‘Wave’ Goodbye to Email?
Many of you have either been tracking Google Wave’s movements, or you’ve started hearing a buzz about it this week. For those of you that don’t know about it, Google Wave is a communication/collaboration platform that combines the concepts of chat, email, wiki, forums, photo sharing, and the list goes on and on. It’s essentially a one-stop-shop for communication and the best part – it’s real time. What does that mean exactly? Well – you no longer have to send an email to a friend, wait for their email server to pick it up, wait for them to read and respond, then send back. When you create a new “wave” and send it to a friend, as they are responding you can physically see the characters show up on your screen! And that’s just your basic email concept. The features are endless.
I recently watched the keynote demo from the Google I/O conference this year, and the creators of Wave went so far as to say that the idea is for Wave to replace email. This is quite a bold concept. For many, they’re just getting on board with email – so how could Wave replace it? In my opinion, replacing email is an ambitious statement. While I believe that this technology is going to connect more people, make them more productive, and take the concepts of communication/collaboration to new levels – there will still be the slow moving people in society that aren’t as excited about new ways to communicate and don’t like change. I do think that a large following does and will exist for Google Wave but it would be hard to fathom replacing current technologies like email, chat, and wikis. Then again, the Wave sensation could explode and take us all with it – much like what I call the “iPhenomenon” (iPods, iPhones, iMacs, etc.)
Being the uber geek that I am, I can’t wait to get a Wave account. Unfortunately, you can’t just peruse the internet and sign up. Google Wave is in what they call a “limited preview”. You can only get access via invitation (similarly to how gmail was initially offered to the public). I guess we’ll all have to be patient and wait for the day when we can all ‘Wave’ goodbye to email.
To learn more about Wave, watch the keynote demo from Google’s I/O conference this past May http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html#video.
It’s insane that email was state of the art 10 or so years ago. Technology is moving so fast. Thanks for this info!
You’re very welcome! Technology is amazing. I think the more people just jump on the bandwagon and join in on these new technologies, the better off they’ll be!
Thanks for the comment!
MKB
Do you still need a Wave invite? I have some.
Hi Tammy!
Thank you for asking. I actually did finally get one. I have another blog (Fresh Squeezed Tech) where I’ve written all about it. Take a look if you can!
MKB