Google Wave Quicky Review

First of all, Scoble isn't that wrong when he says that Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype. I don't know if I'd call it so cut and dry. I've played around with it a bit today and have a few comments:

• It's still got some rough edges, I have yet to see a crash (well, other than a quick try in IE8 which I knew would fail horribly).
  
• It's still got a ways to evolve as well, I'm sure some of the UI and productivity issues will smooth themselves out.
  
• It is not an [anything] killer. It won't obsolete RSS, Twitter, Email, Google Docs, Windows, Linux, IM, or SMS.
  
• Wave has it's place in the world, the current failing for it is it doesn't seem to know where it is. I can see this being the perfect solution to a problem, the thing is, I'm not sure what the problem is. I can see it being awesomely useful doing online support with a team that's separated (open a new wave for each issue, real-time collaboration on answers), a scrum team putting their thoughts on an issue all down together, organizers for a sports team, or something like that. Wave is a hammer searching for a nail.
  
• Lots of the functionality is uber cool. Realtime typing, translation, editing, etc all work pretty much as advertised.
  

I look forward to seeing what Wave brings in the future, and evolves into, but for right now it's probably really not all that useful for normal people other than as a fun toy to play with.

Posted by Arcterex at October 01, 2009 12:53 PM