Google Makes Waves

So I was recently exposed to a prototype from Google known as Google Wave. My composition teacher had us use it as a means of communicating, almost like a conference. It was something similar to chatting but yet still very inventive.

Some of the advantages to using Google Wave were the live action feature, the ability to edit, and the number of participants. The live action aspect allowed you to watch what each person was typing as they typed it, the waves are in real-time. The ability to edit was something really new. If someone in any part of the wave misspelled something or needed some assistance in filling in the blanks Google Wave let you do just that. You were able to make changes to any message that someone had sent. Finally, although it isn't the coolest thing ever, you could invite a lot of people to your wave. This seems ideal for anyone looking for large amounts of feedback. For being a beta version the program seemed very well put together and has some real potential.

As for the assignment at hand, times got a little tough. The wave seemed simple enough but getting everyone involved was another story. Also you weren't notified if you had wave messages awaiting you and that meant the possibility of waiting days for a reply. All in all, when we were in class and had access to computers to log on at the same time it got interesting. Watching everyone's responses pop up was fun and what was more fun was watching how often we deleted what we wrote to write something completely different. It was pretty fun when the whole group got involved.