Google Wave Is Interesting, I Guess

2009 October 16
by CajoleJuice

I’ve had Google Wave for a while now. Oh, I didn’t tell you? Maybe because I don’t have any invites to give you — or I just don’t know where they’re hiding. Or maybe because it’s not all that useful as a social communication tool, especially when no one you’d want to email has access to it.

There’s not even many impressions for me to relate, as most of my activity in Wave has been similar to a forum in real-time. It’s kinda cool to see someone else replying to you before you’re even done typing, but it’s not really much different than a forum — and right now it’s infinitely wonkier. The little things — like being able to drag-and-drop pictures and watching an embedded YouTube video while replying — are cool, but in terms of functionality, I’m not sure if it saves much time or is worth the effort. People for the most part will stick to plain emails, or IM, or Facebook, or Twitter.

Where Wave will be useful is in collaboration in school and work. I wish it was around when I was in college. Students could post their lecture notes and classmates could edit them or add their own comments. Peer editing on papers could be done in real-time over the internet; you’d watch the person fixing or commenting on certain parts of your essay, and be able to converse and ask why they think your paper sucks. Group projects would no doubt benefit even more, in ways I can’t even think of, due to not actually participating in many of them.

I really thought I could write long blog posts consistently, but I usually run out of gas after three paragraphs. How do I get more writing stamina? What’s the equivalent of masturbation in writing? Joe Posnanski’s blog?

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