Oh Yeah, This Replaces Email:
I didn’t even think about an email address for the first 30 minutes. Maybe this slipped my mind because I was so enticed by its cool features. Nevertheless, all Google Wave users are associated to an email address, as you would think. I couldn’t find where to add more users to my contact list, but this could be a limitation in the test environment. I’m curious to see how Waves will interact with standard email. What happens when someone emails you and you are reading it in Google Wave?

Blips:
All Waves are made up of these divisions. A blip is the boundary from when you first add content to when you finish adding content to a Wave. Here are three blips:

Blips can be edited to add and remove content. My first criticism is that you cannot double-click to edit a blip. You must select one and then click the “edit” icon. A number of times I’ve double-clicked a blip and began typing, which is problematic for two reasons. First, it’s slower to click an icon than to double-click…DURR. Second, pressing the space bar is inevitable when beginning a sentence and the space bar acts as a navigation feature to change the view to the newest Wave that has new content when not editing a blip. It’s frustrating for your view to completely change and what you were working on disappears out of view and something else is thrown in front of you.

Instant Messaging-like Features:
The coolest thing about the IM feature is the character-by-character transfer enabling users to watch each other type. Ragan, with whom I was chatting, would be asking a question of which I’d know the answer 3 words in, I’d type my answer, saving him time and energy from typing the rest…handy. It’s such a simple change, but so helpful. In case there are multiple users online that could potentially be typing simultaneously, Google Wave adds a little name tag after the text while that person is typing:

There is less need to say things like “BRB” or “AFK” (except for courtesy) because everything is saved in your absence and can be read like email when you return. When you view a Wave that has been modified by another user, the new content highlighted so you know where to pick up reading:

The one problem I see with IM’ing in Wave is an issue with the interface. In a traditional IM conversation, the text you submit gradually scrolls above the entry box in which you type. With Wave, you cursor always remains within your blip. If someone you are chatting with types a reply below your blip and then you want to reply to their reply, your cursor is still in the original blip. Okay, so do I reply to him in my existing blip or do I start a new blip below his reply…requiring extra clicks? If I don’t, I get a blip that reads like I’m having a conversation with someone only I can hear:

I think there needs to be some kind of IM-mode, but I can already imagine how that could detract from the other positive and intended experiences with Wave. The bottom line is that Instant Messaging needs some work.

Attachments:
Adding files OWNS in Wave! It’s so slick and easy, once Google Gears was updated to the latest version (0.5.21.0). I dragged this image from my desktop to the Wave and it added this nice little tab in the Wave:

Large files were no problem:

Later on, Ragan edited the file names for me because the Wave was shared with him, however the file name changes were NOT recorded in the playback mode of the Wave:

I already would rather use a Wave environment to store shared data. I’m really curious to see how Wave influences changes in Gmail, Google Docs, Picasaweb, and Google’s host of other products.

Slideshow:
The slideshow feature is pretty straightforward. It’s visibly appealing and the interface is intuitive and pretty once it’s activated. Finding where to activate the slideshow took me a moment to find:

Once activated it was easy to use. The slideshow feature lacked transitions which made image changes rather abrupt. If you blink, you can miss an transition. I’d like to see some fading or sliding effects. Below the viewing image is a carousel showing all of the images in a Wave. Currently, you cannot select fewer images in a Wave and then view a slideshow. The slideshow will only play ALL images in a single wave, or you can view one image at a time.

All in All this is a very polished product for an alpha (pre-beta) release. What is so stinking awesome is that this is open source allowing developers to collaborate more effectively, learn from each others’ creativity, and deliver improvements quicker. Now, if I could only get a hold of my own account.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 12:57 am and is filed under Technology / Science.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
4 Comments » You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.