Issue 36.09
This may end up sounding like an advertisement for something you can’t even get yet, but I want to let people know about something I have been investigating for a couple of weeks. It’s called Google Wave, and I believe it will change the way people use their computers significantly over the next couple of years. In essence, it combines the capabilities of email, file sharing, real-time collaboration, social networking and probably a lot more things I haven’t found out about yet.
What Google has done is to re-imagine the email process. Email has been around for 40 years and is still basically what it was then. I create a message and send it to you or a group of people. Then, if people want to respond, they need to create their own email back to me in which they can quote from my email or not as they see fit.
The Wave concept is to re-create the whole approach. You start a wave and indicate who you want to share it with. They all get your original note or picture or poll or whatever you are sharing. They can all add to or edit or ask questions about what you are doing which is immediately updated, not just on your wave, but on all the waves that you sent out as well as anyone they choose to share it with. The option is there to communicate privately with you, but the default is to open it up for everyone you choose to include.
If you are working on creating a document, everyone can make changes and everyone sees them right away. Because of a very cool “recording” feature, you can back up before certain changes are made and you can see who made each change, so accountability is intact. They already have included the most intuitive spelling fixer I have seen which will help a lot of us. They have also created a nifty little Yes – No – Maybe grid when you invite people to events. People can even change which column they want to be in later and it automatically updates everyone’s wave with the new info.
From what I can discover, they are planning to make it available to the public later this year, but no specific date has been set. You can find out more by going to http://wave.google.com/ and signing up for email updates. There is also a very cool demonstration video there that takes over an hour, but has lots of additional ideas and info.
I think this is going to be a good one, and I have to admit I am pretty anxious to start playing with it.
So, until then, stay safe and happy computing.
Shaun McCausland has been in the computer industry for 27 years (locally with Musicomp & Bits ‘N’ Bytes) and currently does in-home and on-site computer consultation, service, training and repair. If you have questions, you can reach him at 668-7118.