What is it n how it works...
Google is ready with another tool to further entrench its position in the online world. The Internet's numero uno company has just released its new communication platform Google Wave to a select 100,000 users. Billed as one of the most ambitious projects from Google, experts believe that Google Wave has the potential to alter the way we communicate online.
Google unveiled Wave in May this year during I/O event's keynote address. It started as a side project at Google's Australia office. Wave was developed by a small team in Australia, led by brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen. It the same team of Australian Google engineers who created Google Maps. Presently, some 60 engineers are reportedly working on the application.
what exactly it is:
An online tool for real-time communication and collaboration, Wave aims to combine instant messaging, wiki, email, document handling and social networking features in one package.
It can be both for a conversation and a document in which people can discuss and work together using rich text, videos, photos, maps and multimedia. Wave also makes it very easy to share photos, which can simply be dragged from the desktop onto the Wave platform.
how it works:
Google Wave users can add new participants to a wave at any time either by clicking "Add" on the wave or dragging and dropping a contact from the Contacts pane on the left to the wave.
Similarly, users can add pictures by simply dragging them into the wave. While the images download progressively, the thumbnails of the pictures appear instantly, while the full image is loaded in the background.
There's also an option for Users to make "quiet" conversations with one or two other participants within the actual wave, and these cannot be seen by the other participants unless you want them to.
Spell checker: There's also a spell checker, dubbed Spelly that automatically corrects misspelt text. The gadget can even recognise how a word is supposed to be spelt based on context within the sentence.
how it looks:
Wondering how Google Wave looks? The main interface looks similar to a standard email box with some changes. On the right side of the interface is a box, which shows the conversations, dubbed "waves" by Google.
These real-time conversations can have multiple participants. All participants have the ability to edit the conversation at any time, with every user being able to see a live feed of what every other participant is doing within that feed.
There's a middle box shows that shows the list of conversations which are either in progress or were made in the past. User icons on the left show the individual wave's participants, and the small green badges show users that are online.
its compatibility and support:
Wave will work on all modern browsers. This means, Chrome, Safari (3 and 4), and Firefox 3.5 and up. Yes, Wave will also work with Internet Explorer. Just that IE users will be asked to install ChromeFrame.
Incidentally, Microsoft does not recommend installing this plug-in, claiming it compromises security.
Developer support: While Wave is a product, the larger goal of the project is to make people adopt it as their online communication platform.
For this, Google is going to need third-party developers. Experts believe that Google needs these third-party developers to build stuff on top of Wave.
Some of such applications include Suduko, a Ribbit conference call gadget, a video chat gadget by 6rounds and a trip-planning gadget by Lonely Planet
