Groove->Wave
Ray Ozzie is going to be so pissed if Google manages to make successful what he's been working most of his adult life on.