

Google Wave is not Email - its so much more. - Spyckie
http://therubyway.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/google-wave-is-not-email-its-so-much-more/

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vidarh
The "see you typing" thing disappeared to a large extent from IM clients
because it was _horrible_. Users don't like other people seeing their
"thoughts" and it creates a much stronger pressure to formulate/complete an
immediate answer.

And the "robot" thing is just inane - it's not like bots are hard to interface
with e-mail or with the web; it's just that at the current level few bots are
very interesting beyond the very basic (IRC type) bots that keep track of when
people last were around etc.

Wave looks interesting, but because it provides distributed/federated group
chat / document editing / collaboration more than it competes with e-mail.

I'd be much more inclined to see it as an alternative to (some) wiki's and
project collaboration tools like Basecamp than to e-mail.

~~~
Spyckie
"Seeing you type" is the same thing as talking - only introverts don't like
other people seeing their thoughts, while extroverts prefer it. The thing is,
extroverts comprise the majority of the population. Also, while seeing you
type may not be preferred in conversation, it will be preferred in a document
collaboration environment.

The robot thing is not inane because it is part of the distributed/federated
document editing, and it has media elements attached to it rather than just
text. In IRC, you only talk to people for the most part, so bots in IRC are
centered around facilitating that purpose. With Wave, you talk, work, and plan
with data that can take any form - a much broader scope that allows robots to
do much more than just 'user logged in, user logged out'.

The reason why I think it is a strong alternative to project collaboration
tools is because of 'see as you type' and its robot capabilities. Yes, it has
a nice document model, but that isn't the key feature for me.

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swombat
I'm getting tired of the whole "OMG this new thing is going to blow your mind
away" quickly followed by "Sorry, it's not available yet" gig.

2009: the year of hypeware.

~~~
zimbabwe
Only 2009? There's always hypeware. Remember Google's SocialStream?

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adamhowell
If I had a dollar for every "serious game changer on the web today..."

~~~
zimbabwe
Then you'd probably have a good $8.

We're in a tech renaissance. Lots of cool stuff is coming out, and they're all
doing things in really different ways. It makes perfect sense that the game is
constantly changing. It's exciting!

~~~
omouse
The cool stuff is stuck on a limited and half-baked platform...

~~~
zimbabwe
That's silly. There's cool stuff on pretty much every platform. Gaming, Unix
apps, online apps, iPhone apps...

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weegee
I hate online chat. Hate it hate it hate it. Sitting there waiting for someone
to type back at you, it's totally stupid. I'll never use this Google Wave.
Email is good enough for me. And nothing can replace a good old phone call.

~~~
zokiboy
you could watch the demo. it's not chat. you can go for a walk and come back
and read everything. the power of it is that it can be integrated with
_everything_ so you can also get replies for this comment on wave and also
reply to it on wave. someone will implement phone in it too (ie skype). think
of it as one place for all your communication ;)

------
growt
This is how it came to be:

Inside the Google Headquarters:

Marketing/Finance Guy: Hey we need "live" search, its hot right now!

Tech Guy: Go buy twitter!

MG: Are you crazy we're in a recession, we don't have the money.

TG: Ok I have this old new-way-of-doing-email sideproject, that was kind of
"live".

MG: Great, can you make it even more "live"?

TG: (sarcastic)Well the users could see each other typing.

MG: (exited) Great! Make it so!

TG: (concerned) That would kill our server if we ever released it.

MG: Don't worry we wont release it, just prepare a demo.

TG: And if we eventually release it?

MG: We make it Open Source, so somebody else will run it and their servers
will crash.

