

Why Google Wave needs a major overhaul - swombat
http://db.tidbits.com/article/11074

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stcredzero
I find that about 1/2 of the objections in this post have todo with cultural,
not technical issues.

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stanleydrew
Seems to me that wave needs an overhaul at the product level. If I can't
quickly discover compelling uses of the product then I think the product is
flawed. It feels a lot like wave was developed in a vacuum compared to
Google's other products. For instance, I don't think many people inside Google
use wave, which is the complete opposite of gmail, gchat/gtalk, calendar and
docs. That should be a significant signal right there.

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jsz0
I wish Google had used the time and effort they put into Wave instead to beef
up Google Docs. To me Google Docs itself could be a great collaborative tool
if the applications weren't so crippled and basic. Integrate it with G-Chat,
add a OneNote style information management tool and make Docs/Spreadsheets at
least as functional as an early 90's Windows 3.x Office suite. I'm really
baffled at the lack of attention Google Docs is getting while all these new
Google services spring up. Someone (probably Microsoft) is going to eat their
lunch. I admire that Google is trying to push forward with a new way of doing
things via Wave but ignoring what users actually want today, a good
collaborative office package, and conceding the market to someone else is just
a dumb move for an advertising company to make. You gotta give the people what
they want.

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jasonlotito
I think though in this case, what people say they want isn't what they really
need.

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jasonlotito
Seriously, this article ignores the important aspect of Wave, something that
it doesn't ignore for something like Email. Email is useless without other
people using Email. So is a chat program. Wave is useless without other people
as well. This is why Wave isn't based around Google, but rather, a protocol
that anyone can use.

Consider that email was first 'invented' in the early 70's, and SMTP in the
early 80's, emails adoption speed was comparable to that of a glacier in terms
of todays adoption speeds.

Wave is such a big undertaking that even Google will have to work hard to move
it forward. But consider for a moment how much work is involved with email,
and yet, today, how easy it is to integrate with your average website. Indeed,
we don't think about how much is built on email. It's wide spread use lets us
forget that it would be useless if no one else used it.

So yes, while the Google Wave client is still in its infancy, and Wave itself
is still an early idea, the idea and what it represents is major. Email, IM,
Social Networking, etc, won't be replaced by Wave, much like none of these
replaced Email as a means to communicate. Rather, Wave will become apart of
these means of communication. Wave is the protocol that allows for this
communication.

Something as simple as Hacker News comments could easily be a wave, and it
wouldn't require us, the users to do anything, yet we could benefit greatly
from Wave being apart of the system.

So every time I see someone complain about Wave, I can't help but think that
they would have said the same thing about email when it first appeared.

~~~
potatolicious
I feel like Wave is not really something for the masses, at least not right
now - I never feel the compulsion to use Wave at home, but I _definitely_ feel
it at work, where there are gigantic, meandering email threads that defy my
ability to track the different tangents that sprout.

My hunch is that Wave was born internally to address that specific problem -
corporate email and its requisite long discussions with way too many people.
Part of its struggle is to prove its usefulness and relevance to people who
_don't_ deal with this type of communication.

~~~
jasonlotito
The thing is, it works the same way email does, but it also has additional
capabilities as well. The problem is, email is widely supported, wave isn't.
Imagine every instance where email is used and you can replace it with Wave.
The benefits to Wave might not be immediately and as widely as useful in every
situation to everyone person, but that's more a matter of it not being used in
a wide spread way.

Imagine Amazon using Wave instead of Email, along with it's customers using
Wave instead of Email. Amazon could use Wave to automatically update the Wave
of a person's order with the latest shipping information. This shipping
information can be bulled in from Canada Post (or wherever) and automatically
update. Rather then sending out a full email every time something changes,
they could simply send along an update that updates the original Wave.

Nothing is lost, due to the nature of Wave, but it suddenly becomes much
easier to find the information I want.

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srnm
We've been using Wave a bit at work.

It's nice that a ping (IM) can turn into a threaded chat can turn into a
document. Editing, with change bars, is great.

It's also great that you can add someone to a wave "late" and they get to see
the current state of the wave -- and the history if they care. Much better
than forwarding someone an email that has done the rounds.

I agree with the person that suggested it is more useful "for work". Think of
it more as "Lotus Notes"-lite than email.

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nfnaaron
I've been involved in a couple of "please participate in some interactive
feedback on my app" wave discussions with some friends.

People had to email me to make me aware of the waves. I'm not normally signed
in to google. So there's a participation/discovery speed bump for people like
me.

However, there was no speed bump in getting that initial message to me via
email.

Removing that hard to see speed bump, and other things like it, might benefit
wave more than feature fixing.

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kordless
Everyone got really excited during the demo at Google I/O, but the second I
used it my reaction was "what do I do with this?". Email, IM and Twitter.
That's all I need.

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dantheman
Wave is great for organizing trips (or at least in concept it should be,
unfortunately it still needs a lot of work). That's pretty much the only thing
i use it for.

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00joe
It seems like Buzz should have been based on Wave

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chanux
Not a great long article like this but I put my thoughts about Buzz together
on my blog and I think HNers might like to see it.
<http://chanux.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/my-buzz-rant>

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dlevine
Wave is and always will be a research project. It was only launched because
Google doesn't believe in pure research projects, and mistakenly classified it
as a "product."

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elblanco
The original intention for Wave was as a protocol. The Wave client we all use
at wave.google.com is just a reference client. Anybody know of other clients
that do better?

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ThomPete
Etherpad?

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swombat
Certainly better for some uses. I think a key point is that there's no reason
why Etherpad couldn't (or shouldn't) be built on top of Wave.

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ErrantX
Well the Etherpad guys are working at Google on the Wave team now so you never
know

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swombat
My point was more that some other thing like Etherpad, in the future, will be
built directly on Wave instead of having to build AppJet first to be able to
build a text editor on top.

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dustingetz
FUD; a wave-to-email gateway is solved by design.

