The digital collaboration space is growing and the enterprise keeps on implementing and improving their collaboration capability across the whole organization. Google knows this as such they have released Google Wave technology to be able to complete in a vertical market. I have signed up for their user invitation weeks back but still wasn’t able to get an invite since I was too late on doing so.

Even if Google Wave is not yet open for everyone, the technology is progressing rapidly and Google has announced during the London meeting that the Google Wave would be opening an app store similar to what Apple has done.  This move shows the long term commitment of the search giant on this technology which they seem to roll-out to the consumer market first before pushing it to the enterprise. I think the move of Google Wave to the consumer market is aimed to help the technology grow and mature before they go full speed ahead on competing with enterprise collaboration tools like Microsoft SharePoint.

Google Wave is an interesting technology because aside from the usual collaborative functions it has, Google promises a real-time collaboration that gets updated as the user makes a keystroke instead of the usual submission of items, going through a workflow and approval process until the time the other user from the other end sees your thoughts.

The search giant also plans to create an extension gallery for Google Wave which includes hooks that invoke actions like opening new wave or launching shortcuts, merging waves, deployment on networks, etc.

As of the latest updates, third party developers have already developed applications in teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and multiplayer games.

I think the Google wave has a lot of potential and in time it would be a cheap alternative application for implementing productive digital collaboration across organizations.

Have you been given an invite for Google wave? What are your initial thoughts?

Image from Google Wave.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave App Store and its potential

I finally got my Google Wave invite and I’m already playing around with the interface. It’s kind of bad timing because I’ve got lots of stuff to do this evening, which didn’t include playing around with Google Wave. I like what I’m seeing so far.

As I play around with it I’m remembering the really long video I watched when I first heard about it, so the interface is sort of familiar. The basic concept imitates what we’re using to seeing in our email interfaces. A listing for folders and inbox type stuff, our contacts, message box and then a preview for each Wave.

When you first sign-in there’s an introduction video from Dr. Wave, which I’ve included above. It’s fun and they did a good job of interacting with the interface based on the position the video displays on your screen.

As I use it more and more and think about the functionality, I’m beginning to wonder how much of the features and functions could be easily migrated and integrated into the Google Chrome OS.

I was imagining my computer desktop being what I see in my Google Wave dashboard of sorts. Communication, video player, document sharing, images, email, instant messaging, video conferencing. It’s all here in Google Wave, what if Google Wave is just a sandbox for them to work out all the kinks for the Google Chrome OS?

What do you think?

Post from: EveryJoe

I’m Surfing the Google Wave (or is it the Google OS?)

Anyways, Google has announced they are releasing around 100,000 invitations to preview the Google wave. Those invitations are most likely to be sent out to developers who were actively participating in the developer preview back in June, the first customers who signed up and offered to give feedback on Google wave and some select customers of Google Apps.

Those initial invites would later be asked to nominate their friends and family to join the Google Wave preview since they content that Google Wave becomes more useful when you have friends and family on it. Since it is a collaboration tool then it is a requirement to have colleagues, family and friends to collaborate with. If all goes well, Google Wave team says they will invite more people into the preview.

The team says that right from the start they have focused on building Google for scalability, stability and speed and usability. They have a very strong opponent in SharePoint and they need to build a kickass application. Their collaboration platform might easily make it to the consumer market but if they want to see enterprise scale implementation of this application, they need to make sure this can compete with the heavyweight SharePoint.

However, the team is quick to say that occasional crashes can happen and they would try their best to fix these issues and improve upon their product. Google Wave would not only be used for personal activities but it should provide improvements in productivity through better communication and collaboration. The team says they have been using Google Wave for planning, sharing photos, managing release processes, debate of features, writing design documents and other business tasks.

The announcement for those 100,000 people who would be chosen to participate in this activity would begin on September 30. I hope thousands of people who are given the invite would not confirm and Google opens up more invitations to people other than those outlined above. I missed signing-up for developers preview, and I missed joining the Google Wave feedbacks to receive invitation for the preview.

Anyways, I would watching closely the features and happenings on this space as Digital Collaboration is and would always be part of me.

Image from Google.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave and 100,000 Invites

Google Wave was announced during Google’s annual I/O conference as a new communications platform. The Google Wave was built at Google Australia by engineers who create Google Maps. Google Wave combines e-mail, instant messaging, photo management and it’s other social networking applications on a single homepage.

We’ll see more from the Google Wave.

Image and news from PCWorld.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave

Image a merging of email, instant messaging, live updating, photo sharing, editing, cooperative document development and even more. Someone can be added to the conversation at anytime and can rewind the updates and see how messages were added in sequence to the stream of thought.

The tool can be embedded in websites, blogs, updated live in all places and all changes are displayed live. Private messaging, spell check, sharing, it’s all here. Oh, and it’s not using any new platform. It’s all running in current browsers with current technology, just some amazing development and coding from Google.

And all that is just in the first 30 minutes of the video above! Looking forward to see what else can be done. Like this, four people dynamically editing the same document and everyone seeing everyone’s updates concurrently.

What do you think? Will this really change communication online forever? I can easily see Gmail taking on the features and functionality of Google Wave as soon as it’s available.

More information about Google Wave:

• Product wave.google.com
• Platform code.google.com/apis/wave
• Protocol www.waveprotocol.org

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave Will Change Online Communication