My Google Wave

This time last Month (first Thursday of the month) I was on my way to Limerick open Coffee, as this open coffee I got my first real-life glimpse of Google wave. Been the technical enthusiast that I am, I wanted my very own Google Wave account. Shortly afterwards (a few days maybe), I tweeted for a google invite. Within a short time I received a DM from one of my followers (@eprenen) saying that he had spare invites and would send one on. Needless to say, I was delighted to get this invite, this invite did not arrive instantly, there was actually a wait of several days before it arrived to my inbox (apparently because google was checking me out).

At first look Google wave does not look like much (funny I am the same impression of Twitter), but as time goes on I can see its uses from a communication and collaboration point of view. The best way to describe it is a cross between IM (instant messaging) and Twitter. There is a not the same 140 character restriction as with Twitter and is not public (well, I don’t think it is) however, the similarities are there is relation to how easy it s to communicate with like minded people. From the IM persepective it has all you contacts and it tracks conversations in an IM fashion, where it differs in which a feature is avaliable that allows you to playback a conversation, this is a powerful feature. You can also add Video and Audio to the conversations, again simple but powerful. And it continues, there is of course a Google Extension Library to extend the functionality of google Wave.

I am starting to read The complete guide to Google Wave, (follow the link) this contains eight chapters and should teach me some more about Google Wave. If you have google Wave and you want to add me to your contacts list, my Google wave name is MarkCahill.Ireland <at> GoogleWave.com. For those of you that don’t have it yet, have a look at this video.