For me, the thing that makes Wave spectacular isn't the ability to branch conversations, though that is nice. It's the ability to all edit a single message - the ability to all work together to improve a paper, report, whatever. It doesn't have to be sent back and forth, reposted, whatever. Just edited in one place.
As an email client, it wouldn't be a huge improvement over existing stuff, though the way it integrates pictures and maps and stuff is pretty awesome and certainly much better than attachments. As an IM client I don't think it will take off, since most people I know don't leave their web browser open - they would prefer an IM client like AIM, which runs in the background constantly.
I said it in the other thread, but I'll say it here too: where Wave will really shine is in collaborative work environments.
Isn't Google documents already like that? And I can see some massive power struggles going on because of this thing.
I'm all for seeing a beatdown in the breakroom over a collaborative effort gone awry.
For me, the thing that makes Wave spectacular isn't the ability to branch conversations, though that is nice. It's the ability to all edit a single message - the ability to all work together to improve a paper, report, whatever. It doesn't have to be sent back and forth, reposted, whatever. Just edited in one place.
As an email client, it wouldn't be a huge improvement over existing stuff, though the way it integrates pictures and maps and stuff is pretty awesome and certainly much better than attachments. As an IM client I don't think it will take off, since most people I know don't leave their web browser open - they would prefer an IM client like AIM, which runs in the background constantly.
I said it in the other thread, but I'll say it here too: where Wave will really shine is in collaborative work environments.
Amusingly, I wrote a blog about that very thing. I believe once Wave has better stability and the ability to handle more complicated messages. (Imagine being able to send git commits to a wave, for example. Well, if you are a coder and know what git is. ) I love seeing that I am simply incredibly behind to the party on this one.
I wish I had a google wave experience to share, except besides the guy who got me my invite, I haven't got any contacts. They haven't extended to me the ability to invite anyone else, so right now I can talk to pretty much no one on there.
There are some Penny Arcade waves. And plenty of public waves. Simply add with:public to the search and you can find them.
Edit: The waves were change from PA to Penny Arcade due to some confusion from others finding them.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Yeah. So I'm not sure what the big functional upgrade is.
Unless it's that you can edit the same document in real time, but that seems like it could be a recipe for disaster.
You can also effectively "fork" a document in real time. That is, insert an inline blip with suggestion on how to improve something in a document, or simply ask question about a spot.
Crossposting this from the Wave thread in the Tech forum because it's relevant:
I just used Wave for an AIM replacement to have an extensive conversation for the first time. It worked extremely well, and being able to see the other person type really did increase speed huge amounts.
Also, to me, it felt more like I was "talking" to the other person. Really cool.
To add to that for this discussion, what was really cool was being able to fork the real-time conversation. I mentioned a certain comic book in passing as part of the discussion, and we had a branch discussion about that comic. When we were done, we could just minimize that conversation and get back to what we were discussing. Certainly we could just have done what you'd do in AIM and say "anyway, as we were saying..." but having it actually visually offset was really nice.
Wasn't there a neat study that showed how the rise of IM corresponded with a decrease in quality and clarity of expressing complex ideas in written form?
For what it's worth, a professor at Stanford studied the quality of writing and type of writing of students from 2001 to 2006. She found that people were in general, writing way more than they used to, which makes sense. 20 years ago, if it wasn't for work, you wouldn't write, you'd call. She also said the social platforms develops the ability to know and speak to your audience.
To add to that for this discussion, what was really cool was being able to fork the real-time conversation. I mentioned a certain comic book in passing as part of the discussion, and we had a branch discussion about that comic. When we were done, we could just minimize that conversation and get back to what we were discussing. Certainly we could just have done what you'd do in AIM and say "anyway, as we were saying..." but having it actually visually offset was really nice.
I don't think I can stress enough how much I think the "fork" or "inline blip" or what ever it is called is the true highlight. I really think that is the biggest feature. I get the impression few people know how to create or use them, though.
Actually, to add another issue that I just brought up in the PA chat Wave - the ability to edit what other people wrote is going to mean we need to establish whole new rules of etiquette. When is it acceptable to edit something somebody else wrote? When do you need to ask first?
These are things that will emerge over time, but which have hitherto not been a real issue with communication. Kind of an interesting problem, I think.
So am I the only one who doesn't really care about wave? I mean, it's chat, but you can edit a document, and fork a conversation...ok? I dunno, maybe it'll make me more excited when I use it. It seems like I would only really need most of these features when chatting a LOT, like collaboratively working on a paper or something....which I would do pretty much never.
And I get the sense that watching someone's real time chat would just make me loathe people's spelling ability even more than my already considerable loathing
I don't care about what wave currently is. I do like to think about where it could go. If that makes sense. Like I said in my blog, it doesn't replace email because email is correspondence and conversation. It can replace email as a collaboration tool, specifically because it is so dynamic in how it organizes things.
I agree with taeric mostly, but I'd add that a lot of the usefulness of Wave is that it can do basically whatever you want. It isn't limited to just email, or just IM, or just forum-like posts. It can do all, some, or only one of those things depending on the person.
Also, taeric, I just made a wave and added you to it. Might be a good chance to play with the IM functionality, if you haven't. It's interesting.
Edit: the point being, then we can have another opinion on this as an IM tool.
I had the opportunity to test Wave out with a few real-world friends of mine. Organising events seems to work fairly well, which I thought was interesting. The image upload ability is also a helpful one.
There are a few things I've found unnecessarily brittle – you can't delete private replies (they seem to be implemented as entire waves?), and there's no facility for moving blips, which would be really handy.
I had the opportunity to test Wave out with a few real-world friends of mine. Organising events seems to work fairly well, which I thought was interesting. The image upload ability is also a helpful one.
There are a few things I've found unnecessarily brittle – you can't delete private replies (they seem to be implemented as entire waves?), and there's no facility for moving blips, which would be really handy.
I was actually just thinking it would be nice to move a blip. That is definitely a UI change that has to happen, the data structures themselves do not seem to disallow it.
I don't care about what wave currently is. I do like to think about where it could go. If that makes sense. Like I said in my blog, it doesn't replace email because email is correspondence and conversation. It can replace email as a collaboration tool, specifically because it is so dynamic in how it organizes things.
Yeah I don't know what you're talking about. I would love to fork blips in a correspondence with someone. Typically a conversation online can go all over the place, actually now that I think about it just about any kind of conversation does the same. I've been talking to one friend about the possibility of making diagrams of conversations just for the fuck of it to see how we and other people manage to go from talking about Paranormal Activity to hiking through other countries.
Wave is basically a way for us to do that online. I can separate a rabbit trail from the general idea or start of a conversation and then easily find my way back to what we were originally talking about. And with the whole thing being open sourced there's room for tons of new features. It might be useful to have a stickyboard for a wave if the original point of one was to organize something. Just have the time, location and all the details at the top and allow people to discuss everything else within the wave. Or the ability to connect two possibly related waves. Of course things might get out of control and we might just end up making a huge intertwined rat's nest of email but saying it's not a big deal because email is for correspondence and does the job just fine is being simplistic. It's like saying texting is never going to get around because it's so much easier to call someone if you want to talk to them.
I don't care about what wave currently is. I do like to think about where it could go. If that makes sense. Like I said in my blog, it doesn't replace email because email is correspondence and conversation. It can replace email as a collaboration tool, specifically because it is so dynamic in how it organizes things.
Yeah I don't know what you're talking about. I would love to fork blips in a correspondence with someone. Typically a conversation online can go all over the place, actually now that I think about it just about any kind of conversation does the same. I've been talking to one friend about the possibility of making diagrams of conversations just for the fuck of it to see how we and other people manage to go from talking about Paranormal Activity to hiking through other countries.
Wave is basically a way for us to do that online. I can separate a rabbit trail from the general idea or start of a conversation and then easily find my way back to what we were originally talking about. And with the whole thing being open sourced there's room for tons of new features. It might be useful to have a stickyboard for a wave if the original point of one was to organize something. Just have the time, location and all the details at the top and allow people to discuss everything else within the wave. Or the ability to connect two possibly related waves. Of course things might get out of control and we might just end up making a huge intertwined rat's nest of email but saying it's not a big deal because email is for correspondence and does the job just fine is being simplistic. It's like saying texting is never going to get around because it's so much easier to call someone if you want to talk to them.
Maybe more people will do it once this catches on, but I need only point to the habit most people are in with emails where they respond to everything at the top as an example of this being the exception. It likely is a generational thing, I know I like inlining my responses to people's emails. I have found I know few people that still do that.
Once they make it so that you can disable the "live typing" feature, it can probably be a drop in replacement for emails. As it is, it inverts the way people usually write unless you typically write the whole message before selecting who you are sending it to. Unless, of course, you like knowing when people are starting a draft to send your way.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
I think the point of live typing is that it is trying to structure it more as a conversation (where you will get to see what they're saying before they have a chance to refine themselves) than the traditional medium which is removed from a conversational standpoint.
I don't care about what wave currently is. I do like to think about where it could go. If that makes sense. Like I said in my blog, it doesn't replace email because email is correspondence and conversation. It can replace email as a collaboration tool, specifically because it is so dynamic in how it organizes things.
the reason I see it replacing email, for me, is because of the way that it is centrally stored, and new folks can be given access.
Instead of having to forward messages around, and then parse the quoted text in a forwarded message, you can just be added in to a wave, hit the replay button (or skim it from top to finish) and be in on it.
I think the point of live typing is that it is trying to structure it more as a conversation (where you will get to see what they're saying before they have a chance to refine themselves) than the traditional medium which is removed from a conversational standpoint.
That may be. However, there is a very good reason many people prefer having a chance to "draft" things that others do not see. So much so, that there is actually an "undo send" button available as an lab's extension in gmail.
Not to mention many times I send an email, I am not worried about an immediate, real time, response.
So... I have Wave now, and I'm interested in seeing where it can take me as far as discussions go. I think it may be more conducive to coherent discussions than the standard message board format, but I haven't tested it out yet. I wonder when there will be a critical mass of D&Ders who have it such that a thread can be started within Wave instead of about Wave.
To add to that for this discussion, what was really cool was being able to fork the real-time conversation. I mentioned a certain comic book in passing as part of the discussion, and we had a branch discussion about that comic. When we were done, we could just minimize that conversation and get back to what we were discussing. Certainly we could just have done what you'd do in AIM and say "anyway, as we were saying..." but having it actually visually offset was really nice.
I don't think I can stress enough how much I think the "fork" or "inline blip" or what ever it is called is the true highlight. I really think that is the biggest feature. I get the impression few people know how to create or use them, though.
When I talk with my girlfriend on Wave, we just type in our own message boxes in response to what the other is saying in real time. I really like it, as it's more fluid than IM, but trying to decipher the conversations afterwards is a bit tricky; it's like listening to one side of a phone call and then listening to the other side. Once we get used to the software I imagine we'll start forking.
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I'm all for seeing a beatdown in the breakroom over a collaborative effort gone awry.
Amusingly, I wrote a blog about that very thing. I believe once Wave has better stability and the ability to handle more complicated messages. (Imagine being able to send git commits to a wave, for example. Well, if you are a coder and know what git is.
There are some Penny Arcade waves. And plenty of public waves. Simply add with:public to the search and you can find them.
Edit: The waves were change from PA to Penny Arcade due to some confusion from others finding them.
Yeah. So I'm not sure what the big functional upgrade is.
Unless it's that you can edit the same document in real time, but that seems like it could be a recipe for disaster.
You can also effectively "fork" a document in real time. That is, insert an inline blip with suggestion on how to improve something in a document, or simply ask question about a spot.
I just used Wave for an AIM replacement to have an extensive conversation for the first time. It worked extremely well, and being able to see the other person type really did increase speed huge amounts.
Also, to me, it felt more like I was "talking" to the other person. Really cool.
To add to that for this discussion, what was really cool was being able to fork the real-time conversation. I mentioned a certain comic book in passing as part of the discussion, and we had a branch discussion about that comic. When we were done, we could just minimize that conversation and get back to what we were discussing. Certainly we could just have done what you'd do in AIM and say "anyway, as we were saying..." but having it actually visually offset was really nice.
For what it's worth, a professor at Stanford studied the quality of writing and type of writing of students from 2001 to 2006. She found that people were in general, writing way more than they used to, which makes sense. 20 years ago, if it wasn't for work, you wouldn't write, you'd call. She also said the social platforms develops the ability to know and speak to your audience.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson
I don't think I can stress enough how much I think the "fork" or "inline blip" or what ever it is called is the true highlight. I really think that is the biggest feature. I get the impression few people know how to create or use them, though.
These are things that will emerge over time, but which have hitherto not been a real issue with communication. Kind of an interesting problem, I think.
Also, taeric, I just made a wave and added you to it. Might be a good chance to play with the IM functionality, if you haven't. It's interesting.
Edit: the point being, then we can have another opinion on this as an IM tool.
There are a few things I've found unnecessarily brittle – you can't delete private replies (they seem to be implemented as entire waves?), and there's no facility for moving blips, which would be really handy.
I was actually just thinking it would be nice to move a blip.
Yeah I don't know what you're talking about. I would love to fork blips in a correspondence with someone. Typically a conversation online can go all over the place, actually now that I think about it just about any kind of conversation does the same. I've been talking to one friend about the possibility of making diagrams of conversations just for the fuck of it to see how we and other people manage to go from talking about Paranormal Activity to hiking through other countries.
Wave is basically a way for us to do that online. I can separate a rabbit trail from the general idea or start of a conversation and then easily find my way back to what we were originally talking about. And with the whole thing being open sourced there's room for tons of new features. It might be useful to have a stickyboard for a wave if the original point of one was to organize something. Just have the time, location and all the details at the top and allow people to discuss everything else within the wave. Or the ability to connect two possibly related waves. Of course things might get out of control and we might just end up making a huge intertwined rat's nest of email but saying it's not a big deal because email is for correspondence and does the job just fine is being simplistic. It's like saying texting is never going to get around because it's so much easier to call someone if you want to talk to them.
Maybe more people will do it once this catches on, but I need only point to the habit most people are in with emails where they respond to everything at the top as an example of this being the exception. It likely is a generational thing, I know I like inlining my responses to people's emails. I have found I know few people that still do that.
Once they make it so that you can disable the "live typing" feature, it can probably be a drop in replacement for emails. As it is, it inverts the way people usually write unless you typically write the whole message before selecting who you are sending it to. Unless, of course, you like knowing when people are starting a draft to send your way.
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the reason I see it replacing email, for me, is because of the way that it is centrally stored, and new folks can be given access.
Instead of having to forward messages around, and then parse the quoted text in a forwarded message, you can just be added in to a wave, hit the replay button (or skim it from top to finish) and be in on it.
That may be. However, there is a very good reason many people prefer having a chance to "draft" things that others do not see. So much so, that there is actually an "undo send" button available as an lab's extension in gmail.
Not to mention many times I send an email, I am not worried about an immediate, real time, response.
When I talk with my girlfriend on Wave, we just type in our own message boxes in response to what the other is saying in real time. I really like it, as it's more fluid than IM, but trying to decipher the conversations afterwards is a bit tricky; it's like listening to one side of a phone call and then listening to the other side. Once we get used to the software I imagine we'll start forking.
BTW, if no one follows the Moe's Tavern thread PA now has waaaaay more invites than people to invite. I have 20 or so if any D&Ders want one, PM me.