Thursday, 26 August 2010

Google Stops Developing Wave

Google pulls plug on Wave development.Google Wave was a Web-based program that lets people chat, share files and collaborate on documents in real time.

“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects,” wrote Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow on the Google blog.

With innovation sometimes come failure. It’s good to try new things and sometimes you have to make the decision that it’s not worth to pursue it further. Karim R. Lakhani writes in an article titled “Google Wave Decision Shows Strong Innovation Management” that was published in Harvard Business Review:

“Google should be commended for both launching and shuttering Wave as it shows that their managers both embrace creativity and innovation and are also cognizant of allowing failure and dealing with it rapidly and efficiently if the creative efforts do not bear fruit. More of us should be following in their footsteps.”

When I read the news, I realized that I also got an invitation to Google Wave, but I have to admit, that I never even tried to use it. It came highly recommended by my son, but somehow I never even bothered to use it.

Friday, 4 June 2010

WaveTube gadget

The WaveTube gadget for Google Wave is a YouTube player that displays the list of viewers in real time. For each participant watching the video, there is a progress bar (that is, how far into the video they have watched) that everyone else in the same wave can see.
The progress bar will remain for 24 hours by default, or for a period of time you set when first adding the gadget. WaveTube also makes it possible to drag someone else's progress bar or to change their playback status (play or pause).

You can also add annotations (notes) by clicking on the bubble next to the progress bar. An annotations will pop on top of the progress bar of the participant who has set it, at the time it was set in respect to the progression of the video.

Gadget xml: http://everybodywave.appspot.com/gadget/WaveTube/main.xml
Gadget installer: http://everybodywave.appspot.com/gadget/WaveTube/xt.xml

Thursday, 3 June 2010

Google Wave Revamp is Now Available to All

Google has upgraded its Google Wave web application, fixing bugs and making the product easier to use.

Wave is a collaborative tool that enables users to email, chat, edit and share documents in real-time.

Lars Rasmussen, head of Google Wave and Google Maps, announced the updates during the company's I/O developer conference in May.

Rasmussen also revealed at the conferencene that Wave would no longer be invitation-only. The company has opened the app to the public in a bid to increase its user base.

Experts believe that Google Wave, which was well received at Google's I/O meeting last year, didn't fulfil its potential due to the simultaneous release of Google Buzz.

Google has also announced plans to widen its client base by signing deals with several schools, colleges and government and private agencies, allowing them to make use of many of the services available in its cloud-based Google apps suite.

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

How to use Google Wave within Facebook

Here is a short video that shows how you can use Google Wave and Facebook together.