Google wave

Original Article: www.robocentury.com

Google wave is certainly gaining momentum. Most of us already have our Google wave accounts. Although Google describes it as real-time communication and collaboration tool, there is still confusion what Google Wave will really be good for once it matures. And, to my opinion, there are some ways to go and some things that surprisingly lack. And that is not “The Next Generation of The E-mail” paradigm.

What I use it For?

The very first use, I found for the google wave was drafting the documents and researching certain topics. It’s simple – you drop into the wave things straight from the head and than edit, add replies, add attachments as you investigate the topic. Google wave is excellent for that.

Next, I figured out that Google wave may be great for the personal knowledge-base – you simply cut-and-paste into waves everything you know (or have elsewhere) about certain topic. Than you can attach documents that contain valuable information and place summaries into wave itself so you can quickly find what you want and give Google wave more information for later searches. You can copy-and-paste even whole web pages and add URL to the original source – to be sure that you have information even if original page disappears one day.

If you do that regulary, or even better – if you use Google wave as your filesystem on the web – wery soon you will have quite googd personal knowledge base.

But Google doesn’t cite any of those uses… so, lets ask Google what Google wave is good for.

What Google Says: “When To Use Google Wave“

Organizing the events? OK – you can do it on Facebook already. Furthermore, this is certainly not “The Killer App” for the Google wave – nice feature, but it doesn’t make a lot of the difference. Same with sharing photos using Google Wave and interactive games – Facebook is cluttered with things like that and there are many services that do the same. Obviously Google wave is not bringing us anything new here from the users point of view.

What about meeting notes? Well, Google wave is good at that – it allows you to organize and share them with other participants, allows them to add their own comments and so on. But, do you really need Google wave for meeting notes? Maybe – let’s see what else Google wave is offering.

Group projects? Well – this is the part I really believe Google Wave’s future is. But still – even if you can add comments, share ideas and comments, even if you can use waves for brainstorming, there are thing that lack. So, let’s see what else we are going to need in order to make Google wave really useful for group projects.

Google wave and Google docs

You can attach any kind of the document to the wave. But you can’t attach google docs document. OK – you may link to it and share it in google docs. But if those are both Googles own products – doesn’t it make sense for the Google to integrate them in some better way. From my point of view, google docs should be essential part of google wave – the way MS Office works on the top of the Windows. Or, even better – look at the OLE – one should be able to insert any google docs document inside the wave the same way you can insert OLE objects inside the MS Word document.

Moreover, you should be able to create and manage your Google docs documents directly from the Google wave – well, wouldn’t THAT be the killer?

Document Flow

When you create new wave and share it with others, everyone invited to the wave can write, reply add do whatever they want at any point of time. While it is nice for the chat application, collaboration between users may require much more structured way to interact.

Simply said – in some cases you want document to be written by one user, commented and amended by the another and finally approved by the third one. And you want each user to own document (wave) in a certain point of time, meaning only him can work on it, comment it, change its status and so on. He may decide to proceed with the document to yet another user, to return it with comments for additional editing or, even, to archive it and trash it. He may want to forward it for the publication. In some of those cases, you may want that no one can change or comment on the certain wave after it passes all verifications.

This is where we need Document Flow and document flow management. So, we need a way to describe the process and add roles to participants while we are creating new wave.

Well – this counts as “The Killer #Two”.