Underwhelming experiences with Google Wave
Took some time today to work with the new communication meme -
Google Wave
. I wouldn't call it a fundamentally new way to communicate - well, not
yet. I think Google is safe to continue with a "preview" label - clearly
not even "beta" yet. No horrible bugs - at least on the Windows platform
- but some obviously missing features. And, I am not all that impressed
with the basic idea - it's just a mashup of Google Docs, instant
messenger, and eMail.
Problems
All of my experimentation has been from a Windows machine - I am
experiencing horrible performance issues with Firefox 3.5.3 on Ubuntu
9.04. I freely admit that this might not be a Wave issue - for the last
two weeks, all of my Google sites (Mail, Docs, iGoogle, Reader ...) run
brutally slow, timing out by graying the browser window. I know it's a
weird issue because I can't
Google for an answer
(a disturbingly tight loop). Wave refused to even show me the stills
from the introductory videos until I disabled
Greasemonkey
. Yes, I'm sure it has something to do with my setup, my installed
plugins - I'm just surprised that the problems have been this stubborn.
So, to get anything done, it's back to Windows - still using Firefox,
but no hint of platform troubles. Just an underwhelming experience with
the fancy new toy.
I Am Legend
Interconnections on the internet are a wonderful thing; I put out a
Tweet
(sic) regarding my Wave invites, and a note in LinkedIn as well. Twitter
generated the most responses, with folks I'd never met - great fun to
connect like that. The following day, I got a note from someone looking
to connect via Wave - I'm guessing from the information that I can see,
this person saw one of my original notes via Friendfeed. Amazing how
those copnnections were practically spontaneous ...
... while Wave feels like I'm in a walled garden. I still feel very cut
off in the Wave world - a different domain from gmail.com means a new
address to track, a new contact list to build. And it's difficult to
find connections with folks you already know; I received another Wave
invite from a friend, but since I didn't need it, I tried to figure out
how to connect to him via Wave (I thought it a reasonable assumption
that he, like me, has dived in). Unfortunately, I had to resort to an
email message and some detective work to find out his Google ID - not
something I could explain to most business users.
Yet Another Email Client
Yes, I am still at that opinion. Most of the opinions and articles I've
scanned make it sound like we are working with a
next-gen
email client
that does
some of the basics right
. I do note that the amplifiers tend to gush a bit, while the
attenuators work hard to impress with wit.
Generally Pro
Generally Con
Maybe It's Just Me
One of my random invites went to
this guy
, who's review was a bit more positive than mind. Ok, maybe I'll jump
into the
with:public
pool and wade around a while - it's probably the only way I'll really
get it
. However, I am very willing to be patient and continue the experiment -
took me about 3 months to
get Twitter
.
Previously ...