Making Waves, Google Style

GoogleWave is the center of discussion on all social networking and blogging sites with requests for invitation are flowing in. GoogleWave is a brainchild of two brothers Jens Rasmussen and Lars Rasmussen, co-founders of a Sydney-based company called Where 2 Technologies which was acquired by Google in October 2004. Incidentally, this was the team which also created Google Maps. GoogleWave builds on the concepts of AJAX. The idea behind Wave is to make it an ultimate collaboration tool where users can use social networking, mail, wikis and instant messaging in single integrated browser-based client.

Google officially describes it as 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 Teething Problems
Google is trying to repeat the 'invitation' success it had with the Gmail with GoogleWave. But unlike Gmail 'invitations' which were instantaneous (a Gmail user inviting another user used to get instant mail asking the person to sign up), invitations, which Google calls 'nominations' for GoogleWave is not real time. It says, Invite others to Google Wave. Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times. Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick. Happy waving! By delaying 'nominations' Google is testing the patience of users who are keen on having an account and surprisingly it is not clear as to when the 'invitees' would actually get the official mail from GoogleWave so that users can activate account.

If you are desperate to use GoogleWave and have a IE (any version), it is highly advisable to install Google Chrome as it just refused to work on IE 8 (despite installing Google Chrome Frame plugin) and Wave Window does not show up. Also, in the contacts section, I was surprised to find the pre-presence of some people who are not even on my Gtalk. I am still trying to figure out why they are there in the first place. Another thing I noticed, in case you log out of your Gmail, Googlewave also logs out which might not be liked by all users. After you log out from Gmail, a message is visible on the top center which says You are offline, with a hyperlinked Connect Now option. But it refuses to connect despite multiple tries. Finally, one needs to 'sign out' and log in again. Tried accessing manage contacts' but each time I tried, it gave a page which said invalid request' despite putting in correct ID and password for the first two days. However, on Day 3, I could access the Google Contacts Beta window which provides you a list of all your contacts and an intersting folder called most contacted' which as the name suggests lists some contacts with whom you have interacted the most (probably based on mails you have sent on Gmail). Another interesting piece of thing on the contact page is the 'suggestion' thing (made popular by Facebook and Linkedin which keeps popping up 'people you might know'. Under Missing someone? It says, It's easy to add frequently emailed people to My Contacts using our suggestions. As you click on View Suggestion , it provides a list of Suggested Contacts (It suggested me 168 contacts). There is also an option to import and export as well.

What is in it for Business?
Google has provided 3 examples two show how businesses can benefit out of the GoogleWave. The first example it provides is that of SAP which created an application within Wave called Gravity providing real-time, cloud-based collaborative business process modelling. In the demo, SAP built, it used Gravity to facilitate the development of high level process descriptions for two merging companies, BCD South Bank and FH Insurance. Similarly, salesforce.com and mediawikiwave are trying to use Wave for their collaborative efforts.