Get Started With Google Wave
Let’s just say this up front: Google Wave doesn’t make sense at first glance. It kinda looks like e-mail because you send messages to friends, but it’s also like chat because the messages you send to friends can be received and responded to in real time. It’s also a little like Google Docs, because the messages you send are rich in display features.
However, if you look at Google Wave as a mishmash of Web 2.0 technology, you’re missing the point. Google Wave is a communication device all its own. It allows you to communicate online as if you’re in the same room, and it makes your communication with large groups of people more powerful and useful. If you really want to conceptualize Google Wave, you’re going to have to use it. Here’s how.
The first page you come across on Google Wave is basically a three-column spread. To your left is your side column, where you do most of your navigation and contact searching. The middle column is your inbox, which is used just like your e-mail inbox. To the right is where most of your editing and reading happens.
In fact, that right column is where all the action is. So, to prevent distraction, the best thing to do starting out is to remove all the other windows so we can focus on the editing window. To do that, on every window on the left-hand sidebar and the middle inbox, click the minimize button on the top right of the windowpane.
You can still access everything you minimized by treating them like the conventional menus of many other applications. Simply click on the menu bar and the options will superimpose over your editing window.
Starting a Wave
Starting a Wave is just like e-mail. You set up a blank page and invite your friends, or those you want to read and/or edit your Google Wave.
If you have followed us so far, you should have a blank page with a link that says “New wave.” Otherwise, you may be in a Wave already. Start a new wave by clicking on your minimized Inbox and clicking the “New wave” button.
Now you see a new wave, click on the plus button next to your profile picture to add collaborators/readers.
Now that you’ve invited everyone, it’s time to start working. Once you start typing, everyone else on the wave will see you type. At that point, you’ll see the similarities to chat. Once you type a paragraph, you see the similarities to e-mail. Once you bold your first headline, you’ll see the similarities to online collaborative documentation like Google Docs.
Know your toolbar
At this point you need to see what you can do with a single wave. You’d be surprised. All the controls are from the toolbar.
Most of it is familiar. Bold, italic, and underline you probably already know. Towards the end of the toolbar are the bells and whistles. Adding a link, Google map, a voting widget, etc… Some of these are done in part by Google’s underdeveloped widget/extension system, but you get the gist.
Adding or removing a widget is done by clicking on the ellipses at the end of the toolbar. Your settings are all controlled by a Google Wave you can access from your navigation pane.
What are you going to do with your wave?
Now is a good time to decide what your Wave is all about. Wave is really good for collaborative things such as project planning, document editing, or just a small chat.
Here are some ideas:
* Professional writing and editing – You can write and collaborate on facts, links, and editing at the same time with your editor, fact-checker, or anyone else you trust. In fact, your editor can edit while you write. By the time you’re done, the document may be ready for it’s next draft.
* Online classroom – Not only does Google Wave allow large amounts of people in the same room, it allows everyone their own replies on the same document (or their own documents as replies to their documents). Want everyone to work on a lab at the same time? Post the questions and let everyone reply with their questions, answers, and homework.
* Role-playing games – You’re the dungeon master. You write the story, the participants play by chatting in replying waves. Display maps, pictures, even music while everyone is connected from anywhere there is an internet connection.
* Continuing Stories – Like the childhood game, you start the story by writing the introductory chapter. Then the buck is passed to the next author to continue the story, and on and on until everyone lives happily ever after.
Wave’s hindrances
Wave is in beta, so doing things like deleting a wave or removing recipients once they have been added doesn’t quite work yet. Neither does the “draft” button at the bottom of each Wave. Also, Wave simply isn’t the perfect tool to do some things. For instance:
* Uneditable documents – Sending a letter to someone without worrying that they might muck it up simply isn’t possible on Google Wave as of writing. Everything on Wave can be edited
* E-mail – It’s not really Wave’s fault, but right now you don’t login to Wave like you would an e-mail, and because Wave is considered “the next e-mail,” it doesn’t make sense to build it to rely on e-mail to be alerted to new waves (although that is a much sought after feature). There is, however, a Google Wave notifier, if you’d have it. There is a hint that Google Wave will have more tie-ins with e-mail in the future. Everyone on Google Wave has an address that looks just like an e-mail address. For example, scott@googlewave.com would be your address.
* Inability to import documents, chats, or contacts from other platforms – This is another thing that I’m sure Google (or the open-source community Google is building around Google Wave’s inner workings) will address, but in the meantime we’re stuck with what we have.
In the future
Google Wave is considered by Google developers to be the future of e-mail. It’s hard to believe that Google Wave will replace a legacy system that everyone already understands and just works, like letter writing did in the past, but anything is possible.
In the meantime, others have come to compete with Google Wave’s smaller features in small but significant steps that make greater sense than Google Wave. Expect the future to contain more elements like Google Wave in its software. Chatting, contacts, and editing can be integrated in all of your favorite applications. You may not even need Google Wave to do it.
Software like Etherpad, which was recently open-sourced, is a better first step than Google Wave. The collaborative software had one purpose: collaborative document editing. It meant an easier learning curve more like stepping into a lake than jumping into a wave.
