Currently, I’m all about Google Wave. But whenever people ask me to explain it to them, I kinda have a difficult time doing that. “It’s like email, in real time,” I would say. “And instant messaging, and there are robots that do things for you…” and then I blabber on a little more, and a person who was confused already is completely lost. Heres what wikipedia says.
I think the reason this happens is because Google Wave seems to be the next generation communication tool of the internet. Basically, I don’t think people have seen anything like it yet, so they have trouble accommodating it into their current web framework. “So its like email?” they ask. “It’s kind of like souped-up email,” I say.
Google Wave is coming out September 30th, which is pretty exciting. I’ve been trying to develop a robot with the wave apis, and it seems like it’s going to be pretty sweet. To me, google wave seems like everything you should be able to do with email, and very easily. You want the weather? Include the Weather Bot and type the city. You want to include a link or a picture? It couldn’t be easier.
Right now, at any time I have either one or no friends on wave–so I face the problem of the first telephone–who do you call? I think as more users start to use wave and as more developers create sweet bots and extensions, it will be a very powerful communication tool of the future.
Watch the Google I/O on wave here.