Thursday, January 07, 2010

The Mystery of Google Wave

At the end of November, I had the opportunity to join the Beta testing of Google Wave, the new online collaboration utility. It combines features of email, chat, and other functions in a whole new approach. Google describes it this way:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Unfortunately this is one innovation that seems, as yet, to be a mystery to almost anyone who has had the opportunity to try it - including myself. It seems to do a little of everything, but not much of anything.

It might possibly serve to create a creative environment in a virtual office, assuming that employees are online at the same time, so that the give-and-take of a actual office might best be simulated.

Has anybody found an effective use as yet for Google Wave? I'd really like to hear about it!

By the way, if you would like to explore it yourself, I have one more beta membership I can give out - first come, first served.

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