Google Wave: Ride It

Google Wave yet another free web application brought to you by the kings of internet innovation, Google. Because it’s from Google, you can expect it to integrate Google’s other groundbreaking software, such as Gmail, Google Plus, and of course Google search. Google Wave is a media mashup web application that allows you to collaborate on a project with your team, be it friends, family or coworkers. If you were to look at each individual feature, there would be nothing new about Google Wave, but when you cram all these features into one, and integrate it with Google’s other services, you have a winning combination.

The structure of Google Wave is that you create and share “waves” with your group. A wave can be either a discussion board, complete with a polling system, task tracking, where the user can create and manage to-do lists, meeting planner, richly formatted documents, or brainstorming, where you can type text, add images, or even draw your own images. You can even do a video search from within Wave’s interface and embed it in your wave. Not only videos and images can be embedded, but also Google maps and a long list of customizable add-ons. Customizability and personalization are the keywords for Wave. Wave syncs with your contacts, and the way in which you present ideas and data are virtually unlimited.

The user interface is sleek and intuitive. There are helpful mini tutorials along the way as you explore its features, yet they don’t clutter your screen or get in your way. When you create a new wave template, there will be a sample format shown, so you aren’t wasting time stumbling around with the features.

So how does all this affect the way we communicate and interact? It seamlessly melds the best of both worlds of what we look for in communicating on computers. That is, you can get the real time collaboration and instant feedback from something like the video chat extension, and you can have the “read now, respond when I have time” angle of communication with a wide array of text based communication options such as the discussion boards. You can collaborate on the computer, or you can organize a face to face interaction with the wave template for meetings.

If you’ve got a project that requires group organization of any scale, there’s no reason not to give Google Wave a spin. There’s no sign up required, just sign in with a Gmail account. Like all Google software, new features are added constantly, and you can trust that if the technology is there, Google is going to find a way to make it better for you and not even charge you for it.