Last week, Google announced that Google Wave would be fully opened to the public for use. There is no longer a need for an invite. Anyone can join Wave now. Just login using your current Google account.
As you might remember, Wave was met with a lot of criticism from people once it was opened up for preview. I remember when I got my invite. I was so excited. However, upon trying it out, I had a hard time seeing the point of it all. I found the whole entire program to be slow, buggy, and a bit pointless. Perhaps, you felt the same.
Even so, I decided to give it a try, and I actually created this blog to share my experience and learnings.
Google Wave promised that they’ve listened attentively to our feedback and have made a bunch of improvements over the past six months.
Stephanie Hannon, product manager for Google wave, writes:
If you tried Google Wave out a while ago, and found it not quite ready for real use, now is a good time to come back for a second try. Wave is much faster and much more stable than when we began the preview, and we have worked hard to make Wave easier to use.
Opening up Wave to the public should be a very helpful step. Wave is meant to be used with people and groups. Wave is not merely an individual tool, although I suppose you could use it as such. In preview, we might not have received the clearest picture of what Wave was capable of since a lot of the people we would potentially collaborate with were closed out from Wave because they didn’t have an invite. I know that I didn’t really first see the power of Wave until I wrote a group academic research paper for university.
At the same time, with a public release, the demand for a fast and easy-to-use interface will be intensified. In preview, when I invited my most tech-savvy friends to Wave, even they were quite a bit confused by the interface. There is a definitely a learning curve involved.
All to say, I’m excited to see the ways I can use Wave for group projects and collaboration here in the future.
What do you think though? Is Google Wave headed in the right direction? What type of use have you found for Wave?
Share your comments below.
Oh, its a new knowledge for me that anyone can access Google Wave now. But Google Wave is not making a big Wave as I thought earlier. I don’t think they can replace mail protocol.
I discovered Wave a few days ago with a bunch of friends and have been trying a few things with it. So far, we’re only four/five active users, but I’m pretty optimistic.
I discovered Wave’s an advantageous alternative to MSN for what I call ESC (Earth-Shattering Conversations – conversations about deep subjects such as art’s true nature). You can split topics by blips, and you can take your time to write answers without having to fear losing ideas because you can simply put them in other blips.
Incidentally, it’s also pretty good for sharing pictures – so far, it’s our most active Wave with over 50 pictures in 24 hours.