On Sunday I was lucky enough to wake up to a Google Wave invite. I was pretty excited and jumped right in to have a look. These are my thoughts so far.

First though, for those who don’t know what Google Wave is, it’s a new app that blends email, instant messaging and document collaboration. Rather than me explain what it is, check out this quick video about it.

When I first got into my Wave account, I was lonely! Once I added some people though it turned out to be pretty cool.

Instant Messaging

We got a 4 way instant messaging conversation going between me and some friends that I’d invited. Before using Wave, I thought that having the letters show up as you type is a bad thing because often you want to change your message half way through. What I found though was that having letters showed up made communication loads faster.

When someone else was typing in a message, I can see where they are heading with their thoughts before they send the message. If I know what they’re going to say, then I can start typing my reply before they’ve finished their message. And because it works both ways, it actually speeds up the conversation considerably.

Group Planning

I also created a Wave to plan for the family holiday coming up next year. I separated the different aspects and then people started replying in different areas of the Wave.

The Wave makes it easy to break up the conversation into multiple points.

Instead of having one long email and having to say “In regards to the location:” at the start of every paragraph, what you’re talking about is obvious based on the place it is in the wave. It’s actually quite easy to talk about where, when and how all at the same time, because each conversation is in a different area.

Collaboration

I started a Wave for one of the quotes I’m working on. For this quote, there are about 10 different items that have to be costed individually.

Again, being able to talk about each individual item separately feels nice and is intuitive.

I can quickly upload relevant files. Though I tried to upload a recording of a meeting but there is a 20mb size limit on files.

Fun

I also started mucking around with the Sudoku gadget. Basically, this allows you to play Sudoku against as many people as you want.

Not a new concept, but definitely novel to try it out.

For the record, I won.

Downsides?

There were a few downsides for me. Firstly, the interface isn’t as smooth as I would like. It feels a little bit like I need to upgrade my computer so that it’s a bit smoother.

Also, the interface isn’t as intuitive as I would’ve thought. For instance, one thing that has bugged me is that when I go into edit mode, I can’t get out of it unless I click on another Wave. There are a few little things like that.

So how will it affect productivity?

For me this is a double edged sword. There are the obvious productivity boosts – I am able to collaborate and communicate much more effectively.

However, I currently turn off all notifications on Outlook so that I’m not distracted when I’m doing a task. What if I’m doing a document in Wave, and I see a response to another Wave come in? It’s so easy to quickly check it – I know I won’t be able to stop myself from having a look.

And what happens when that Wave gracefully turns into an instant messaging conversation? I can see myself spending a lot more time “collaborating”.

My thoughts

Overall I’m really excited about using Wave. It feels much “easier” and I think Google have succeeded in bringing communication to the next level.

I have a few questions that can only be answered as time goes on and Wave actually gets used. For me, I’m interested to see how Wave will improve my workflow.

On a more macro level, I’m interested to see how much Wave is going to take over from email? Or is email and Wave going to coexist for a long time?

In the mean time, I have a few invites left, let me know if you want in!

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