Hah! It’s not learning, it’s playing. I am no developer nor programmer, and being a techy noob, all I can do is google some informations about it. Hahaha.. Still, I am curious of what Google Wave (GW) is all about. So I asked a blogger friend of mine, Marvin to send me an invite =x Thanks dude!
Beware! This is a f*cking long post. Read only if you’re interested. I’m just sharing.
*kulu*kulu*kulu*
Let’s hear what Wiki said about GW:
“a web-based service,computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking”
Web-based because GW uses Internet browsers to operate, so far only Chrome and Firefox are able to fulfil the requirement. IE users will have to download plugin for that (Microsoft warned people from doing so lols). Huh who cares.. and who still uses IE anyway?
Google introduce GW to replace emails, view this video to get rough ideas of what GW is:
Replace email.. Maybe. But not instant messaging (IM) and social networks. I think Yahoo Messenger, MSN, Facebook and Myspace still rule. People love Facebook’s stupid annoying quizzes. That’s the reason why.
Hmmmmmmmmm.. After spending hours ‘playing’, these are what I can think of:
1. Live editing conferences
- Mentioned in every GW related post.
- Eg: discussing a Malaysian Studies folio project with your group members.
- Since everyone has a web browser (of course you need internet connection), no more excuses like “Eh I’m a girl, I can’t meet up with you guys since it’s already midnight” or “What? Meeting? Again? Lazy la, need to go to McD just for discussion bla bla”
- Save money, save petrol, no need to make up, no need to bathe. Just stay inside your own smelly room and work!
- All you probably miss is only Mc Flurry Oreo. And some French fries.
- Editing can be done instantly, anywhere, anytime.
- What if you are lost and confused as you missed the earlier part of the conversation (coz you woke up late)? No worries, there’s a timeline bar for that, you can playback with ease.
- You can even see your friend’s ‘movements’ while he’s editing, you know like the one in IMs’.
2. Making a guide/newsletter
- Okay I was an addict gamer back then, so guides and walkthroughs were my best friends.
- Take MMORPG for example; we have list of classes and races to choose from, being a
prosmart gamer, checking guides for what’s best is a must. - People will make guides and tutorials for this purpose, but the guides are limited to their gaming experiences.
- Some would agree and some would not, so little amendments can be done by other gamers to perfect it.
3. Alternative for Forums
- Forums are useful, so much info can be shared there but they are not so user friendly.
- Plus you have to refresh the page a lot to view any updates. Waste of bandwidth if the forum has high resolution pictures etc.
- Since GW uses a real-time ‘page’, the updates can be seen faster.
- Replies are much easier and specific.
4. Alternative for Twitter
- Still Twitter will win in term of mobility but what if Google make GW a portable app for phones?
- Twitter would probably be less popular. Unless they join the wave thingy.
- Why? I think with GW, Google can categorize and tidy tweets better, as replies can be seen easily just like Plurk’s timeline.
5. A better Google Reader
This is a normal wave
converted into embed wave..
- One thing I noticed is GW’s ability to embed things into websites, I’ll take blog as example.
- At the bottom of this post, I embed a wave (we call any ‘project’ inside GW as wave, just like document in Microsoft Office).
- This wave can react as blog comments and any visitor who already logged into their Google Wave account, will be added automatically to the wave contact ‘list’.
- The interesting part is, let say a boy named Tomok left a comment at my blog and few hours later another visitor replies Tomok’s comment. Traditionally Tomok would have to visit my blog again to reply but if he got GW, there’s no need for that. He can just reply from his GW page.
- This applies to everyone listed in the wave contact list.
How public GW editing works:
1 2
3 4
5
List of public bots I tried, add those in green as your GW contact:
- wikifier@appspot.com
<wikify yourtopic> - adds wiki link to yourtopic
<wikidef yourtopic> - display full definitions of yourtopic - flippy-wave@appspot.com
rotate your text 180 deg - elizarobot@appspot.com
she talks to you when no one does
good for testing self-made bot
eg. (click to enlarge):
- tweety-wave@appspot.com
update twitter from GW - roshambowave@appspot.com
play rock-paper-scissor - blog-wave@appspot.com
embed a wave into your website
. . .
My conclusion of this super-long-post-which-no-one-gonna-read-but-I-still-type-wtf :
GW is cool, but they should make it much user friendly. Actually it is right now, maybe I need some time to get use to it. It’s hard to explain and understand by just reading without having a look and touch it ourselves.
For now GW is still not available for public, those who got it are either invited by Google or by friends. I can’t invite others so don’t ask me for one. You can apply for an account here though, it takes time for Google to approve as they are limiting the service till they can handle the growing numbers.
All above are only my assumptions. Correct me if I am wrong thanks.
Do add me: acaptake2@googlewave.com :)
Sources: mashable, carsonified.com, my.biotechlife.net, googlewaveinfo.com, software.silicon.com and a lot more..
Sample of a wave I created, sorry only those with an account can view huhu: lags the blog, so I put it out.
