Google Wave Impressions

I’ve been using Google Wave for the past few weeks and I think I’ve experienced enough of it to come up with a balanced and fair review of Google’s new product. As a quick summary though, Google Wave is a collaborative online tool which combines features of e-mail, online messengers, and social networks. To quote one of the developers, Google Wave is what e-mail should be if it was developed today.

Initial Impressions
First, let me just share that I was initially bored to death with it. Simply because I had no one else to “wave” with. There was no tool at the start that allowed me to invite my friends and my colleagues to try the product out. Since the main goal of Wave was to collaborate, it kinda defeats the purpose of not having someone to “collaborate” with, haha.

After a few weeks, Google allowed users to start inviting and this was when it became more interesting. Initially Google Wave was a social tool. It was just a glorified chat engine or forums. I’d have waves with old friends from Level Up or fellow bloggers but it was really nothing else than that.

Google Wave for Status Updates
Eventually one of my partners in my consultancy business asked me to use Wave for our updates. This is very important for us because we handle multiple clients and it was becoming too cumbersome to keep on updating each other per project e-mail after e-mail or through SMS. So far Wave has been such a huge blessing in tracking everything. Here’s what we do:

1. Create a folder for status updates of clients
2. Create one wave per project
3. Update the wave each time there’s progress or developments
4. Interested parties can comment, discuss, and suggest next steps

It’s very easy to track. Makes for a good and simple project management tool. Right now I just have one folder for all the projects. I’m thinking of changing it to one folder per project.

For this to work though your employees or collaborators have to be active on Google Wave. My personal dream is to have all my clients and co-workers on Google Wave which would make my life infinitely easier. That would cut meeting times considerably and everyone will always be on the same page.

Some Google Wave Issues
I only have one major issue with Wave, and that’s the load time. I don’t know if it’s because it’s still in BETA but if Google finds a way to take out the long loading time, then this would really be one of the best online tools that I’ll be using in my business for the coming years. One of the cool features of Google Wave is that you can see the updates real time, which makes Google Wave a chat engine. However, there are times that the entire interface becomes sluggish when you’re chatting with someone on Wave. There’s also a slight lag time each time you change waves. The loading time of Wave when you start it up or when you refresh it is also considerably long.

All my other concerns are pretty much minor which I’ll tackle in my wish list for Google Wave.

Google Wave Wish List
Google Wave has so much potential. In fact, like what I said above, I feel like I’ll be using Wave for a long time, especially if I convince more people in my network to start using it regularly. Here are some items in my wish list for Google Wave:

- Ability to group contacts and start group waves without having to add all the “wavers” one at a time. I’m not sure if this works already but if it’s already there someone leave a comment so I can do this! Hahaha!
- Integrate a Calendar of sorts which is synched to Outlook or some other mobile application.
- RSS as waves. This might kill Google Reader though, hehe.
- Integration to other social media tools.

That’s about it. I still have around 10 invites left so if you want one just leave your e-mail address below in the comments section.

If your’e already on Wave, then please do add me as a contact – oplecarlo@googlewave.com.