So I’ve been using Google Wave on and off for about a month now. I think it’s useful for collaborative work.

I know some a lot of people don’t get it and I think it’s because Google made a bad move by branding it as “how email would be like if it were invented today”. That caused everyone to come in with the expectation that it would be like…well…email. Wave is a whole new beast.

It’s a combination of email, wiki and IM. But be careful because it’s not anyone of those. I find that its use is best when it involves more than one person trying to solve problems.

It is not a tool for catching up with an old friend. It’s not a chatting tool…it gets waay too messy, waay too fast.
It is not a wiki(at least not in its present form) because unlike a wiki, you can’t roll back to a previous version.

I think the sample wave that Google provided is a good one because it shows how Wave can be used constructively.

You start with a problem and list down the sub-problems that need to be solved.

Then the wave participants start throwing out ideas all over the place causing the wave to get really messy. But once a solution is agreed upon, someone simply deletes the entire discussion and just leaves the agreed solution on the wave. This keeps the wave readable, moves the problem-solving effort forward and because of the replay function, anyone who wants to see the thought process can simply do a playback.

Keep repeating for all the sub problems.

As i see it the relationship between a wave’s readability and time goes somewhere along the lines of

I’m trying to organise a party using Wave. It got messy from time to time, what’s really interesting is how this time around, I can increase the guest list and update stuff without having to go through the hassle of informing everyone(Especially those “Who else is going?” questions). I just set the wave be the central point of information dissemination where everyone can edit and update. Sure makes being the organiser a lot easier.

I wish they would send me an email when my wave is updated though. Beats having to keep logging in to check.