Google Wave unveiled, new live chat medium for browsers, iPhone and Android

[edesignuk]

Google's big reveal at I/O? Meet Wave, the Next Big Thing from the Lars and Yen Rasmussen, makers of Google Maps. It's a very early build, meaning we won't see it anytime soon, but here's the gist: a "wave" is a chat session that enables you to send messages live, with each word being transmitted live -- no more "person X is typing" messages (don't worry, that can be deactivated momentarily / permanently with a "draft" button). You can also add others to the wave, drag and drop images for instant transfers, and share documents for on-the-fly edits (with all the participants working simultaneously, mind you), and get this... it does real time translation. So hot, and the crowd is in an uproar over this. The "waves" can be played back to see the conversation evolve / documents edited dynamically. We just got confirmation that it'll be coming to Android and iPhone, also, but they have yet to get the mobile platform to do the live updating. As they keep telling us, this HTML5-based platform is still in a very early stage, but all attendees will be getting an invite to a sandbox build later today. It's an open protocol, so expect other devs to add their own toys to the mix. Hit up the gallery for more pics.

Engadget.

Sounds impressive.

 

[xUKHCx]

I've been reading more about this recently and the video demo is finally up on the wave site. I have only watched about 20 minutes of it, looks very impressive so far. Will be interesting to see how much penetration this gets and get real world experience with this.

 

[edesignuk]

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009.

 

[twoodcc]

seems pretty cool. i'll watch the video when i'm not at work

 

[Melrose]

I think it looks needlessly confusing.

Kudos to Google for making great software that's (mostly) free, but my opinion is they could have made the interface better.. less bogged down-looking.

'course, I'm a nut for usability..

 

[twoodcc]

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009.

looks very nice to me. i'm excited about it

 

[xUKHCx]

I think it looks needlessly confusing.

Kudos to Google for making great software that's (mostly) free, but my opinion is they could have made the interface better.. less bogged down-looking.

'course, I'm a nut for usability..

Its hard to tell how well it works as a UI from just a video alone. As it is a shift in how emails/ims etc work in the current form it is easy to judge based on the habits we have built up using those forms of communication. It will feel very different once you are actually able to use it and see how well (or not) the UI works. Also it is worth noting this is an early developer preview so it can change wildly between now and when it is released.

 

[mikeinternet]

I agree. Seems to be a little confusing in some places. I think it will catch on though. Tons of sites are going to start embedding this stuff.

For instance. Wouldn't it be great if MacRumors worked more like this somehow?
Think about moving seamlessly between comment posting and live chatting. Or having comments and polls span across multiple sites and blogs.

Cool stuff.

 

[retroneo]

It's amazing. Open source too.

Impressed that finally web apps can now outclass desktop apps. It's easy to forget that it is running inside Safari or Firefox in the demo.

 

[.Andy]

For instance. Wouldn't it be great if MacRumors worked more like this somehow?
Think about moving seamlessly between comment posting and live chatting. Or having comments and polls span across multiple sites and blogs.

Imagine the moderator issues !

Anyway I'm impressed. I'm admit that it didn't sound that wonderful from the description but seeing it in action it looks like it could be very useful. As per usual google seem to have put a lot of thought into it. And from a user point of view as well rather than simply a money making enterprise. Will have to see how it works in real life.

 

[retroneo]

Incredible that this is the biggest tech announcement of 2009. It's Apple's from closest partner. And silence around here.

Apple will certainly be building Wave clients into Mac OS X, Mobile Me and iPhone.
Apple will build Wave servers into Mobile Me and Mac OS X Server.

If you don't understand the significance of this announcement, check out this article:

http://www.suntimes.com/business/1606282,ihnatko-google-wave-060309.article

 

[dehory]

Revolutionary, but I don't think a critical mass of attention/excitement will build until a public beta comes out.

 

[Abstract]

I don't like this. All the spelling corrections I make would be revealed!