24 Nov Will Google Wave Be Game Changer
In today’s business environment communication is critical. The speed at which information can be shared and reviewed is amazing. From e-mail, IM, Blogs, Tweets, Facebook, smart phones, go-to-meetings, WebEx, PDF’s, and smart Docs, etc. Has Google created a new communications model that uses these as the foundation for creating a truly innovative solution? Will Google Wave change the way we handle communications going forward?
As Google states, Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
What is a wave? A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen, nearly instantly, what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
Here are some potential uses of Wave:
Organizing events: Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event
Group projects Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.
Photo sharing Drag and drop photos from your desktop into a wave. Share with others. Use the slideshow viewer. Everyone on the wave can add their photos, too. It is easy to make a group photo album in Google Wave.
Meeting notes Prepare a meeting agenda together; share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page. Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback.
Brainstorming Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discuss and then work together to distill down to the good ideas.
Google plans to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:
The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the Web application people will use to access and edit waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the “live” concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. Google Wave is currently available to the developer community with plans to release to the public at a later date.
Are you interested in Google Wave? Will it be a game changer or just another product offering from Google? Will the developer community embrace this technology and extend it functionality and uses like iPhone apps? How can the mortgage industry take advantage of this technology?
Share with us your thoughts about this new innovative technology.