Google Wave, the two words that have the Internet gripping onto their computer seats and wondering just what is this new invention from Google and what can it do for me.
Well I took the time out to read over a few tutorials and watch the 1hr 20minute video on their home page and see all the things that Google wave is about so let me explain.
Google Wave takes emailing , collaborating , and instant messaging to an all new level. Coded in java using the Google toolkit Google Wave is designed to merge emailing, instant messaging , wiki’s and social networking.
Hers what the wave tool looks like:
Well I wont bore you with all the details as I know that everyone just wants to know what it is about.
Well lets say I want to send an email to my friend “Sean”
I would open my Google Wave and here I would start a new “Wave” I would then send this to my contact Sean.
Now if we are both online on Wave at the same time he can in real time see what I am typing to him. If he is offline it will show up in his wave like an email would.
But lets for the moment stick to explaining if we are both online at the same times.
Okay so Sean receives my wave that says:
Hi Sean ,
How was your day at work?
Sean can then reply in real time also and instead of like on instant messaging looking at a blank screen that says “Sean is typing”
I can see exactly what he types when he is typing it. Now you may think what if I type something I don’t want them to see , well of course there is an option to hide what you have typed until you are complete and want to send it.
So when you Sean sends his reply it shows up on my screen under what I have wrote. Okay your think wow instant messaging? Well what if I wrote a wave to Sean that said:
Hi Sean,
Was great seeing you the other day . I kicked your ass in Soccer. (loads of random text)
hope you’ll visit again soon.
Regards,
Well sean can now click on any part of that text and leave a reply so lets say he clicks beside “I kicked your ass in Soccer” he can then reply afterwards ” You wish my friend I creamed you”
And so on so forth so after this you can see his reply to individual parts of your email. So say now I have 10 photos on my computer of my holiday in America and i want to show Sean I can drag them from my computer folder and drop them into my wave these will automatically appear on his computer also for his viewing and at the same time we can both edit the captions and titles on these pictures. Do remember that all stuff done in the wave appears in real time on the other users computer. That looks like this:
Moving on so say I want to add my other friend “Ryan” to the wave all I have to do is drag him from my contacts list and into my wave. Now Ryan is going to see random emails with edited parts and random replys left all over the place. He won’t have a clue what me and Sean were previously talking about, but that’s no problem all Ryan has to do is press the replay button which will play a video of what went on in the wave before he arrived this is an excellent feature and when seen is brilliant.
So we see now that unlike the email we use today we can easily connect to each other and allow more organisation in our emails.
So what else has it got to offer? Well I think it is more a tool for corporate business’s . Lets say “Sarah” has been taking notes for her company or that she has put together a marketing plan , she can then create a wave and add her text to the wave. When she adds her contacts they can then all start editing her plan in real time. On her screen the edited areas will change colour for her to see where they have changed the text. This allows for business’s and business people to collaborate and all work together.
No what if people have left loads of replies and notes all over the text of her plan it will all look messed up, but with a click on a feature tab it will minimize all notes and give you the full changed document to print or wave to someone else ( your boss maybe)
Google Wave has many different robots and these are what impressed me greatly. If we turn on the spell checker when you type it picks up nearly everything it is the best that I have ever seen. In the video they type. “ilcand is an siland” and spell checker automatically changes it too ” Iceland is an island” It is a brainy extension but the rest are very impressive also. When you type a link into the wave the extension automatically changes the text to a link without you having to insert a hyperlink. Another cool tab on this allows you to type a request or website into Google and simply drag the sites link into the wave and also using Google images you can drag an image onto the wave.
If you add a link that links to a movie or a video file the wave picks this up automatically and gives you options to embed this video in your wave which then shows up in real time on the other users wave.
The language addon is amazing, simply amazing. Say I write to my friend “SAM” in Spain an he has little to no English. Well with “Rose” the language extension I can type what I want in English and it automatically translates word for word my text to Spanish on Sam’s wave. This works visa verse and changes his Spanish to English on my wave.
There are a lot of other things that the Google Wave can do but they are just extra ad dons like playing games like chess through waves or integrating the API with sites like orkut and Twitter and replying to tweets through your wave but they are self explanatory or can be seen in the video, I just wanted to give you a basic and simple understanding of what Google wave is and what is can do for you.
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