Google Wave: First Impressions
I am lucky enough to have been sent an invite to Google Wave. Here are my initial impressions.
Move over Silverlight/Flash
The interface is amazing to say it is not flash or silverlight. It is slick and easy to use in both Firefox/Linux and Chrome/windows. It does not struggle at all on my netbook and also it fits just fine into the 1024x600 world without tweaks. I really see this as stealing some of the attraction of more complex browser plugging type interfaces like Silverlight or Flash. I clearly is possible to make a really clean, smooth operating interface just with AJAX/HTML. I can only assume it is the power of the GWT (Googles Java->Javascript based web interface toolkit) which has permitted this level of quality.
Yes - there are some bugs in the interface but wow - this is in a new league.
The flip side to this slick interface is that it does not seem to do very much which is actually useful. I suspect this could say more about me than about the application its self. I lost interest in Facebook and ever got into MySpace. Wave definitely has that feel about it; it seems to be about talking a lot and saying very little.
I have tried to figure out how I would run a webinar or presentation from it and failed to be excited. I also suspect it is a long way from being a SharePoint killer yet as it does not seem to support the document handling required. Maybe if Google link up Google Docs with Wave then they will have a killer application indeed?
In Conclusion
The very first thoughts are that the technology of Wave could mark a water shed. If browser based interfaces can be this good, then there might be a time when everything but hard core gaming is browser/html based.
The second thought is that Wave is underwhelming - maybe. It is possible that as multi-site collaboration tool it will be very good - kind of a merge of email and im. I am not sure yet. We will see when more users are on the system.
Rest assured, I'll be blogging the minute I have more thoughts on this!











