A look at Google Wave

Till sometime back, there was buzz on the new collaboration tool by Google - Google Wave; and  I believe most of us, including me had long waited for the invite to come.I received the Google Wave invite a couple of weeks back.

I had a lot of high hopes with Google Wave, as collaboraton tools have become a must nowadays . Google Docs itself is an excellent collaboration medium , so I was thinking of some expecting some new features in Google Wave .

The picture is self explanatory for the Google Wave .

For first time user , Google Wave does not boast of  a freindly user interface. Initially when I wanted to delete a newly created wave, I could not delete it.. because I could not find the Delete button . Then after fiddling with the UI for some more time , I found the Trash icon is only visible once More .. options.In the above screeshot the Trash button can be viewed prominently as I had increase the panel size  Therefore I feel that providing a better UI shall help users to get acquainted with it easily

Regarding collbaration , Google Wave can be used as very good collaboration tool.  It combines the power of chat, wiki and notifications.Now lets see how Google Wave serves as unique communicatin tool.

Chat - Sometimes during chat we need to check the chat history for last weeks discussion . In Google Wave this feature is very much handy , as the entire chat history gets saved in your Google Wave account. So next time wen you are chatting on Google Wave,  and you want to view the last weeks chat history , all you need is to view the Wave file of that date . There is a cool Replay feature also which replays the entire chat .

Wiki - Though Google Wave is not a Wiki in the true sense, yet the collbarative nature of Wave makes it one. Added to that there are the Gadgets and Voting buttons, which  make the discussion more meaningful .

 Notifications - Google Wave also adds a Ping- or notification button . This is probably the alternative to buzzing your friend in chat.

The advanced options in Google Wave are the Gadgets. Presently the Gadgets option is in beta, but after installing a new gadget , I found I could even call the other participant from within Google Wave !!!

Now isn't that cool .