
Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype - Flemlord
http://scobleizer.com/2009/10/01/google-wave-crashes-on-beach-of-overhype/
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mrshoe
First of all, the guys at Google have been padding this landing pretty well.
At least for people who are paying attention. They're quick to stress that
wave is a _protocol_ and a _platform_ with take-over-the-world potential and
that this initial client that we're playing with is just one example of what
can be done with it.

That said, I agree with this article completely. The wave client is an
absolute nightmare to use. Stuff is blinking and flashing all over the place.
People are adding comments up and down waves will-nilly and there's no good
way to tell where changes are happening. There's a decent amount of latency
with every single character I type, which basically kills my thought process
and typing ability. Switching waves is a multi-second proposition that beach-
balls FF on my Mac Pro.

Even if all these bugs were ironed out, I don't see why or how I would ever
use it. I would have given pretty much exactly the same review a couple of
months ago when I started using the wave sandbox, so whatever progress they've
made hasn't made much of a difference so far. Maybe they're onto something and
wave as a protocol will end up replacing a bunch of old web protocols which
people have tried and failed to replace for years, but, at this point, I
wouldn't bet on it.

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stumm
"Google’s Wave will crash hard onto the beach of overhype" coming from the man
who said World Wide Telescope made him cry. (WWT is nice, but I can't imagine
it making anyone cry). Why does the web always seem to reward those who make
the most exaggerated and outlandish statements?

He only seems to addresses the Google wave client in his complaint, when
there's much more to it. If he doesn't like their implementation he could
implement his own with their federation protocol.

On a side note, why does he say new things can come in at the bottom? From my
limited use of the dev preview new stuff is always coming at the top of my
wave inbox.

~~~
jacquesm
> Why does the web always seem to reward those who make the most exaggerated
> and outlandish statements?

Because the web is a subset of 'the media' and that's where the same thing
happens.

Let's be happy that at least it doesn't make sound (for the most part) or we'd
have aggressive voices touting products while you're looking at a page.

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andrewtj
I treat Scoble's view of Wave with the same reverence I'd apply to his views
on TokyoTyrant. He's not an opinion-leader on this one as far I'm concerned.

~~~
hughprime
I'm not actually sure who Scoble is (apart from being some guy with a blog)
but he's some guy who's been using it and has bothered to write a lengthy blog
post on what he thinks of it, so that makes his views worth something.

I've been playing with it, and I think I agree with him on most points -- it
is awfully difficult to follow a conversation, and I'm not sure whether I'm
going to be able to find a use for it once the initial "Hey folks, my wave
invite finally came through!" conversations die down.

~~~
andrewtj
A view does not intrinsically have worth just because of it's existence.
Scoble is a tech-evangelist; someone who uses technology and not someone who
builds upon it. As someone who builds things, I value the perspective of folks
who will build on Wave.

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cmelbye
I've personally found Google Wave to be really useful for communicating and
collaborating with others (certainly much more so than any other options: IRC,
Email, IM). I've been using it over the past few months in the Wave Sandbox,
collaborating with other developers on small projects, and I have to say its
features are really useful and nice. It's got even more potential as a
platform, and developers are just starting to show some of that with Wave
extensions.

~~~
acangiano
I didn't have a chance to try it out yet, but from their demos, it looks like
it could easily replace Basecamp for many small teams.

~~~
pavs
I was thinking the same thing. As a matter of fact, my next project (in few
months) will be collaborated on wave. The twitter "bot" also removes the need
to rely on a twitter client for updates. With open API the concept of one
interface for all clients makes it very interesting to me.

I don't remember the last time I was excited about about a web app, like I am
with wave.

~~~
dschobel
My experience has been much the same as yours. Although I have to wonder how
many web-apps are going to have their functionality subsumed by wave.

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pavs
Not sure why the whining. Wave is not for everyone the same way twitter is not
for everyone and IM is not for everyone.

I haven't got any invite yet on Wave, but I can see a lot of potential of this
platform and I can already see myself using it extensively when it hits
"mainstream".

I don't think wave is just "another thing" that will distract you from your
work. I think wave already has the potential to get rid of 3-4 external
services I depend on and it just started.

Most important. Its free and open source.

~~~
hughprime
_Not sure why the whining_

Mostly because the hype was huge and the product is, to many people, a bit of
a letdown.

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tumult
Well, I've been using Wave in the sandbox since July, and I think it rocks
pretty good. So there.

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siculars
if you have trouble keeping up with your inbox, let alone all your rss/twitter
feeds this is going to be like trying to monitor multiple active irc channels
in real time.

i do not deny there is good value here, especially for bot stuff. the
information overload is going to be daunting for many.

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DannoHung
I'd like to have an actually meaningful conversation in a Wave (one not about
Wave itself) before I render judgment. Unfortunately the only people in my
Wave contact list are waxy and Joe Gregario because I've emailed them each a
while back.

~~~
sahaj
send me an invite, and we can talk about something... drkrool-gmail

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wallflower
Google Wave's chat.

I remember fondly the joy of getting access from a family friend to a
Internet-connected VAX account in the early 90's so I could use the 'talk'
command to chat in real-time (see characters typed).

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nir
So you mean it won't reboot the internet?

