Google Wave set to go public on Sept 30
SHOWCASE: Well, “public” as in 100,000 users will be getting their invites on September 30. It’s expected to go out to the rest of the world a month later.
Google Wave, an open-source, real-time, personal collaboration and communication tool, was first unveiled at the Google I/O developers conference on May 27, 2009.
Ever since then, it has been described as a game-changer by multiple developers (25,000 of them currently have access to Wave) who have been busy creating and testing their own slew of plug-ins and widgets via APIs (Application Programming Interface) which Google has made available to them.
Basically, Google Wave takes the basis behind emails, instant messaging, community forums, media sharing and social networking, and puts them all within a platform. (Editor opinions: 1)
To better understand what Wave really is all about, here’s an eighty-odd minute video of that fateful developer conference:
Since it’s Web-based, Wave works on most Web browsers (the recent requirement to install a Google Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer is possibly in preparation for Wave compatibility, or parts thereof).
The best part is that concurrent users’ responses are updated in real-time, multiple users can edit, collaborate and even playback a “wave” at the same time and it’s open source, meaning different companies and individuals can set up their own Wave-based systems which update one another, similar to how bulletin boards work, except that it tracks posts in real-time.
The Google Wave site, currently a developers’ site, will transform into a proper Wave site on September 30, 2009.
Here are some screenshots of Google Wave:
- Google Wave logo
- Imagine being able to see other people typing their responses to your Gmail in real-time and reply concurrently. Imagine if more than two people are talking, like a boardroom.
- Within a Wave response, you can choose to embed a photo, video or links, which is instantenously shared across to people you know. Similar to how the Facebook concept works.
- The three highlighted colors show three different users editing and adding text, media and images on a Wave at the same time. And this is seen on each of the three users' PCs (be it mobile, desktop or notebook).
- Besides a smart spell-checker (called Spelly), there are other bots which you can add such as Bloggy (ports the entire Wave as a blog post), Polly (which adds polling functions) and Rosy (which translates your posts to foreign languages in real-time when conversing with foreigners).
- From games to documents, photos to videos, each Wave is like a multimedia-based email, and you can use the Playback tool to backtrack every single action made by different users (in this image, playback lets you replay a Chess game between two users).
HWM Indonesia
HWM Indonesia: It seems like Google will make it big in the next five years with its so-called open platform that combines all aspects of life into one uniformed platform.
However, the idea is not new.
In fact, Yahoo started it in a smaller scale with its Yahoo! Email account and Yahoo! Messenger as well as other recent widgets in the mobile world.
Microsoft has also started it with Live platform.
Google is catching up, but doing it in a more coordinated approach with all previously-released applications falling into place all together.
I think it’ll become a “passport” or ID in the virtual world in the future.
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