Thoughts on Google Wave

Google Wave

In mid 2009, Google developers announced a new communications technology know simply as Google Wave.  It connects more people and more content together in a sort of email but not email, semi-instant messenger type of fashion.  Though it is still in the beginning of its life, this program already shows some great potential and hopefully proves worthy and not too confusing to catch on to.  

I signed up for a beta preview a few weeks back and finally got approved.  You can request an invitation to join Google Wave by going to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/.  I usually sign up for whatever new idea Google pops up with and try my hands at it.  After approval, first thing I noticed was the 8 available invitations to help me get a small network of friends to Wave with.  Good thing too since so far I have 7 invitations sent and 5 already joined.  Its definitely something to get used to.

Here's the looooong video from I/O 2009 conference where Google publicly announced Wave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&feature=player_embedded

I'm still in the process of checking it all out and testing various parts of it.  Some things such as the embed video doesn't appear to be working, I've tried Youtube.com, Dailymotion.com, and Break.com and none of the embed codes work.  I even tried the url code for it and still the same thing.  I'm sure its just a matter of time before they vamp it up and get it going once they see evidence that this could potentially overtake emails, which will probably mean another price jump at the port office.

I will return with more words once I've had thorough time to test it and possibly check out the developer extension pack to start learning how to create extensions.  It sure would be nice to see this beta grow and become a full-fledged release and available to everyone.