New Google Wave

I have a slight confession to make on this hub, I wrote it when google first came out, and only really covered the basic features.  I always meant to add more but never got around to it.  A few days ago I cam across it and decided to publish it 'as is' unfortuantely I didn't do any research before hand.

It turns out (Thanks to a few comments) that Google Wave is set to be discontinued, this is a great shame as it had a wide variety of functionality, and I actually do use it in day to day business.

So for those of you wtill interested in Google Wave, please read on and see what you have probably missed out on!

Google has a reputation of creating innovative new software, from the Google OS to Google Chrome, we have seen some amazing things. It is for this reason that I am not entirely surprised that they have come up with yet another ground breaking piece of software; Google Wave.

I found Google Wave incredibly hard to review.  It is not down to anything bad, it is more to do with the huge range of software that this not only covers, but obsoletes.  Google wave replaces those out of date things such as e-mail and instant messaging, say goodbye to Microsoft Project, and Facebook? who needs that.

In short Google Wave can replace all of your basic personal and work related software, by creating what they call a 'wave' for pretty much anything..

Below I have placed a video all about Google Wave straight from teh Google development team itself.  Unfortunately the sheer size of Google Wave's capabilities turn this video in to a feature length film, nearly an hour and a half long.  So for this reason I am going to highlight the basics of Google Wave for you right here, afterwards I will go more indepth in to this amazing piece of software.

First off, Google Wave works in Waves, this is very similar to a conversation by email, except you can change parts anywhere within the document, you can distribute permissions, and you can invite new people to view all of, or selected parts of, the wave. 

In the wave you can incorporate photos, videos, presentations, games and more, without worrying.  Infact you can pretty much do anything you want with a wave.

Further more the wave is embeddable, and any other Wave users out there can (With your permission) edit or add to your wave.  This may seem complex, but you could start your own wave of status updates, like facebook, and people could comment on them.unlike Facebook however, the wave could be embedded in to your website, your blog, or any other online medium.  And anyone can edit any one of these, and it will update every single one, in real time!

Google Wave also has timescale rollback, so if it needs to be restored, or you simply want to play through how the wave has progressed you simply drag a cursor along a timescale slide bar, and press play!

So lets go over what Google Wave replaces one thing at a time

Email - Google Wave replaces email in several ways.  First off it follows the conversation much like Google Mail, and looks kind of like the commenting feature on Facebook.  Unlike either of these however editing emails, combining work on a plan, or including media becomes an absolute sinch.  Instead of cumbursome photo uploading you now have drag and drop capability, right in to your Wave (email thread) perfect for updating people who you planned an outing with.

Instant Messaging - It is the functionality of Google Wave that makes it the perfect replacement for many IM conversations.  And while it may never fully replace instant messaging, it might just bring it in to mainstream business use.

Online Picture Albums - The drag and drop picture functionality, along with tagging and the like make this an unbelievably good photo mangement tool.  With Wave integration and embed capabilities, you can show off your photos anywhere, and choose which of your friends have access.