Comments on: By Request: What Do You Think of Google Wave So Far? The LazyWave Experiment

By: Larry Port

Larry Port — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:19:34 +0000

I tried Wave out. I’m sure it’s a wonderful tool but I dropped it after day one and haven’t been back.
As far as I can tell, it’s a real-time collaboration tool and would be great if I didn’t already have Skype, which I use for everything.
It may just be me. I may be suffering from new social media fatigue. The desire to make it work for me just isn’t there.

By: Mike Mintz

Mike Mintz — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:14:45 +0000

Great post Dennis. Currently I am using Wave to write a chapter of a book on a collaboration project and to co-write another book. I am one of the underwhelmed. Wave promised to be a revolutionary tool, “what email would be like if it was invented today.” My biggest issue with it so far is the editing posts on a Wave. The interface gets “jumpy” and it is almost impossible to edit what you have written. Until Google smooths out this glitch me and my co-author have decided to just use Word Press and start putting our work on there publicly (the whole Blook thing).

By: Martha Sperry

Martha Sperry — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:05:21 +0000

Hi Dennis -
To answer your question, I love Wave and I can clearly see its potential. From what I can tell from your posts, your disappointment comes from lack of engagement. That is clearly a problem, particularly in a community of users that may not be at the peak of tech-savvy. Wave has a fairly steep learning curve compared to other web tools, but it can be managed. My personal experience is that there is far more collaboration in Wave among my tech friends than among my legal friends, but I am not surprised at all by that. Stick with it, keep inviting Wavers (legal and non-legal) to participate and you will help push Wave more into the mainstream and into a place of greater utility for you.
You can add and wave with me under the name “startoestudio” – I will always be happy to participate!
Cheers,
Martha

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:06:42 +0000

I’m sure Google will figure out a way to meet the market demands for their products. They’ve already revolutionized so many things about the internet for us, and I don’t think they’re done yet.

By: Jason Wilson

Jason Wilson — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:50:42 +0000

Dennis,
I can totally see the advantages to Wave. I’ve had two successful public Waves already, one involving Google Scholar and another involving a recent case issued by the Texas Supreme Court. Being able to have a “conversation” (there’s a parity here you don’t get in e-mail) is essential to learning. Knowing someone is “on the line” motivates one to participate in the Wave. Once it’s over, it’s over. That’s it. The Wave rolls in, then crashes, and it’s done. Some can take longer to form, like the Google Scholar one (or some of my internal Waves at our company), or are shorter, like the Texas Supreme Court Wave.
If I had to guess, there really isn’t a place in Wave for laziness. Too hard to find, and no reward for the user. And the reward (i.e., feedback) cannot be overlooked. IMHO, it is essential to the success of a Wave.

By: Brett

Brett — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:22:45 +0000

I’ve been using – or, more accurately, trying to figure out how to use – Wave in a couple of different communities. The most promising looking idea so far: the FIRST robotics team that I mentor is looking at using Wave as a team Engineering Notebook to document their work in the upcoming season.
I’ve come across two main problems to actually making good use of Wave:
1) Limited number of users. Obviously, the more people that you want to Wave with that actually have Wave accounts, the better. Even “public” waves are only open to others that have a Wave account. I know they will be truly public once Wave matures, but limited “membership” makes it hard to try anything significant.
2) Lack of extensions/robots. There is a lot of potential, but not straight “out of the box”. Early on I got a wave sandbox account so I could play around with writing some extensions and using the APIs. Haven’t done much yet, but again this is because the sandbox account and actual wave account are separate, and to test extensions etc with others they also have to have a sandbox account. (This is why Google actually gives you two accounts in the sandbox: a main one and a “test” one.)