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Google Wave Now Open To All 180

Posted by timothy from the and-do-you-care dept.
tonyfugere writes "After a year of testing by invitation only, Google Wave has been opened to the public. From what I have seen, it looks like it could be beneficial for documenting brainstorming sessions beyond simple instant messaging protocols." (Google Wave is "also great for entertaining the masses," says tonyfugere, who links to the slightly NSFW demonstration below.)

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Google Wave Now Open To All More

Google Wave Now Open To All

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  • The link you actually care about (Score:5, Informative)

    by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:51PM (#32267550)

    http://wave.google.com/ [google.com]

    • Re:The link you actually care about (Score:5, Informative)

      by BitZtream ( 692029 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:52PM (#32267570)

      Should also note, its actually open to Apps for your Domain as well.

  • People are using it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:51PM (#32267556)
    Wow, I have not heard about Wave in a while...I thought it had been lost in the bin of Forgotten Google Projects (FGPs).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm so glad that /. came it it's senses about google wave because when it was announced everyone was so excited about it, I thought I had gone crazy to feel otherwise. Now everyone is giggling about it, asking what the point is and why exactly it's a "revolution".

      Jeez just watch that video, I mean it's embarrassing.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by dsavi ( 1540343 )
      Maybe this will lead to someone actually knowing what Google Wave is. I never thought I'd see the day.

  • My best fit for Wave; (Score:5, Interesting)

    by B5_geek ( 638928 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:51PM (#32267562)

    IMHO, the best niche that Wave can fill is by replacing message boards. By merging the IRC/Email/newsgroup/BBS concept it makes it perfect for following threads of conversations, starting new discussions, replying privately to one or two individuals, embedding images and/or videos.

    I would gladly donate my left kidney if all my favorite forums/groups switched over to Wave.

    • Re:My best fit for Wave; (Score:5, Funny)

      by natehoy ( 1608657 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:09PM (#32267804) Journal

      A few of mine tried. After a couple hundred messages, you have to type each character and wait a second or two before you can type the next one.

      I finally gave up when it started taking me more than a minute to type a short sentence. I started longing for the incredible speed of BBSes and my old 300-baud modem.

      • Re:My best fit for Wave; (Score:5, Insightful)

        by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:46PM (#32268208) Homepage Journal
        Why is this modded funny? It's painfully true. Some friends and I have used Wave for a LOST discussion group every week, and it's pretty bad by the end of each episode.

      • Re:My best fit for Wave; (Score:5, Informative)

        by radtea ( 464814 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @03:10PM (#32268508)

        After a couple hundred messages, you have to type each character and wait a second or two before you can type the next one.

        I've found Wave basically unusable on my netbook with Firefox for much the same reason, even with small waves. The fastest it runs is unacceptabley slow, and this on a machine that is powerful enough to run OpenOffice acceptably fast.

        • Have you tried it with Chrome?

          I have yet to mess with either Chrome or Wave, so I don't even know if it's as heavily javascript based as I assume, but this seems like something Chrome's supposedly faster javascript engine would excel at... if my lazy assumptions are true.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          I've found Wave basically unusable on my netbook with Firefox for much the same reason, even with small waves. The fastest it runs is unacceptabley slow, and this on a machine that is powerful enough to run OpenOffice acceptably fast.

          It's a beta.

          I know Google produces exceptionally high quality betas, the quality of software that the likes of Microsoft and Apple would be proud to call a RTM version but please, it's still a beta. Submit a bug report if possible and help.

      • What are you on a P2 450 mhz system with IE6? My work system is at least 3 years old with some cheap intel graphics card and even 3 years ago it wasn't top of the line (typical business machine, imo, just enough to get the job done) and wave is as smooth as any other text box even with the constant ajax requests to show what I am typing as I type it.

        • For small groups, it works fine. And maybe they've fixed the performance problems for larger public groups in the month since I last checked.

          But, no, this was on a relatively modern machine with a decent connection to the Internet, running the latest Firefox. I thought it would be better with Chrome, but it wasn't. I thought it would be better with Firefox + GoogleGears, but it wasn't. Tried this on my corporate machine (Windows XP) and my home machine (recent Linux Mint) and it was still slow.

          A lot of

          • Re:My best fit for Wave; (Score:4, Informative)

            by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @04:31PM (#32269694) Journal
            Chrome has pretty fast JavaScript, but it's not very stable. There's a game called Lord of Ultima, which uses Javascript to display everything. It's pretty amazing, actually. When you run it in Chrome, it's nice and speedy. For about an hour. Then it starts to hang, pause, choke, and it's not even worth using.

            Firefox isn't quite as smooth as Chrome in the game, but it stays at that speed for days of leaving the game open.

            Just another reason I see no reason to use anything other than Firefox. It just works.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Avumede ( 111087 )

        You may want to try it again. They have been working on performance for quite a while now, and recently made some substantial improvements.

    • PS: If you want a good message-board system, try BeeHive ( http://beehiveforum.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] )

      No, it's not the same as Google Wave, but the threaded conversations are quite good.

      • Frame-based layout, for easy navigation.

        No, no, no.

        "Hey, check out this topic, here's the URL... Oops, that's the main page".

        • Beehive supports direct linking to both a topic and an individual post. It handles building the frame around the post quite nicely.

          Yes, I know frames are the work of Satan, but they are done very well in BeeHive.

      • Does it make me a brown noser if I say I actually like slash?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Brandee07 ( 964634 )

      My best use for Wave: FAQs.

      It's honestly my only use for wave, but it's a good one. Someone asks a question, someone else answers, someone else corrects the answer, someone else provides links to citations.

      An example, the wave I manage: https://wave.google.com/wave/waveref/googlewave.com/w+N0MhqpVgB [google.com]

      Active discussions require a very active moderator to keep the wave from getting so large as to die the slow death of lag. Most collaborative documents are better handled in Google Docs. Random "which do you like

    • Seems like a lot of obscure collaboration tasks could take huge advantage of Wave. Like Mike's D&D email sessions.

      http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/5/19/ [penny-arcade.com]

      In Wave you could have lots of people acting their roles and adding to the story while a plug-in handles random number generation for combat and such. It could use a Google Maps plug-in to run the map and position characters.

    • We're using it at work for collaboration. it's freaking sweet. It's not perfect but for free it *more* than meets our needs. I hardly hear anyone talking about wave. It's a shame imo, because it is pretty damn useful at least in certain circumstances.

  • Surf's Up! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarbleMunkey ( 1495379 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:52PM (#32267582)
    Seriously, though, I consider myself a reasonably bright software programmer, and I'm still unsure exactly what it is I'm supposed to be using Goole Wave for. Maybe I just don't communicate with enough people via electronic means...

    • Re:Surf's Up! (Score:5, Funny)

      by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:57PM (#32267644) Homepage

      > I'm still unsure exactly what it is I'm supposed to be using Google Wave
      > for.

      The video makes that quite clear: creating a hideous garbled mess of crap.

    • The only reason I can think of: to avoid SEC regulations on the retention of email.

      In other words: if you want to have a company discussion, electronically, but avoid all record of it in case the government comes snooping: use Wave. Otherwise, just use email as usual. And yes, I'm sure that the SEC will catch on eventually, but for a few years, you're golden.
    • It is a communication tool...if anything a programmer would know less about it than a teenage girl. ;-)

      That said if you do have a decent team and wave it is a good way to sling data back and forth to each other.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Yes, same here. After initial excitement, I've tried using it for some things.

      Turns out that it's an ok replacement for IM, since it keeps the history and allows non-linear editing (i.e. I can go back and put a comment to an earlier statement of yours, and it'll be put into the correct place). Also for having IMs with multiple people, while keeping the option of having sub-threads with just a part of them.

      But as a replacement for e-mail, especially mailing lists, if you have more than 2 people in the conver

  • I remember when Wave was first being mentioned as a replacement for SharePoint Server (MOSS). Not sure if it's still thought of that way. From what I've seen in Wave, I doubt it could do the same job....

  • Yes, open to all... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tarsi210 ( 70325 ) <nathan AT nathanpralle DOT com> on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:55PM (#32267610) Homepage Journal
    ...and still just as useless. Well, ok -- non-realtime collaborative efforts, perhaps. Brainstormings. Things like that.

    But after it takes you 3 years to get everyone on Google, set up, working right (damned ad-block), etc. and THEN you can start working together -- oh, but wait, half the people don't know how to use Wave, so you have to teach them how to use it -- yes, dammit, it's more than just IM, it's all sorts of...oh, read the docs, won't you? -- THEN you can finally get down to working on the pro....

    What? You have to go? Oh, I guess we DID spend the entire 2-hour meeting setting this crap up. Fine, reschedule for another day. AND ON A PHONE THIS TIME.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pojut ( 1027544 )

      What? You have to go? Oh, I guess we DID spend the entire 2-hour meeting setting this crap up.

      Sounds par-for-the-course for Arkham Horror night at our apartment :p

    • Have you tried it recently? Its significantly improved. Yes it DID suck last year.

    • I still think they should just integrate it somehow with GMail like they did for Buzz

    • Half the people using it (ie project managers) in my team are completely useless with computers and they got it in less than a day and were creating their own waves with little intervention from me. It takes all of about 2 minutes with people to show them how to use it. Certainly easier to learn than MS word or even outlook.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slim ( 1652 )

      ...and still just as useless. Well, ok -- non-realtime collaborative efforts, perhaps. Brainstormings. Things like that.

      You mean it's useless, except for the things it's made for?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slim ( 1652 )

      But after it takes you 3 years to get everyone on Google, set up, working right (damned ad-block), etc. and THEN you can start working together -- oh, but wait, half the people don't know how to use Wave, so you have to teach them how to use it -- yes, dammit, it's more than just IM, it's all sorts of...oh, read the docs, won't you? -- THEN you can finally get down to working on the pro....

      I had the same issues trying to bootstrap the use of staff email at a high school in the late 1990s.

      Of course, nowadays you'd have a hard time finding an email naysayer. People know what it's good for, know what it's bad for, and use it accordingly.

  • To quote Triumph (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @01:59PM (#32267660)

    "Shhh, shhh, shhh, listen, listen closely, hear that? It's the sound of nobody giving a shit!"

  • ....till I can send an email right from the wave interface. Why is this still impossible? Google, wake up!

    • Re:Do not tell me about this wave thing... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MisterZimbu ( 302338 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @03:36PM (#32268898)

      This.

      Google Wave has to actually be forwards and backwards compatible with e-mails if it ever stands a chance of replacing it. That means people seamlessly being about to send e-mails to myaddress@googlewave.com and having them appear in my inbox, and having my replies (as waves) send out e-mails as replies if any of the participants in the wave is an "e-mail" participant.

      And bots really don't count. It has to be tightly integrated into the system.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pilot1 ( 610480 ) *
        What would "tightly integrating" it into the system do that a bot can't?
      • Same thing with Instant Messaging. If they want Wave to replace IM in the future it must be compatible with the common IM networks today, or at the very least XMPP.

  • Been using it for months (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ngarrang ( 1023425 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:16PM (#32267864) Journal

    I have been using Google Wave for months now. It works well once you figure out how to use it and for what you can use it effectively. I have been using it to collaborate with fellow musicians. In real-time, we hammer out lyrics, instruments parts, ideas, etc. Record something, most the MP3, share the bits that way, and the guy that is the best with the mixing software does the final mixes, shares the results. It has been fast and effective.

    • Re:Been using it for months (Score:5, Insightful)

      by natehoy ( 1608657 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:53PM (#32268296) Journal

      I think the beauty, and problem, of Wave is that it's very unstructured. It can be exactly what you want it to be, but if you don't know what you want you'll just end up with a mess. People approach it like project management software, or Instant Messenger, or email, or some concept they are used to, and discover that the people they are collaborating with are using it based on another concept.

      Wave is like a big box of Lego. You can build some really cool stuff with it, if you know what you want to build up front. It can build things more easily and conveniently than many other tools. But if you just start mashing pieces together without a shared vision of what you are doing, it's a complete clusterfuck.

      Well, that, and once you get past a few hundred collaborators or a few hundred posts on a specific Wave, the software slows down to a bind-bogglingly-painful crawl. But for small collaboration projects, it's quite good. If all of you decide how you are going to use it up-front.

      • Wave is like a big box of Lego. You can build some really cool stuff with it, if you know what you want to build up front. It can build things more easily and conveniently than many other tools.

        So long as what you want to build can usefully be built with Legos. If you need steel, or glass, or rubber, or bits and bytes... you're screwed.

        But if you just start mashing pieces together without a shared vision of what you are doing, it's a complete clusterfuck.

        Most people want a tool that works - not a G

    • Re:Been using it for months (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @03:13PM (#32268564)

      I have been using Google Wave for months now.
      It works well once you figure out how to use it and for what you can use it effectively....

      I thought the same thing about my penis.
      Admittedly, I can't share MP3s with it, like Google Wave, but other collaboration is a go...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by oatworm ( 969674 )
        I call mine a "flash drive". It's "plug-and-play" compatible and can be inserted and removed from compatible ports smoothly and easily. Unfortunately, since it uses a FAT file system, it's rather prone to corruption; proper mounting and dismounting procedure minimizes this somewhat. On the other hand, if small and fast is the way of the future, it's several generations ahead of the curve!

  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @02:17PM (#32267884) Journal

    Someone explain to my why whomever it was felt it was okay to transcribe half the curse words in the English language, but had to leave out "God Damn"?

    Fuck him like a bitch is okay.
    Mutherfuckaaa is okay.
    All the rest is okay, but "God Damn" is censored?

    Pussies.

    • They're obviously scared of spreading a Chris Tucker meme [youtube.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gr8dude ( 832945 )

      I think it was a profoundly religious person who didn't want to write the string "god" because they thought they'd end up in hell for doing that.

      Isn't that obvious? :-)

  • This wave demo uses kinetic typography to make it (more) interesting. Google wave is interesting, but this cake was delivered with frosting I didn't ask for.

  • As has been said before, Gwave hopes to replace email, forums, IRC and other types of communications systems.

    I've just now, tried Wave for the first time, and it seems very interesting. I'd love this (or at least something) to be *the* standard for emails and forums etc.

    In terms of features, I kind of wish there was an in-place search filter that filters in real-time only the messages in that wave that contain a certain word/phrase. Also, if it's not going to have skins, then can it at least let me change t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by am 2k ( 217885 )

      The above points are mute in a way though, since as Wave is a protocol, expect to see some great custom GUIs in the future (maybe some are already available).

      Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Google only provides a spec for server2server communication, the communication between server and client is not specified. The protocol their own implementation (which is open source) uses is very Google- and Javascript-specific and unlikely to be viable for other clients.

      In summary, this means that everybody who wants to implement a client has also to implement the server, which is far from trivial.

  • I like what they're doing with rich text editing, and I like the "playback" feature. For collaboration, I think it has two main flaws:
    1. It's hard to catch up after you haven't seen a wave for a while. Harder than email for sure.
    2. It's too "realtime". I don't want people to start replying to me before I finish my message.

  • that video ... what?

  • ...who watched that video and now has even less idea what the point is?

  • Just a wiki (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tbird20d ( 600059 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2010 @07:21PM (#32271722)
    Is it just me, or is Wave just a fancy wiki?

  • And yay, googles great software places strangers on my contact list (and NO they are not in the other contact list (you know the one where they automatically add everybody you just think about)) should have stayed in beta.

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