Blog > October 2009

An erstwhile colleague (update your blog Miles!) who now works at Google sent me a Wave invite, so i dutifully logged in and had a play around. Here’s what i found

Choosing a username

was impossible. I wanted to link it up to my existing Google accounts, but guess what, they are all taken! So i had to settle for some random username which i will never remember and which pisses me off

Using Wave

Once through the username ordeal, the app loads nice and quickly and a bunch of stuff is staring me in the face. Here’s a picture

Dr Wave – aka – Greg the happy Aussie Wave product manager then gives me a 2.12 minute intro, care of an embedded YouToob video, which is cute and I’m off.

That’s where things get weird. I’m off, but I’m not sure where I’m off to. My contacts who also have Wave accounts show up, and I hook Wave into Twitter to get some content going, but other than that, it’s not at all clear to me what to do next. I start a conversation with Miles and see him typing on my screen as it were, which is nice, but not ground shaking.

And after 20 minutes or so I’m left with the following feelings about Wave

1. Nice UI, albeit quite similar in structure to an email client
2. Some nice Javascipt touches – like being able to select where in a thread you want to make your comment, just by hovering there and seeing a bubble show up and a great idea on scroll bars. This is a real issue for us at the moment with the new release of Brandwatch in testing – there are just too many scroll bars – Wave has a nice solution for this
3. What it really needs is ADOPTION and PLUGINS. I have a feeling that it has a chance to become something important, but it’s not clear what – at least not clear to me – at this stage. But when more people actually USE it and figure out it’s really good at this and that (and maybe not so good at other stuff), clarity will emerge. It’s an interesting tool, but what can be made with it is, I guess, up to us.
4. Final point is I send my congrats to the Wave team for coming up with something new and interesting and for Google to have the wherewithall to back them and get it out there. I’m sure it will spawn another round of web-based innovation and that’s good for us all